With the annual elite night stay credits having just posted, I officially hit 600 nights with Marriott and triggered Lifetime Platinum today!
It's not amazing, but theoretically: guaranteed 4pm checkout except at resorts, breakfast sort of sometimes depending on hotel (they really made this confusing the past few years), lounge access, and some other useless stuff.
That's a nice perk. Now to keep working on lifetime Globalist with Hyatt, which is far more valuable.
Damn that's impressive. I'm "only" Silver Elite with Marriott. I only travel once/twice a month and usually just an overnighter. 2 nights at very most at a time.
For those years I have traveled between 3-5 nights a week almost every week, then add in all our vacation time was heavy travel around the world too.
Wow! Lots of questions: What’s the typical week look like for you? Leave Monday and back midweek to Friday? You have a family at home? How long you been doing this schedule? Do you hope to be at home more regularly at some point?
When I started, typical week was Monday morning to Thursday afternoon, and you could fly Sunday night if you preferred (I often did, extra hotel night, delays less of a big deal, and a full nights sleep usually). I was newlywed and my wife was at a FAANG company at the time. Stayed about the same the whole time i was an individual contributor, and basically the same when i became a team leader too.
About a year and a half ago I reached our "junior partner" level, and went from being on one client/project at a time to running multiple teams, sometimes across clients. The travel really ramped up in intensity, though timing was mostly the same. It just became also flying Tuesday morning to the second client, and Tuesday night to a client development meeting, and then sometimes we had Friday morning stuff or the place I was Thursday was remote enough not to have a late flight home so I'd stay at airport hotel and go home early Friday am.
A little under one year ago we had our first, and about a month ago we had our second (via surrogate this time). My wife was on leave from birth until mine started, so my travel schedule didn't really change aside from a couple weeks at the start while she recovered. I've been on parental leave since August, and will go back in May. We'll see, but I get six months of "protection" to re-enter my role and build back up...I'll probably leave right after that.
When I leave, I will start or acquire a business, probably. I want to travel - it has been REALLY nice for our vacations with the outstanding flight and hotel perks of being at the very tippy top of status. I have a million stories like how refreshed and easy to fly direct round trips to Auckland in lie flats (on miles alone) without having to do a bunch of legwork - just use the million+ AA miles from that year. Or how the hotel on our anniversary had complimentary champagne (a nice bottle) and chocolates on our anniversary without asking (because the hotel chain had our anniversary on my profile). or how we went to Mendoza and the Park Hyatt upgraded us to the Presidential Suite on the diplomatic floor, where we had a full private casino and our group of 8 got to hang out in one of the living rooms in our suite vs us all cramming into a room or not being able to relax at the hotel after dinner to wind down.
I won't ever, likely, have the money to just pay for that treatment. But whatever my next role is, I will be optimizing it for travel because the experiences make all the other experiences amazing. Like I don't think I could get into the 3-star Michelin sushi place we went in Tokyo as gaijin if not for the Park Hyatt Tokyo getting us in.