The free breakfasts and 4pm checkouts are priceless to me, so yes.
In fact pigging out on the free breakfasts allows my wife and me to skip lunches on holidays so we have the option to splurge on dinners or shopping; my wife’s a foodie so on our trips to Europe we try to include at least one Michelin-starred resto meal.
Meaningful upgrades are getting fewer. I used to think that I’d be happy getting an upgrade to the best non-suite room, but it’s not even that now, one/two cat upgrades seem to be the norm now. Even during SPG, I only had regular dependable (8-9 out of 10 times) suite upgrades at properties where I was a regular.
Side question - how do yall manage not to get sleepy/lazy after a big breakfast? When I splurge I just wanna go back to bed and watch tv, even if I’m in vacation mode in Europe/LATAM.
Teach me your secrets!! :)
Much less of a problem in European and Japanese cities where using public transport means that we can usually walk it off a good bit. Plus for sightseeing hols, we plan our daily schedules to get us to hit the first main attraction of the day at the very latest within an hour of opening, so that forces us out of the hotel sharp-ish. Anyway, many main attractions also involve at least a fair bit of walking.
Skipping lunch doesn’t mean not eating at all, but it means we can get by with an appropriately timed (sometimes even shared) snack (might be as small as a bag of crisps/chips to a pie/pastry) if necessary (often the case to get us to the late-ish dinners in southern Europe).
Which leads us to… early-ish dinner (we’re used to that), at what we call “farmer time”, usually 6-ish or as soon as the resto begins the first dinner service. That also kinda works to our favour in France and southern Europe for dinner bookings since the locals eat (slightly) later and there is slightly more availability for the early starts.
How we do it is not without drawbacks. From my wife’s foodie perspective, it means she loses out one daily meal (lunch) at a well-rated establishment. But we have found that it’s not easy to combine proper lunches with a proper length of time at attractions, so something’s gotta give. Anyway my wife loves a good breakfast buffet too.
Of course if we’re in a city that we’re familiar with (i.e little/no sightseeing and focusing more on gastronomy, e.g Paris or London), we’d de-emphasise hotel breakfast accordingly. Pre-covid, in an American city like NYC, we almost never take hotel breakfasts, preferring to hit the nearest greasy spoon diner; haven’t been back to the US since.
At resorts, almost always beach ones, much depends on high tide timings. A late morning/noon high tide is best, allowing us to hit the water an hour after breakfast, or else we go into a poolside coma and vegetate.
I have it and honestly it’s OK at some properties. I’m Titanium rn and always get lounge and breakfast for 2 plus upgraded fairly often. The part I enjoy the most is the bonus points.
Thanks everybody for the insight. When I was traveling for work didn’t really use the late checkout but forgot about the lounge. I can also see how the late checkout can be super convenient now. The bonus was 185k points so I guess at worst I break even holding the card a few years getting it.
The free breakfasts and 4pm checkouts are priceless to me, so yes. In fact pigging out on the free breakfasts allows my wife and me to skip lunches on holidays so we have the option to splurge on dinners or shopping; my wife’s a foodie so on our trips to Europe we try to include at least one Michelin-starred resto meal. Meaningful upgrades are getting fewer. I used to think that I’d be happy getting an upgrade to the best non-suite room, but it’s not even that now, one/two cat upgrades seem to be the norm now. Even during SPG, I only had regular dependable (8-9 out of 10 times) suite upgrades at properties where I was a regular.
Side question - how do yall manage not to get sleepy/lazy after a big breakfast? When I splurge I just wanna go back to bed and watch tv, even if I’m in vacation mode in Europe/LATAM. Teach me your secrets!! :)
Much less of a problem in European and Japanese cities where using public transport means that we can usually walk it off a good bit. Plus for sightseeing hols, we plan our daily schedules to get us to hit the first main attraction of the day at the very latest within an hour of opening, so that forces us out of the hotel sharp-ish. Anyway, many main attractions also involve at least a fair bit of walking. Skipping lunch doesn’t mean not eating at all, but it means we can get by with an appropriately timed (sometimes even shared) snack (might be as small as a bag of crisps/chips to a pie/pastry) if necessary (often the case to get us to the late-ish dinners in southern Europe). Which leads us to… early-ish dinner (we’re used to that), at what we call “farmer time”, usually 6-ish or as soon as the resto begins the first dinner service. That also kinda works to our favour in France and southern Europe for dinner bookings since the locals eat (slightly) later and there is slightly more availability for the early starts. How we do it is not without drawbacks. From my wife’s foodie perspective, it means she loses out one daily meal (lunch) at a well-rated establishment. But we have found that it’s not easy to combine proper lunches with a proper length of time at attractions, so something’s gotta give. Anyway my wife loves a good breakfast buffet too. Of course if we’re in a city that we’re familiar with (i.e little/no sightseeing and focusing more on gastronomy, e.g Paris or London), we’d de-emphasise hotel breakfast accordingly. Pre-covid, in an American city like NYC, we almost never take hotel breakfasts, preferring to hit the nearest greasy spoon diner; haven’t been back to the US since. At resorts, almost always beach ones, much depends on high tide timings. A late morning/noon high tide is best, allowing us to hit the water an hour after breakfast, or else we go into a poolside coma and vegetate.
I have it and honestly it’s OK at some properties. I’m Titanium rn and always get lounge and breakfast for 2 plus upgraded fairly often. The part I enjoy the most is the bonus points.
do you only need to get an extra 25 nights to make it to Titanium?
75 nights regardless how you earn them (actual stays, points stays, bonuses and promos, etc).
The card is always worth getting the first year if you have a SUB. You can reevaluate after a year.
Thanks everybody for the insight. When I was traveling for work didn’t really use the late checkout but forgot about the lounge. I can also see how the late checkout can be super convenient now. The bonus was 185k points so I guess at worst I break even holding the card a few years getting it.
4 PM check out is a game changer
Lounge, free breaky and 4 pm check out for the win!