Loyalty Traveler offers an extensive rundown of Hyatt stay certificates. The prices on the three bottom categories have recently gone up a bit, but the thing that’s made them less useful than they used to be is that the categories that hotels are assigned to, and thus the prices of some of the hotel values, have gone up substantially. But there are nonetheless some real values to be had. In the olden days I used to make Hyatt certificate stay reservations, and only buy the certificates once I was certain of my plans. The reservations themselves are cancellable. And if I still needed to cancel the stay after buying the certificate, that’s fine, I could always use the certificate on a future stay within a year. The cost of many of these stay certificates are…
Yearly Archives
Yearly Archives for 2011.
Paging Hyatt Gold Passport…
I’ve already written about Starwood’s first quarter promotion, and of course Marriott and Hilton have theirs, now Loyalty Traveler writes up Best Western’s lucrative offer: one free night after three stays between February 6 and April 11, 2011, plus bonus points for staying in each of their three levels of hotel, Best Western, Best Western Plus, and Best Western Premier. Now you can only earn one free night during the promotion, that’s even a bit more limiting than Marriott. But when Best Western is aggressively on the promotion train you know that everyone is and you’d best not be left behind. Hence titling this post, “Paging Hyatt Gold Passport…” Your promotions are usually ezcellent. Just please don’t keep them a secret!
A Big ‘Thank You’ For All of Your Comments Recently!
I’m not sure the reason. Perhaps it’s because I’ve run some contests and that’s gotten people to sign up to be able to comment — that it’s not worth the hassle just to leave a comment on a blog post, but the possibility of a prize helps overcome the hurdle? But clearly more folks have signed up to be able to comment. And I do apologize about the hassle it may take to be able to comment, I try to keep the blog comments relatively spam free and the system in place does a pretty good job of that, but it also means making commenting for the first time a bit inconvenient. Regardless, I appreciate all of the comments lately, there’s been a nice uptick and I admit I really value the feedback. Sometimes you…
Cancelling Non-refundable Advance Purchase Travel Bookings
TM Travel World offers suggestions of what to do if you book a non-refundable hotel and change your mind. He points out that Marriott will actually let you cancel a non-refundable room if you do so by midnight the following day. Beyond that, call the hotel chain and say you made a mistake and see if they can help. And if they can’t contact the hotel directly, perhaps a hotel manager bill let you cancel the booking to keep a future customer happy. I’d add a few points: If the hotel won’t let you cancel, consider asking them to let you change the dates into the future to another time when you might be able to use the reservation. At least it won’t be a total loss that way, and the hotel may be more…
TSA Cracks Down on Nude-o-Scope Beating Underwear
A long time back I posted that since the Nude-o-Scopes would only see to the first layer of skin, why not wear leather underwear? More recently some firms have been promoting undergarments that are supposed to prevent TSA Pervy Smurfs from seeing you naked. Well, we knew that wouldn’t last. The TSA says that’s not cool, and if you try it they’re going to touch you up. “Some might think this is TSA’s way of getting back at clever passengers,” the blog post continued. “That’s not the case at all. It’s just security.” So now there’s TSA-approved undergarments, and undergarments that the government doesn’t approve of. I wonder how long before we’re all required to go commando?
Earning Miles By Buying Money Orders With a Debit Card
Frugal Travel Guy writes about something of a recent Flyertalk controversy. mrpickles posted his experience successfully using a mileage-earning debit card to purchase money orders, earning miles and depositing the money orders in his account to restore his balance. This wasn’t the first time anyone had posted about this particular bank and this particular merchant, but the group of members who knew about the deal went ballistic demanding that the information be removed. They feared exposure on Flyertalk would ‘kill the deal.’ And they’re probably right. As a moderator of the forum where it was posted, MilesBuzz, I was asked by members to intervene and remove the post. Of course I wouldn’t, as the post was certainly not against the rules. The role of a moderator is not to keep information out of folks’ hands.…
American Airlines New Welcome Aboard Video
American Airlines has just released a new Welcome Aboard video. For most of the world that isn’t news. For folks who fly American every day, that’s huge. Better, worse, or just different and time for a change?
Free American Airlines Miles from Bose Post Quickly
It was just January 3 when I posted the offer of free American Airlines miles from Bose. Checked my American account balance this morning, and the miles from watching the video were already there. There’s a wonderful turnaround time posting miles, and remember if you have any American miles and want to extend their validity (since American miles expire after 18 months of account inactivity) this is a quick, easy and reliable way to do it.
Amtrak: Every 2 (or 3) Northeast Corridor Roundtrips Earns a Free Roundtrip
Amtrak is running a new promo (registration required) in the Northeast Corridor (from DC through New York and up to Boston). Every 3 roundtrips or 6 one-ways on Acela Express from January 10 through March 19 will earn a free Acela Express roundtrip. And every 2 roundtrips or 4 one-ways on Northeast Regional trains will earn a free Northeast Regional roundtrip. They’ve clamped down the ability to buy ultra-cheap segments and redeem them expensively by setting a minimum qualifying fare of $85 each way on Acela and $49 each way on regional. Free travel can be taken June 1 – August 31. And Acela award travel can’t take place before 9am or between 2pm and 6pm Monday through Friday, in other words more or less off-peak only. Not a huge bonanza, but a plus for…
Southwest’s New (Gutted) Frequent Flyer Program
It’s long been expected that Southwest would be rolling out a new frequent flyer program early in 2011. They’ve been getting fairly stingy as an airline across the board over the past year, they even started enforcing the expiration on their drink chits. I certainly expected the new program to be a gutting of the old one, and it apears to me that’s the case. Southwest introduced its new fare-based Rapid Rewards program today, moving from a credits system (based on segments flown) to a points system (based on dollars spent, with redemptions based on cost of paid airfare for the flight). Overall they align themselves more with the programs of other ‘low cost carriers’ like JetBlue and Virgin America rather than the mileage programs of major airlines. And while there’s a great deal of…
