I spent this past weekend at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco in a Terrace Suite. Concierge.com offers, Splurge on a Terrace Suite to enjoy the ultimate perch above the city and feel like a railroad tycoon. The room sells online for $1500 a night, but I received it as a Royal Ambassador upgrade. The hotel played host to a gathering of Flyertalk moderators, so I figured I might as well stay there. I have a tinge of jealousy over the Flyertalkers upgraded to Astor Suites at the St. Regis San Francisco, but my upgrade was secured at booking and not having to play the upgrade lottery was reason enough to choose this hotel. I queried the hotel about what room I’d receive if I booked their lowest category offering. Their usual policy is that…
About Gary Leff
The End of Award Charts?
At the moderator gathering in San Francisco I sat with Randy Petersen at dinner Saturday night. He raised some real alarm bells for me. Up until now I haven’t made mention of the new United Choices program. United has introduced new award redemption options for Mileage Plus Visa cardholders. It’s a complex Rube Goldberg scheme where you can only redeem miles earned from the credit card for specific awards on offer through the program. It will probably, eventually, be rolled out more broadly. United already reduced the value of its regular award chart. Now they’ve introduced new awards that have a rough value of 1 cent a mile or less, though of course not subject to capacity controls. I hadn’t mentioned the program because, to me, it wasn’t worth mention. I have a hard time…
What Makes Me Feel Good
This past weekend I was in San Francisco for a meeting of Flyertalk.com moderators. The event was held at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco, and I had a nice stay there. I’ll post photos of my Terrace Suite and a more complete review a bit later. But just as interesting as the conversations and meetings — which were excellent — was my multi-tasking. Sure, I issued a couple of warnings to new Flyertalk members looking to sell their miles and I had to delete a couple of posts (all while everyone else was being more productive than I). But the real joy came from a reader of this blog who emailed a question about award travel. He was taking his mother on a trip to Bangkok and wanted to use United miles for the…
A Theory on Why Starwood is Considering Devaluing its Awards
A week and a half ago I posted that Starwood is apparently considering increasing the number of points required for most awards, roughly speaking a 25% devaluation of its program. Sure, hotel prices have been rising, and that pushes up Starwood Preferred Guests’ costs since that means the program has to pay each property more for award nights. But that’s also why Starwood re-evaluates the category that each hotel is in at the end of each year. Starwood award categories aren’t tied to a property’s quality or demand (occupancy rate) but to its average daily room rate in the prior year. And when the rate goes up Starwood bumps it up a category (or two) — requiring more points for a room night and paying the property more for that same night. So it didn’t…
Even loyalty points can’t get me to ride the bus
Today in the Sky notes that Greyhound has introduced a loyalty program, Road Rewards. I haven’t looked over the particulars, but Ben Mutzabaugh says that 16 segments equals a free roundtrip. I’m not even signing up for the program, even if it turns out to be easy to game. It would be bad enough to sit through 16 Greyhound segments. But the reward for doing so is more travel on Greyhound? And as if that wasn’t bad enough, their points even expire.
A vote of no confidence
Just a few hours removed from the shoe carnival myself, I’m uniquely sympathetic to El Al Airlines which wants to do its own baggage screening because it doesn’t trust the TSA.
Aren’t the existing 900 rooms enough?
Starwood’s The Lobby reports that the Sheraton Seattle Hotel & Towers will finally live up to the plurality in its name by building a second (albeit shorter) tower.
Marketing Copy that Makes You Want to Buy the Product
Japan’s StarFlyer Airlines has this as its slogan: Blazing like a mother comet producing meteor showers throughout the world (Via the Upgrade Travel blog.)
Where to Put Your Miles When Flying Paid First Class
The Global Traveler reports that bmi British Midland is now offering up to 625% mileage earning for miles flown in paid first class. Normal bmi is already generous on these fares — 300% miles for first class and 200% miles for business class plus Gold members earn a 25% status bonus. Now once you reach 55,000 status miles in a calendar year excess status miles get converted to redeemable frequent flyer miles at a one to one ratio. In total, after passing 55,000 status miles, first class fares would earn 625% of flown miles and business class would earn 425% of flown miles. Not bad. Not bad at all. (Of course, membership in bmi’s frequent flyer program is only open to residents of the UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, Netherlands and Spain. So you may need…
The Nicest Hotels in Bangkok, or Two Places I Didn’t Stay
I had a decent enough place to stay when I was in Bangkok, but it wasn’t at one of the generally-accepted nicest hotels in the city. The top honor usually falls to the Peninsula, followed by the Oriental and the Metropolitan. I went to dinner one night at Sala Rim Naan, the Thai restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental. The Oriental has part of its property across the river, right next to the Peninsula, and this restaurant is part of that across-the-river outpost. You take the hotel’s boat to get there, naturally. Here’s a view of the restaurant’s outside seating Here a view of the Mandarin Oriental from the restaurant My appetizer sampler My lobster entree The next day we had late afternoon drinks at the Peninsula. You can either arrive at the hotel on the…
