News and notes from around the interweb:
- It’s amazing how long United’s ‘unofficial award sale’ seems to last..
- Doubletree’s new bath amenities. Things like amenities — and cookies — provide consistency, which is especially important for Doubletree which is Hilton’s conversion brand. There’s little across Doubletree that is otherwise the same and makes a ‘brand’.
- New American Express lounge that Platinum carhdolders can use opens in Sydney
- Travel hacker banned from UK finance industry for gaming train fares.
- Alaska will open a Boardroom in United’s old club space in the North Satellite terminal at SeaTac in mid-2015. I’d guess that it, like the Boardroom in the main terminal, will become accessible to Priority Pass and Lounge Club cardholders as well as partner lounge members.
- You can join the 40,000+ 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!
The “travel hacker” you mention wasn’t gaming train fares, he was outright stealing. Gaming the system would have been, e.g., buying two tickets to cover his trip that together were cheaper than a single through ticket. Rather, he just failed to buy a ticket for part of his journey, taking advantage of the fact that they generally don’t check tickets on most UK commuter services.
that guy was sooo cheap … some major exec at a bank and won’t pay for commuter train fares
Can you explain ‘conversion brand?’
I don’t think I suggested the guy in my post was a travel hacker. Only that some who do travel hacking might find themselves under similar scrutiny, depending on the kinds of tricks they use.
@Scottrick: The following is a direct quote from your blog:
“His “travel hack” consisted of boarding a train […] without buying a ticket”.
You suggested that his offence was “finding a way to save money on train fare”.
What actually happened was that Burrows dodged his rail fare. Plain and simple.
It’s not clear that the “temporary” Board Room for AS will be in the old United Club space. The POS (Port of Seattle) was (or is) apparently using the old United space as their base for N Terminal construction.
There’s been some discussion that it will be nestled between some of the N gates. Exactly where is (to my understanding) still undisclosed.
@stvr – hotels that used to be part of some other chain or independent, they don’t do major renovations, just stick a new flag on it..
There’s the reason why the guy caught gaming the train ticket fares works at BlackRock and not Blackstone!