Monthly Archives

Yesterday morning I wrote about the future of mobile for travel providers. Reader S. shares a bit about Travelocity’s current offers which I thought were insightful. Travelocity pushes their mobile app as the only one from an online travel agency booking flights, hotels, and cars. Currently they report that over 10% of their hotel bookings come via their mobile app, mostly within three days of arrival and 64% for same-night check-in. Travelocity offers ‘mobile exclusive deals’ where they solicit hotels to offer lower pricing through their mobile booking app, usually at the last minute, than are offered on the Travelocity website. In exchange for lower pricing, hotels get help pushing last minute inventory (that hotels may expect to go unsold), and they also get priority placement in search results shown to customers (Orbitz isn’t the…

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A couple of weeks ago I explained why TSA PreCheckwas both amazing and useless at the same time — that it was a great security experience, harkening back to the pre-9/11 days before all of the security theatre like shoes off, War on Water freedom baggies out of your carryon, but that since the TSA won’t give approved travelers access to those lines every time and since you don’t know in advance whether you’ll have the access, you don’t actually save time, able to turn up at the airport later. You still have to plan for long TSA lines, and if you’re lucky just wind up with more time to be productive in the lounge or by the gate. Scott Mayerowitz does a great job explaining what the PreCheck program is and how it works…

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Online Travel Review finds that the Air France KLM Flying Blue program not only allows one-way award bookings on partner Delta (when Delta Skymiles does not allow their own members to book one-way awards at half price) but they do not appear to be adding fuel surcharges to those awards. I was skeptical at first — I commented that of course they don’t add fuel surcharges in his New York – Detroit example, since paid travel doesn’t include fuel surcharges on that route. Jared replied to my comment and amended his post — he’s found that even one-way transatlantic travel, US – Europe on Delta, does not incur fuel surcharges in the Flying Blue program! Of course you have to find saver award availability on Delta metal to make that work, and Delta remains about…

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Back in April, British Airways and bmi announced that beginning July 3 it would be possible to move points between Avios and Diamond Club accounts. They brought the functionality up some hours early and it’s now live, which is great, but it appears that the option exists only one way — from bmi to Avios, and not as I had expect from Avios to bmi as well. And the transfer is irrevocable. Roughly speaking you will want to make this transfer unless you expect to use your bmi miles with partners that British Airways doesn’t share (and don’t expect those partnerships to last beyond their current contracts!). So that means you have a near-term desire to redeem on Virgin Atlantic (you know that transfer is going away!), Qatar, and Jet Airways. GhettoIFE walks you through…

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The July 9 issue of Time magazine carries a piece (subscription required) on summer air travel reading. It begins with a paean to the Kindle, but offers my dissent: “I always bring a hardcover,” says Gary Leff of frequent-flyer community Milepoint. “I don’t use an e-reader because flight attendants get snippy during takeoff and landing.” Though it also goes on to explain that I will discard books as I go along to stay as light on the road as possible, leaving books behind in places where others may fortuitously stumble upon the best reads. Some hotel lounges have places where folks leave behind and pick up books, other times I’ll leave them in airport clubs. Occasionally I’ll carry home a book that I’ll want to reference later, but that’s rare, usually once I’ve read it…

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I spoke to an airline industry group last month about the future of social media as a revenue stream. Most industry folks know that they have to have a presence on Twitter, on Facebook, some of them are starting Pinterest pages (I’m still not on Pinterest). They have mobile apps. But one of the best quotes of the weekend from another event I spoke at back in March was, “An app is not an online strategy.” One of the folks on the panel was a top executive from LivingSocial, and he didn’t like one of the first points I made. So far travel providers have seen online distribution channels as a means to segment their customers, offering deep discounts to Twitter followers or Facebook fans, dumping excess inventory to a minority of engaged customers while…

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Here’s some great perspective, a three-year old clip from a Louis C.K. appearance on Conan. “Everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy.” Great insight about life, drawing on telephones, banking, and starting two minutes in half the clip is about the ‘annoyances’ we experience during flying. Roughly speaking, since I couldn’t find a full transcript, here’s what he has to say: I was on an airplane and there was high speed internet on the airplane… it’s fast, I’m watching YouTube clips, I’m on an airplane. It breaks down, they apologize, and the guy next to me is like “This is bull…” Like how quickly the world owes him something he knew existed only 10 seconds ago? Flying is the worst one, people come back from flights, they tell you their story and it’s a horror story. They…

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The Alitalia Millemiglia program is offering up to 50% bonus miles for flights taken through the end of 2012. Receive a 15% bonus on your 4th through 7th Alitalia segment credited to the Millemiglia program, a 30% bonus on segments 8 through 19, and a 50% bonus on your 20th segment and beyond. I haven’t found the offer listed in English, and oddly enough the Google translate of the Italian page suggested that the bonus was on Air France segments. Perhaps Google remembers when Air France was trying to buy Alitalia? I’m not a big fan of accruing points with Alitalia without specific, near-term uses. One of the ‘quirks’ of the program, I’m told to comport with Italian law (though I do not know if this is a law that Alitalia has pushed for, or…

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During the month of July, US Airways is offering up to a 50% bonus on one share miles transaction. Offer valid for your FIRST Share transaction (purchaser or recipient) made between July 1, 2012 00:00:01 AM PT and July 31, 2012 23:59:59 PM PT. This bonus is only applicable for Share Miles and the offer does not apply to Buy or Gift Miles transactions. Bonus amounts will be awarded upon completion of the transaction. Bonus miles will be awarded to the recipient of the Share. I interpret this as saying that you can only transfer points out of your account to generate a bonus once, and you can only receive a bonus once. It’s an open question whether you can do both with the same account, though a literally reading of the terms and conditions…

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Heels First Travel describes getting AAA membership just for the hotel discounts. And that’s exactly what I do. Hilton sometimes has decent AAA rates, though I usually book their MVP rates. At Hyatt, where I stay somewhat frequently, AAA rates are usually approximately the same as prepaid rates but which are cancellable. I’m nearly allergic to non-cancellable hotel rates, unless I’m getting a monster discount such as order of magnitude 50% off via Priceline. I’m usually not willing to book a non-refundable rate for a mere 10% off unless it’s exceptionally close to check-in. So the AAA rate deal is worthwhile to me, I capture the savings while maintaining the flexibility. And after 3-5 room nights booked this way I break even on my annual membership. Now I can’t say I’ve ever been ‘carded’ or…

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