Apr 16 2015

American, British Airways, and BA’s ‘OpenSkies’ are matching cheap business class prices to Paris. The fares are even cheaper when 2 passengers travel together. BA offers discounts to AARP members (anyone can join) and to British Airways Visa co-brand cardholders. These discounts stack.

I’ve never seen non-mistake fare business class tickets to Europe cheaper for just one passenger. But when two passengers travel together and stack these discounts, the price is $984 apiece. Wow.

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Apr 16 2015

Starwood launched a new brand – or more of an ‘un’brand – that will bring in independent hotels and fill geographic gaps in the SPG program.

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Apr 16 2015

Airbus is introducing a new standard coach configuration for their A380 — eleven seats across. Meanwhile JetBlue may turn the old TWA terminal at JFK into a hotel, gogo outfits a test plane with their fastest internet ever, United feeds the masses and Air New Zealand strikes oil, y’all!

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Apr 15 2015

I ignored the new hotel loyalty satisfaction survey from JD Power & Associates when it came out last week, but it seems to be getting a lot of play now, so let’s go over why it does not tell you anything useful. This isn’t simply one of those “these things are subjective” or “it depends on whom you ask” kinds of criticisms. The survey is just fundamentally silly. That begins with the factors that go into their ranking: account maintenance/management (23%) ease of redeeming points/miles (22%) ease of earning points/miles (18%) reward program terms (16%) variety of benefits (16%) customer service (5%) The most heavily-weighted factor in the rankings — nearly a quarter of it — was ‘account maintenance’. That just doesn’t strike me as the single biggest factor in how valuable a hotel loyalty…

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Apr 15 2015

Google Wallet changes its credit card policy, baggage thieves caught on tape, the value of passports, and more..!

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Apr 15 2015

With airline profits up, competition heats up on more than just schedule and price. Airlines are focusing more, or at least promoting more, their investment in soft product areas including wine.

It’s an expensive game, and one which US airlines are likely to lose — not just against foreign rivals, but also when judged against their own goals. Here’s why I believe the reality won’t match the rhetoric, and that there are far more fruitful areas for their to focus on.

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Apr 15 2015

When you’re traveling outside the United States, it’s always worth checking local airfare. Don’t just assume the fares you see on Orbitz or other US-based online travel websites are the cheapest available. Fares sold in U.S. may be higher, the cheapest fares may only be available in-country. For that you need to book on a website whose “point of sale” is local. Rapid Travel Chai shows you the difference for travel on Vietnam Airlines. He searched for travel on the Vietnam Airlines website – and so issued locally in Vietnam – and found that fares were less than one-fifth the price he was seeing on US booking sites. The US sites were showing ‘full fare’, all that was available to them. The simple solution is to book on an airline’s own website. But using local…

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Apr 15 2015

IHG is going to start expiring their points. At the same time they say they’re introducing new benefits, but aren’t telling us what those are. We should trust them.

Yet they’re sneaking in that they will be changing the award categories of ~ 10% of their hotels. They won’t tell us which ones.

This program has a history of making changes without notice. I walk through some of those, and remind what their boss stated publicly about no-notice changes. Hopefully all he needs is a reminder.

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Apr 15 2015

Scott Mayerowitz writes about the proliferation of brands across the lodging industry.

“The world’s 10 largest hotel chains now offer a combined 113 brands at various price points, 31 of which didn’t exist a decade ago.”

Too many brands leads to consumer confusion, and makes it more difficult to understand what each one’s basic idea is. Do hotel chains proliferate brands in order to sign more properties, but while undermining their core business? With lifestyle brands the range, and more new brands coming online every few months, can consumers even keep up — and know which loyalty program to credit their stays to?

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Apr 14 2015

Copa wouldn’t seem like the most important airline to most US-based frequent flyers. But they’re a lot more important than you think, in several ways. Copa used to be majority-owned by Continental Airlines, and Copa took on a variant of the Continental logo and joined the old Onepass frequent flyer program. Continental started selling their investment in 2005, and the airline is independent now, but they’re pretty well integrated with United. Even now that they’re launching their own frequent flyer program there’s reciprocal upgrade benefits between the two airlines. And of course Copa is a member of the Star Alliance. Their brand new frequent flyer program which is about to launch is making a statement — and they’re calling out United and Delta while they do it. They’ve just e-mailed out this missive: Russ Hinckley…

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