Dec 2012 - Conrad Istanbul Hotel

Hotel Stay Details
Hotel: Conrad Istanbul Hotel
Dates: December 27-30, 2012
Rate Paid: $159 / night
Total $ Savings: $0
Points Earned: 11,877 Hilton Points 
Gold Status $ Value Received:  $265

I found out that Turkish people LOVE babies. I know that everyone says they love babies, but in Turkey, they really do.

Walking around the streets, literally 3 out of every 4 people would stop and stare adoringly at me as if they have never seen a baby before in their entire life. You can only imagine how excited they get when they see an adorable half-Asian/half-white baby.  Yes, some people in cars literally stopped in traffic to roll down the windows and look at me. A girl can get used to this kind of attention.

Walking around, we'd hear "maşallah" (wonderful) or "yerim seni bebek" (I want to eat your baby!).  I don't really understand that last one, but my father does tell me that for some reason, when adults see something so cute, they get this odd feeling of wanting to bite/eat it.  Perhaps it's something primitive that didn't get bred out over thousands of years of evolution. But I digress.

After the nightmare flight, we landed at Ataturk Airport (IST) around 6AM and got through customs/baggage by 6:30AM since my father had a Turkish Airlines Frequent Flyer Gold Status card with him.

This was his first/only flight on Turkish Airlines, but they offer a free status match if you have mid-tier status on another major airline (like United).  So back in August, he emailed "customermiles@thy.com" and asked for a status match since he was Gold on United.  A week later, he received the Turkish Gold tier in their Miles & Smiles program.  With this frequent flyer card, my family was able to get into the VIP immigration line at Ataturk Airport, saving us another massive line with smelly foreigners.

After looking for our pre-arranged taxi driver (NEVER use IstanbulAirportExpress.com!!!) for 30 minutes, we found a regular meter taxi who took us from the airport (A) to our hotel on the other side of the city (B). The taxi drive was about 60 Turkish Lira (about $33 USD).  Had the pre-arranged pickup been there, it would have been 30 Euro (~$40 USD).  Not a big difference.


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When we arrived to the hotel, it was closer to 8AM and check in is normally around 3PM.  My father again flashed his Elite Status card (this time it was his Hilton HHonors Gold status) and they apologized profusely for the room not being ready at 8AM.

They kindly asked us to visit the club lounge upstairs and to enjoy free breakfast while they saw what they could do.  Hungry after eating bland Kosher meals on the flight, my parents jumped at the chance to fill their faces with free food while overlooking Istanbul from the rooftop.

My father was shocked that they were so accommodating.  He hoped a room might possibly be available around 12PM, but to our pleasant surprise, it was ready by 9AM (six hours before they're supposed to be ready!).  After a long redeye flight, getting into your hotel room early is a huge win.

The King Deluxe City View room was simple but nice and gave us more than enough space for our Istanbul base camp.  It seemed to be a newly renovated room (as they were currently doing remodeling work on the other part of the hotel).

For a Conrad (Hilton's high end luxury brand), it really didn't amaze us like the St Regis (Starwoods) brand or the Park Hyatt (Hyatt), but we were perfectly happy.

Whenever my parents stay in a city center hotel, they opt for value over amenities/space because they don't plan on spending much time in the room or the hotel.  Cursed with Travel ADD, my father loves to spend as much time out of the hotel as possible, preferring to wake up early and explore the city instead.  And my mother enables goes along with his travel insanity (probably because saving money on a hotel means more money for shopping).

Value is where Hilton HHonors comes in strongest, relative to other mid-tier status at other hotel chains with loyalty programs.

With my father's Hilton HHonors Gold Status (received through a targeted promotion offering free gold status to Australian Visa card holders), he received the following benefits during his stays at Hilton hotels:

1.  Upgrade to an executive room (club lounge access - free snacks/beer)
2.  Free internet
3.  25% HHonors Points Bonus
4.  Free breakfast

So club lounge access isn't that important to a baby.  But it's important to my father because he can go have a few beers while my mother enjoys the city view or reads her book.  A few beers saves him maybe $10/day.  Not a big deal.

The free internet (especially in Europe) saves at least $15/day.  So that's $45 of additional savings.

25% HHonors Points Bonus is valuable but not until you have enough for a free night award (i.e., 50,000 HHonors Points = 1 night at Conrad Ko Samui which goes for $500+/night).  So let's say HHonors points are conservatively worth 0.8 cents/pt.  This 3 day stay earned my father 1,268 bonus Gold points on top of his 5,073 base points + 2,536 regular bonus points + 3,000 Q4 Hilton promotion bonus points for a total of 11,877 Hilton HHonors points earned during the stay.  So those 1,268 gold bonus points gave him another $10 of value (out of the total $95 value of overall points earned).

Free breakfast is where the real savings come in. Perhaps you're like me, a tiny baby who cannot appreciate the difference between an expensive meal at a nice restaurant and a warm bottle of milk.  But if you're like my parents, you'd probably enjoy an unlimited hot breakfast buffet with eggs, bacon, sausage, pastries, cold cuts, salads, soups, waffles, and cereals.

Now, my parents would never actually PAY $30/person for breakfast (they're more breakfast at McDonald's types), but they'd definitely find a way to eat $30 worth of food if it were free.  So perhaps they didn't "save" $60/day for breakfast because they wouldn't have paid for it anyway, but they definitely got $60/day of value.  So for a 3 day stay, that's $180 of value.

So for having Hilton HHonors gold status, my family received $265 of value for FREE during their 3 day stay at Conrad Istanbul ($30 club lounge + $45 internet + $10 Gold bonus points + $180 breakfast), received top tier VIP service from the staff, and enjoyed luxury surroundings for $159/night.

Looking at it another way, if you assume the $265 of Gold status value were actually a rebate to the hotel rate, then it would be about $83/night, bringing their all in cost for the room itself down to $76/night.  Including the other Hilton HHonors points he earned, that's $117/night of rebates implying the basic hotel room cost $42/night.