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.
Priceline founder Jay Walker is launching a new travel booking site in September. The focus is business travel for small and mid-size companies, and the goal is to save the company money while offering gift cards to employees.
I spoke with Jay last week about how development of the site progress is going, the ideas behind it (and whether they’re replicable in other industries) and also his history with Priceline. Jay also founded
The Daily Mail carries what they contend is a ‘trend piece’ on an increasing number of husbands and wives traveling together — with the husband in business class and wife in coach. Really it’s just a collection of stories, not data, and not offering any comparison with the past to make the case that this is more common than it used to be.
Nonetheless the stories are interesting.
In 10 weeks at the beginning of the year I traveled to Paris, Bangkok, Doha, Maldives, Sri Lanka, the desert outside Dubai and Maui (plus places like Washington DC and San Francisco of course). Over and over, when people asked where I was going next, I heard “can you take me along in your suitcase?”
This morning an Eritrean man is making news, having been found inside a suitcase in Chiasso, Switzerland after train passengers heard moans emanating from inside. The train originated in Italy, and the man in the suitcase was traveling with another man who was hiding in the bathroom.
Uber will give free credit to existing customers just for adding a promotion code from Lay’s potato chips.
This helps me not at all because I’m in Austin through the validity of this promo and the only way to use Uber inside the city is with this hack.
For most of you though it’s free money.
Back in December I wrote about Southwest upgrading its technology to be able to pre-assign seats and even sell first class. They basically said they were acquiring dangerous doomsday-style technology that they promised they wouldn’t use.
The new reservation system will go live later this year. In the first half of 2017 Southwest will migrate operations over to the new platform.
I make typos frequently in blog posts. I’m a one man shop, and part-time at that. I bang out a post and share it in between other jobs. I could do a lot better. With a budget over $7 billion and with 50,000 employees at my disposal, I’d like to think that I would do better.
This year is also the 25th anniversary of American Express Membership Rewards (née Membership Miles). This wasn’t the first transferrable points program — Diners Club Club Rewards launched six years earlier in 1985.
American Express has an Anniversary Collection of redemption offers. Some are new redemptions, others are “member favorites” (not new) and some are exclusive to the promotion.
American Express is offering a 50% bonus on transfers to Plenti through December 31.
You earn points with Plenti partners. You can also spend your points (at 1 cent apiece in value) on those partners. A 50% bonus means getting 1.5 Plenti points per Membership Rewards points — valuing those Membership Rewards points at 1.5 cents each when redeemed to pay those bills.
Hyatt Gold Passport is adjusting the hotels that are in their different reward categories effective August 1.
As always you can book hotels now at the old prices to lock in savings for properties which are going up in category, and you should generally be able to get a refund starting August 1 for reservations in the future that were made at higher category prices for those properties that are going down.
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 »
