News and Notes from Around the Interweb: The American/US Airways “Integration Management Office” now has full-time team members appointed. It can be tough to read tea leaves at this stage of the merger process, with very few things about a merged carrier actually decided (though Doug Parker has intimated on multiple occasions that they’re likely to keep the American Airlines computer systems — a huge plus for travelers). But I don’t like that they’ve appointed US Airways’ Senior Vice President of Customer Experience to a key integration role for the new combined carrier… Point me to the Plane got word from Alaska Airlines that the new one-way awards and mixed partner awards that Mileage Plan is offering will soon extend beyond American and Delta to select other partners. This is a gradual rollout, and looks…
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Register Now for Hilton’s Second Quarter Promotion
Register now for Hilton’s second quarter promo — 1000 points during the week and 2000 per weekend night. This isn’t strong enough to make me move business over to Hilton, and certainly not to make extra stays. But it’s worth registering for in case you have any paid Hilton stays between April 1 and June 30. I’m likely to pick up points only during the Freddie Awards, Randy Petersen Travel Executive Summit, and Frequent Traveler University, hosted at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner. Register even if you don’t expect to have any Hilton stays. It takes just a second, and that way if you do you won’t have to remember to do it later (since you’ll likely forget). 2000 Hilton points aren’t a ton especially in the new post-March world where a night at a…
He Who Dies With the Most (Delta) Points… Loses?
Effective March 20th, with no advance notice at all, Delta Skymiles changed their terms and conditions so that miles in a member account are no longer transferable at death. The single best discussion of how to handle miles in death and divorce was the cover story of the June 2012 Inside Flyer. It succinctly described Delta’s policy as follows, Upon the death of a Member, the Administrator or Executor of the Member’s Estate may designate one or more other Members to receive a transfer of the mileage credit in the deceased Member’s account. Only whole number amounts of miles may be transferred. The form for this is no longer on the website. Delta’s membership guide (.pdf) now says: Except as specifically authorized in the Membership Guide and Program Rules or otherwise in writing by an…
Why Hotel Programs are Devaluing Their Points
Here’s a chart from the Calculated Risk blog that shows the 2000-2007 average hotel occupancy rates by week in blue. Then the yellow dashed line shows what those occupancy rates were in 2012. Back to normal levels! The red line shows things so far in 2013, even better than 2012. So hotels are running full, a sharp contrast from the black line which illustrates the bottom falling out of hotel occupancy in 2009 during the Great Recession. Nationwide occupancy is up year-over-year by 1.4% to 66.6% and average daily room rates up 4.5% to $112.05. Put simply, hotel chains believe they don’t have to offer big rebates (nearly as valuable points) in order to put heads in beds.
Bits ‘n Pieces for March 20, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: What It’s Like To Fly On North Korea’s 1-Star Airline (HT: @TheBrettGall) I’ve written in the past that Turkish Airlines will offer status matches to most airline elites. This is ultra-useful for free access to United and US Airways lounges when flying solely within the U.S. There’s been some suspicion that Turkish stopped doing so at the end of 2012. However, Loyalty Lobby reports that they’re continuing to do so — you just have to use the online contact form to request the match and upload a copy of your online statement from the airline you wish for them to match. It seems to take two months for them to process it (but the status is valid for about two years and requalification requirements are relatively generous). Hack…
Membership Rewards Ending ‘Points Advance’ Benefit on June 30
I received an email from American Express Membership Rewards yesterday titled, An Important Update About The Membership Rewards Program. Eek. An important update. When I opened the email the graphic said, “A Quick Update” and the email simply read, We are writing to let you know that the most recent version of our Terms and Conditions is available online. You can also learn more about the Membership Rewards program, including how to get and use points, at membershiprewards.com/abouttheprogram. I figured they’d changed something in the program terms, the subject line was alarming, but scrolling through I’ve found only one thing that’s obviously different than what I had understood before: that the “points advance” feature of American Express Membership Rewards cards is “Available until June 30, 2013.” American Express lets you borrow points beyond those you’ve…
Alaska Airlines Finally Offers One-Way Partner Awards (and Mix and Match Roundtrip)
Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan is an incredibly useful program. They partner across much of both Skyteam (eg Air France, KLM, Delta, Korean) and also oneworld (eg American, Qantas, British Airways, Cathay Pacific). And they have partners that aren’t alliance members (like Emirates). For the infrequent flyer I often recommend Alaska as a way of earning miles from flights, they may not fly either American or Delta enough to have enough miles for an award ticket but crediting miles flown on either airline to Alaska allows those miles to build up much more quickly. The biggest drawbacks to Alaska have been the inability to use miles for one-way awards on partner airlines (those were limited to flights on Alaska Airlines only) and the inability to mix and match partners on a one-way award. This last is…
American Introduces a New Tool to Help Customers Find Award Seats
Probably the biggest challenge faced by airline mileage programs is the frustrations of their members trying to redeem points. The cynic says that’s by design, airlines don’t want members to redeem because redemptions cost money! But that charge isn’t really true — members who redeem their miles become even more engaged in programs, ramping up their earnings even faster in the future. In contrast, redemption frustrations turn off customers and mean those customers won’t be accumulating miles as quickly in the future; accumulations that provide revenue to the frequent flyer program. So they’re all trying different ways of improving the redemption experience. Some are even considering upending their entire underlying value proposition to treat miles as a cash currency that’s just used to pay the price of any ticket. That would reduce frustration but also…
Are You Part of the 1%? Then You Can Have Big Miles!
Back in December 2011 I wrote about earning big miles for funding brokerage accounts. At the time you could earn up to 50,000 miles from your choice of either American, United, or Delta with a deposit of $100,000. But the trick was that you could cycle the same money in and out of the account and all that mattered was that the sum of the deposits needed to total $100,000. I did just that. I put money in, took it out, put it back, took it out, and so on in order to earn 50,000 American miles. Unfortunately ‘cycling’ no longer seems to be possible to earn signup bonuses from Fidelity brokerage accounts. If you want the full 50,000 mile bonus, you actually have to deposit $100,000 into the account (cash and/or securities). On the…
If At First You Aren’t Approved: Getting Credit Card Reconsiderations… Online
Dan’s Deals gives some good advice on credit card ‘reconsideration’. With most card issuers you don’t need to be approved right away or automatically in order to get a card. You can be denied initially and still wind up with an approval. The best bank for reconsideration in my experience is Chase. If you have existing credit lines with Chase you can usually horse trade — either cancelling an existing card to get approved for a new one, or offering to shift some credit from an existing card onto the new one. The basic principle here is to demonstrate that you aren’t increasing the bank’s exposure to loss by their approving you for a new card. In the case of cancelling an existing card or shifting credit from an existing card, that usually comforts Chase…
