News and notes from around the interweb:
- Which Hotel Loyalty Program is Best and Why? My piece over at Conde’ Nast Traveler.
- Younger business travelers are more likely to splurge with their company’s money than they would with their own. Older workers are much less likely to do so. (HT: uggboy on Milepoint)
- Several months ago I put together a primer on American Express financial reviews. Dan’s Deals what sorts of activities he sees as flags for banks generally to cause them to take a closer look at your accounts.
- Wandering Aramean says that United is now allowing only three connections (four flights) on one-way awards between the US and Australia/New Zealand and no longer just between the US and Asia via Europe.
- A United website glitch was letting people book award tickets without miles in their account. United will not honor the tickets.
- The pilots of the Asiana flight that crash landed in San Francisco in July are returning to work as ground staff.
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Gary:
Permit me to disagree a bit on your evaluation of Hotel Reward Programs. Personally, I like IHG for two reasons. Promotion stacking gets you an abundance of points on a paid stay. And with their companion Priority Club credit card you do get Platinum status, which means the staff will do everything the can to upgrade you. Point Breaks is the biggest bargain in loyalty redemption.
For the budget USA based traveler, La Quinta returns in unusually generous, with great customer service. (Their call center is in the USA, so they speak English and do try and help. When they offer a stay two get one free it can’t be beat. A good benefit is for 6,000 points and each additional $15 upgrades you to a higher category. Great value.
Do you think united will honor, despite the rep stating on flyertalk saying it won’t be honored?
@Steve T – you can accumulate lots of points with Priority Club. You may do well with their status but it is not because the terms of the program entitle you to anything, you are “getting lucky” rather than getting anything that is due to you under the program. There are some redemption bargains and if all you want is a room then this can be a good program.
@Albert There is nothing to honor as no tickets were issued for any of this bookings
“Younger Business Travelers More Likely to Spend Company Money on Perks”: that’s a very misleading title. The survey questions compare spending company money and personal money, so if young people make less, it looks like splurging even if they spend less that the older folk (but not proportional to the income disparity). Two engineers, ages 25 and 45, go on a business trip together. The senior engineer chooses the kind of restaurant she normally eats at when paying for herself. The younger engineer ends up spending about the same amount of company money, but the cost is higher than what she would have spent if she had chosen the restaurant.