Intercontinental hotels – Windbag Miles

That’s AMBASSADOR Jordan to you, sir.

Back in the pre-Leff days of this blog, I wrote a post evaluating whether IHG Ambassador status is worth it. After another year, my final answer is… kind of? It’s great for people like me who don’t travel enough to get high-level status with another chain. If you have Hyatt Diamond (oh, sorry I meant Hyatt “Exploratoriest”), you get sweet suites and suite sweets (AKA free in-room breakfast), so it wouldn’t make sense to pay IHG $200 to get a couple grapes and a free movie. However, if you’re me, and the only status you have is the mid-tier stuff you get from co-brand credit cards, Ambassador is a nice way to buy up to an actual elite tier. While the benefits on paper don’t map directly to SPG Platinum or Hyatt Globalier (AKA no free breakfast), I have found Ambassador upgrades to be very reliable, much to the contrary of every other hotel chain. As far as upgrades are concerned, SPG Gold at W San Francisco = worthless. Hyatt Platinum at every Hyatt I’ve ever been to = worthless. Hilton Gold at the Copenhagen Airport Hilton = worthful, but seems to be an anomaly.

To recap my Intercontinental stays since I bought Ambassador status:
– Intercontinental Monterey: booked standard room, upgraded to one-bedroom suite with view
– Intercontinental San Francisco: booked jr. suite and no upgrade to a larger suite was available, so I got free breakfast and lounge access instead.
– Intercontinental Austin: booked standard room, upgraded to one-bedroom suite
– Intercontinental Times Square: booked standard room on points, no upgrade
– Venetian: booked some overly large suite and upgraded to an even overly larger suite on a high floor with a good view.
– Intercontinental San Francisco: booked jr. suite, upgraded to one-bedroom suite plus lounge access because they remembered the last time when I didn’t get an upgrade and were STILL apologizing for it.
– Intercontinental Amstel: booked standard room on points, still got upgraded to a one-bedroom suite.

Nice, right? I only struck out once, which is a pretty good track record. I knew when I renewed my membership this year that I probably wouldn’t stay at very many IC’s, but I basically paid $150 to gamble that I’d get a nice upgrade when my wife and I went to Amsterdam, and I totally scored. It was a 3-night stay, and I consider it a great deal to essentially pay $50 per night for a one-bedroom suite. Plus all the other benefits (4PM guaranteed checkout, a grape or two, free movie, etc).

Oh yeah, and what about the free weekend night certificate? FUCK THE FREE WEEKEND NIGHT CERTIFICATE. You’ll notice that I evaluated Ambassador status as if said certificate didn’t exist, because I think it can still be worth it even if you put the certificate into the shredder where it belongs. Am I overreacting? Probably. But here’s why I’m mad at IHG and thinking of not renewing next year…

This April, I got an email telling me to renew my membership even though it wouldn’t expire until July. I decided to get it over with and renewed for another year, but they sent me my certificate right away. Fine, that’s proactive customer service, except that the certificate was dated to expire in May of 2017, two months before my Ambassador status expires. IHG confirmed with me today that I would indeed have to use the certificate by May, and that it’s their policy to send it out immediately when you renew. So that stay at the Intercontinental Chicago that I booked in June thinking I’d use the certificate? No dice, just head lice.

I suppose I didn’t actually lose out on anything, since I still had a 12-month window in which to use the certificate, but I’m mad that my original plan fell apart and that I likely won’t have a chance to use the certificate at all this year. Plus, I’m in a bad mood because of my fucking lipid profile and so I’m taking it out by writing on my blog about how I hate IHG.

Fuck you, IHG!

The Nazi Hilton?

My grandparents used to have a friend named Hilton, and I remember one time being really confused as they talked about him, finally asking, “Is that the Nazi Hilton?” Hilton, Hitler, same thing to a six-year-old Jewish kid I guess. Anyway, I bring this up as a segue into a post about Hilton hotels, which are NOT affiliated with the Nazi movement.

Because I’m not a huge fan of Hilton’s loyalty program, I don’t make an effort to stay there very often. I have a friend who travels constantly for work, and he puts all his spending on a Citibank Hilton card. He bragged to me that he had amassed 800,000 Hilton points, and I scoffed “Enjoy three nights at a Waldorf Astoria.” SICK BURN!!! Hahahaha.

When it comes to hotels, I try to stay at Hyatts if possible, since their loyalty program works best for me. Decent at-hotel earning, Chase transfer partner, and fairly valuable points. Check, check, check. The only exception is if there’s an Intercontinental, since I’m always treated really well as an Ambassador. For work travel, I’ll usually stay at an IHG, since they’re cheap, and the expectation when I book travel is that I’ll choose the cheapest hotel where the rooms don’t open onto the parking lot (which usually ends up being a Holiday Inn of some sort). Plus, the IHG loyalty program ends up being pretty useful for non-aspirational redemptions. I mean, Holiday Inns are everywhere, so, for instance, if I want to take a weekend hiking trip but don’t want to spring for a fleabag motel in Red Bluff, I can just drop 20,000 IHG points and sleep in relative comfort.

(I’m getting really off-track here, but the math on IHG redemptions is actually better than people give it credit for. Sure, I’d never transfer Ultimate Rewards points to IHG, but the points accrue so quickly that their low value isn’t that huge of a drawback. For instance: if I pay with the IHG co-brand card, I’ll earn 20 points per dollar at most hotels. Assuming I use the Hyatt co-brand card at a Hyatt, I’ll earn 8.15 points per dollar. A top-tier redemption at an Intercontinental is 60,000 points, while Hyatt is 30,000. That means that IHG is exactly 2x the cost of Hyatt for an aspirational redemption, although you can earn IHG points more than twice as quickly.)

This is all to say that I don’t pay attention to Hilton or Marriott, since I just don’t travel enough to spread the love among all the chains. On my most recent trip, however, I stayed at the Hilton Copenhagen Airport, since it’s physically connected to the airport, and we were flying out early the next day. I got a decent deal on a cash + points room (20,000 points + $100 for a room that cost around $275 per night), so I booked it after transferring over Citi points (which were on a 1:2 bonus at the time). I wasn’t expecting much, but the stay was actually pretty great.

The room was nice in a sterile, modern way – but really comfortable overall. And, the best part is that I got a nice upgrade to an executive club room due to having Gold status through my Amex Platty (a status level I basically forgot I even had). This was a nice surprise, since I’m used to never getting upgrades from mid-tier status thanks to my 0.00 batting average at Hyatt.

file_000-2 — OH MY GOOD I TOOK A PHOTO! Look at it, since this is all you’re gonna get.

It gets better, though. I noticed that the breakfast buffet on the bottom floor was OUTRAGEOUS – like three full football fields of breakfast food. It just kept going and going. I’ve never seen anything like it. Needless to say, it dwarfed the spread in the executive lounge, so I asked at the desk if I could have two vouchers as part of my Gold benefits, and they gave them to me. Ask and ye shall receive, right?

This has me rethinking my prior disregard of Hilton, since free breakfast is worth more to me than the points I’d earn at an IHG or Hyatt – especially considering that I earn 90% of my hotel points from credit card spending anyway. And I haven’t run the numbers on it, but I suspect that my point above about IHG’s vs. Hyatt’s at-hotel earning applies to Hilton as well.

We’ll see. Reading some old posts, I’ve said some shit that sounds completely ridiculous to me now, so I may end up continuing to shun Hiltons that aren’t connected to airports. (And also, it may be true that the CPH Hilton is especially good, and I won’t have the same experience at US ones.) What say you? Seriously, post a fucking comment already.

Rookie Mistakes – Hyatt Edition

Being fairly new to this game, I have to keep telling myself that rookie mistakes are inevitable. A lot of the pro bloggers make all this shit sound so easy that whenever I can’t find availability or execute a strategy before fully thinking it out, I end up getting way angrier at myself than I probably should. The little mistakes, like paying with the wrong credit card or forgetting to check a shopping portal before making a purchase, don’t really get to me, but this mess I’ve made with my Hyatt Gold Passport account definitely does.

Here’s the situation: I have a trip to New York in November and will be traveling to Paris on October of next year. I really wanted to stay at the Park Hyatt NYC, since I’ve never been to a hotel that nice, and there’s no way I’m ever going to pay cash for a $750+/night hotel. I could always redeem points, but 30,000 points per night is a lot to spend, even at a halfway decent redemption rate. So the Hyatt sign-up bonus was pretty much my best chance. And, worst case scenario, I could always use the free nights for the Park Hyatt Paris on my trip next year, which would be almost as cool.

So what two boneheaded mistakes did I make? Well, even though I tend to research everything to death before doing anything, I decided to go ahead and apply for the Hyatt card without actually checking if there was award availability at the Park Hyatt in the first place. It didn’t occur to me that I could only use the free nights at a hotel with award availability, although it clearly should have. I hit the spend pretty quickly, only to find out that I couldn’t use the free nights either for the Park Hyatt or the Andaz 5th Avenue (which was my second choice). There were some other options, but I had it in my head to use the free nights on a really special hotel, so I didn’t want to spend them on a run-of-the-mill Hyatt with a typically inflated New York nightly rate.

Oh, but I wasn’t done yet… see, one of the ways I hit the minimum spend on the card so quickly was that I spent $300 on a gift card. (Most cards exclude “cash equivalents” from counting toward the minimum spend, but Chase doesn’t consider a Hyatt gift card to be a cash equivalent, in case you were wondering.) And, given that I’m going to New York on the weekend, I found a great discounted rate on the Andaz Wall St – great news, since I could at least earn some points on a paid stay at a nice hotel, even if it was way out of the way geographically speaking.

Again, though, I bought that stupid gift card before reading all the terms and was cockblocked again when I found out that you can’t use a gift card to book a prepaid stay, since the gift card can only be used at the hotel. On a normal rate, you use a card to hold the room, but they switch the payment method at the hotel – however, if the rate is nonrefundable, they can’t switch the payment method, so you’re out of luck. And since I tied up most of my free funds for travel in the gift card, I didn’t have the extra money to book a paid stay on my credit card. Maybe I could have done it anyway and begged the hotel to accept the gift card, but I didn’t want to risk it.

Not bad for $175 per night, right? Too bad all my money is tied up on a crappy gift card.

No worries, I’d just save the free nights until next year and use them at the Park Hyatt Paris… except that I didn’t read the fine print that they expire within a year. I’ve read on The Points Guy that you can sometimes ask them to extend the expiration date, but the Gold Passport rep I talked to unequivocally told me that’s not possible. I suppose I could have waited until later next year and called over and over again until I found someone who could extend the awards, but I didn’t want to risk that either.

So what did I end up doing? Well, I used all my IHG points to book the Intercontinental Times Square, that’s what. I’ve been on a roll with Intercontinentals lately, and the pictures on Tripadvisor looked pretty enticing, even if Times Square is a shitty neighborhood to stay in. (I don’t know New York from a hole in the ground, so I only know what I’ve been told by others.) It’s a far cry from the Park Hyatt or the Andaz, but I’m sure I’ll live.

How will I ever live for two days in such non-Hyatt squalor?

The problem is that I was saving those points for that same Europe trip to book the Intercontinental Amstel, which goes for over 500 euros per night. There are plenty of good-looking cheap hotels in Amsterdam, though, and from what I could see online, the Intercontinental isn’t nice enough to command that price. Also, it isn’t a huge loss, since I kind of hate hotels that are decorated in that “don’t you feel like an 18th Century aristocrat?” style. I feel like I’d need a powdered wig or something.

And what of the Hyatt free nights? No doubt you’re extremely concerned at this point how I’ll use them. Well, I have a trip to Chicago coming up next year, so I decided to get my Park Hyatt on there instead. It isn’t as nice as the New York one, but it’s still out of my budget for a weekend trip, so it’s a good redemption. I also found a Hyatt Regency Chicago standard rate that’s within spitting distance of the advance purchase rate, so I booked a night there as well so I can use my gift card. There you have it… learn from my mistakes and make sure you do your homework before taking actions (like applying for credit cards) that you can’t take back.

Requisite question designed to spur a flurry of responses in the comments section: What’s the worst mistake YOU’VE ever made? I’m not just talking about miles and points. In your entire life, what’s the worst mistake you’ve ever made?

Ambivalent Ambassador

Earlier this year, I paid $200 to get Ambassador status at Intercontinental hotels. I did it on a whim, since I had sold a bunch of stuff on eBay and had used the money to book a couple weekend trips to IC hotels in Monterey and San Francisco (“staycations” as they’re called by insufferable people). I’m still trying to decide if it was a good deal, and, more importantly, if I’ll pay $150 to renew it next year.

First, though… seriously, fuck the name of this “status.” One, it doesn’t count as elite status if you can just buy it. Whenever I check in at an IC hotel, they always go out of their way to thank me for being an ambassador, and it seems hollow, since they aren’t thanking me for being a frequent guest or whatever, just for forking over $200 in hopes that I can wring more than $200 in value out of them over the next year. Two, what am I ambassading? Am I going out into the world and representing the Intercontinental in a positive light? (Probably not, given the number of f-bombs on this blog.) And if I stay at IC hotels every night for a year, I may be invited to be a Royal Ambassador, which is roughly the same thing, except you get a bejeweled crown upon check-in and free drinks from the minibar.

Okay, so with that out of the way, let’s take a look at the value I’ve gotten out of my Ambassador membership this year. This is a mix of quantitative and qualitative, since (in general) I really like Intercontinental hotels. I like that they’re all different, so you don’t get that “what city am I waking up in” feeling you get from business-friendly hotels blending together in your mind. Plus, they’re pretty nice across the board, so it’s always fun to go to a new one. So overall, I do like getting upgraded on check-in, and that alone may be worth $150 to keep my membership next year.

Stay #1 – Intercontinental Monterey
-Upgraded from standard room with king size bed to one-bedroom suite with balcony and bay view. This is a huge upgrade, since the standard rooms at this hotel face a parking garage. The price difference was around $180 for the night, although I wouldn’t have sprung for the suite at the normal rate. I would have probably paid for a room one or two categories above the standard room, though, so I’m gonna say this upgrade was worth $40.
-Fruit upon check in: $0. I did eat it, but only because I eat whatever is in front of me. I didn’t want the fruit, per se, so it gets a big fat goose egg.
-Welcome amenity (a chocolate bar): $0. I ate this too, but it wasn’t very good.
-Movie: While We’re Young. We usually rent movies in hotels, so I’m gonna give this one the full list price of $15.95.
-Late check-out. Oh man, I LOVE late check-out. Justine and I sat around in bathrobes watching Ink Master on SpikeTV and looking at otters frolic in the bay until well into the afternoon. I probably wouldn’t pay for late check-out, but getting it for free is a pretty huge perk.
Total value: $55.95 plus loving the late checkout lifestyle.

Stay #2 – Intercontinental San Francisco
– Booked junior suite and declined an upgrade to a one-bedroom suite, even though the difference in price between the two rooms was over $300. We were only going to be there one night, so a one-bedroom suite was wholly unnecessary. Instead, we got free breakfast and club lounge access. The club lounge at this hotel is pretty lame, but the breakfast is AMAZING. We’d have definitely paid for breakfast, so the value here is pretty easy to determine: $65.
-Fruit upon check in: they didn’t bring the fruit at first, and I called down to complain, even though I didn’t want the fruit. I’m a terrible person. Value: negative $1,000,000 value due to me being an asshole.
-Welcome amenity (some discount cards for stores at the nearby mall): $0. I buy everything online, anyway.
-Movie: Blackhat. Again, we’d have rented a movie no matter what, so this gets the list price: $15.95
-Late check-out: This was the nicest hotel room either of us had ever stayed in, so we stayed until right around 4PM, grabbed some drinks from the club lounge and left. Value: $1,000,000.
Total value: $80.95 plus more late-checkout luxury.

Stay #3 was supposed to be at the Intercontinental Chicago, but I canceled at the last minute so that I could book a Rocketmiles stay instead. That brings us to the Intercontinental Austin, where I’ll be staying tomorrow through Wednesday for a business trip. Because I’ll be there on business, I really only care about what upgrade I get, since the standard rooms are pretty small. If I only get upgraded to a room with a better view or something, I won’t really feel like I got any value out of the Ambassador membership on this stay.

Update: While the upgrade perk is only technically supposed to bump you up one room category, I found out upon check-in that I got moved from a standard room all the way up to a one-bedroom suite (that’s at least three categories higher). This is an example where there isnt really a monetary value, since my standard room is reimbursed by work and I wouldn’t have paid anything to move to a better room. However, it does make my trip much nicer to have a suite vs. a small room with only a bed and a small desk. For this year, it definitely adds value to my Ambassador membership, helping to justify the $200 fee. For next year, I’m not sure, since it’s uncommon for me to travel to Austin on business, and there aren’t Intercontinentals in most of the locations I routinely visit for work.

Stay #4 is coming up in December at the Venetian. Since this is a partner hotel, I’m not really sure what to expect in terms of benefits. We have a late flight out, so late check-out would be nice, and I’d love to parlay an upgrade into free breakfast again. The big thing here is that I used the Ambassador free night certificate to book this stay. One nice thing about the certificate is that it is good for any room, not just rooms with award availability. The downside is that you have to book the refundable rate, which is often much more expensive. If I had booked two nights here at the best available rate, the total would have been around $650 with resort fee and tax. At the refundable rate, the total is $810 with resort fee and tax, and due to the disparity between the cost of the room on Saturday vs Sunday night, I’ll get about $300 knocked off by using the certificate. That comes out to around $140 in savings, which isn’t bad, but it isn’t really a “free night” either.

Overall, if you add up the benefits through three stays, it’s well over $200, and that’s without counting the 6000 IHG points I got for signing up (5000 as a bonus and 1000 from using the IHG credit card). Plus, there’s the late check-out, which massively improved both of our overnight trips. I’m still on the fence about renewing for next year, though… especially now that I have mid-tier status in some other hotel programs as well and can get room upgrades and late checkout at Hyatts, SPG hotels, and anything booked through Amex Fine Hotels & Resorts.

Requisite question designed to spur a flurry of responses in the comments section: Do YOU cringe when you have to say “Ambassador” status?