MSNBC carries a piece on hotel chain efforts to move bookings to their own websites and away from the likes of Orbitz and Expedia. The piece cites the trend to refuse to honor elite benefits on third party bookings and to offer ‘best rate guarantees’ for bookings made on their proprietary sites. It doesn’t evaluate those guarantees for fine print and ease of processing claims, however.The stakes are huge: PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that the Web last year generated an extra $715 million in hotel business. But increased price competition spurred by the Web cost hoteliers $2 billion in potential revenue, meaning the Web on the whole cost hoteliers about $1.3 billion in revenue. And the shortfall for hoteliers is growing, said PWC analyst Bjorn Hanson. “There is no question that we are losing the battle,” Starwood…
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Privately owned airports
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Sydney Airport Corporation is negotiating to buy Qantas’ terminal at the international airport.The interesting notion is that the Sydney Airport is privately owned (most of the equity is publicly traded) and it is immensely profitable. The start of negotiations to acquire the Qantas terminal comes as the airport is on track to post earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of $420 million for the year to June 30 as it benefits from the restoration of full operations at the former Ansett terminal and continuing cost reductions. In the six months to December 31, the airport posted EBITDA of $206.2 million, up 12 per cent, on revenue of $271.5 million. Securities analysts had forecast EBITDA for Sydney Airport of $420 million to $440 million for 2003-04. Perhaps…
But who gets to SPEND the three grand?
Comair paid a $3,000 fine in November for a burned out light bulb (the FAA had wanted $44,000).The light the illuminates the no smoking, fasten seat belt sign was out. An off duty FAA inspector noticed it while flying on the plane. He reported it to a flight attendant who told the pilot. The pilot forgot to write it up in his log, and it wasn’t noticed again for four flights.The fine was for flying the aircraft when it was “not in an airworthy condition.”
The value of a takeoff and landing at Heathrow
Qantas and Virgin have acquired new slots at London’s Heathrow airport, paying record prices to low cost carrier FlyBE. Qantas has paid nearly
The Wall Street Journal Explains Mileage Runs
The Wall Street Journal ran a Scott McCartney piece on mileage runs. The value proposition is this: When the deals are good enough, mileage-runners can arbitrage airline tickets, paying less than two cents for each mile, but cashing them in for first-class tickets or upgrades that would cost far more per mile. Two carefully played mileage runs, costing a total of maybe $700 or so, can yield enough miles for a free business-class ticket to Europe — priced at roughly $7,000 these days. Nothing new to readers of this website, but perhaps to readers of the Journal. It’s a great ride we’re on, isn’t it?
Changing Criteria for Elite Status and Higher Prices for Awards
There’s an interesting article in the February issue of Travel and Leisure on the trend towards making elite status a perk for higher fare passengers and increased mileage requirements for award redemption.Naturally, in this fast changing, erratic world of frequent flyer programs, this article is already out of date: Top-level elite fliers on Delta will get free upgrades when buying tickets in Y, B, and M classes; these upgrades, if available, can be confirmed when reserving. Second- and third-tier elite Delta fliers will get free upgrades for tickets in Y and B classes, but will have to wait until 100 or 72 hours before departure, respectively, to request the upgrade. In mid-December, Delta announced that it was moving to a complimentary upgrade model for all elites.And the piece mischaracterizes upgrades on Northwest and Continental: Northwest…
Rewarding the loyalty of non-human passengers
JAL has introduced frequent flyer points for traveling pets. Believe it or not, this isn’t a new idea.As I noted last year, Virgin has a program to reward pets themselves. In contrast Continental just gives 1 frequent flyer mile per dollar spent shipping Fido as cargo.
Alaska expands partnership wtih American
Alaska Airlines and American Airlines are moving to expand their codesharing relationship. Alaska also partners with Continental and Northwest, as well as Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Hawaiian, KLM, LanChile, and British Airways.Normally I’d just interpret this as an expansion of their broad partnerships across the board. One item struck me, though. Alaska and American, which since 1999 have had reciprocal frequent flyer programs, also plan to co-locate certain airport facilities “wherever possible.” If “wherever possible” just means where they aren’t colocated with, say, Northwest then this would be nothing new. But does it signal that Alaska is becoming closer to American, to the exclusion of its other partners?
Thoughts on pricing and the Sony-United music download partnership
Tyler Cowen wonders why iTunes charges the same amount — 99 cents — for all songs.While there may ultimately be a good reason for it, I hope that Sony doesn’t fall into that trap with their new partnership with United that is said to allow redemption of Mileage Plus miles for music. The price in miles is as yet unknown. I hope they get creative and experiment with their anticipated spring launch.First, they could offer some sort of ‘introductory pricing’ to stimulate interest. Each song could be 100 miles (or 50 miles?) at the outset, perhaps for a week or a month or two. This should build a user base not just of mileage plus members but of mileage plus members that are both interested in music and technically savvy enough to be interested in…
