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    VioletGatesyJoanna Rothkopf
    11/18/15 9:56am

    If you spent most of your life away from your family because you travel for your job, you would be pissed if one of the main perks of that situation was lessened/taken from you after already being incurred.

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      Country Mac's Ocular PatdownVioletGatesy
      11/18/15 10:06am

      Yeah, I think Joanna must not travel for work. As someone who does 4 out of 7 days on the road, this kinda stuff really matters in terms of convenience.

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      smallpotatoesVioletGatesy
      11/18/15 10:09am

      Yeah, I can’t be outraged about this. They’re being a bit pouty and dramatic when they first find out, that’s allowed. Maybe if one takes up a public crusade against the merger and never shuts up about it and compares themselves to actual suffering people it I’ll change my mind, but for now...pout away.

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    bagoflettersJoanna Rothkopf
    11/18/15 10:01am

    These kinds of rich people problems are hilarious in that same way that watching toddlers fall down (and not get seriously injured) is.

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      Stig-a-saw-us wrecks loves nuclear power.bagofletters
      11/18/15 10:38am

      Or they’re regular people that have to travel for a living and want some niceties for being away from home so often. Having these perks makes travelling for work a bit more livable.

      These aren’t just “rich people problems”.

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      bagoflettersStig-a-saw-us wrecks loves nuclear power.
      11/18/15 10:44am

      Very true, however I was thinking more of the sliver spooned type who can afford to take 100 days of vacation. Not the working class person living out of their suitcase.

      Which was, admittedly my mistake.

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    HoustonDude2014Joanna Rothkopf
    11/18/15 10:01am

    Sure, there are bigger battles to fight, but if you are someone who does spend a 100 nights a year in a hotel and a couple of hundred thousand miles a year with your butt in an airplane seat (I do neither of those things any longer), the perks of elite status do matter.

    Upgrades, late checkouts, free nights are not the end of the world, but they make life much nicer and easier and make spending 1/3 of the year living out of a suitcase more tolerable.

    We have many people on here who complain mightily about the general travel experience, and these folks have to do it constantly, so I’m not going to be mocking folks for having a way to make that experience a little less sucky.

    Sure, if you hate it, get a different job, but if it is their job, begrudging or mocking folks for the benefits of that job seems petty on our part.

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      LoloAGoGoOriginaleHoustonDude2014
      11/18/15 10:39am

      Absolutely. I’ll tell you that when traveling for work, particularly when abroad, those late check outs are a godsend when you have meetings all day and a late night flight. Most of the time, you never see outside your hotel and the entire process is exhausting and very unglamorous. It is not vacation in the least.

      In addition, it really helps if you have plane delays or problems at a particular hotel. On my honeymoon, the Starwood hotel we booked was oversold and they downgraded us from the room we had already paid for. A call to the rewards program rep fixed that issue quickly.

      At Marriott, status means nothing. I’ve been in a room with blood on the sheets and neither the management or the rep I called really cared to do anything about it.

      This merger is bigger then just the rewards. It represents a huge loss of customer service that both elites and non-elites received at Starwood.

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      HoustonDude2014LoloAGoGoOriginale
      11/18/15 10:51am

      Although, Starwood has better higher-level status benefits, as lifetime platinum at Marriott, I really have few complaints about Marriott. They have generally done me right through the years, and their footprint across the brands meant you could generally find a hotel everywhere.

      I don’t think they’ve announced the details of merging the programs, but if the Continental/United merger is any precedent, they’ll take the cheapest (i.e., worst) of both programs.

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    Joanna RothkopfJoanna Rothkopf
    11/18/15 10:18am

    Here’s a good analysis from Felix Salmon at Fusion:

    And yet, this is one of the few mergers I’m optimistic about. Any multi-billion-dollar deal like this one is going to run into fraught management and implementation issues, of course. But there’s a logic here which could mean that creating such a behemoth makes sense for all concerned – not only the two companies and their hotels, but even the loyal Starwood customers who are rending their clothes and gnashing their teeth worrying about what will become of their precious Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) program.

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      paultoesJoanna Rothkopf
      11/18/15 9:58am

      “It ruined my breakfast,” said Edward Pizzarello, a partner in a venture capital firm.

      GIF
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        randilynisFINDILYNpaultoes
        11/18/15 10:00am

        Quelle horreur

        (everything just sounds snobbier in French)

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        randilynisFINDILYNpaultoes
        11/18/15 10:05am

        Pizzarello

        Also, my diet must be getting to me because...Pizza. Pizzelle. Jello. Caramello.

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      randilynisFINDILYNJoanna Rothkopf
      11/18/15 9:55am

      “Here you go Sir. Your wahxi is waiting out front”

      Snark aside though, when you travel that much the niceties must be, well, nice to have.

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        Ken Yadiggit, AdiosrandilynisFINDILYN
        11/18/15 10:24am

        Somebody call the waaah-mbulance.

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        randilynisFINDILYNKen Yadiggit, Adios
        11/18/15 10:25am
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      PobbleJoanna Rothkopf
      11/18/15 10:05am

      Travelling that much for work sucks. I’m a veteran at this stuff, and no hotel on earth is as nice as my bed at home. The perks you get with things like reward points soften what can be a pretty horrible way to make your living, and while I don’t think I’d be as hyperbolic if I was a Starwood points holder, I do understand that this is not the best news for a large number of people whose work life is nothing like as much fun as you might imagine.

      (I got shouted at by a drunken millennial colleague for being upset about my schedule back in June, when I had been on the road for three of the four weeks of the month. He said I had no right to complain: many would give their left arms to be able to travel this much. He’s a prick.)

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        coolbreezePobble
        11/18/15 11:04am

        He sounds like fun. Tell him to shut up and let the grownups work.

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      RenoDakotaJoanna Rothkopf
      11/18/15 10:15am

      Certainly, those quotes are overwrought. But the perks of these point systems aren’t insignificant - on Starwood, once you reached a certain status you got 10 free nights (I think - I don’t have that status yet). The guys quoted can afford 10 nights in a hotel so whatever, but I can’t. That perk would have let me spend time with my family on a trip we couldn’t otherwise afford. Also, traveling so much fucking sucks. It does. Certain hotels make it easier and better to be on the road so much. Starwood is one of those. So while it didn’t ruin my breakfast, I am concerned that the places where I sleep about a third or more nights out of the year might change.

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        PotentPotablesJoanna Rothkopf
        11/18/15 10:21am

        My spouse is a consultant, and generally I see him 2.5 days per week. It’s not the greatest setup, but his income and long hours help subsidize my non-profit work. It sucks taking multiple flights per week and spending more time living out of hotels than with your family (lots of his coworkers have little children). Hotel status is one perk that helps lessen the crappiness of all that required travel. We just got Starwood platinum status and it would suck to lose some of those perks that we’d like to enjoy over the next year. We’ll probably try to use our points up sooner rather than later.

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          Bears for PresidentJoanna Rothkopf
          11/18/15 10:04am

          When I was in a job with a lot of travel, these sorts of things did sort of make a decent sized difference. I mean, yeah, they shouldn’t cry about it but hotels suuuuuuuck.

          Also it was just fun. Collecting flyer/traveller’s points and amenities was like grown-up Baseball cards.

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