Historically the major chains have had a limited presence in Las Vegas, the biggest hotel market in the world. Planet Hollywood used to be a Sheraton, there’s a fairly mediocre Westin that isn’t on ‘the Strip’. IHG managed to link up with the Venetian as an Intercontinental hotel, and Mariott nabbed Cosmopolitan. The big breakthrough came for Hyatt over the summer when it inked a deal with MGM M Life. You can now earn and redeem Hyatt Gold Passport points and get reciprocal elite status recognition at participating MGM M Life properties. That was a huge coup that brought in properties like Bellagio, MGM Grand, and Mandalay Bay along with several more. In a copycat industry (Starwood introduced Crossover Rewards with Delta, then Marriott introduced RewardsPlus with United), now as announced on Milepoint this morning,…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for December 2013.
American Airlines Employees Will Vote on the Aircraft Paint Job (Or At Least the Tail)
American Airlines Group CEO Doug Parker told employees of both American Airlines and US Airways that they would get to vote on the tail of American Airlines planes. If they prefer, the airline will go with the old tail icon that had been in place since 1968. If they like the new tail, they can keep it. But the decision needs to be made quickly so they can start painting US Airways planes. Personally the new paint job has really grown on me since it was unveiled. I don’t really like the tail, though… still, the old one seems dated especially after they’ve painted so many planes with an updated one. Tail and body of an American Airbus A319 Ultimately Doug Parker’s letter — and even this blog post — is spending too much time…
Would You Change Your Name to Schmuck for Miles and Elite Status?
Lufthansa is facing quite a bit of competition on the Stockholm-Berlin route. As the German national airline they clearly favor the Berlin side of the equation, and their marketing gurus are going to tell those Swedes how much better it is to be a Berliner! Or something. Lufthansa ran a contest with a grand prize of: [A] free one-way ticket to the German capital and a prepaid apartment for a year on the border of the city’s trendy Kreuzberg and Neukolln neighborhoods. Did I mention that the furnished, sparkling white, 750-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment comes with a balcony, a fully equipped kitchen, and a custom-painted bike with your (new) name on it? Or that the jackpot also includes German lessons and two free flights to Frankfurt and Munich? Everyone else entering receives Frequent Traveler status and…
Is a 50% Bonus Buying American Miles (2 cents Per Mile) a Good Deal?
Ryan points to a new promotion for buying American Airlines miles that I hadn’t seen, and asks if it’s marginally better than this week’s 100% bonus for buying US Airways miles. Gary – could you also buy 90,000 AA miles more cheaply through this promotion for 1.833cpm? 60,000 + 18,000 bonus + additional 12,000 bonus by Jan 31? American has two stackable promos for buying miles, whereby you’re paying 2 cents per mile for up to 90,000 miles total. (It’s not actually 1.83 cents as suggested above, as that price wasn’t inclusive of taxes and fees.) I’ve never seen American Airlines miles sold for less. You’ll have to wait until January to pocket the final chunk of bonus miles, though. US Airways is straight-up selling miles for just over 1.8 cents apiece, as they often…
Best Western Secrets Revealed!
Best Western is more of a hotel booking service than a chain. It’s not a management company, hotels are generally independently owned and also independently operated. Best Western has an online course that front desk agents have to go through, and someone on property has to be certified in their reservation system and also certified in housekeeping. Best Western doesn’t run the hotels, and the brand standards – despite in recent years adding ‘brand descriptors’ (for legal and internal political reasons they couldn’t call these separate brands) “Plus” and “Premier” – are fairly lax compared to major chains like Marriott and Hilton. Still, there are standards, and there are rules. Milepoint.com member traveltoomuch shared a link to Best Western’s rules and regulations for its hotel properties. Only I would find the full .pdf interesting reading.…
DC Locals, Watch (Fox5) and Listen to (WTOP) Me Today…
I should be on Fox5 at around 8:45am, and on WTOP radio at either 7:20pm or 7:40pm this evening. As always with such things, scheduling is subject to change, who knows what the President or Members of Congress might do? I’ll be talking mostly holiday travel, and that could of course take a back seat to a national crisis. Or world leaders taking selfies. You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
Air India Back on Track to Join Star Alliance
Ben Mutzabaugh reports that Air India is again on track to join the Star Alliance. Air India had been invited to become a member of Star at the end of 2007 (rumored as far back as 2006), in a process that generally takes 18 to 24 months. After a series of delays, supposedly they were ready in May 2011. But in July 2011, however, Star gave up on the project and walked away. Air India was too much of a basket case, taking too long to meet entrance standards, including in IT (at the time they hadn’t managed to successfully integrate with Indian Airlines, which they had acquired). Star wanted to take a stab at having Jet Airways join, but the Indian government balked. Etihad has since taken an equity stake. (Kingfisher was supposed to…
My DeltaPoints Interview
DeltaPoints interviewed me for his ‘fireside chat’ series. On Southwest Airlines: I flew Southwest once. That was 1993. They used to have seats that faced backwards, but of course not like British Airways or United (lie flat seats). Southwest is great, it isn’t generally cheaper than its head-to-head competition but I think they’re a good reliable airline and they’ve brought a lot to the communities they serve. I used to love sparring online with their founding President Lamar Muse, and his autobiography is a great must-read. I loved the stories about their commitment to putting skylights in their first planes so passengers could look up to the heavens (helped them get financial backing) and of how the La Quinta chain got its name (a Southwest board member founded it, and was looking for the cheapest furniture…
Is Hilton Eliminating High Speed Internet as an Elite Benefit?
The worst thing a loyal program can do, in my opinion, is change its rules without notice. I suppose the asterisk here is that they can compound the sin by changing their rules without notice and not even tell their members. I don’t like to be caught off-guard, so a trick I employ the is website ChangeDetection.com. It will send me emails whenever an internet page I want to monitor changes. I set up an alert for most major programs’ terms and conditions changes. This works well most of the time. Some programs, like Delta’s, change their page daily if only to update the current date making the exercise not very useful. But that’s the exception. One of my alerts is for changes to the Hilton HHonors terms and conditions. And I got on such…
100% Bonus Buying US Airways Miles: Cheapest Way to Buy American Airlines Miles
US Airways is running a 100% bonus for mileage purchases through December 20th. For purchases of 50,000 miles you get 50,000 bonus miles, and your 100,000 miles cost you 1.88 cents per mile. They ran this targeted last month and in July. They ran it non-targeted in August. October and also a couple of weeks back they had the much better 100% share miles bonus. US Airways IT Challenges Making Bookings Limit Value Somewhat US Airways has been dubbed the ‘consolidator of Star Alliance premium class seats’ (credit to eponymous coward) since seats that aren’t expected to be sold (distressed inventory) tend to be offered as awards, and US Airways has been the most aggressive about letting members straight up buy those seats cheaply via purchased miles — even putting awards on hold before buying…
