TravelZoo has a good compilation of their Intercontinental hotels offers, book by June 29 and rates are prepaid, non-refundable. The full list is on the Intercontinental hotels site. It’s a good time to be a Royal Ambassador member! TravelZoo’s favorites are: U.S. and Canada Tampa: InterContinental Tampa $69 valid Thursday-Sunday, July 1 – Sept. 8 New Orleans: InterContinental New Orleans $79 valid July 1, 10-11, 16-19, 26-31; Aug. 1, 8-31; Sept. 1-7 Toronto: InterContinental Toronto Centre $87(CA$99) valid July 1-31; Sept. 1-3 Atlanta: InterContinental Buckhead Atlanta $99 valid July 1-2, 6-7, 12-14, 17-31; Aug. 1-31; Sept. 1-3, 6-8 New York: InterContinental The Barclay New York $159 valid July 1-31; Aug. 1-23 Caribbean & Mexico Puerto Vallarta: Presidente InterContinental Puerto Vallarta Resort $90 valid July 1-14; Aug. 16 – Sept. 8 (Oceanfront Room) Cancun: Presidente InterContinental Cancun…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for June 2009.
500 Virgin Atlantic Bonus Miles for Online Shopping
Virgin Atlantic is promoting its online shopping portal with 500 bonus miles for your first purchase over US$50 or £25. (Hat tip to FFBonuses on Twitter.)
On How to Parse Review Websites and Pick Hotels
On Twitter, USA Today columnist Laura Bly passes along this tweet: laurablyMore choices: control, or confusion? RT@MindlessMuse: Why can’t finding a hotel be easy…so many sites, reviews, opinions. I guess I don’t really have this problem, I know what sources match my travel preferences the best. Once upon a time people would work with a travel agent on these questions. There were good travel agents and bad travel agents, travel agents familiar with the destination or not, travel agents who would push particular providers because of higher kickbacks, and travel agents who happen to understand your travel style and those more suited to other styles (luxury vs. backpacker, and huge gradations in between, different sorts of details matter to different people). True full service agents offering actual travel strategy and advice are now few and…
Lufthansa Discounts Coach Redemptions from Canada to Germany
For bookings through July 16 and travel through July 20, Lufthansa Miles & More is offering award seats from Calgary, Montreal, or Toronto to Germany roundtrip for 35,000 miles in coach. That’s a 42% discount from the usual 60,000 miles. Travel only permitted on Lufthansa, not their partners, and one transfer in Germany only is permitted. (Hat tip to FFBonuses on Twitter.)
How Do I Get Kickbacks for My Blog Posts?
This is a long way off from reality, but the Federal Trade Commission is looking at whether and how it can take jurisdiction over bloggers making false claims or failing to disclose conflicts of interesting regarding commercial products. This part of the story stuck out for me: Many bloggers have accepted perks such as free laptops, trips to Europe, $500 gift cards or even thousands of dollars for a 200-word post. What I want to know is how, and where do I get my hands on laptops and thousands of dollars for my posts? I’ve never been offered anything meaningful in exchange for my posts. I get PR hack mass emails all the time, touting this or that product or hotel most of which are of little to no interest. Occasionally I get a custom-tailored…
40% Off Beds and Bedding at W Hotel Store
The W Hotel Store 40% discount appears to be back with code WX4T7. I don’t know the expiration. This offer comes up frequently (see for instance here, here, here, here, and here) but I haven’t seen it in awhile. Every time it pops up it’s worth noting because it really is a great deal, I bought my W Hotel bed (plush top with featherbed) in March of 2007 and I’ve been happy as can be. 40% off makes the price reasonable, shipping is free and they’ll remove your old bed for free as well. And the discount applies to bedding as well, though I personally didn’t choose mine from the W Hotel Store. If you want automatic notification of the next time this deal pops up you might want to subscribe to this Flyertalk thread for…
Top 10 Ways To Earn Lots of Miles
1. Credit cards, credit cards, credit cards. The signup bonuses are great. Chase-issued cards are generally one-time (but there are at least 4 different United Visa products, for instance, and you can get the signup bonus for each), in the limit so is each Amex card (but you can of course get each different type of Delta American Express, each type of Hilton Amex, each Starwood Amex, each Membership Rewards Amex, etc). Citibank cards can still be churned, they will unbelievably still gift you 30,000 American Airlines miles after spending $750 each time you successfully apply for the card (which at a minimum is once every 60 days). I’ve discussed in the past that you want to take a long breather from this before going to get a mortgage (short-tun requests for credit drop…
View from the Wing on Twitter
I’m finally becoming active on Twitter, you can follow me to get my most recent blog posts and also minor deals and fares that don’t make it onto the blog. Of course, subscribing to the RSS feed (http://viewfromthewing.com/feed/) for this blog remains an outstanding way to keep up on the latest deals and strategies that I post.
Top 10 Miles/Points Program Deals of Times Past
10. Free status offers for Marriott Gold, Avis Presidents Club (still active…), Virgin Silver, Hilton Gold, Starwood Gold, Continental Silver just for becoming an AT&T customer. 9. Class of Service Bonuses on Upgrades (Earn more bonus miles on United than it took to upgrade US-Hawaii, the upgrade more than paid for itself). 8. 1-800-Flowers 100 miles per dollar with Delta. On December 30, 2003 1-800-Flowers sent out an email saying they would award 100 miles per dollar spent on flowers. Presumably they had bought a ton of Delta miles which needed to be awarded or else they would expire. So they thought they would generate some cash with this rapidly expiring asset. The email was targeted, but anyone could use the promotion. And it wound up being much bigger than they anticipated… 7. Double, triple,…
Free Hyatt Platinum Status and Diamond Fast Track
Through August 31, Hyatt is offering free Platinum status for 120 days for new account signups, and a fast track to Diamond: 5 Hyatt nights within the promo period retains Platinum and 15 nights achieves Diamond. With the huge improvements that Hyatt announced in April — especially the confirmed suite upgrades for Diamond members — Gold Passport may offer the best elite program currently making this a good time to consider switching to Hyatt. And while you work on the Diamond fast track you can also earn 2500 bonus points per stay (through September 15). Hat tip to One Mile at a Time. And as lucky points out, you could wait closer to the end of the promo period to sign up and possibly overlap with Hyatt’s standard Faster Free Nights offer which may come…
