About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Why Do The Values Some Blogs Give For Miles Make Absolutely No Sense?

by Gary Leff

Aug 18 2022

Richard Kerr, formerly of The Points Guy and the Award Travel 101 Facebook group who is now with Bilt Rewards, offered a couple of provocative questions in his Instagram feed.

He asks why some people value clearly less valuable currencies more than a Bilt point. He may be asking about individual program members, but I’m going to ask it of those people who are supposed to know – travel bloggers who publish valuations of different mileage currencies. Much of the work those bloggers are doing fails to hold together.

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NYT Journalist: People Are Waiting In Long TSA PreCheck Lines As A Status Symbol

by Gary Leff

Aug 17 2022

Nikole Hannah-Jones, who was responsible for the controversial New York Times’ “1619 Project” which argues that the real founding of the United States happened when the first salve arrived in Virginia in 1619 and not in 1776, tweeted yesterday about inequality at the airport.

The oddness of complaining about inequality inside of the Martha’s Vineyard airport aside, what struck me about this is that I did not think Martha’s Vineyard airport even had a separate PreCheck line? When I visited Martha’s Vineyard last month I took the ferry in both directions and I didn’t visit the airport. Perhaps I need to update my priors?

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Why Tortas Frontera Is Great, And Other Airport Restaurants Are So Bad

by Gary Leff

Aug 17 2022

I don’t love Chicago O’Hare, but when I book an O’Hare connection I usually think, “at least I can get Tortas Frontera.” And I’ll pick up a sandwich (choriqueso is my go-to, followed by the pepito) even though there’s free lounge food available. I’ll gladly pay for something good enough that I would eat it even if it wasn’t inside of an airport.

There need to be some licensed TGI Fridays and plenty of quick serve places in an airport, to put out a lot of food to travelers with varying palates. But not every place needs to do that.

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QUICK: IHG Discounting Many Award Nights 50%, Unannounced Sale?

by Gary Leff

Aug 17 2022

A week and a half ago IHG was pricing many of its best hotels around the world for about half the usual points. This didn’t last. I told everyone to book quickly, and many did.

Some people were worried that IHG would cancel the reservations, claiming they were a mistake, but this did not happen. IHG has been silent on what happened. However this strange pricing is back.

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New US News Rewards Program Rankings Are Out, And They’re A Big ‘Ol Pile Of Goo

by Gary Leff

Aug 16 2022

The U.S. News Travel Rewards program rankings are out and they are a big ‘ol mess, largely because the methodology they use to rank programs makes little sense – which they’ve known for years and haven’t done anything meaningful to improve.

This year is worse than ever because they say they didn’t even bother searching award availability to determine which airline programs are best, blaming the pandemic. And hotel rankings even appear to punish hotel chains offering strong coverage in smaller markets.

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