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Back in October and during Starwood’s third quarter earnings call to Wall St, the company announced that a plan to incorporate the Design Hotels brand into their stable of hotels. However, unlike other Starwood brands (Westin, St Regis etc…), the Design Hotels will continue to operate independently under the leadership of their team in Berlin, Germany.
Design Hotels are a portfolio of 287 boutique hotels and resorts dotted around the globe….
…..and, as you should be able to see from the map above, will significantly boost Starwood’s presence in Europe a region where I’ve often found them lacking.
A couple of weeks after the initial announcement, Starwood told us which Design Hotels they expected would be the first to come under the SPG umbrella:
- C-Hotel – Lake Como, Italy
- Gramercy Park Hotel – New York
- Kruisherenhotel Maastricht Hotel – Maastricht, Netherlands
- Nira Montana – La Thuile, Italy
- Ten Bompas Hotel – Johannesburg, South Africa
And, as of today, those five hotels, together with the Nira Alpina, Silvaplana, Switzerland, are all bookable on SPG.com.
None of the hotels is, as yet, bookable with Starpoints and none appears to have been given a Starwood Category rating so it’s hard to say how much award nights will eventually cost. What we do know, however, is that the “free night redemptions” are expected to be available in March 2016.
Starwood Benefits
As things stand, the Design Hotels may be being incorporated into SPG but they are still showing as having “limited participation in the Starwood Preferred Guest Program” on SPG.com.
For the time being SPG Elites can expect the following benefits when staying at one of the 6 Design Hotels listed above:
- 2 Starpoints per eligible US dollar spent (with a 50% bonus for SPG Gold and Platinum members, and 100% bonus for Platinum members with a minimum of 75 Eligible Nights)
- Night and stay credit toward elite status
- On-property benefits of internet access and bottled water in room
- Gold Preferred and Platinum Preferred members will automatically receive a Starpoints bonus as their Welcome Gift.
Interestingly the information on SPG.com specifically says:
Other on-property benefits such as upgrades, late checkout, Your24 or Suite Night Awards will not be available at participating hotels.
There’s no mention of the SPG Platinum breakfast benefits and the way the sentence is phrased doesn’t seem to leave open the option of those benefits coming in at a later date – and that would be a shame. Still, this could all be a mute pointe anyway as, with Marriott’s impending take over of Starwood, there’s no knowing what elite benefits will look like anyway!
What Are the Hotels Like?
Actually, they look pretty cool and I can see why they describe themselves as “unique”. They definitely appear to have a lot of character and they look like they’re going to be great additions to the Starwood (soon-to-be-Marriott) portfolio.
It will be interesting to see how these hotels ultimately fit into Starwoods categories – I suspect they will all be at the higher end of the scale.
It’s great news that, thanks to the increasing number of alliances we’re seeing between boutique hotels and the major chains, that we now get to have the best of both worlds – we can stay in hotels that have character and are a little bit different while still getting a lot of the benefits that the hotel chains bestow upon their frequent guests.
