The Hampton Inn Boston Raynham has an offer on their Facebook page Text HAMPTON to 40491 Earn 10,000 Hilton Honors points for joining!!! Apparently if you give them permission to text you, they’ll give you 10,000 Hilton HHonors points. Slickdeals says that you’ll get a text back with a phone number to call and provide your HHonors number to receive the points. Apparently, though, “the voicemail is full, so you can email your info to renee.snoke@hilton.com and she will take care of it.” The number is 401-608-3516 but it’s probably easier to email. Personally I work off a blackberry and I never text, I’m such a luddite I don’t have an unlimited texting plan. They’ll text you room deals and deals on dinners and the like, apparently. Not sure how often so my inclination is…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for February 2011.
Starwood Announces Hotel Award Categories for 2011, and the Changes Aren’t Bad at All…
Yesterday I wrote on Milepoint that Starwood should be coming out with their revised award categories for 2011. The list of changes has been made public and my predictions were all wrong. In the past I’ve given Starwood a hard time over their annual re-categorization of properties. A very hard time, and I think it’s well-deserved. They say their categories are based on the average room rates for a hotel property, but on the hotel categories seem to go up even when room rates stay constant. Starwood introduced category 6 and category 7 and certainly hotels in that category cost more in points even when the rooms themselves don’t cost more. And I’m especially exercised over Starwood charging double points for ‘all suite’ properties at the highest award categories. A hotel earns its room rates…
Has Delta Increased the Price of their Asia Awards, and Are More Increases Coming?
TM Travel World reports that Delta has apparently increased the price of a whole bunch of awards. It’s always something that’s really difficult to verify, much of Delta award pricing is shrouded in mystery. They do not publish an actual award chart for flight redemptions that don’t start or end in North America. But Troy says that they’ve broken Asia into two separate regions. I remember when Asia was all just one region, and business class within Asia was 30,000 miles roundtrip. Now it’s apparently 25,000 miles just for economy within North Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan) and 45,000 miles for business class. With a new separate region for North Asia and South Asia, instead of just a single region for Asia, flights between the two regions — or even just…
United WIll Keep Economy Plus and Expand it to the Continental Fleet
Scott O’Leary posted on Milepoint (and, I’m guessing, on Flyertalk as well) that United will be keeping Economy Plus and will be adding it to the Continental fleet ‘beginning in 2012’. This is a big sigh of relief, though not unexpected. While it was certainly going to be a ground up review, and Continental’s management was going to make a decision based on whether they thought economy plus would drive incremental revenue compared to having the additional seats in coach to sell, United has gotten quite adept at upselling passengers for these seats and economy plus unquestionably drives product differentiation and consumer choice at the low and mid-tier elite levels. A United Premier flying 25,000 miles a year doesn’t see the front cabin very often, but is better off in back on United with extra…
Club Carlson to Replace Radisson Goldpoints Plus
On March 31, Radisson Goldpoints Plus is being replaced with a new program, Club Carlson. I haven’t paid a great deal of attention to the Goldpoints program. Back in December 2001 I was hugely engrossed in their shopping portal, they were offering a holiday shopping promotion that allowed me to earn points that transferred into miles in any number of programs and purchased those points (through shopping transactions with Valumags) at less than a penny apiece. That was the high point. It wasn’t long after that when the points-to-miles transfer ratio got cut in half. And the shopping portal itself is no more. In fact, Goldpoints itself was a shared loyalty program between Radisson hotels and of all things TGI Fridays. You could earn points from stays or by eating out, and redeem your points…
US Airways 100% Bonus on Purchased Miles is Back (for Almost Everyone This Time)
Via Milepoint, US Airways is back with their 100% bonus on purchased miles through March 31. Except it’s not a straightforward double miles offer. Instead, you get a 75% bonus immediately when you purchase miles. Then in order to get the remaining 25% bonus you need to use the Dividend Miles toolbar by March 31. Now, when you download and install the toolbar and make three searches with it or an online purchase, you get 500 bonus miles (1000 bonus miles for US Airways elite members and co-branded credit card holders, only US-based members of the Dividend Miles program are eligible for the first use bonus). Making three searches with the toolbar is required to earn the 25% bonus on purchased miles, and the 25% will post 5-10 days after having made the miles purchase…
Delta Ends Expiration of Miles — And That’s NOT Such a Good Thing!
Don and Matthew send along the news that Delta is eliminating expiration of Skymiles. This is a consumer-friendly move to be sure, and deserves to be lauded. And I admit it’s a move that surprises me. Mileage programs hold unredeemed miles on their books as a liability until those miles expire or are redeemed. Expiring miles mean recognizing revenue without associated cost. That’s why programs have shorted expiration periods in recent years, with most programs going from three years to 18 months (Delta’s miles expired after two years). Mileage expiration is big business. United Mileage Plus booked an extra $64 million of revenue in the first quarter of 2010 just by tweaking their model for mileage expiration. So real applause here, but at the same time I don’t value the move myself and anyone who…
US Airways Will Sell You Your Elite Status
Troy points to US Airways’ new offer to let members buy elite qualifying miles or segments towards their status. Now, the status lasts only through February 2012. So it’s current-year status, not earning credits this year for status through February 2013. But what really sets the US Airways offer apart is that the offer runs all year, and you can buy all the way up to top tier status even if you’ve never had a single segment or qualifying mile credited to a US Airways Dividend Miles account. For the first five months of the year, you can choose to top off the elite qualifying miles you earned in your account in your choice of 2010 or year-to-date 2011. So you get more months of status and at a lower cost. For the last seven…
Double British Airways Executive Club Miles on BA and Iberia to Central and South America and on Iberia Between the UK and Spain
Through April 24, British Airways is offering (registration required) double miles on Iberia between the UK and Spain, between Madrid and South and Central America (excluding Mexico and San Juan.. odd), and also on all British Airways flights to and from South America. (HT: Milepoint)
Full Details of United’s New More Generous Award Routing Rules
This morning I described United’s increasingly generous rules for routing frequent flyer award travel. The rest of this post doesn’t need to make sense to you, everything you need to know is in this morning’s post. But a friend sends along the actual profile for the new United routing rules which confirms my earlier description of the changes. For the routing rules junkies it’s worth looking at, but not something the majority need to even read further on. UPDATED: 10FEB11 S*R.A PERMITTED ITINERARY TYPES (RT/OW/LEGAL SOJ/RTW) S*R.B STEPS TO VALIDATE ROUTING FOR ONE AWARD S*R.C STOPOVERS —PERMITTED ITINERARY TYPES————————— THE FOLLOWING ITINERARY TYPES ARE PERMITTED FOR ONE AWARD: – ROUND TRIP (RT) – ONE WAY (OW) – SINGLE OPEN JAW (SOJ) – DOUBLE OPEN JAW (DOJ) – AWARD TRAVEL DOES NOT NEED TO FOLLOW LEGAL…
