Monthly Archives for April 2015.
The new Denver airport hotel and related train station project are so far over budget that the project’s independent watchdog is incurring a 137% cost overrun.
Yet the airport doesn’t think it’s fair for an independent auditor to claim current projected costs (which could still rise) of $721 million off of a $500 million budget. With some creative accounting they’re ‘only’ over budget by 17%.
…Nonetheless, the airport contends that:
Marriott and Hyatt cap the hotel categories you can use their annual free night benefit at — which may have been fine years ago, but they’ve increased the cost of hotels since then. The benefit becomes worth less and less each year.
In contract, Hilton and IHG Rewards Club — two programs I don’t think of as cutting edge — actually do this one better..
When travel companies ask what their social media strategy should be, they’re missing the point. They need to understand their business, and do it well. Then they need to communicate authentically with their customers, wherever they happen to be.
Social media strategy isn’t even a thing. You have a business strategy, and then a willingness to be real with your customers. Anything else is a waste…
A collection of interesting links you’ll want to see, many you’ll want to click.
Kids on a plane, children in first class, unaccompanied minors, all controversial topics for frequent flyers. I’m generally in favor, though not when I’m trying to sleep.
Though this is the first time I’ve seen rowdy children named as a contributing factor in an air crash investigation…
Google collects a tremendous amount of information. That’s pretty useful — to Google and to us. They improve their selection of what search results to show us based on what we’ve chosen in the past. They also give us similar results that we’ve liked before when we search again. And of course they tailor ads to our searching which, while creepy, is actually quite good — I’d rather have ads that contain relevant information and offers than ones that are utterly useless to me though in practice it doesn’t much change the likelihood that I’ll click. Google search data is also fascinating in the aggregate for social sciences. What people are searching tells us something about what they’re thinking, and en masse it tells us something about what “we” are thinking as a society. It…
A collection of interesting links you’ll want to see, many you’ll want to click.
Silvercar announced Ft. Lauderdale as their 9th city, and strongly implies that number 10 will be Chicago. Silvercar of course is the company that rents only silver Audis. And they give you GPS, in-car internet, and no toll tracking administrative fees. They charge just $5 to refill gas at market rate. Promo code FLLE27 will get you 27% off their $59 introductory rates, or $43 a day (plus taxes). That’s even better than the $49 deal they’re running on all rentals this month (that’s valid at other locations as well). Although on a two day rental you’ll still do better with the Frequent Traveler University discount code FTU50 which will give even existing customers $50 off a rental of two days or more. The great thing is that these stack with Silvercar’s $25 bonus for…
Two weeks ago I wrote about American’s new lounge design.
American, today, has finally announced it and it looks very much like their old new lounge design, which is to say it’s quite similar to the most recently-opened lounges such as in Buenos Aires and the midfield concourse at LAX and even Paris.
The idea is that eventually all of the lounges get re-done. Here’s details of the renovation and which clubs go first..
When Club Carlson announced that their co-brand Visa will stop giving second night free on award stays, they offered something of a sweetener to make the news go down more easily. They announced 30,000 bonus points on your next stay paid with the card by August 31. Presumably that was to keep cardmembers from cancelling their Club Carlson Visa — since they’d need to hang onto the card and use it to earn the 30,000 points, and presumably many would have cooled down or forgotten the devaluation by then. Reader B.K. confirms for me that it doesn’t actually have to be a paid stay in order to earn the 30,000 points. Any hotel charge that posts to your account should work. He passes along an award stay where he had a food and beverage charge…
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
