If there was ever a time when I was making a first world travel grump, it’s when I’m complaining that I can’t apply for a status match for top tier hotel status because I already have next to the top-level status. But that’s where I am and I’m just a smidge aggravated that I can’t apply for Hilton Diamond status.
Why can’t I? Because I’m already a Hilton Gold.
HARRUMPH!!!!!
Finding a hotel in Ft. Lauderdale is so frustrating for me. It only takes us about three hours to drive there so we’ll sometimes plan a quick getaway weekend. It’s just far enough away that driving there and back for the day is a pain (especially if we stay late for something), but it’s still close enough to home that we don’t want to spend a bunch of money for a hotel room for one night.
All of the hotels near downtown charge extraordinarily high rates and some of them even charge an additional resort fee as well as mandatory valet parking. I learned this when a free night at a Hilton ended up costing me over $65.
As this was going to be a truly quick trip, I had a few main requirements. The room would preferably be free and relatively close to Ft. Lauderdale. After looking with IHG, Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt there were no good options to redeem points. Even the base hotels were costing a tremendous amount of points in relation to the cash price. Since it looked like I was going to need to pay for the room, I focused on Hilton since Sharon needed a stay to keep her account active. I found a decently priced hotel and booked it for the night, and figured out a way to get it for free, while I was at it.
Continue reading “Hotel Review: Hampton Inn Ft. Lauderdale-Commercial Blvd – Tamarac, FL”
This 100% sounds like it should be a “Florida Man” story but it turns out to be out of Eastern Kentucky. Sorry, Kentucky readers – we Floridians just had to share some of the love ;-).
Jason Fields of Leslie County, Florida (oops!) Kentucky is suing his former boss and corporate employer. According to his lawsuit, he had been a front desk clerk in a Hampton Inn & Suites in Hazard, KY, working second shift since 2016. His boss, Sharon Lindon, found out he was getting a divorce and thought his marital problems were because he had demons. So she thought he needed to be cleansed.
Here we are, at the end of 2018. When looking back at our hotel stays from the past year, I get a sense of how we traveled and how it compared to previous years. I make travel decisions based on how I think we travel but if those trends are changing, I’ll need to adapt the methods I use when looking at the best way to maximize our points usage and out of pocket spending. When I look back at 2018, I’m really happy how everything turned out. Going into the year, due to some work changes, I knew that saving cash on hotel stays would be a priority. I never really focused on earning hotel points before but I’m a quick study and I set a goal to not pay for a hotel room if I could help it.
I did really good in achieving my goal. We stayed in hotels for 37 nights and only paid $1000. When I paid cash for a room there was a specific reason I did so. The rest of our hotel stays were paid for by points or free nights earned by having certain hotel credit cards. Here’s a breakdown of our stays for the year:
I purchased tickets to see Ed Sheeran in concert in Tampa, FL many months ago. However, it was only two weeks before the show that my concert buddy and I decided that it might be a good idea if we got a room for a night after the show. Driving to Tampa from Orlando takes about 90 minutes in the best circumstances, not taking into account post-concert traffic. We didn’t know what time the concert would end, but we knew it would be late.
Since we waited until the last minute, hotel rooms weren’t cheap. Raymond James Stadium in Tampa is located right off a local main road; great city planning there, Tampa. The nearest set of hotels are located about three miles away, across the street from the Tampa Airport. I looked at the available options and every hotel with rooms was charging over $250 a night. That was way too much for a single night stay where I just needed a bed for a few hours before driving home the next morning.
I decided to check if any of the hotels had rooms available for points and luckily I found one that did.
Continue reading “Hotel Review: Hampton Inn & Suites Tampa Airport Avion Park Westshore”
