TravelingForMiles.com may receive commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on TravelingForMiles.com are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. TravelingForMiles.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers.
Yesterday evening Starwood published its list of hotel category changes for 2016 and, from the outset, they’re not making any friends. The hotel category changes go into effect for bookings made on or after 1 March 2016 – 11 days notice – and that’s simply not good enough.
Marriott announced their list of hotel category changes yesterday and gave customers over a month’s notice (35 days to be exact) and even IHG Rewards gave customers 19 days notice when they announced their changes back in January so the 11 day notice period from Starwood is pretty pathetic.
The Starwood Award Chart
The good news is that it doesn’t look as if Starwood has tinkered with the framework of their award chart so the number of Starpoints required for an award stay remains the same for each tier.
The font in the chart isn’t the biggest so here are the highlights from the chart for reference:
- Category 1 – 3,000 Starpoints per night (weekends are 2,000/night)
- Category 2 – 4,000 (weekends are 3,000/night)
- Category 3 – 7,000
- Category 4 – 10,000
- Category 5 – 12,000 – 16,000
- Category 6 – 20,000 – 25,000
- Category 7 – 30,000 – 35,000
Starwood’s 2016 Changes
The headline numbers are as follows:
- 282 properties are changing categories
- 168 properties will increase in category
- 114 properties will decrease by category
Only 3 properties move by more than one category:
- Four Points by Sheraton Penghu goes up a staggering 4 categories to Category 5 (I’d be surprised if this didn’t turn out to be a typo)
- Element Hanover – Lebanon (New Hampshire) moves up from a Category 2 to a Category 4 property
- Sheraton Dubrovnik Riviera Hotel moves down from a Category 4 to a Category 2 property
The downgrade of the Sheraton Dubrovnik is interesting as, although it’s a distance from the sights of the main city, it gets some decent TripAdvisor reviews and so could be a good points redemption going forward.
Moving Up
3 properties move up into Starwood’s top category – 7
- W Retreat & Spa Bali – Seminyak
- Suiran, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Kyoto
- Schloss Fuschl, a Luxury Collection Resort & Spa – Austria
W Retreat & Spa Bali – Seminyak
36 properties will be moving up from Category 5 to Category 6 and, while I’m not about to list all of the properties, this is an important category move.
To my mind some of the best value redemption to be had in the Starwood portfolio are at the Category 5 level where 12,000 Starpoints for an award night isn’t a bad price to pay for a good number of the hotels. The move up to Category 6 sees the number of Starpoints needed for a free night rise by over 65% – and that’s painful and often not worth it.
Moving Down
Just 4 properties will move down from Category 6 to Category 5:
- The St. Regis Lhasa Resort – Tibet
- Le Méridien Fisherman’s Cove – Seychelles
- The St. Regis Bangkok
- The Westin Athens Astir Palace Beach Resort
The St. Regis Lhasa Resort
The downgrade of the St Regis Lhasa Resort and the St Regis in Bangkok are both reasonably good news for me as I’ve been wanting to visit the Tibetan property for a few years and I may have a trip to Bangkok coming up later this year – timely downgrades for me 🙂
Still, with just 4 properties moving from Category 6 down to 5 we have a net 31 property move into Category 6 and, as I outlined above, I don’t like seeing hotels cost me 65% more than they once did.
3 properties will move down from Category 7 to Category 6:
- Le Méridien Bora Bora
- Caresse, a Luxury Collection Resort & Spa, Bodrum – Turkey
- The St. Regis Istanbul
The decrease in the Le Meridien Bora Bora is a welcome one and, as I’ll show later, the drop in category for the two properties in Turkey is part of an overall downgrade to the hotels in the country.
Le Méridien Bora Bora – courtesy of Benoit Mahe via Flickr
Select Changes By Region
USA
- 104 properties will change in category
- 82 properties will increase in category
- 22 properties will decrease in category
California seems to take a bit of a hit with these changes as all 17 properties in the state that are seeing a change are going up a category.
In Los Angeles the Westin LAX is now a Category 5 hotel (a bad redemption for 12,000 Starpoints/night) and the W Hollywood will be a Category 6 property from 1 March (an even worse redemption than the Westin LAX and will cost a mind-blowing 20,000 Starpoints/night).
San Francisco doesn’t fare any better than LA and it sees the following 3 hotels move up to Category 6:
- Le Méridien San Francisco
- The Westin St. Francis San Francisco on Union Square
- The Park Central San Francisco
Hawaii gets more expensive too with two Maui properties (The Sheraton and the Westin) both moving up to Category 6 at 20,000 Starpoints/night.
Westin Maui – courtesy of Mark Krynsky via Flickr
China
- 36 properties see a category change in China
- 22 properties go up a category
- 14 properties go down a category
It’s interesting to see so may Starwood properties in China increase in category. The recent changes to the IHG rewards chart saw China properties take the biggest hits – this may have something to do with the fact that the IHG properties in China are mostly towards the lower end of the cost spectrum while Starwood’s properties tend to be more high-end.
Europe
- 38 European properties will move categories
- 22 properties go up a category
- 16 properties go down a category
I’ve already mentioned the interesting downgrade of the Sheraton Dubrovnik but, unfortunately, of the remaining 15 properties that are going down in category, 7 are in Turkey and 3 are in Russia – not countries that too many visitors are flocking too at the moment (for various reasons).
UK
Only two UK properties are changing Categories and both are moving up to Category 6:
- The Park Lane Hotel, London
- Great Northern Hotel, a Tribute Portfolio Hotel, London
I realise that Starwood bases its category moves on projected daily room rates but I’m surprised to see the Park Lane Hotel moving to Category 6. I’ve always considered that to be one of the poorer Starwood properties in London and have actively avoided it whenever I could – still, someone clearly likes it!
Bottom Line
While the downgrades to the St Regis Lhasa, the St Regis Bangkok and the Sheraton Dubrovnik my provide a few notes of happiness for some (myself included) the majority of this news isn’t good.
The 11 day notice period is pathetic. Perhaps a good thing to come out of the Marriott takeover will be that we get a bit more of a heads up when hotels are changing categories in the future.
Seeing more hotels leave Category 5 and move to Category 6 is never good. A 65% increase in the cost of an award night is a big hit to take and I’m sure that a lot of people will have some favourite hotels in the list of properties that suddenly cost a lot more to visit (Starpoints-wise).
As always, make sure you check the cash price of a room before you decide to redeem your Starpoints. Starwood’s currency is one of the hardest to earn so, when you do redeem for free nights, make sure you’re getting value.
