{"id":2610,"date":"2013-03-04T16:45:47","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T21:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/first2board.com\/verygoodpoints\/?p=2610"},"modified":"2013-04-23T11:54:41","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T15:54:41","slug":"hotel-loyalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/first2board.com\/verygoodpoints\/2013\/03\/04\/hotel-loyalty\/","title":{"rendered":"Hotel Loyalty: I Believe It Pays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For every frequent traveler, you&#8217;ll find a different opinion to the question: does it pay to remain loyal to 1 hotel brand. My opinion is yes, it pays. \u00a0For me, I&#8217;m loyal to Starwood. Now, I&#8217;m not saying that you can always stay at a hotel with the brand you&#8217;re loyal to. There are going to be exceptions &#8211; some cities\/towns\/countries may not have a hotel within your preferred brand. Starwood didn&#8217;t have a single hotel in The Hague, Netherlands, so I had to stay somewhere else. \u00a0There maybe times when your preferred brand isn&#8217;t within your budget and you have to stay elsewhere. However, whenever I possibly can, I stay at Starwood hotels.<\/p>\n<p>Why be loyal? There are perks. The more frequently you stay with a particular brand, or chain, the more valuable you become to them. The more revenue you spend with a brand, the more willing they are to help you when you run into issues or challenges. \u00a0When you become an extremely frequent guest within a brand, there are special perks you become entitled to. \u00a0Yep, that&#8217;s right, VIP perks.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2615\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2615\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2615\" alt=\"wbkk\" src=\"http:\/\/first2board.com\/verygoodpoints\/files\/2013\/03\/wbkk-300x200.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"http:\/\/first2board.com\/verygoodpoints\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/\/sites\/2\/2013\/03\/wbkk-300x200.jpg 300w, http:\/\/first2board.com\/verygoodpoints\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/\/sites\/2\/2013\/03\/wbkk-511x341.jpg 511w, http:\/\/first2board.com\/verygoodpoints\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/\/sites\/2\/2013\/03\/wbkk.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2615\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">W Bangkok Madonna Art Exhibit VIP Event<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Having stayed more than 100 nights at Starwood, I have a personal ambassador, who by the way, I happen to love. She&#8217;s a direct contact who is my advocate, can help with\u00a0essentially\u00a0anything I need help with &#8211; including booking a room at another chain if there&#8217;s no Starwood that I can stay in &#8211; and I get Starwood points by booking through her (that is also available via the Platinum Concierge for people with more than 50 nights in a year.) \u00a0She arranged something special for my birthday, helped me with an odd situation for my New Year&#8217;s Eve hotel reservations and more. \u00a0It&#8217;s great to have one point of contact to work with.<\/p>\n<p>When available, I&#8217;m upgraded to the best suites possible, and when there&#8217;s not available, I don&#8217;t act like an entitled traveler (which I wrote about last year) and usually end up getting some other VIP experience or treatment.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_2616\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2616\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2616\" alt=\"Westin Siray Bay Plunge Pool Suite\" src=\"http:\/\/first2board.com\/verygoodpoints\/files\/2013\/03\/westin-plunge-pool-suite-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"http:\/\/first2board.com\/verygoodpoints\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/\/sites\/2\/2013\/03\/westin-plunge-pool-suite-300x224.jpg 300w, http:\/\/first2board.com\/verygoodpoints\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/\/sites\/2\/2013\/03\/westin-plunge-pool-suite-455x341.jpg 455w, http:\/\/first2board.com\/verygoodpoints\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/\/sites\/2\/2013\/03\/westin-plunge-pool-suite.jpg 550w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-2616\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Westin Siray Bay Plunge Pool Suite<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As I said, everyone&#8217;s going to have a\u00a0different a different opinion, and that&#8217;s okay. \u00a0But in my opinion, building a relationship with one brand, and growing it is much better than not having a relationship at all.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For every frequent traveler, you&#8217;ll find a different opinion to the question: does it pay to remain loyal to 1 hotel brand. My opinion is yes, it pays. \u00a0For me, I&#8217;m loyal to Starwood. Now, I&#8217;m not saying that you&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[91,92,742,96],"tags":[743],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.13 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Hotel Loyalty: I Believe It Pays - VeryGoodPoints<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/first2board.com\/verygoodpoints\/2013\/03\/04\/hotel-loyalty\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Hotel Loyalty: I Believe It Pays - VeryGoodPoints\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"For every frequent traveler, you&#8217;ll find a different opinion to the question: does it pay to remain loyal to 1 hotel brand. 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