Kimpton Really Does Have Great Karma

As part of Kimpton’s Inner Circle elite loyalty tier, members are entitled to a free night at all of their new hotels, plus a $50 credit at the hotel restaurant.

Last year, I took a 4 night vacation, beginning in Phoenix, then going on to La Jolla, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, all using Kimpton’s new night hotel benefit. I’ll be writing a trip report of this soon, but really enjoyed the road trip – and a majority of it was free, thanks to the free nights, and food credits.

Currently, as of this post, the only hotel offering the free night benefit is the Brice in Savannah, GA. For Inner Circle members, this free night benefit expires on December 31.

Kimpton is adding several new properties, where free nights will be offered at the start of the new year:

• Pittsburgh, PA
• Austin, TX
• Grand Cayman,Cayman Islands
• Seattle, WA
• Denver, CO

Since the Brice offer was expiring this year, I really wanted to get in a stay here before the end of December – I couldn’t live myself letting a free hotel night slip by! 🙂

I’ve been searching for availability for several months, with no luck. It seems like every day I wanted to go, nothing was available. I made a call to Kimpton’s Karma line, and learned an interesting piece of information: Inner Circle new hotel benefit nights have different inventory than traditional Karma rewards night availability. I had originally thought that the Inner Circle benefit could be simply used anytime there was reward availability, but I was wrong.

Luckily, I got an amazing agent on the phone who was able to put me on hold to call the hotel directly. He mentioned the date I wanted to go, and coordinated with the hotel to manually release availability – which is outstanding! I’ll be tacking on a traditional reward night to this to make 2 free nights at the Brice!

Not only that, but the agent I spoke with was able to put in requests for a one-bedroom suite, a balcony, and to have bottled water in the room upon my arrival. While I’ve received plenty of outstanding support from Kimpton in the past, this agent went above and beyond…and really did bring some great karma!

So, the lesson learned here is twofold:

• Individual Kimpton properties have the power to release award night space and Inner Circle free night space manually.
• Award night and Inner Circle night availability are two different things, and may or may not be available on the same nights.