A few weeks ago I went up to New York to tape a segment for The Colbert Report. It won’t run for awhile, if it runs at all, but doing the taping was a blast. They first thought we’d get started in the early afternoon and were going to arrange the train up and back same-day. But when they went to schedule crew and studio time they ran into some snags, and wanted to schedule a first thing in the morning start time so I headed up to the city the night before. I go to New York all the time, living in the DC area and 10 minutes from the airport it’s almost like going to the exuurbs for me, and I do it with greater frequency. I’m pretty much always given towards staying…
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Alaska Airlines Miles Will Be Able to Redeem Awards on Emirates Starting January 16
Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan members will be able to redeem miles for Emirates flights beginning January 16. Alaska’s award chart for Emirates has not yet been published. And to date — I’ve long expected this to change, but no luck so far — Alaska requires roundtrip awards on partners (no one ways), and the roundtrip must be on a single partner (plus Alaska flights optionally), no mixing and matching partners in an itinerary. Still, depending on award pricing, this could be outstanding. For now Japan Airlines miles (which can be obtained via Starwood Preferred Guest) remain the best way to score awards — including A380 suites awards — on Emirates.
What Won’t Actually Happen to Travel if We Go Over the Fiscal Cliff
First of all there is no ‘fiscal cliff’ — there’s a series of changes in law as well as fiscal circumstances that cluster around the same time. And the analogy is misleading because in most cases nothing irreversible happens on January 1; tax rates if reset can be done so retroactively to the start of the year, program spending put on hold a few days can still be greenlit, etc. But even if we go past December 31 under current law, none of the Really. Scary. Things.(tm) being predicted in travel will actually come to pass. At least not the bad stuff leading this USA Today piece. The big threat is that if Congress and President Obama can’t reach an agreement on spending cuts and tax increases, automatic spending cuts are scheduled to hit the…
Top Eight Best Uses of Delta Skymiles
What do Delta Skymiles redeem for? I give Delta Skymiles a hard time, and deservedly so. I’m known as the guy who coined the term ‘Skypesos’ for their currency, on the whole their miles are worth less than miles in the United, American, and US Airways frequent flyer programs. They’re harder to use. They don’t permit one-way awards for half the cost of roundtrip (neither does US Airways). Their agents are clueless, their award booking website offers limited partners and is generally quite broken. International first class awards aren’t allowed. But because I give such a hard time to Skypesos, I also feel like I have a special responsibility to help figure out how to make the most of them. And I’m the first to say that the miles you should collect and use very…
Online Travel Agencies Provide Just as Bad Customer Service to Hotels as They Do Travelers
LarryInNYC posted a story on Milepoint about a small hotel owner’s experiences working with Expedia. The hotel owner reports: Expedia takes a 25% commission. I’m actually surprised it’s that low, I’ve heard of small independent hotels paying as much as 40% with commissions in the 20’s reserved for the big chains with negotiating clout. Expedia made several mistakes in describing the property and its rooms. The hotel kept asking Expedia to make updates and corrections, but the process was a mess and corrections didn’t get made properly. Guests were getting rooms that were different than what they thought they had booked as a result. Website links stopped working, the hotel no longer came up on Expedia, and the hotel owners couldn’t get Expedia to fix it while the problem got passed around between the travel…
Sheraton LAX Remains the Best Choice Near the Airport
I’ve stayed at the Sheraton LAX more than half a dozen times. It’s the best of a bad lot of LAX airport hotels. There’s a Westin at the airport which is probably the worst Westin in the United States, don’t tell me it’s gotten better unless they’ve soundproofed the walls. There’s a Four Points which has some pretty decent rooms and some not-so-decent rooms. The Hilton needs investment. I admit to having no experience with the Marriott properties in the area. But if you want a really good experience you have to go beyond the properties that offer free airport shuttle services and get over to Marina del Rey or Hermosa Beach. The Sheraton remains the best of the airport properties, though, and though it’s been a few years since its last makeover it continues…
Bob Crandall Comes Out For, or I Mean Against, a US Airways-American Merger
Retired American Airlines CEO Bob Crandall has a video message to American pilots on a potential merger with US Airways. He says he favors the concept of a merger which makes American the largest carrier in the world again. But I read him as arguing against a merger, or giving pilots a reason to change their minds about the desirability of a merger. He says a merger is great only if there’s a pilot seniority integration agreement in place first and that it needs to include all the pilot work groups of US Airways West (former America West pilots), US Airways East (US Airways legacy pilots), and American pilots. The warning here is that the merger will mean closing pilot bases, opening other ones. Pilots will have to move, some pilots will wind up flying…
$300 Off $750 at Travelocity.ca
Update: Code has reached its maximum number of uses and is now dead. Via Mommy Points, the Travelocity.ca (Canadian Travelocity) website is offer $300 off air and hotel packages costing $750 or more using promotion code 1226300BOX. You enter the code at the ‘review and continue’ screen, after selecting travel details and before inputting passenger information. And it does seem to take $300 off. That’s a great deal if you want to book air and hotel together. Traditionally folks have been able to also use these for air-only discounts, by choosing the cheapest possible hotel they can find and not using/checking into that hotel. Basically finding a hotel that’s less than $300 means you save on the air alone. The way that this has worked in the past has been to use the ‘advanced search’…
Saving Money on Rental Cars: AutoSlash is Still a Highly Useful Site
AutoSlash was one of the real innovations in travel a couple of years back, and one of the few real innovations in the rental car space. There were two basic pieces to the model: They would automatically test and apply coupons and discount codes to get you the lowest rate on your vehicle at booking They would keep searching after you booked your car in order to find you better prices. Rental car prices change all the time, especially as time passes and the rental date nears, if rental companies have unbooked inventory The biggest savings came from this second technique. Most people make car reservations and then leave things alone, but prices do drop, often significantly. I’ve seen folks report saving several hundred dollars on longer rentals, and reducing prices by more than half.…
Some of the Good and Bad of Hotel Hospitality
Hack My Trip outlines his hotel annoyances and I found his list a bit anachronistic, but at the same time it was useful in prompting my own thinking about the features and services at hotels that matter to me. So allow me to share some of his dislikes and my own thinking on each, perhaps an odd exercise for Christmas Day. I don’t like room service. It takes just as long as going to the hotel restaurant and usually has the same menu. I’d rather sit at a real table and eat my food in comfort. I do like room service, and if you’re pressed for time try ordering ahead, I occasionally ring up the hotel enroute from the airport if it’s late and ask to have room service delivered at a specific time. Sometimes…
