Category Archives for Discounts & Deals.
Hyatt is offer 20% off plus breakfast for loyalty program members, adding to an aggressive drive to put heads in beds that includes triple points and cancelling stays up to 24 hours prior to check-in.
For several years hotel chains have worked to get customers to ‘book direct’ rather than through third party agents because it lowers their distribution costs. They’ve imposed contracts that limit the ability of their properties to offer discounts, and they’ve advertised to convince you that booking directly through them gives you the lowest price, but that’s often not true.
Now that the global pandemic has decimated hotel occupancy, properties are doing everything they can to cut costs and look for business – and that includes cutting more deals with third party distributors.
Rakuten is offering 90% cash back at LifeLock, or 90 American Express Membership Rewards points per dollar if you have your earning style set to receive Amex points rather than cash.
There’s likely to be greater variance in what happens to fares than we’re used to, because airlines build their schedules guessing what demand patterns are going to look like and those may be more volatile than we’re used to – airline revenue management tools are more likely to “guess wrong” than in the past because they’re dealing with new situations they haven’t encountered before.
Hotels are a different story. While hotels can leave entire floors closed to save on cleaning and heating and air conditioning costs during periods of low demand, it’s harder to mothball capacity.
There are business class roundtrips between several U.S. cities and Europe from $1650. That’s an amazing deal, especially from the West Coast, and this deal was available “from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, New York, Boston, Miami and many more cities in the US” to Paris, Zurich, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Brussels, and more – with travel valid through mid-January.
What’s even more amazing is that some small online travel agency sites are making these fares available for less – much less.
You’ll know the airline industry is healthy again when we start to see really low fares. There are good deals around right now, but few great deals.
Low fares will signal that it’s possible to encourage people to travel again with good deals. High fares suggest discretionary travelers are still staying away.
So while in normal times, with planes full, airlines prefer high fares – in the COVID-era we need to see low fares before predicting an airline recovery.
Showtime’s store has Billions merchandise and the last item on the page for apparel lists a men’s white Axe Capital t-shirt that they personalize for you, with your name or whatever else you enter. It is pricing at $0 plus shipping and tax, which comes out to less than $6… whether you order just one shirt or several.
The Vancouver Hotel Destination Association will arrange for you to receive visa gift cards for every night of your Vancouver hotel stay, up to the first five nights.
The insane Qatar Airways airfare deal is one of the most generous I’ve ever seen, at least where there hasn’t been a mistake. You can book the cheapest flight you can find from the U.S. and then change the city you fly from and change where you fly to – just pick somewhere within 5000 miles of your originally booked destination.
Qatar Airways has two new restrictions – which is actually a good thing, it shows the basic policy is working as intended and this is not a mistake.
You can fly Qatar Airways business class – one of the best products in the world – from any city they serve in the U.S. to nearly anywhere in Europe, Asia, or Africa for less than $1650 roundtrip. Lots of readers are having success with this. Here’s how it works.
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 »
