Last month I detailed the significant award chart devaluation that’s coming to Hilton HHonors in January. I noted how strange a time for it this is, since room rates are at historic lows and hotels have been on the whole empty. Prices are lower than a year ago, not higher. And hotel chains have been doing all they can to woo customers, not gut their loyalty drivers. Nicholas Kralev details the changes as well in his “On the Fly” column for the Washington Times (Kralev is one of the very best travel columnists in the country, by which I mean his stories are generally accurate and in-the-know rather than made up fluff). The upshot? Beginning in January, you will need about 25 percent more points on average to book a free night at a Hilton…
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Possible Amazing Opportunity with Continental Miles to Redeem for Singapore Airlines First Class
According to this Flyertalk thread, Continental isn’t fully linked up with Singapore Airlines yet. In order to book award tickets they have to do a ‘long sell’ where they manually request award availability. And it seems like more often than not, that availability is coming back confirmed. Long-time readers of this blog know that Star Alliance members can look up award availability by signing up for an All Nippon Airways account and using their award search page. That gets you all except Air China, Shanghai Airlines, and Swiss. It seems that Continental is somehow managing to confirm awards that the ANA website suggests are not otherwise being made available to Star Alliance members for redemption. I haven’t tested this myself, but one hypothesis might be that Singapore — which offers expanded award availability to its…
Hotel Price Glitch: Four Star Hotel Pineta, Rome for $9/night
This Flyertalk thread points out that HotelClub and Orbitz both should be offering 5th night free (pay 4, get 1) but instead of pricing the Hotel Pineta Palace at pay 1, get 4 free. The promo is valid through March 31. For the first set of nights I checked that made the rate $17/night. What’s more, promo code afforb40 may knock an additional $40 off the stay, bringing average room night cost down to about $9 (depending on the rate for the first night). Just choose expand your search options when first arriving at Orbitz, enter hotel name contains ‘Pineta’ to go straight to the property and enter code in the promo box. The discount should appear in the ‘total cost’ summary once you select the hotel! Here are the TripAdvisor reviews. The place looks…
Avis Prepares to Implement No Show Fees
Via Upgrade: Travel Better, Avis is readying the IT infrastructure to implement rental car no show fees at some point in the future. Avis has asked that computer reservation systems be ready by December. They want all systems able to take credit card information on rental car reservations so that they can charge no show fees. If only their own website was imposing a no show penalty, they’d lose bookings to other channels which increases costs. If the refused to allow other booking channels to reserve their cars because those channels didn’t impose fees, they’d lose bookings and thus revenue. So they need all channels ready prior to launch of this initiative. In all likelihood the policy they’ll try to roll out is a 24-hour cancellation policy, with specified charge for failing to cancel by…
Free Continental and Hawaiian Miles
Via Frugal Travel Guy, Continental is offering 100 miles if you enter promo code 57071 into their offer registration page by December 31 — the miles are for learning about their Twice the Miles holiday promotion. Personally these Continental 100 mile bits never seem to post, but your mileage may vary. Meanwhile, Rick also points to an offer for 80 free HawaiianMiles in celebration of the airline’s 80th anniversary. Woo hoo!
Chris Guillebeau’s New Frequent Flyer Miles Guide is Out
Chris Guillebeau has just completed his frequent flyer guide. It’s $49, and not going to be useful to everyone, but I’ve given it a read and for the right audience it’s really quite good. If you’ve been a Flyertalk member for years, or have over 2000 posts there, this product isn’t for you. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you understand and follow the tips and take advantage of the offers I post, this product isn’t for you. But if you’ve just stumbled upon this blog for the first time, or bookmarked it with the intention to “figure all this stuff out” at some point, this document/guide may be the ticket. I rarely write comprehensive, ground-up, basics posts. Chris, on the other hand, has done a pretty good job at starting with…
Lufthansa to Introduce the Airbus A380 on JFK-Frankfurt
Another news item from the Star Alliance MegaDO, Lufthansa will introduce the A380 to New York-JFK / Frankfurt service for its summer schedule. Currently Lufthansa operates 3 Boeing 747 aircraft on the route. The A380 will replace one of those 747s. If you have tons of miles and are a top tier elite in a position to cancel an award without penalty, consider booking first class awards for late summer or early fall 2010. Book a variety of JFK-Frankfurt flights so that when one of them switches to an A380, you have a first class award. I fully expect first class awards on the A380 to be very difficult to get. The cabin will have fewer seats than the current 747 offering, and they’ll be in much higher demand. The best way to get one…
An Eventual End to United’s Starnet Blocking?
At the Star Alliance MegaDO it was revealed that the Star Alliance website will be offering an award search tool to display award seat availability across the alliance. If Star makes member award seats transparent, it will be very hard for United to remain the only Star member blocking awards. The alliance itself will be marketing that you can find award seats on its website and call your member program, and then Mileage Plus members would call to be told “that flight doesn’t exist” and “awards aren’t being offered.” That can’t last. Already Continental is building excellent IT capability for partner award search into its website. And this will shine the light, somewhat, on United’s blocking efforts. It’s not just users of the All Nippon Airways website, anymore, that know the difference between awards not…
The Link is Live! British Airways Visa 100,000 Mile Signup Bonus!
Here it is. As expected: 50,000 miles with first purchase 50,000 miles after spending $2000 on the card within 3 months 1.25 miles per dollar spent (2.5 miles per dollar on British Airways spend) After spending $30,000 on the card in a year, you’ll receive a certificate for a free companion award ticket when you redeem an awardBritish Airways allows ‘households’ to pool their miles for an award. So two people each sign up for the card. One puts $2000 in spend to earn the full bonus, the other puts $30,000 in spend to earn a companion certificate. 240,000 miles will be earned, plus a companion certificate. This would allow two people to redeem first class tickets between, say, Los Angeles and Dubai. In other words, 480,000 miles of awards for nothing but $32,000 in…
Hotel Check-in Cleanliness Regimens
Through the Lens, a flight attendant with some err.. habits.. when checking in a hotel room, shares her regimen. None of this is new to me, but I like to pretend that staying in nicer places I don’t have to have the same concerns. She’s not especially graphic in describing most of the things she’s avoiding, and her tips are probably good ones. It’s worth reading her post, but you may wish you hadn’t! She says her routine isn’t particularly extreme compared to that of some of her flight attendant colleagues, I am almost afraid to know what they do… Do you worry about your hotel’s cleanliness? What steps do you take to protect yourself, or do you just not worry about it? Share in the comments.
