Frugal Travel Guy experiences a common, annoying scam in Bangkok. He shows up at a tourist site, is told by a local that “it’s closed” and is offered an inexpensive tour that winds up at a jewelry shop. Relatively harmless as far as scams go, but can easily ruin a day of sightseeing. It’s one reason that, in an inexpensive destination, I like to hire a guide for the day on my first visit to a city. I’m basically paying one tout to fight off all the others for me, and give me a more seamless experience…
General
Category Archives for General.
Service Cuts at Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and Related Brands
It’s tough times for the hotel industry, and unsurprisingly hotel brands are looking to cut back on expenses. Intercontinental Hotels Group has announced a series of changes delaying large expenses for their hotels (.pdf) and also lowering service and amenity standards (.pdf) for their varous brands. On the capital expense front, they’re delaying the date by which all hotels have to have flat screen TVs, and the date by which Crowne Plazas have to have more comfortable banquet chairs. They’re also pushing back the requirement for Holiday Inns to purchase new beds. On the service expense front, all brands can skip leaving newspapers at each room door and make them available in lobbies instead. Crowne Plazas won’t be required to have bellmen, can reduce restaurant hours and room service hours (eliminating lunch service), can offer…
United Mileage Plus is Still Worth It.. Sort of
One Mile at a Time wonders whether Mileage Plus is ‘worth it’ anymore, with their much more expensive award charts (post-December 31) and extensive Starnet blocking of partner awards (just go try to book anything on Lufthansa most days). And he’s right to a certain extent, United has massively devalued their mileage. And most Star Alliance carriers offer more valuable currency. United’s award chart used to be favorable, but now is average at best. Air Canada’s is better, US Airways’ is better. And United frequently prevents you from booking awards with their partners, whereas the rest of Star Alliance carriers offer currencies without such restrictions. But that doesn’t mean there’s no more value there. It makes sense to credit flight miles to United to requalify for 1K (or until one requalifies). Because United 1K and…
AA.com 10% Discount for Bookings by Tomorrow
American is celebrating 10,000 Facebook fans by offering 10% off flights booked by May 17. In celebration of reaching 10,000 fans, we want to give you 10%* off your next flight. Just go to AA.com and type the code FCB10K in the box titled “promotion code” when you book a flight. The code is good for travel between May 15 and August 31, 2009, and you can even use it to take an extra 10% off the great sale fares we announced yesterday. But hurry – this offer is only good until May 17, 2009 Blackout dates are June 27-28, 2009 and July 2-6, 2009.
Register for a Free Mystery Bonus from United
So United says they’re going to give away a small bonus to everyone following them when they hit 10,000 followers on Twitter. My guess is it’s a 10% discount electronic certificate, or 100 or 250 miles. But who knows? You can sign up to follow them.. or not. Apparently all that is required to get the bonus is to register for it, which should work even if you don’t follow them on (or even are a member of) Twitter. But since they’ve still as of this writing got over 5000 followers to go, you might as well follow them so that I can get my bonus faster…
Podcast Discussing the Minutest Details of First Class Award Travel
I’m a guest on the new Upgrd.com Podcast, give it a listen.
American Express Membership Rewards Raises Points Transfer Fee
This Flyertalk thread points to an American Express Membership Rewards change that I had somehow missed — beginning September 1, the fee to transfer points from Membership Rewards to US airline frequent flyer programs will be going up. Amex currently charges $0.0005 per point to transfer to US carriers, and caps the fee at $75. This will go up to $0.0006 or $99 beginning September 1. For a 100,000 mile transfer the fee is $50, going up to $60, a 20% increase. They describe the fee as an ‘offset’ for the federal excise tax they pay when buying miles from US airlines. However, the fee isn’t a direct reimbursement of their actual costs, and it certainly isn’t mandated. It’s a charge they pass along to their customers. And similar programs, such as Starwood which allows…
Spanish Trains: More Expensive in English?
Upgrade: Travel Better discovers that the Spanish trains will sell you cheaper advance purchase tickets if you’re searching in Spanish, but not in English. That’s a great trip for the next time I’m in Spain, in the past I’ve seen online pricing and just went ahead and purchased at the station. I hadn’t realized better significantly advanced purchase fares were available. And with six years of Spanish under my belt, I ought to be able to muddle through an online shopping cart.
Adding a Free Domestic Roundtrip to an American International Award
In the discussion of American’s new one-way awards with stopovers permitted in international gateway cities, a Flyertalk member pointed out that members living in gateway cities can book themselves a free domestic roundtrip when booking an international roundtrip. If you live in New York and are booking a roundtrip to Tokyo, why not also book yourself a trip to Miami as well? From the Flyertalk post: Here’s what I was thinking of doing: Newark – Jackson Hole ($219 in Y / Purchased Ticket) [Stop] Jackson Hole – Newark (F Award Ticket #1) [Stop] New York – Hong Kong (F Award Ticket #1) [Stop] Hong Kong – New York (F Award Ticket #2) [Stop] New York (LaGuardia) – Eagle, CO (F Award Ticket #2) [Stop] Eagle, CO – New York ($219 in Y / Purchased Ticket)
Fitting (5) International First Class Products into a Single United Star Alliance Award
I’m just back off of a two week trip, our annual Asia first class redemption. Prior to the gutting of the United award chart I booked two first class awards that combined five different Star Alliance international first class products, and managed to work around Starnet blocking for my transpac segments. After much time with agents who insisted that All Nippon Airways doesn’t serve Washington-Dulles (funny, I attended their party celebrating 20 years of service, and they only refer to the flight as NH 1) I did secure ANA three-class first, which I hadn’t flown since 2006. One sad note however is that I believe in July three-cabin service will leave DC, meaning I’ll have to hop over to Chicago if I want ANA F. On the return I fought agents who didn’t believe it…
