News and notes from around the interweb: JetBlue is introducing social media ‘badges’ that earn real points and there are opportunities to earn up to 4000 points for free. How to get up to 5/8ths of your Vanilla Reload purchase fees rebated at 7-11. Korean Air first and business class passengers arriving in Seoul can now use sauna and fitness facilities at the Hyatt Regency Incheon. No doubt it’s a nicer option than current lounges (which work fine for connecting passengers) and offers something as an arrivals experience, but the need to take a shuttle to the hotel limits the usefulness I think. Although if I had an all day connection and didn’t want to take a transit tour I suppose it would be nice to pass through immigration and get out of the airport.…
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United and Marriott Offer New Reciprocal Benefits – RewardsPlus Gives United Gold Elites Marriott Gold!
United and Marriott today launched a partnership called RewardsPlus. In some ways similar to Starwood and Delta’s Crossover Rewards announced in February, the program adds status recognition and some stepped up points benefits for elites in both programs. But unlike Starwood-Delta, points-earning has not been boosted under this new offering. United’s Gold elites and higher get Gold status in the Marriott Rewards program. That’s actually a pretty strong benefit (albeit one you can get by signin up for the Ritz-Carlton Rewards Visa) in that it usually takes 50 nights with Marriott to qualify. All Marriott Platinum and Platinum Premier members get United silver status. United elites will be able to convert miles into Marriott points at a 1:1 ratio, although this represents a poor transfer value (since a United mile is generally worth more than…
Celebrate Bastille Day By Planning Your Trip to France!
Today — on Bastille Day — you can travel to France even while staying at home. (Or, as the French celebrate on this day, La Fête Nationale.) The storming of the Bastille is a purely symbolic moment, and had little role either in the practical success of the French Revolution and little relation to revolutionary ideals. The crowd initially went to the Bastille in search of gunpowder. Most prisoners had already been removed, there simply weren’t political prisoners there to be freed. And as a symbolic moment, it’s perfect for a day dreaming moment — celebrate France by thinking about a visit there, about French food and wine, where you’d stay, and how you’d (book your award to) get there. Get yourself there before Cola-flavored wine takes hold! Now, the US and France have an…
National Car Rental Prize Giveaway. Give Me Your Best Travel Tips About…
Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman starred in the 1986 mini-series Fresno. Fresno was supposed to be this backwater place, an absurd location with which to parody soap operas. I lived there, a few years after the mini-series debuted. And I even have fond memories, there are many more things to do there than when I was there on and off from 1989 through 1996. I spent a ton of time playing $2 blackjack at the Indian casino… What does this have to do with rental cars? As I’ve written in the past, there are only two real game changing innovations in rental cars that I can think of in my lifetime. One is keeping your information on file so that you can be pre-assigned a car and take off by showing just your driver’s license.…
I Can’t Warn You Enough: Make Absolutely Positively Sure United Actually Issues Your Award Tickets
I’ve put out the clarion call several times in the past. But it bears repeating often. And every time this happens to me, even I remain surprised. A year ago I wrote about United award tickets on Asiana cancelling themselves. United’s system doesn’t always pass ticket numbers through to some partners and when the partner you have redeemed your miles on sees an ‘unticketed’ reservation, they may go ahead and cancel. United blames the partner, but United’s system is the only one that regularly does this. Solution: When you issue award tickets, call up the airlines that are operating your flights. Make sure they see the ticket numbers and confirm you are ready to travel. If there are changes to your flights that require re-issuance of tickets, repeat this step. I also wrote about the…
Bits ‘n Pieces for July 13, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: A new place to buy Vanilla Reloads cards, and possibly even earn double points while doing so. The Southwest Visa 50,000 point signup bonus offer (offer expired) that I wrote about this past week now has a known expiration date of August 6. Somalia’s somewhat friendly skies. Another fascinating example of relative (and relatively increasing) prosperity in the country with no functional government. The new head of Dallas Fort Worth airport once boarded the wrong plane there as a child. (HT: Carter H.) He continued making similar mistakes throughout his career, such as running United’s short-lived low cost carrier Ted. Terry Maxon suggests his experience at United means that the Virgin Australia COO already has experience running a non-profit.. Fly New York to Guayaquil, Ecaudor for $365 roundtrip…
Instant Free Top Tier Status with Accor Hotels (and Status Match Options) – ALIVE AGAIN!
Instant Platinum (top tier) status in the Accor Hotels loyalty program comes around with some frequency, usually the signup link doesn’t stay active long — sometimes days, sometimes just hours. Here’s a current offer for instant Platinum status. (HT: This Milepoint thread and Milepoint member 0geek) The offer is in Polish, but fortunately Google Chrome has built-in translation. You must open a new account, it cannot be applied to existing accounts. And when you do so you must use an email address that’s not currently on file with them. Even if you don’t frequently stay at Sofitel, Novotel, Pullman, Mercure, and other related properties frequently, you never know when you might find yourself in one and having top tier status can’t hurt. Platinum status usually requires 60 nights or 25,000 points earned. It offers double…
How an Intern Was Thrown Under the Bus for the Racist Joke Alleging Asiana 214 Pilot Names
By now the world is aware of a San Francisco television station ‘confirming’ the names of the pilots of Asiana 214 which crashed on landing in San Francisco last weekend. I first saw the story on Matthew’s blog. Ben covered it as well. When I saw the clip on YouTube yesterday there were fewer than 1000 views. Now as of this writing there have been nearly 2 million. In case it’s new to you: The San Francisco television station insisted it really wasn’t their fault and indeed in the televised report they claimed the pilot names were confirmed by the National Transportation Safety Board. My first thought was how could this be possible? Now we learn that the pilot names were confirmed by a spokesperson for the NTSB. who happens to have been an intern.…
You Have to Pick Just One: Should You Be a Marriott Rewards or Ritz-Carlton Member?
Reader Andrew asks, There is Marriott Rewards and Ritz-Carlton Rewards. How do these two work together? Is one better than the other? How do the 2 statuses work? Marriott acquired Ritz-Carlton in 1998, but the hotels had limited participation in the Marriott Rewards program: you could spend points for Ritz-Carlton stays, but that was it. Luxury chains have for the most part eschewed points, the belief was that they provide recognition not freebies and compete to offer the best luxury experience not guest kickbacks. That seemed like a mistake to me, but of course I start with a presumption that loyalty programs with formalized tiers and defined benefits sett clear stretch goals for your customers which incentivize them to stay more. After the drop in hotel stays during the Great Recession, Marriott made a strategic…
Adding Insult to Injury: Elite Status Devaluation Edition
Frontier Airlines isn’t the greatest airline. Regional carrier Republic bought them, along with Midwest Airlines. They’ve cut things to the bone — they even eliminated Midwest’s cookies (gone long ago, the all premium cabin seating and fine dining meals). They took away advance seat assignments and cut mileage earning for tickets booked through online travel agencies (although in reality they just filed fares to trick those agencies — parallel fares 10 cents cheaper that online sites default to, that take away benefits, while making fares that are pennies higher available to those booking sites which include benefits — but which the sites are incapable of displaying online). To date they’ve cut either from all customers, or from infrequent customers primarily. But as customers of the merged carrier learned this week, there’s more to cut. And…
