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.…
About Gary Leff
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…
Possible 1100 American AAdvantage Miles for a $1.01 Donation
The AAdvantage eShopping Mall offers 1100 miles for spending over $1 with the College Bound Institute. Sign into your AAdvantage eShopping account (or create one), then pull up the offer. Click through to the College Bound Institute’s website, and then at the top of the page click “Make Payment/Donation” Then click ‘Donate’ on the bottom of the page. According to the details of the offer on the AAdvantage eShopping site, you need to spend more than $1. Click on “Don’t have a PayPal account? Use your credit card or bank account (where available).“ This way you can pay with a card registered with your AAdvantage eshopping account, in order to add another way in which points could post (update to clarify: as in-store transactions with a registered credit card can offer points). You can register…
My Points.com Amtrak Points Posted — And I’ve Already Redeemed
This morning I blogged about points.com offering crazy good transfers of Priority Club points into Amtrak, so good you’d even potentially make money by buying Priority Club points and then transferring those points. It seems that Points.com was offering about 10 times as many Amtrak points per Priority Club point as they had intended to, and they quickly pulled the option. They even cancelled several of the transfers that had already been made. It’s hard to complain too much when they react within a matter of hours. Their cancellation emails could have been a little bit better, though: Thank you for performing an exchange transaction on Points.com. Unfortunately, your exchange has been cancelled as we were unable to process it. If you would like to try again, please visit Points.com. They ‘were unable to process’…
Suites, Treats, and Eats, a Malaysian Mileage Thanksgiving: Korean Air First Class, Seoul – Washington Dulles
Introduction: Constructing — and Re-constructing — the Award Trip American Eagle DC – New York and the New Nicest JFK Airport Hotel, the Hilton Cathay Pacific First Class, JFK – Hong Kong The Wing lounge in Hong Kong and Cathay Pacific Business Class Hong Kong – Kuala Lumpur Grand Hyatt Kuala Lumpur Malaysia Airlines Business Class, Kuala Lumpur – Langkawi The Andaman Langkawi Malaysia Airlines Business Class, Langkawi – Kuala Lumpur Intercontinental Kuala Lumpur Things to See and Do in Kuala Lumpur Korean Airlines First Class, Kuala Lumpur – Seoul and the Korean Air First Class Lounge Seoul Korean Air First Class, Seoul – Washington Dulles It was a short walk from the lounge, down the escalator and over to our gate at the very end of the terminal. The first line encountered wasn’t for…
Great Deal: Double the Value of Your Priority Club Points Today
Update: Deal is dead. Some folks have received cancellation emails as well. Points.com is almost never a ‘good deal’ — the website lets you transfer points from one frequent flyer program to another, but almost always at a substantial devaluation — often greater than 90%. I would use the site about once a year to earn a partner activity credit in the US Airways grand slam promotion, perhaps transferring about 4 American Airlines miles into 1 US Airways miles. The idea there was any activity with Points.com moving a mile into US Airways would count towards a bigger bonus. Sadly that promotion didn’t come back this year, and I’m quite confident I didn’t use Points.com in 2012. There are occasionally really good values — arbitrage opportunities — and years ago I would earn eBay Anything…
Not How I Would Protest in the Mideast…
… and no doubt many readers are glad for that! But a Ukranian woman stripped naked in the Beirut airport to protest Lebanon’s smoking ban. ..[T]he traveler removed her clothes and held a sign calling for lifting the ban on smoking inside the airport. ..In a country considered a “smokers’ paradise,” the law took effect a year ago in airports, hospitals and schools, but took hold on a wider basis in September 2012, also banning tobacco advertisements criticized for luring youths into the habit, according to a report by AFP. Smokers caught lighting up in a closed public space face a $90 penalty, while restaurant or cafe owners who turn a blind eye to offenders could be fined anything from $900 to $2,700, AFP reported. If you must, there’s a photo at this link. (HT:…
Suites, Treats, and Eats, a Malaysian Mileage Thanksgiving: Korean Air First Class, Kuala Lumpur – Seoul and the Korean Air First Class Lounge Seoul
Introduction: Constructing — and Re-constructing — the Award Trip American Eagle DC – New York and the New Nicest JFK Airport Hotel, the Hilton Cathay Pacific First Class, JFK – Hong Kong The Wing lounge in Hong Kong and Cathay Pacific Business Class Hong Kong – Kuala Lumpur Grand Hyatt Kuala Lumpur Malaysia Airlines Business Class, Kuala Lumpur – Langkawi The Andaman Langkawi Malaysia Airlines Business Class, Langkawi – Kuala Lumpur Intercontinental Kuala Lumpur Things to See and Do in Kuala Lumpur Korean Air First Class, Kuala Lumpur – Seoul and the Korean Air First Class Lounge Seoul Korean Air First Class, Seoul – Washington Dulles After a 50 minute straight shot out to the airport we were at KLIA again, and walked straight up to the Korean Air check-in counter. The check-in process was…
Hilton’s First Quarter Bonus – Registration Open for Double Points or Double Miles
Registration is now open for Hilton HHonors’ first quarter promotion — your choice (choose when you register and you cannot change later) of double points or double miles between January 7 and March 31. There’s a really long list of non-participating hotels, almost all in the United States. It’s not an especially exciting promotion, doesn’t make sense to move stays over to Hilton as a result of the bonus in most cases, but is certainly worth registering in case you have Hilton stays — better to earn the bonus for those stays than not to earn the bonus.
American Made — No Lost — No Made — No Definitely Lost Money in November
Terry Maxon covers the spin over American’s November financial results. The bottom-line number for the airline in November was a loss of $347 million. Yikes. But wait, $301 million of that represented bankruptcy-related items, so we shouldn’t pay attention to those. Except… then they still lost $46 million. For the month. And yet they “reported an operating profit of $1 million.” See, they’re making money. Even though they lost nearly $350 million. “Operating” results can be useful numbers, the idea that there are certain one-time items that obscure the performance and viability of an underlying business. If you’re looking at financial results to gain an understanding of how a venture ‘normally’ operates you may want to exclude certain things from the analysis. But those same operating results can hinder understanding as well, and I admit…
