Happy New Year!!! The Chinese New Year of ox, or bull (or cow). If you missed making new years resolution on Jan 1, this is another time to make up.
Hotel Frequent Guest Program
Like Airline frequent flyer programs, there are hotel frequent guest programs. And I joined two lately: Hilton HHonors and Mirriott Rewards. There are some tangible benefits to those programs, such as getting the points for the hotel stay and redeem them sometime later. One thing I noticed interesting, at least something I was not aware of, is that hotels sometimes assign better rooms to its frequent guests.
I learned the lesson the hard way couple weeks ago. My co-worker and I checked in the same hotel, he got a room of his preference, while I got a room near the ice-box and vending machine. Luckily the machines did not make much noise. But later on I learned the reason is I am not enrolled in the frequent guest program. So what did I do? I signed up online on the second day, and I am getting all the points for my stay, and even got the credit for my last month’s stay at the same chain hotel. This is one thing hotel programs are more lenient than airline programs: they give credit to previous stay (in last 31 days in this particular case), while airline programs don’t give credit to previous flights (before enrollment).
Hopefully, as I travel more in my new job, I can get enough points in one program which allows me and my wife to go vacation somewhere.