How Marriott prioritizes room upgrades, Chambers Club closing, and edible souvenirs (Saturday Selection)

This week we’ll share some insights about how Marriott apparently prioritizes room upgrades, we’ll lament the closing of the Renaissance St Pancras Chambers Club (which Greg had delighted in), and we’ll daydream about edible souvenirs that you can bring home with you, worry-free.

The Secret Way Marriott Prioritizes Room Upgrades: Interesting Insights

Thanks to a reddit post from a Marriott employee, we may now have some insights about how Marriott prioritizes room upgrades. The employee wrote:

The algorithm in GXP (Guest Experiences platform) arranges all guests arriving for each particular day and gives us insights about them one of which is an upgrade dashboard. The dashboard arranges guests arriving that day on an internal points system as to who are the most “valuable” guests to upgrade. Associates at the FD typically just run down that list after NUAs [Nightly Upgrade Awards] are awarded until upgrades are gone.

This means that Nightly Upgrade Awards are prioritized first, and then there’s a point system to weight certain guests over others on the day of their arrival. That ranking is “comprised of spend, status, # of nights etc”, according to the Marriott employee who’d posted on reddit. Each day, the hotel gets a ranked list of the guests for that day so that they can objectively assign upgrades based on each guest’s rank. In other words, they leave it up to the algorithm, (although at some smaller properties, an early arrival may still help you out.)

Bits: good Etihad sale deals from Manchester, Renaissance St Pancras rebranding

The part of this post that caught our attention is the Renaissance St Pancras’ rebrand to St Pancras London – Autograph Collection and more specifically, the apparent “permanent” closure of the Chambers Club within that hotel. You may remember that Greg has really enjoyed the Renaissance St Pancras before, especially the Chambers Club, which he wrote about here. The Chambers Club was a top-notch lounge which you could access by booking a room in the Chambers Wing (or by booking in the Barlow wing as a Titanium or Ambassador elite member). It’s possible this closure (while indeed described as permanent) will make way for a new club (that we hope will fill its shoes) after renovations. Time will tell and in the meantime, it’s a little unclear.

Dear Atlas: What International Food Can I Legally Bring Into the U.S.?

Who doesn’t love international snacks? This article suggests a few quintessential snacks you can bring home with you without worrying about any customs issues. Some I was already familiar with, like the green tea matcha kit kats from Japan, Tim Tams from Australia, and of course the funky flavors of chips (or “crisps”) you can find overseas. But the most fun part about this article is how many of these supposedly quintessential snacks I’d never heard of. Have you ever tried cuttlefish gum from Singapore for example? Or “musk sticks” from Australia (which the author describes as being perfume-like in flavor)? Or if you thought licorice was an acquired taste on its own…how about the tar-flavored version from Finland? Which makes me curious: what weird snacks have you brought home from your travels? (And were they any good???) Tell me all about them!

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