Though I have an upcoming trip to the Maldives, I don’t have a ton of exciting travel to look forward to beyond that, at least exciting by the standard of flying international first class on a premium airline to an exotic destination, hopefully one I haven’t been to before. So this weekend I decided to start playing around with future trips. First I put an award on hold to the United Arab Emirates — American miles to fly Etihad first class (suites with doors!) to Abu Dhabi, then a business class hop over to Delhi and back, the though was to stay either at the Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi and/or Park Hyatt Dubai while in the U.A.E. I wasn’t sure if that especially appealed, but the ability to hold the award without committing was nice.…
About Gary Leff
Travel Technology Re-think
I’m working through my technology solutions for the year ahead and would love reader input. There are some travel items that I’m thoroughly happy with. I love my Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer laptop bag, it’s a great bag with plenty of room and the right pockets for me and it unclips to sail through the TSA without taking out my laptop. Sadly foreign countries that require laptops to come out don’t recognize “TSA Approved” laptop bags, even when they enforce “TSA Silly” liquid bans. I wish they’d follow the US lead in those few customer-friendly initiatives that exist, not just in the stupid ones. A laptop bag may not be electronic, but a good one fits my definition of travel technology. I’m happy with my five year old D-Link wireless pocket router, which has been…
Mysteries of American Airlines Life
I’m learning all of the little quirks of flying American, and it’s certainly an adjustment when you’re frequenting a carrier you aren’t used to. Even just having different food options in your home airport is strange, at DCA though American and United share a pier but my DCA departures have tended to be on US Airways where there’s a Five Guys Burgers, something I miss flying American. There aren’t any good food options airside. And the airport desperately needs better coffee post-security than the Dunkin Donuts that’s a standalone kiosk near the gates without the ability to offer full service preparation. A Starbucks would be really, really great — and not just upstairs by ticketing, at least until the TSA declares an end to the War on Liquids. But there are two things that I’ve…
37.5% American AAdvantage Purchase Miles Bonus
On American’s buy miles page it’s still listing a one-third bonus from last month: Between now and December 31, 2011, when you buy the AAdvantage® miles you need to book your travel now, you’ll earn a special bonus — for every 6,000 miles you purchase, you’ll earn 2,000 bonus miles, up to 20,000 bonus miles! But when you click through the January offer is available. A 40,000 mile purchase for $1100 yields 55,000 miles — a purchase price of 2 cents a mile. Now, I’m not stocking up at 2 cents apiece. But it’s not an unreasonable rate for topping off. Lower mileage purchase amounts are more costly per mile and less attractive. Still, given how readily available Cathay Pacific and Etihad first class awards are much of the time, it’s not unreasonable to put…
Delta 50% Bonus on Mileage Transfers Between Accounts
Delta’s transfer miles page shows a 50% bonus for moving miles from one account to another (at a cost of a peny a mile). When you click the link to the offer it takes you to the page from the 100% transfer bonus offer which expired December 16th (and was actually pulled at the beginning of that day rather than the end, blocking my plans to take advantage of the bonus at the last minute). So we don’t know how long this one is scheduled to last. I won’t be taking advantage of the 50% bonus. While I think that a 100% bonus offer is a great opportunity to effectively buy miles at 1.1 cents apiece, and despite all of the drawbacks of Delta Skymiles (I’m the person who coined the term Skypesos, after all)…
The Rise and Fall of Egyptian Tourism
I struggled with how to title this post. Certainly Egypt has become a destination that many in the West avoid, and i know from working with clients through my award booking service that despite excellent business class award availability on the non-stop New York JFK – Cairo EgyptAir flight that most folks aren’t keen to connect in Cairo these days. So certainly the parts of Egypt dependent on tourist dollars are suffering. Still, this seems like a very poor coping mechanism: An Egyptian newspaper reported that a young man from the city of Luxor in the south cut off his penis and buried in a graveyard after suffering depression as a result of the decline in tourism since the outbreak of popular protests that led to the removal of former President Hosni Mubarak in February.…
Free Hilton Gold Status Offer Still Working
On December 22 I posted an offer for free Hilton HHonors Gold status through May 2013. Hilton’s offer was that any Visa Infinite cardholder could have the status, and they simply verified whether a member was qualified by asking for the first six digits of the Visa Infinite card, which is the Bank Identification Number. With that as the test, it was fairly easy for folks to Google, Wikipedia is the first page that would come up, and a bank in Russia was the first Visa Infinite card listed. Apparently folks hit that code pretty hard, or at least it was talked about a lot, and so after a few days it and the others listed most obviously on Wikipedia stopped working. Folks in the comments to my original thread found that other numbers, however,…
Resort Spas in the Maldives Will Remain Open
Alan H. and several others alerted me to the declaration of the Maldives government that all spas in the country had to shut down, in a bow to the country’s opposition calling for greater adherence to Islam and concerns over prostitution. Except something didn’t seem quite right about the stories and the reporting, and I couldn’t actually verify that any of the hotels actually had shut down their spas. So I very much appreciate this piece, sent along by Win which does a nice job I think laying out the situation. The Republic of Maldives is an Islamic nation, nearly its entire population is Muslim, and religious freedom is very much restricted. It is a dry country. Except at the resorts. Tourism, after all, is the driver of its economy. So ‘shutting down all spas’…
Planning for Star MegaDO 4 Has Begun!
With the first ever oneworld MegaDO just around the corner, which I’ll be blogging and am super thrilled about — an aviation-enthusiast’s dream of inside operations with American in Dallas, Boeing in Seattle, and other oneworld carriers in Los Angeles all connected by a chartered 757 party plane — it’s actually time to start the thinking, planning, and scheming for future trips. Now, for those unfamiliar, a group of frequent flyers first got together and chartered a plane and set up tours and activities with some Star Alliance airlines, enthusiasts and loyal customers that the airlines decided to pay attention to. There were crazy moments like pillow fights gone viral on YouTube and sliding down an evacuation slide in Europe. The media quickly started paying attention, there was a feature article in Conde Nast and…
50% Off Alitalia Coach Redemptions
Alitalia is offering 50% off all economy ‘classic’ (capacity controlled) redemptions booked by January 15 for travel through March 24. Somehow this promotion has been around for awhile and I wasn’t aware of it, but it certainly provides real value for instance U.S. to Italy in coach runs 25,000 miles roundtrip instead of 50,000. (A one-way ticket under this promo runs 15,000 miles.) The offer is available on Alitalia flights only, not on partners or codeshares, and isn’t available on intra-Italy domestic routes or between Italy and France. Alitalia is an American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner and a Starwood Preferred Guest transfer partner, among others. Just 20,000 Starwood points are enough for a roundtrip coach ticket between the US and Italy with this offer. (HT: beaubo)
