Category Archives for Commentary.
The restrictions imposed by the U.S. were performative. They were not sufficient to influence the course of the virus, and thus did not on their own make sense when instituted. Now that the government no longer even considers this a public health emergency it’s absurd that restrictions remain in place.
Most frequently visited isn’t the same as best, and this list in order wouldn’t be close to my own estimation of best, but for those curious about a best estimate of which frequent flyer and travel websites see the most traffic here’s a list that ranks 14 popular websites.
This is my rough guide to thinking about airlines and hotels. This can be useful, because it helps to understand announcements and changes that each one makes and also for transparency as you read my own writing. Specifically, these are my rough biases or frames as I think about each of the major U.S. airlines and hotel chains. I love some things about each one, but each also has its flaws.
Overall I fly American Airlines most, but I do fly everyone, and I stay at Hyatt most and recommend Marriott as a primary ‘backup’ chain since Hyatt isn’t everywhere you might travel.
I was skewing more towards the familiar after spending over a year inside the U.S., and as more and more countries opened up. I felt like I needed to return to places I’d been – it had been longer than it might otherwise have been. I needed to visit family I hadn’t seen, revisit the familiar places I loved to eat and experience. If you haven’t been to a place in years it feels more new, and you already know you’ll love it! So I’m only now just returning to thinking about new experiences.
The parent company of The Points Guy, Red Ventures, has been using AI to write articles on some of the sites that it owns like CNet and Bankrate. The tools for this aren’t very good yet – they produce numerous errors – but they will become good soon.
Phil Washington, who runs the Denver airport, was nominated by President Biden to head the FAA and confirmation hearings were held today in the Senate. Among other roles, the FAA has a huge responsibility in aviation safety as well as directly providing air traffic control service.
Frequent flyer miles have an amazing characteristic. They cost about three quarters of a cent to produce while people value them at twice that much. The more you produce, the more you profit, so you go around generating as many miles as you can. But now there are too many miles chasing too few seats, airlines have to raise the number of miles required for the seats, and the miles aren’t worth so much.
Interesting in U.S. law you cannot protect the recipe for wine. You can only have intellectual property in its packaging. If the wine tastes identical, then customers are really getting what they expected right? And it’s just the famous brand that isn’t making profit off of it.
If you look at once high quality brands that have been acquired and watered down their products… think Tumi in luggage, Dom Perignon in champagne (not every vintage should be released, and once wouldn’t have been!)… then the brand is actually what’s lying, communicating to consumers a quality that turns out not to be delivered.
Foreign visits to the U.S. are down substantially compared to pre-pandemic times. That’s bad for airlines. It’s bad for hotels. But it’s bad for the entire U.S. economy, too. And it’s an own-goal, with the U.S. government slow-walking people who want to visit here from around the world.
There’s been zero discussion of updating the NOTAM system to focus on giving pilots (and airline ops centers) the right information, in the right form, at the right time – just how to keep the existing system from dumping again.
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 »
