Taj Innercircle – Status Extension & More
Introduction
Taj Innercircle is the loyalty program of the Taj Group of Hotels. Given the coronavirus situation, hotel chains globally have been extending status and halting expiry of points in a bid to retain their top loyalists. Taj Hotels in my opinion often set the benchmark for hospitality in India and yesterday they announced a series of measures for their Innercircle loyalty program. Lets check it ou
A Brief Intro on Innercircle
Taj Innercircle has 4 tiers with the base tier as Copper which goes up to Silver, Gold and Platinum. Silver tier requires 10 nights or INR 100k in spends, Gold requires 40 nights or INR 400k in spends and Platinum requires 80 nights or INR 800k in spends in a year. They earn 4, 5, 7 & 8 points per INR 100 in eligible spends. You can redeem your points for Stay, Gift cards etc. with 1 TIC Point (Taj InnerCircle Point) = INR 1. So a gold member like us earns approximately 7% return on spends which is good. Your points do not expire till you are active (An active member has at least one stay in the past 12 months)
Taj's Response
Taj has paused the expiry of TIC Points from 30 April 2020 to 28 February 2021. In addition Tier Status which was assessed from 1 May 2020 will now be assessed on 28 February 2021. Taj as a brand realizes that guests are really not comfortable traveling currently and have extended validity for almost 10 months which is quite commendable. This is overall a great initiative and we can all hope that some amount of leisure travel can resume by end of 2020.
I find the Taj Group to be far better compared to Airlines in India who keep our money in a credit shell and we end up locking our money. I had a booking in April at the Taj Bekal resort which had a cancellation window of 1 month prior to arrival. While I had cancelled my ticket before the window, they allowed full refunds even on non-refundable bookings to all their other customers which is something airlines in India need to learn. Another reason why you should always book direct and not via a third party OTA (Online Travel Agency). In order to understand how good this group is, you should really see how their staff is being treated in their properties during this crisis. I really get jealous and wish my ex-employers had even 25% of the kindness to staff that this group has.
My only complain is that they have not really talked about validity of Taj Experience Gift Vouchers which we earn via our Citi Prestige Credit Card. I guess they need to extend those as well and I hope a communication on this is rolled out soon. Otherwise, INR 10k of vouchers risk end up being devalued to zero.
Update: Taj reverted back quickly to me on the validity of Gift Cards. Unused cards with expiry between March and September 2020 are being extended till September 2020. Gift cards issued by American Express expiring between 1 March and 30 April 2020 are being extended by further 180 days from existing validity. Citi Prestige Taj vouchers are typically valid for 1 year so you can act accordingly. If you still want to find out exact validity date of your cards check out this link
Overall Impression
I think this is a great initiative from the Taj Group and status extension and halting of points expiry for 10 months is really nice. Now let’s hope that this crisis gets over soon and we get to do some much needed leisure travel.
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