Since acquiring Starwood, Marriott has been making baby steps towards learning from the strong affinity that members have for the Starwood Preferred Guest program and creating a single unified program which will require IT work and owner buy in.
Early on, in a nod to the SPG program, Marriott Rewards added 4pm late checkout for Golds and Platinums and introduced experiential redemptions.
When talking about degrading the passenger experience by offering Basic Economy fares, US airline executives talk about ‘allowing customers to buy exactly the product they want’ — except they really do not do this, because Delta, American, and United do not offer a product that is as comfortable as Virgin America’s for customers to buy.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
If you take on United and there’s no video to release to the media, your MileagePlus account is in jeopardy.
One of the best deals in travel has been the British Airways AARP discount. I’ve loved stacking British Airways business class sale fares with $400 off business class fares and even a further 10% discount for eligible Chase credit card holders (using promo code CARDOFFERU).
We know that American Airlines is below expected credit card signups this year.
Their 8-K filing with the SEC didn’t tell us whether that was on the Citibank side or the Barclaycard side, since American has two credit card issuers. But since Barclaycard only started adding cardmembers in mid-December it was a good guess that Citi applications were a driver.
United’s management thinking is now America West-turned-American Airlines management thinking since United brought ex-US Airways leadership of American over to run the business.
Today United announced that latest way they plan to follow in American’s footsteps: re-banking hubs beginning with Houston effective October 29.
When Richard Anderson resigned as Delta’s Chairman — suddenly in October, without notice, and without waiting for the airline to be ready to name his successor as CEO the new Chairman — I said that it would be interesting to see what the then-61 year old did next.
Now we know. He’s the new CEO of Amtrak. Hold onto those Guest Rewards points, folks.
It’s not often you see pictures of plane crashes proudly displayed in an airport.
Especially when one of the photos emphasizes the need for a security procedure that’s no longer in use.
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 »
