PointsHound, the online hotel booking site that rebates miles to you (and offers ‘DoubleUp’ properties where you’ll still also earn hotel program loyalty points and credit towards elite status), now has 14 options for earning to choose from. They’ve added Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan and Frontier Early Returns. I cannot imagine a scenario where I would want to be accumulating Frontier miles instead of one of the other choices, but it’s an option. Through the end of the month they’re awarding 1000 bonus miles in the program of your choice for bookings you make that are 3 nights or longer. With these two program additions the earning options for PointsHound bookings are: Always price compare, there are certainly some folks that have reported some times where PointsHound has shown higher prices than booking direct —…
About Gary Leff
Frequent Flyer With Low Morals Faces an Ethical Dilemna
Via Peter S. My advice: End the affair. The Hilton points are no longer worth it. You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss out!
How to Protect Yourself From Tourist Scams
A work colleague was recently in Paris and he was charged 100 euros for a cab ride from Charles de Gaulle airport to his hotel downtown. He didn’t know — until I his return trip was much cheaper — that he had been scammed. A year ago I wrote Common Tourist Scams and How to Avoid Them. I detailed the Paris ring scam, where someone along the road ‘finds’ a ring and rushes to return it to you. Taking advantage of your greed, they separate you from your money in exchange for worthless ‘jewelry’. And the Chinese tea ceremony where a local wants to spend the day with you to ‘practice their English’ and shows you to a local tea place where you’ll experience local culture… and receive a bill many orders of magnitude higher…
Double Miles on Australia Hotels Booked Today
Rocketmiles is offering double miles for booking hotels in Australia today only. It’s their way of celebrating Australia Day. Except that it’s Australia here in the U.S.. As I write this, just after 8am on Sunday on the East Cast, it’s no longer Australia Day in Sydney where it is now just after midnight. Australia Day was yesterday Down Under. Book via via this link to earn double points for reservations of hotels in Australia made on January 26 for travel by July 1. The bonus is not combinable with other offers and can only be earned once per person/account. You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free.…
Virgin Atlantic MasterCard 50,000 Point Signup Bonus is Back
Bank of America has brought back a strong signup bonus on their co-branded Virgin Atlantic credit card. They used to offer the card as an American Express (one of those oddball American Express cards not issued by American Express). Now it’s a MasterCard. It’s advertised as a signup bonus of up to 65,000 miles but I wouldn’t think about it that way. Reach rewards faster with up to 65,000 Flying Club bonus miles in the first year with the Virgin Atlantic World Elite MasterCard® credit card from Bank of America. The offer is: 20,000 Flying Club bonus miles after your first retail purchase 25,000 additional Flying Club bonus miles after you spend at least $2,500 in qualifying purchases Earn up to 15,000 additional bonus miles upon anniversary — 7500 after $15,000 spend and 7500 after…
Limiting Elite Benefits, Running Away from Delta, Seeking Refuge in the (Business Lounge) and Exploring a New Terminal (Bits ‘n Pieces for January 25, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: As Delta ramps up in Seattle, going for erstwhile partner Alaska Airlines’ jugular, some speculate that the carrier from Atlanta wants the Eskimo to cry uncle until agreeing to be purchased. The risk of course is that they wind up driving Alaska into the arms of their Dallas-based partner American’s arms. An Alaska Vice President seems to hint in that direction. Here’s the status of various offers for Regus business lounges. It seems like only American and Virgin Atlantic elites can still take advantage of free ‘Gold’ memberships with unlimited use of workspace, while other Regus travel partners are being limited to ‘Preferred’ memberships. There are some new limitations on Kimpton Hotels’ exceptionally generous elite benefits. An inside look at San Francisco’s new terminal which opens to flights…
I’m Not Burning My United Miles Before the Devaluation, But Here’s How You Can…
United’s big devaluation goes into effect February 1. Make no mistake, it’s huge, some awards go up 87%! At the same time it’s not as bad as we think. It all depends on how you use your miles. The biggest increases are in international first class partner awards. That’s where you’ll find the 80%+ increases. International business class partner awards go up too, that’s where you’ll find increases of ~ a third. They’ve created a separate category of United flight awards that do not go up as much as partner awards, you’ll see increases there of ~ 15%. Flights within the Americas, and coach awards, don’t really change in a material way. If you redeem for coach, the ‘devaluation’ doesn’t really hit you (except that higher prices for other awards may mean more people are…
Has TSA Gone Off the Rails With PreCheck?
I love PreCheck. Which is to say that I love not have to stand in interminable bureaucratic lines to exercise my right to travel. And I love not have to go through a dance of shoes and liquid freedom baggies. I go through security quickly and in a somewhat more dignified manner. And in the meantime TSA doesn’t waste its resources screening me, since I’m pretty obviously not a terrorist threat. At first they worked with airlines to identify frequent flyers with travel patterns they were confident could be considered low risk. And they folded in folks who had been extensively screened through programs like Global Entry — if folks were ok to enter the U.S. without an interrogation, odds on they were ok to wear their shoes through the airport security checkpoint. Getting Global…
United Lies to its Elites, LAX Hates its Passengers, a Hotel CEO Hates His Job, and Where the Cheap Room Awards Are (Bits ‘n Pieces for January 24, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: United’s “My Fingers Were Crossed” Defense Succeeds in Court: The lawsuit by United’s million milers over program changes has been dismissed. There was not really a dispute that United devalued the benefits offered to its million mile customers, even almost immediately after they promised not to do so. But United hadn’t promised not to break its promises, so its customers can’t sustain their suit. Here’s a Preview of Monday’s Fire Sale: IHG Rewards has posted a preview of the hotels they’ll be offering for just 5000 points a night (for stays through March 31) starting on Monday. The most desirable properties usually see strong demand and fall off the list quickly. That’s the Truth, Truth! The CEO of Choice Hotels really hated being on undercover boss. And running…
Marriott Rewards and Cosmopolitan Points Now Transfer Back and Forth, and What it Means for the Lodging Loyalty Industry
Vegas is all the rage this year in the lodging loyalty industry. Las Vegas is the largest hotel market, but the major chains had very limited presences there. Hyatt kicked things off with its MGM alliance that involves both points-earning and redemption and also reciprocal elite status recognition. I think of this as the hotel industry’s answer to airline alliances. The latter have been close to tapped out, but have been a real engine of growth for a decade. Hotel chains can grow strategically in much the same way, exchanging customers, without the infrastructure cost or addition of new rooms, competition, and driving down of prices. Starwood and Caesars followed up with their own, somewhat less extensive partnership. IHG plants its flag with Venetian, and Marriott has the quite-good Cosmopolitan. Yesterday, Marriott Rewards let me…
