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 »

Hilton Raises Award Prices To Over 100,000 Points Per Night At Popular Resorts

by Gary Leff

Mar 10 2022

Marriott is getting heat for eliminating award charts at the end of this month, but Hilton already did this in 2017 while claiming award prices wouldn’t go up. And every time a program has dropped published price lists, that’s meant an irresistible temptation to raise the cost of awards. They don’t even have to tell members that they’re doing it.

Hilton has just increased pricing at some of their best properties, though it will take a comprehensive review to identify just how many and how much.

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Federal Air Travel Mask Mandate Extended One Month

by Gary Leff

Mar 10 2022

The Biden administration wasn’t quite ready to let the federal transportation mask mandate lapse, out of fear they’d look stupid if Covid-19 cases surged again. But they know the mandate is on its last legs. Every state is eliminating its indoor mask mandates (or has already done so). Even if cloth masks were effective against the Omicron variant, this mandate would do very little on its own.

The federal mask mandate for commercial airlines, airports, trains and buses was set to end March 18. It will be extended through April 18. That one month extension, announced a mere 8 days before the rule would have lapsed, is the shortest extension yet. And, barring unforeseen events, is likely to be the last.

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No Blog Reader Would Ever Fall For This Housekeeping Tourist Scam, Right?

by Gary Leff

toilet
Mar 09 2022

A woman dressed up as a Marriott housekeeper to convince a guest to open the door to their room. She rummaged around the room at the Four Points Sheraton Bellingham, Washington while pretending to provide ‘service’ – and stole car keys, a wallet, credit cards, and $2300 in cash.

The arresting officer told her to turn the engine of her vehicle off – but she slammed it into reverse and drove off and led police on a high speed chase at over 100 miles an hour.

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With Only 9 Days Left For The Federal Mask Mandate, Disarray Over Whether It’s Extended

by Gary Leff

Mar 09 2022

The fact that the transportation mask mandate is set to end in nine days and no decision about its future has been announced yet – or even leaked – tells me that the administration has had internal disagreement and uncertainty on what to do with it.

While I anticipated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine I didn’t anticipate that it could play into the decision over whether to extend the federal transportation mask mandate. But the decision is ultimately a political one, and current politics could move up when the mandate gets lifted – no longer having to wait until close to the midterms.

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