Quick Trip: Weekend in Queens NYC – Planning

Motivation

My wife has family living in New York and our niece was turning two. We were invited to the party and of course we couldn’t miss that!

Considerations

We would be driving from Boston to New York by car. My wife’s family lives near LaGuardia so we’d be looking for a hotel near the airport. As discussed in The Joys of Status we’re currently working on reaching 50 nights in Marriott before the end of the year in order to qualify for some perks for next year so this was an opportunity to add two nights towards that total.

We had points to use for the stay, but we’re saving our points for some better value redemptions as the options we were considering weren’t that expensive compared to the number of points it would have required.

We’re mostly just looking for a place to sleep as we’ll be spending most of the time with family nearby.

Hotel Planning

We wanted to be located near LaGuardia airport to be convenient to family and we are relatively familiar with the area from previous trips. We are confident we can find street parking to avoid the outrageous nightly parking fees at the hotels so parking fees were not a consideration when searching rates.

Searching

Since I knew we were looking for a Marriott property I went directly to Marriott.com to search for the dates of our stay. I checked the option to search for AAA rates as we are long time members and AAA rates, when available, are often very similar to or better than the prepaid (non-refundable) rates available. The AAA rates are often, but not always, refundable if canceled more than a few days before the stay. There’s no guarantee the rate is available or that if it’s the lowest rate so be aware of that. It’s important to always check the rate details to be sure the terms of cancellation as they can vary from property to property!

I found several hotels near LaGuardia as you would expect around a major metropolitan airport. One that stood out was the New York LaGuardia Airport Marriott. We had stayed in the hotel during the summer and had a pleasant experience. During that visit the room had recently been renovated and was clean and updated, though the lounge and restaurant were closed and under construction at that time. We were hoping the construction has been completed by the time we arrived this time.

Based on our status we could expect complementary access to the lounge and breakfast there. If the lounge was closed we could expect breakfast for two in the restaurant.

Booking

I ended up booking a room with two double beds at the cheapest refundable AAA rate available at around $200 a night. There were other options a few dollars cheaper but we had previously stayed at this property and felt comfortable trying it again betting the construction was complete on the lounge and restaurant.