American to Miami in First, then Business Class to Sao Paulo Gol Smiles VIP Lounge and Domestic Service to Foz de Iguassu Sheraton Iguazú Falls Resort The Wonder of the Falls Gol Domestic Back to Sao Paulo and the Admiral’s Club Sao Paolo American’s Business Class to Miami and on to DC With just a weekend in South America, and a goal of visiting one of the places I’ve wanted to see for years, I decided on convenience and time savings — I picked the Sheraton because it’s actually in the National Park, on the Argentina side. The Sheraton is on the pricey side, rooms were over $250++ and suites around $575++ during my stay. It’s a Starwood category 5 — so delivers a bit over 2 cents a point without any high season points…
About Gary Leff
Registration for Park Inn 44,000 Club Carlson Point Bonus Now Live
Last week, Club Carlson’s giant promotion launched for two of its brands, where you effectively can buy a cheap hotel night and earn enough points for a stay at any of their hotels in the world. The most famous and historically lucrative hotel promotion has been Hyatt’s Faster Free Nights, every two stays is a free night, and you could do a couple of cheap airport stays and redeem for, say, the Park Hyatts in Paris or Tokyo. (We haven’t seen that offer in a couple of years and it is missed by many.) This takes things a step further, it’s effectively buy one get one free but since it’s points you don’t have a short timeframe within which you have to redeem your stay (as long as you keep your account active) and you…
Weekend at the Falls: American Business Class, Gol Domestic, and the Sheraton Iguazú Resort: Gol Smiles VIP Lounge and Domestic Service to Foz de Iguassu
American to Miami in First, then Business Class to Sao Paulo Gol Smiles VIP Lounge and Domestic Service to Foz de Iguassu Sheraton Iguazú Falls Resort & Spa The Wonder of the Falls Gol Domestic Back to Sao Paulo and the Admiral’s Club Sao Paolo American’s Business Class to Miami and on to DC I walked over to the transit check-in desk for Gol, it had a long line but I decided since I was there anyway I might as well grab my boarding pass rather than going upstairs, not knowing what the economy check-in line might look like there. I had booked an aisle and middle in row 5, the whole plane is coach. Seat assignments secured by emailing contactus@golnaweb.com.br. Brazilian domestic flights have a maximum weight for carryons of 5kg but the agent…
How to Save on Rental Cars
Michelle Higgins has a great piece in the New York Times on how to save money renting cars. Her list, my comments. Let go of name brands. Certainly Fox, Payless, and others will often have lower rates than Avis and Hertz. The question is whether the lower rate is worth the extra hassle, and that’s a personal tradeoffs question. The lesser known brands may be off-airport in several cities, so more of a hassle to get to the car. And they don’t all have the streamlined checkout and checkin processes that you can at least sign up for with Hertz, Avis, Thrifty, and National — I hate a long trek to the car, or taking more than one bus, and I don’t ever want to stand in line at a rental counter if I can…
Weekend at the Falls: American Business Class, Gol Domestic, and the Sheraton Iguazú Resort: American to Miami in first, then Business Class to Sao Paulo
American to Miami in First, then Business Class to Sao Paulo Gol Smiles VIP Lounge and Domestic Service to Foz de Iguassu Sheraton Iguazú Falls Resort & Spa The Wonder of the Falls Gol Domestic Back to Sao Paulo and the Admiral’s Club Sao Paolo American’s Business Class to Miami and on to DC Standing in line at TSA an inquisitive fellow (perhaps a wannabe Behavior Detection Officer) was asking me where I was headed. I told him Iguassu Falls. He asked where that was. I told him I was going for the weekend. “Gotta do something this weekend.” Coupled with top tier elite status on American and some extra systemwide upgrades, along with a bonus promotion meant to incentive additional flying by passengers from the oneworld Mega DO in January, I could fly business…
United Sees Some MileagePlus Members as “Over-entitled”
Reader Joe C. sends me to a Flyertalk thread where someone listened to United CFO John Rainey’s talk at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Transportation Conference on Thursday, and reported back that Rainey referred to some members of the United MileagePlus program as “over-entitled.” Audio of the talk is on the UnitedContinentalHoldings.com Investor Relations page. The Flyertalk thread apparently went to nearly 200 posts within 4 hours before a moderator decided to shut it down (where it remains as of this writing, but it may be re-opened). I listened to the audio, and what he said about Mileage Plus members was We had certain groups in this program that were over-entitled if you will. And now we’ve re-aligned the benefits of that program with what the customers and program participants are actually providing…
20% Off All Alitalia Flights This Weekend
Alitalia is offering 20% off all flights in economy or business class (not in premium economy) network-wide through noon local time on May 21, for travel through April 15, 2013. Details thanks to translation skills of The Google: USE THE CODE: SPECIAL20IT This week you reserve an offer not to be missed. Buy online between 12:00 on 18 May at 12:00 on May 21, 2012. For you a special discount of 20% of all destinations of the Alitalia network. Discount of 20% applies on the total ticket price (taxes, surcharges and service sales included), all of the destinations of Alitalia network purchased in Classic classes of service – Economy, Great and Magnificent – Business, Premium Economy with the exception of – Classic Plus Offer ‘valid for flying from May 22, 2012 April 15, 2013. I’m impressed that the discount isn’t just…
United Award Tickets on Asiana Sometimes Cancel Themselves – How to Make Sure You Don’t Get Shafted
Prior to merging with United, Continental Onepass awards booked on Star Alliance partner Asiana would sometimes disappear. It was rare, but occasionally Asiana segments would drop out of a reservation. Continental wouldn’t notify customers. They’d either check online and see the segment gone, or they’d go check in and they wouldn’t have a reservation. Continental was already pretty good about fixing the situation, to the extent they could. They wouldn’t be able to get the Asiana flights back if there was no award availability on those flights. But they’d go to great lengths, generally, opening up seats on their own aircraft to use instead. Sometimes it would take a call or two to get someone who was helpful and would escalate this to the level necessary. But in the end things usually worked out, albeit…
Priority Club Increases Cost of Cash & Points Awards
Starwood cash and points discounts the point cost of a room, and has you make a cash payment directly to the hotel. The awards are capacity-controlled — a hotel will make cash and points awards available only when it doesn’t expect to be sold out. That’s because in sold out situations (actually > 90% occupancy), Starwood will reimburse the hotel its average daily room rate. But not on a cash and points booking. So they don’t want cash and points to displace a paying guest. Priority Club, though, introduced its cash and points feature as essentially discounted points purchase. Instead of using, say, 25000 points for a room when the benefit was introduced you could use 20,000 points + $30 or 15,000 points and $60. The nice thing about that is it’s not capacity controlled…
100 Free Starwood Points
Starwood is giving away 100 free points on Facebook (with a chance to win 100,000). (HT: Joey M.)
