About Gary Leff

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 »

More articles by Gary Leff »

How to Make an Airline Customers Want to Fly

by Gary Leff

Feb 04 2019

The major US airlines mostly follow the same business model, and there’s little disruption today in the industry. However while schedule and price were once the primary drivers of consumer behavior, even proponents of ‘schedule and price über alles like United President Scott Kirby learned years ago at US Airways that it was no longer the only thing that mattered to win business.

Since much of air travel is heavily regulated, the space in which airlines can differentiate themselves becomes more crucial than ever to attract customers.

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Huge Personal Milestone for Marriott Sorting Out the Mess Of Their New Program

by Gary Leff

Feb 04 2019

When Marriott launched their new program on August 18th they encouraged members to combine their accounts. They told you that you were keeping either a Starwood account or a Marriott account, but that wasn’t really true — all accounts were moved onto Marriott’s IT system.

If you were a Starwood member and a Marriott member previously you now had two Marriott accounts but for legal reasons they still displayed Starwood graphics for one of them.

I combined my accounts and somehow showed only three years at the Platinum level towards lifetime status.

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British Airways Testing Not Cleaning Planes Between European Flights

by Gary Leff

Feb 03 2019

At American Airlines cleaners frequently board an aircraft and start cleaning before passengers are off the plane. That’s not a great experience, but the airline frequently tries to turn planes around with unrealistic schedules. At least they’re getting cleaned.

British Airways in contrast has trialed ways to reduce cleaning to see if passengers complain. Now they’re taking a new approach — testing the elimination of cleaning altogether on some flights.

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Worst Airline Meal on the Planet?

by Gary Leff

Feb 03 2019

There are plenty of meal attempts that aren’t even trying, or actively trying to be disgusting.

There’s a recent viral story about an Emirates passenger complaining about their cajun chicken sandwich. Doesn’t look great, but not actively ‘grosser than gross’.

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Is Hyatt Place Breakfast Really Restricted to Members Booking Direct? Not So Fast!

by Gary Leff

hotel breakfast food
Feb 02 2019

Effective November 1 Hyatt Place hotels were supposed to stop providing all guests with free breakfast and limit breakfast only to members of World of Hyatt who book through Hyatt channels (or corporate booking tools, since that’s good business).

In practice the Hyatt Place “mornings are for members” slogan isn’t as cut and dried as corporate’s rules appear.

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