Last summer I stayed at the Andaz Maui and loved it.
Many Diamonds had ways of taking advantage of this property and they cracked down. They even started limiting what Diamonds received for breakfast.
Fortunately that’s changed.
SPG Stay for More will offer double points on 2+ night stays and 500 bonus points on top when the stay is 3+ nights.
I very much look forward to Cuban modernizing.. for the sake of the Cuban people. Remember that however quaint walking back into the 1950s may be as a tourist, the people of Cuba have been forced to live without the benefit of many of the advances of technology that we too easily take for granted.
Many people want to visit Cuba before it ‘changes’. It turns out, so do the Cubans.
I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
The Department of Transportation’s Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protection voted to recommend that airlines be permitted to choose whether or not cell phones are allowed onboard their planes.
Russian carrier Transaero is being acquired by Aeroflot for just one ruble (and assumption of debt).
This is especially interesting because Transaero has one of the most elusive first class products in the sky. And if they joined Aeroflot in Skyteam we’d be able to use Korean Air miles (transferred from Chase or Amex) or Flying Blue points (transferred from Amex or Citi) to book the seats finally!
It’s very important to get record locators from phone agents as soon as a reservation is created. You could get kicked off of a phone call and it would be difficult to retrieve the reservation.
When reading the confirmation to you, you’ll often use a phonetic alphabet, words that stand for letters. And agents make up the darndest words…
Hilton announced a partnership today with Uber.
And when I first saw this — whoa, didn’t Starwood get any exclusivity in the hotel space when they did their Uber deal?
Over at Fortune, Christopher Elliott says that suffering economy passengers are subsidizing the perks for premium cabin passengers. In fact he has it exactly backwards.
And he has several of his facts wrong, too.
Two weeks ago Starwood Preferred Guest added Korean Air as a transfer partner. That’s fantastic because Korean has some of the best redemptions in first class (amazing availability), to Hawaii (cheap awards on Alaska, Delta, and Hawaiian), and for business class to Europe (40,000 miles each way with fuel surcharges).
I tested a one point transfer from Starwood to Korean (no minimum transfer is a benefit of being a Starwood Platinum): a Wednesday afternoon transfer appeared the following Sunday night/Monday morning.
That same Monday when I found the points in my account I made another points transfer, looking for another data point for when points would post.
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 »
