There were a ton of great questions in yesterday’s open thread, and I will slowly work my way through them. I don’t promise answers to every question, and of course some of the comments weren’t questions at all or even close to on topic for this blog. But that’s ok, I asked what’s on your mind, it’s given me a ton of food for thought. The questions I think will be of broad interest to my readers I’ll try to give some public answers to. And of course I do my best to answer reader e-mail as well. Eric FD said, discuss the ‘fuel dumping’ fare tricks often secretly discussed on FT/MilePoint trick-it forums. i hate the secrecy there – can you shed some light? There’s a great deal of secrecy surrounding the concept of…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for January 2013.
Monday Open Thread
What’s on your mind? Share it in the comments.
A Lovely Stay NOT in a Suite at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco
I posted about downgrade experience at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco and about getting compensation at check-in. It turned out to be a pretty get stay, though, with an excellent club lounge. And the points I was given for the hotel not honoring my confirmed suite upgrade were worth more, to me, than the suite would have been. So I don’t hold a grudge at all. I just wish it had been a smoother, more proactive process on the part of the hotel instead of having to argue. Instead of a suite I had a ‘club floor’ room with a balcony. Not bad. I’m not sure the difference between a club floor room and a regular room, club rooms are not on the same floor as the club lounge. But you need your key card…
American Express Running Targeted 50% Transfer Bonus from Membership Rewards to Starwood
American Express Membership Rewards seems to be doing more targeted transfer bonuses recently. Not a trend I much like to see (well, I suppose I shouldn’t mind as long as I’m being targeted!). I received an email this afternoon about a 50% bonus on transfers from Membership Rewards to Starwood Preferred Guest. Still not in my view worth doing. It goes from taking 3 Membership Rewards point to get 1 Starpoint to 2 Membership Rewards points per Starpoint. When I get these offers I’ve started to copy the link into a different browser, one where American Express doesn’t know who I am, to see whether the bonus comes up and is thus available to everyone or not. This time, no dice. It’s available on my account, it may be available on your account, but seems…
Are Airports What’s Wrong With Travel — And A Symbol of What’s Wrong Everywhere?
Seth Godin writes about 10 things organizations can learn from airports. The lessons for organizations may be right, or more right than wrong in many cases, but the underlying understanding of airports seems off the mark to me. Godin seems not to like (1) commodity products, whose production is (2) intertwined with several bureaucracies (FAA, TSA, airports authority) in conjunction with highly a regulated industry (commercial aviation). But I find that airports are surprising diverse, and while many remain soulless places run by bureaucrats and featuring little innovation there is tremendous variation — geographically (there are some amazingly impressive airports in Asia, like Singapore and Seoul-Incheon) and in terms of innovation (Dallas Fort Worth is trying to do a lot to make their experience more pleasant, Miami is making a ton of infrastructure investments without…
Hyatt Confirmed Suite Upgrades: What Do You Do If You’re Downgraded?
Earlier in the month I surveyed the various hotel programs and their ability to get you into suites and upgraded rooms using points, not just status. The two best programs for this are Starwood Preferred Guest and Hyatt Gold Passport. In fact, Hyatt is insanely generous. If you’ll book the ‘Hyatt Daily Rate’ then you can confirm a suite, at time of booking, for up to four nights, for just 6000 points. I asked a bit later, why ever stay in a regular room at Hyatt? Here’s how much more generous Hyatt is with suite upgrades (with points, available even to general non-elite members) than the second best program for suites, Starwood: [W]hile a hotel like the Westin Tokyo will cost an extra 20,000 Starpoints per night for a suite, confirmed only five nights in…
Retailers Can Charge Consumers More to Pay With Credit Cards Starting Tomorrow — And Why It’s Much Ado About Little
There have been tons of stories the past couple of days, across television and all sorts of media, about credit card processing fees starting tomorrow. Except, the scary headlines don’t match the reality. We’ll see very few changes tomorrow. This all stems from a settlement reached between retailers and Visa and Mastercard this past summer which will allow retailers to add a surcharge to Visa and Mastercard transactions. But most won’t because in many cases the surcharges are worth it to the retailer: companies get money right away, deposited straight into their account when processing credit cards, and without the risk that a check bounces; consumers paying by credit card tend to spend more money per transaction; credit card transactions also reduce the likelihood of employee theft significantly compared to cash transactions. And the charges…
150 Free Miles Per Hotel Review You Write
Malta Points ‘points’ out that HolidayCheck will give you 150 free Air Baltic BalticMiles for each hotel review you write. It appears that the reviews you write do get screened, so they need to be real and materially of a similar quality or better than those of other reviews on the site. No scripted gibberish for generating free miles. 😛 Over the summer I had a throwaway line about Air Baltic BalticMiles (saying they’re worth more than SkyPesos), and the head of the program chimed in to suggest that BalticMiles are worth way more than that.. I think it is time we get you over to Riga, Latvia to change your perception of the airBaltic BalticMiles value One-way awards in the Air Baltic program start at 4200 miles, and the airline partners with SAS so…
Bits ‘n Pieces for January 25, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: Delta has now commented on my blog about the targeting data they collect on customers and its display through their website when members were logged into their frequent flyer accounts. Like many companies, Delta uses demographic and other data to help provide a personalized experience for our customers, improve how we communicate with them and design offers customized to their interests. While the data displayed was only available to the specific user, we sincerely regret that this code displayed and the confusion it may have caused for our customers. We worked to resolve the issue promptly upon discovering it. When American released their new aircraft livery and logo last week, I said we’d be learning about new uniforms a week later. And indeed, American has tapped KAUFMANFRANCO to…
Amazing Delta Business Class Fares to Istanbul and Moscow
Rob points me to the ‘Good Deal Premium Cabin Fares’ thread on Flyertalk, where we find that Delta is running a pretty amazing business class sale on some transatlantic routes. Probably the easiest place to find seats to purchase is Kayak.com, where you’ll be transported to the Delta website. Using ITA Software I searched for Delta flights in business class between New York JFK and Istanbul, and set the trip length from 6-9 days, looking at flights in May and came up with the following calendar: That was before I looked up fare rules, even, and found that there are several cheap business class fares ranging from $978 – $1293 plus taxes which have varying rules such as 14 and 21 day advance purchase requirements, some have 7 or 10 day minimum stay rules. Here’s…
