Hyatt Hotels Corporation announced a new global promotion that allows Hyatt Gold Passport members to earn up to 45,000 bonus points – that’s enough points for seven free nights at Bali Hyatt or two free nights at Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome.

Bali Hyatt

Members can earn 3,000 Hyatt Gold Passport bonus points after every three eligible nights at any Hyatt hotel worldwide from March 1 through May 31. Points are redeemable for free nights, room upgrades, and now dining and spa services.

Plus, Hyatt Credit Cardmembers will receive a 20 percent point bonus – that’s 600 more bonus points after every three nights. With these additional bonus points, Hyatt Credit Cardmembers can earn a maximum of 54,000 bonus points during the promotion.

Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome

With nearly 500 hotels in more than 40 countries, it’s more rewarding than ever to make Hyatt your hotel of choice when traveling for business or pleasure,” said Jeff Zidell, vice president of Hyatt Gold Passport. “And with thousands of bonus points from this new promotion, it will be easier than ever to use them for your next free night in New York, dinner in Milan or deep tissue message in Kauai.”

Register by April 30, 2013 by visiting www.goldpassport.com/possibilities

•    Stay March 1 through May 31, 2013 at any Hyatt hotel worldwide
•    Provide your Hyatt Gold Passport membership number at check-in

New members who enroll in Hyatt Gold Passport through April 30, 2013 will automatically be registered for the promotion.


 

The international cruise industry must proactively face up to its challenges and respond openly to criticism, according to a leading expert in the sector and one of the critical area is safety and security.

Following the Costa Concordia accident at the start of 2012, cruisers still consider cruises to be a safe option, Professor Alexis Papathanassis, from the University of Applied Sciences in Bremerhaven, Germany said at Pisa forum. Nonetheless, according to a research study he supervised, approximately half of the respondents expressed doubts on the crew’s ability to deal with an emergency and clearly perceived safety as their own responsibility. This finding could serve as a valuable input to the improvement of safety procedures and information policies on board, he said.

Moreover, Papathanassis was particularly critical of the working conditions for cruise ship staff, especially salary-levels, which effectively mean that many workers rely on tips while working long hours and living under suboptimal conditions. In this light, some labour organisations accuse cruise-ships of being more like “sweat-ships” (a pun on ‘sweatshop’ factories), he noted.

Obviously, what constitutes fair pay and acceptable working conditions can be conveniently seen as a relative matter defined by the living standards in the crews’ source countries and by the recruiting structures in the corresponding labour supply chains. At the end of the day though, it is matter of perceived responsibility and ethical imperative at the consumption-end of the cruise supply chain (i.e. cruise operators and guests).