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 »

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Hotel Gives Out Bonus Points For TripAdvisor Reviews, This Is Why Most Reviews Are Bogus

Dec 20 2021

I don’t look at average review scores for a hotel property on a site like TripAdvisor. A lot of reviews may be fake, and the reviewers may not have similar tastes or expectations even if they’re real. But there’s another thing that skews ratings: incentives by a property to post great reviews. Hotels that do this will get more positive reviews. That doesn’t mean it’s a better hotel.

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All Travel Is Up In The Air Right Now, Only Spend Miles And Book Cancellable Trips

Dec 20 2021

I continue to travel, and I continue to make travel plans. But I’m doing the best I can to use miles whenever possible, and book cancellable itineraries. The next couple of months couple be touch and go. I’m not making a prediction of what happens, but I live my life on probabilities and make the best decisions I can given the knowledge I have at the moment. And right now I’m giving myself as much optionality as possible.

What I’m really saying is that many people seemed to have calmed after the initial scare over Thanksgiving about the Omicron variant, and I don’t think we’re really internalizing what the next couple of months could (not will) look like.

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