Some of my first travel-related memories are of road trips in and around Southern California, through the desert Southwest, and to Denver to visit family. We piled into a 1978 Buick Estate “Woody” Wagon with suitcases and a cooler full of sandwiches. The vinyl-top ‘69 Chevy Nova (that didn’t have seatbelts for the backseats) stayed parked on the street in front of the house.
For reasons I’ll never know, we became a Ford family with the introduction of the Taurus LX Wagon in 1986. I learned how to drive stick behind the wheel of my brother’s 1988 Probe (and was subsequently pulled over with windows halfway down because the aftermarket tint was about 4 shades darker than was permissible). When I became a licensed driver a few years later, I drove an ‘89 Thunderbird.
Were Fords generally one of the best on the road? Were they reliable or a great value? Were they packed with amenities, luxurious, or especially comfortable? No, no, and no, but that’s what we went with and for whatever reason we stuck with it.
Cut to 2003 when I took a corporate job and started flying about 10,000 miles a month to administer monthly on-site investment counseling sessions for various non and not-for-profit institutions, primarily in Baltimore, Palo Alto, Seattle, all over Southern California, and in Chicago. I was advised to “pick a hotel brand and stick with it,” so I went with the Marriott Rewards program. After a year or two, I realized I could hit the highest ‘preferred’ tier with both Marriott and in the Starwood Preferred Guest program simultaneously, so I started splitting my loyalty.
Thirteen years later and by the time the two merged to form the largest hotel and resort loyalty program in the world, I had ‘achieved’ the highest tier ‘lifetime’ status with each of the respective brands. Due to a system glitch, my ‘Lifetime Titanium Elite’ stats suggest that I have been ‘Platinum Elite’ or higher since age 17, so I guess that entitles me to some kind of bragging rights.
When we as ‘elite’ members accrue benefits, there is a reference to ‘earning’ rewards points or elite-qualifying nights or stays. Merriam-Webster defines ‘to earn,’ as ‘to receive as return for effort and especially for work done or for services rendered,’ implying that we have to make sacrifices or grind away in exchange for loyalty benefits. Is there a reason that we should do this when we take a vacation when we already do enough of it to get to where we can even take a vacation in the first place?
The answer is a resounding NO.
This goes for any [insert a multinational major brand here] property, but I’m going with what I know purely for illustrative purposes. On the Forbes list, there are 340 5-Star, 600 4-Star, and 503 other recommended properties for 2024, for a total of 1,443. Although Marriott accounts for more collective rooms than any other brand on the planet, they account for a mere 251 of these, breaking down as follows:
103 Ritz-Carlton
49 St. Regis
35 Luxury Collection
23 Marriott / JW Marriott
13 EDITION
10 Autograph Collection
10 W Hotels
4 Westin
2 Sheraton
1 Renaissance
1 Design Hotels
For those who may not want to rely strictly on Forbes, here are the top 10 hotels in the world, according to the 2024 Tripadvisor Travelers’ Choice Awards.
Number of which are Marriott-affiliated: 0/10
Let’s take a look at the Sofitel Mexico City Reforma, coming in at number 10. At the time of this publication, total rates including taxes & fees for 4 nights beginning on Wednesday, July 24 are as follows (based on double occupancy):
Direct w/ no benefits - $1,661.91
Expedia w/ no benefits - $1,823.20
My rate - $1,514.06*
*Including a $100 F&B credit, complimentary daily breakfast for 2, early check-in & late check-out, as well as complimentary upgrade at time of check-in and based on forecasted occupancy, complimentary wi-fi.
Ford and Marriott are OK, but the question we need to ask ourselves is should we just stick with what we know, or should we consider opening up to what we've earned?
-Safe travels 🤙
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