Hotel loyalty schemes

student100

Hello

I've just started a new job that will involve a reasonable amount of travelling and a fair few hotel stays (pretty much all UK based). I want to make sure I don't miss out on any "fringe benefits" so I'm after a bit of advice from seasoned business travellers about hotel loyalty schemes - are any significantly better than the others, are some rewards better value than others etc.

The firm's travel policy is a bit restrictive in terms of what hotels we can book etc, so I can't stay exclusively with one particular chain, but generally speaking most of the hotels will be either Marriott, Intercontinental Group (mainly Holiday Inn), Accor Group (Novotel etc) or Hilton. I know the Accor scheme costs money to join, so probably isn't worth it, but does anyone have any experience of the others and know of any particularly good features/things to avoid etc? And given the choice between two hotels that cost the same for a room, is it worth choosing one over the other on the basis of the loyalty scheme?

Thanks for any advice.

monkeyspanner

I would say join the HI Priority club scheme. Points on your spend. We also have a Priority club Visa credit card so you get a point for every £1 on the card as well. On the face of it this does not amount to a lot as the minimum points for a free night is 10000 and dependant on the hotel can be a lot more (up to 25000pts). However if you sign up to the promotions sent to you by e-mail you can earn a lot of extra points for multiple night bookings etc. Fringe benefits include priority check-in, late check-out, upgrades, etc. Also your card status changes the more nights you stay, I'm not sure what this means as we have never used it enough.

simongregson

Quite a lot of info on https://www.flyertalk.com, although it is a little US biased.

Thursdays_child_3

We only travel for pleasure but always use the Hilton hotels where we can, as my husband is a Diamond member and we get the benifit of being able to get a room for any dates we want, an upgraded room and the use of the Executive floor where free soft drinks, beer, spirits, tea, coffee and snacks are available all day.

We also get points for our stay that go towards free nights.

Networkguy

It depends on what you want to get out of the scheme

If it is just free hotel nights then the Priority Club scheme which covers Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza etc makes it very easy to rack up free nights especially if you sign up for the bonus schemes. Using this scheme I have never needed to pay for a hotel when NOT on business in 5 years.

On the other hand Hilton is good for me as it lets me collect Virgin Atlantic miles at a rate of 1000 miles for each stay.

Also with both of these, once you start moving up the membership tiers you start to get other benefits such as free gym use or free room upgrades.

But the reason I am a member of both is that in West London where I stay, the Hilton hotels are dumps where as there is a really nice Holiday Inn in the area. No amount of points makes up for a dump.

So join them all and depending on how often you stay and where you stay you will always benefit.