Save 15% on Bonvoy redemptions and 20% on cash rates with ‘Week of Wonders’

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• John says:

  9 Oct9 October 05:34

  I find the ratio of advertorials to real content too high these last weeks.

  As a consequence, I just added your RSS feed to my feedly. Won’t visit the web site on a daily basis any longer. I’ll just stop by if something interesting shows up in the feed.

  • KP says:

    9 Oct9 October 08:21

    👍🏻

  • BJ says:

    9 Oct9 October 08:21

    I get your point but to be fair a similar article would have been run on HFP ten years ago. Personally, I’m happy as I need to buy Bonvoy points soon and might otherwise have missed it. I do have some sympathy with the view that the balance of HFP has become all wrong though and it pains me to express that view, but the bills have to be paid and new readers have to be continuously engaged. The problem is that it just feels like it has become the Barclays, Marriott and amex show with other tidbits thrown in as an afterthought. Countering that though is the undeniable fact that the points and miles nuggets are currently stockpiled at amex and Barclays so in this respect that is where the focus of the coverage should be regardless of whether it is advertorial. There’s no point taking up space to tell readers they can get 50 Nectar points for watching a video when you can explain how to get 100k points from at bank! The more fundamental problem I think is reconciling the needs of newbies and long term readers. The balance of the site at the moment works very well for the newbies, less so for the oldies. I think what I’d like to see going forward is HFP addressing how best to keep us oldies on board. Clearly, they do this, for example we got the forum many have been crying out for for years. Personally, as an oldie, what I’d like to see is more creative ways for me to burn the points and miles I already have and continue to collect. To this end, and if resources are or become available to hire new staff then it would be brilliant if we could have guest pieces from time to time by somebody like Stephen Au. It would be very interesting to get his take on how best a UK-based collector of points and miles could get the best out of them.

  • Chas says:

    9 Oct9 October 08:25

    I’d normally think of an advertorial as being paid for by the company that is being written about. This isn’t, otherwise it would say that it was a sponsored article at the top.

    Do you also think that the Economist article is an advertorial? Or the ones yesterday talking about the BA route suspensions, or the HSBC points bonus? They’re not – they’re just news.

  • George K says:

    9 Oct9 October 09:59

    Pretty sure if this were an advertorial, it’d be marked as such.

    There’s a genuine discount to be found for a week only, and the news piece is of use to those who either didn’t opt in to Marriott’s emails, or those who forgot about it (like me!)

  • KevinS says:

    9 Oct9 October 10:02

    It’s a business. You might not like uncritical puff pieces but are you suggesting they should turn them down if they’re offering big money?

  • Rob says:

    9 Oct9 October 10:13

    Whilst there are many articles you could have posted this on, potentially with justification – since you clearly believe that magic fairies provide the £150k per year we need just to keep the lights on – putting it under a) an unsponsored article and b) one which covers a hotel sale AND a points sale AND a ‘buy points’ sale is just bizarre!

  • M says:

    9 Oct9 October 10:29

    I’m actually suprised that Rob and team can produce content daily I enjoy reading!

    • BJ says:

      9 Oct9 October 11:16

      Not only that, I think many people do not comprehend how difficult that is to do. It is over a thousand articles per year and over ten thousand since HFP started. And they have cost us nothing! It’s been a wonderful achievement. More days than not I have found and continue to find something interesting and useful to read. Sure I may gripe sometimes about the balance but I always try to be constructive and suggest solutions to my issues. In any case, they are just issues from my perspective , and I am well aware it is impossible to please everybody all the time so I hope Rob and Rhys will not take my lobbying for my own interests to much to heart, I love HFP regardless 🙂

  • John T says:

    9 Oct9 October 10:45

    You’re getting free content 7 days a week. Who do you think pays for the production of this content?

    Perhaps H4P should consider a membership model where people pay a small monthly fee (like Netflix) for purely non-sponsored content?

    • Freddy says:

      9 Oct9 October 22:30

      150k to keep the lights on…I’d be shopping for a new energy supplier

• Matt says:

  9 Oct9 October 07:33

  Unless Marriott have changed their booking system, you can probably still change Al Maha. I’ve had to cancel a few reservations within 30 days of stay (where this was outside the ‘official’ cancellation policy) and received the points back straight away.

• AJ says:

  9 Oct9 October 08:41

  This Marriott promotion is a joke. I have four stays planned in the coming weeks which should qualify based on the criteria. But when I search, the rate is mysteriously unavailable. These advertising campaigns are getting pretty tiresome. Doesn’t create any goodwill to waste time with “promotions” which have zero value.

  • Lee Thornton says:

    9 Oct9 October 12:30

    Agreed, I’m left ‘wondering’ what the promotion actually is! As far as I can see it is abysmal.

  • Neil says:

    10 Oct10 October 14:15

    Have a look again now. I found the same thing before but this morning I managed to cut my point spend

• ankomonkey says:

  9 Oct9 October 09:45

  – Save 15% on the standard points price
  – Stay by 31st October
  – 4,500 of Marriott’s 7,000 hotels are participating

  They could at least have made it a bit more useful/attractive by having a later stay by date and including all hotels!

  • meta says:

    9 Oct9 October 10:28

    Exactly. Even if you have existing bookings, the rates are going to be higher anyway so close to stay. And if you don’t have you’re probably either staying somewhere else or the price doesn’t matter. It’s just for the sake of saying we have a redemption promo.

    • Lee Thornton says:

      9 Oct9 October 12:57

      I just wasted 15 minutes looking for rooms on six dates in London over November and December and not once was this discount rate available. What a gyp.

      • Andrew. says:

        9 Oct9 October 16:15

        Why were you looking for hotels in November & December when promotional rooms aren’t available after Halloween?

• tony says:

  9 Oct9 October 11:43

  Certainly doesn’t look like sponsored content – other than to agree with previous posters that the terms of the promotion are so limited as to make it rather questionable. Unless of course you’re wanting to spend Christmas in the Swindon Marriott and get 20% off…

• Mr(s) Entitled says:

  9 Oct9 October 22:42

  To offer balance, I found this article to be very useful. I have just saves 20% over Christmas at the Swindon Marriott. Result!

• Neil says:

  10 Oct10 October 13:11

  Thanks a lot. Managed to save 12k in points by rebooking on a trip to Berlin at the end of the month.

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