Category Archives for Commentary.
In the midst of the political skirmish of the federal debt limit, the idea has once again surfaced to have the Treasury mint a trillion dollar coin and deposit it at the Fed in order to avoid the need to borrow more money. So it’s worth remembering just where this idea originateed: one of the best frequent flyer miles deals.
Customers who earned their status the hard way for next year, rather than just having it extended, have something of a legitimate beef with their brand. They’ve chosen their travel provider, trying to earn their status. They’ve selected less convenient flights, sometimes connections rather than non-stops. They’ve chosen less convenient hotels. They may have paid more than what competitors were pricing their products at. And they’ve done all of that all while accepting lower levels of service (fewer meals in airline cabins, limited housekeeping or breakfast benefits and closed club lounges at hotels).
We now know that there were Covid-19 linked deaths in the U.S. as early as the week of January 5, 2020. That’s contemporaneous with China’s first reported death on January 9, 2020. And there were January deaths now attributed to Covid-19 in California, Georgia, Alabama, Wisconsin and Oklahoma.
Cases could have been brought here as early as November on flights from China.
Caesars Diamond members who live in a state that allows online gaming now receive $20 per month to wager on sports. Even Caesars Platinum members receive $10 per month. And there are many many Caesars Diamond members through status match.
We won’t be able to impose national ‘no dine lists’ for restaurants, but the ex- Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security in the Obama administration Juliette Kayyem wants those who haven’t been vaccinated placed on the government’s ‘No Fly List’.
The CDC is announcing today that fully vaccinated people should wear masks again in indoor public settings, because of spread of the Delta variant. People aren’t going to comply. However this change makes an extension of the federal transportation mask mandate more likely.
Travelers are banned from entering the U.S. if in the prior 14 days they’ve been in China, Iran, the European Schengen area, U.K. and Ireland, Brazil, South Africa or India. That’s true even though the U.S. requires testing of everyone entering by air; if the traveler has had a full course of an mRNA vaccine; and is coming from a place with far less Covid-19 than the U.S.
This makes no sense. Americans can go to Europe and they can return – in some cases even if they’re unvaccinated. But vaccinated Europeans can’t fly to the U.S. And this is somehow for our protection?
Provided an employer is financially solid enough to make the payments, and processes expense reimbursements quickly, there’s few things better than being able to charge business expenses to your personal credit card. This makes it easy to earn initial card bonuses, as well as threshold bonuses that might help you keep elite status, and ultimately generates lots of points for you to use later. Imagine being able to charge plenty of airline tickets (at 5x) and conferences at hotels (3x) in large volumes!
But there are several big “if’s.”
With the Biden Administration taking aim at ratcheting up competition regulations across the economy, the airline industry’s lobby shop came out with a claim that the industry is already highly competitive. Some of their arguments are true and fair, others are misleading, and they skip over the role that government plays protecting big incumbent airlines from competition that might drive them to improve their products.
Here most places have re-opened. There’s an expectation that many businesses will return to the office in the fall. Schools are expected to be open. Already leisure travel has returned to pre-pandemic levels, and in some places has exceeded it. But is this state of affairs going to last?
When leisure travel tapers in the fall it won’t yet be replaced by business travel. And spread of the Delta variant amongst unvaccinated populations without immunity from prior infection could lead to real challenges for the industry.
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 »
