Traveling To…

Having stayed so close to the Duomo, it would be difficult for me to justify not sharing a photo if it.

Just prior to my Hyatt Diamond status expiring in early 2013, I signed up for the Hyatt Visa card and completed my minimum spending, yielding me two suite award nights at any* Hyatt worldwide.  As part of my visit in Milan, I decided to use one night to stay at the Park Hyatt Milan.  At the time I booked, the retail price of a suite was about 810 Euros per night.

The Park Hyatt places floor plans of its suites online for convenient reference.

While hotel check-in was at 4PM, I arrived at about 1PM to see if any rooms were available.  The front desk clerk took down my information and, after being a bit confused by my Irish cell phone number (“There aren’t any more digits?”), sent me on my way.  I took to wandering around the Duomo and its nearby plaza.  He called me back about 30 minutes later, informing me that my room was available and I should return to the hotel.

For those reading the Hyatt brochure at home, I would have certainly liked to have received an Imperial Suite, in all 2745 square feet of glory, but I doubt these awards are given much consideration for upgrades.

My room overlooked a very quiet side street.  Just under the archway lies the Piazza del Duomo.

At some point while I was exploring Milan, the hotel staff stopped by to drop off a bottle of wine, bottled water, some dried peppers, and a handwritten note in my room.  (Scroll up to the earlier picture of the table…  I’ll wait.)

The Park Hyatt Milan is exceptionally centrally located.  Unfortunately, this hotel was one of the six Park Hyatts to be elevated into Hyatt’s new formed Category 7 hotels in January 2014, so a single night in a standard room is now 30k points and a single night in a suite is 48k.  While I can point to the retail price to convince myself how good of a “value” I would receive for redeeming points at this property, it’s hard to justify when there are reasonable–albeit not quite as nice–alternatives nearby.

* While this offer was on-going, the Park Hyatt Sydney was restricted to standard rooms, rather than suites, for credit card night redemptions.

While in Milan, I made a day trip to Lake Como.

Carlson announced a devaluation of its own today, joining last year’s Hilton bloodbath and last month’s Hyatt changes.  The announcement is on the Club Carlson website and will go into effect March 15th.

The key takeaways, roughly prioritized by significance:

• Carlson is creating a new Category 7, 70k points per night, tier that will initially include:
• Radisson Royal Hotel, Dubai
• Radisson Blu Le Dokhan’s Hotel, Paris Trocadero
• Radisson Blu 1835 Hotel & Thalasso, Cannes
• Radisson Blu Le Metropolitan Hotel, Paris Eiffel
• Radisson Blu Hotel Champs Elysees, Paris
• The May Fair
• Plaza on the River, London
• art’otel, Amsterdam
• Radisson Royal Hotel, Moscow

The full list of changes is on Carlson’s website.

• The online booking bonus will be restricted to promotional periods, rather than for all bookings.

• The points bonus on stays is being cut to 35% for Gold Elite and 15% for Silver Elite members.

• Award nights will count towards status.

• Hotel restaurant spend will earn points

Hack My Trip points out that this devaluation was inevitable, following the overly generous promotions in the last two years.  I agree:  It’s hard to be surprised that any of these one-for-one stay promotions were sustainable in any way.  More importantly, the changes could have been worse.

To top things off, the signup bonus for the Carlson Visa works out to about four free nights (by strategically booking two stays of two nights) at any top tier hotel.  That’s quite a bit more than Hyatt (two nights), Starwood (not even one night at a Category 7), or the Citi Hilton card (two nights).

With the cobranded Visa card, I have Gold Elite status with Carlson.  The points bonus cut stings ever slightly, but historically, I’ve earned 90% of my Carlson points from various promotions (50k points for a $80 stay?  Sign me up!) and the credit card signup bonus.

Even with award nights now counting towards status, I would not be much closer than I was from just revenue nights (maybe 9/35 instead of 2/35 last year).  Absent shifting my hotel stays nearly completely to Carlson, I’m still hopelessly far from hitting the Concierge level at 75 nights.  Doing so would involve completely forgoing SPG status (and my stays), which have served me quite well for my many trips to Hawaii.

I stopped by the American Arrivals lounge after clearing immigration for a quick shower and snack before heading into London.

I applied two systemwide upgrades to my itinerary.  For my flight to London, my upgrade cleared a bit over two days prior to departure.

American 98
Chicago O’Hare (ORD) – London Heathrow (LHR)
Wednesday, October 9th, 2013
Depart:  9:45PM
Arrive: 11:25AM
Duration:  7 hours, 40 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 777-223ER (N775AN)
Seat: 12H (Business Class)

The menu read as follows:

As I was trying to maximize the amount of sleep I could get on this flight, I skipped most of the dinner offerings and selected just a cheese plate to snack on.

In preparation for my departure to London, I visited the Flagship lounge next door to my gate.  I previously visited this lounge in September 2013.  As this was the last international departure for American that evening, the lounge was quite empty.

With Emirates introduction of JFK-MXP-DXB service, a fare war broke out in the fall, driving base fares for New York to Milan to laughably low levels:  $10 round trip.  Of course, thanks to a $516 fuel surcharge, it’s not a complete steal.  I booked one of these trips with American, giving myself one night in London and four in Milan.

American’s fares had a bit of an annoying quirk in them, requiring transit on AA198 and/or AA199 on the transatlantic leg for “New York” (Kennedy and La Guardia).  As AA198 and AA199 are “direct” flights from and to Chicago O’Hare respectively, one could book somewhat strange looking itineraries such as LGA-ORD-JFK-MXP.  I was interested in visiting London (again), so I picked a departure out of Newark, which allowed me to connect in London on to British Airways.

Way back in 2012, Radisson ran a stay one night, get one night free promotion.  I wound up picking up a night at the Radisson San Jose Airport, as I was heading out of SJC particularly early in the morning trying to beat Hurricane Sandy’s landfall on the eastern seaboard.  The hurricane won the race, unfortunately.

This stay left me with a free night redemption at any US, Canada, or Caribbean Radisson to use by the end of 2013.  As my life is mostly composed of Starwood and Hyatt stays, I delayed redeeming this award until the use-it-or-lose-it factor kicked in.  I had a trip to San Francisco planned, and at the time, Radisson wanted $265 for a night at the Radisson Fisherman’s Wharf.

The hotel’s rooms were recently renovated, so the exterior appearance is a bit deceiving.

Somehow, I ended up with two beds, despite only needing one.

My room had a view of the bay and the parking lot.

American only serves Lihue from Los Angeles, unlike Honolulu and Kahului which see redeye flights to Dallas.  Consequently, getting back to New York required spending a chunk of a daylight on an airplane.

American 266
Lihue (LIH) – Los Angeles (LAX)
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2013
Depart:  1:15PM
Arrive: 9:45PM
Duration:  5 hours, 30 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 757-223 (N193AN)
Seat: 2F (First Class)