Yesterday’s Cathy cartoon expressed a common frustration about using frequent flyer miles. I don’t mean to dismiss the idea because it is commonly held and people do have difficulty redeeming miles. But the conventional wisdom doesn’t match reality. If you take the miles and points game seriously, you should be able to do pretty well on the redemption side. Here are some basic tips. Build up miles in a single program until you have enough for the awards you want, and then diversify into other programs. That way when it comes time to redeem you’ll have more than one program to choose from. Sometimes United hasn’t had seats, but American does. Or Delta won’t, but United will. One good way to do this is to accumulate miles through partner activities (credit cards, mortgages, internet service,…
General
Category Archives for General.
The Challenge of Redeye Flights
The Global Traveler has tips for surviving redeye flights. Basically don’t drink caffeine and try to get to sleep right away. Great as far as it goes, but I find redeyes to be brutal, and survival to depend entirely on the seat. I had tremendous difficulty flying Bangkok to Narita a couple months back in ANA’s old style business class seat. It was just uncomfortable and nothing I did could change that. Give me a full recline in a comfortable seat and it’s a different story. The short flight time would still present challenges and I wouldn’t be well rested on the other end, but it would have been far better. The only real tip for surviving redeye flights is a modern business class or three-class first class seat. I know that won’t help many…
Travel items you can’t live without
Alex Tabarrok notes his favorite items for travel: an inexpensive noise-cancelling headset, a Paul Frederick non-iron dress shirt, and his Kodak DX7590 digital camera. Allow me to suggest a wireless pocket router. Too many hotels have wired high-speed internet. I don’t always want to sit at the desk to work (especially frustrating at resort properties with balconies overlooking the ocean!). Or sometimes my wife travels with me and we’d both like to be online. This is the one I’ve been using, about $40 + shipping after $10 rebate. Second, power converters. Magellan’s has a nice website that’ll figure out for you just want converters and adapters you need, wherever in the world you’re traveling (I was shocked to find them accurate for Rwanda!). And don’t forget that clicking on the link to Magellan’s at ebates.com…
Why are fewer hotels participating in Starwood’s Cash & Points?
Starwood posted its Cash & Points award hotel participation for 2006 yesterday. Well, sort of, since hotels in Asia aren’t listed yet. This has been a long time in coming, I understand from Flyertalk that they were trying to get this up much earlier but a glitch in the process delayed it until January 30. They even moved back the date to look for it on the website a couple of times. I don’t really know what the glitch was, but posting a full year of participation by the end of January is actually an improvement on past practice. Starwood used to list these awards only one quarter at a time, and the listing would usually be posted no earlier than a few days into that quarter. Last year they moved to show a full…
Why are fewer hotels participating in Starwood’s Cash & Points?
Starwood posted its Cash & Points award hotel participation for 2006 yesterday. Well, sort of, since hotels in Asia aren’t listed yet. This has been a long time in coming, I understand from Flyertalk that they were trying to get this up much earlier but a glitch in the process delayed it until January 30. They even moved back the date to look for it on the website a couple of times. I don’t really know what the glitch was, but posting a full year of participation by the end of January is actually an improvement on past practice. Starwood used to list these awards only one quarter at a time, and the listing would usually be posted no earlier than a few days into that quarter. Last year they moved to show a full…
Changes to the Hertz #1 Club Gold Terms & Conditions
This San Francisco Chronicle piece details changes to the Hertz #1 Club Gold contract that took effect on January 1. Customers didn’t used to be responsible for damage to cars in the case of force majeur events, now they are. Hertz also reserves the right to place a hold on a customer’s credit card for $200 above the anticipated rental charges. Not included in the artcile is that Hertz’s ‘grace period’ of an hour for computing rental charges has been scaled back to 30 minutes. This last item is a big deal for me. Hertz has otherwise been the best rental company in my view. I prefer not to do business with Cendant companies like Avis though I find I do rent from them most often, and probably will do so more in the future.
Changes to the Hertz #1 Club Gold Terms & Conditions
This San Francisco Chronicle piece details changes to the Hertz #1 Club Gold contract that took effect on January 1. Customers didn’t used to be responsible for damage to cars in the case of force majeur events, now they are. Hertz also reserves the right to place a hold on a customer’s credit card for $200 above the anticipated rental charges. Not included in the artcile is that Hertz’s ‘grace period’ of an hour for computing rental charges has been scaled back to 30 minutes. This last item is a big deal for me. Hertz has otherwise been the best rental company in my view. I prefer not to do business with Cendant companies like Avis though I find I do rent from them most often, and probably will do so more in the future.
Travel & Leisure Readers on Crack
I love ‘best of the best’ hotel lists, and this year’s Travel & Leisure‘s 500 best hotels around the world — as voted on by readers of the magazine — is no exception. (Hat tip HotelChatter.) This one, I love to hate. While there are lots of wonderful properties on the list, the rankings are truly bizarre. If you believe this list, there are more top luxury hotels in the United States than in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Carribean, Australia, New Zealand (and the rest of the South Pacific) combined. This has to be a function of the limited travel experience of T&L readers. Some of the stranger U.S. listings: The St. Regis isn’t the best hotel in Manhattan. And the Pierre isn’t better than the Ritz-Carlton Central Park, the Peninsula, and the Mandarin…
Travel & Leisure Readers on Crack
I love ‘best of the best’ hotel lists, and this year’s Travel & Leisure‘s 500 best hotels around the world — as voted on by readers of the magazine — is no exception. (Hat tip HotelChatter.) This one, I love to hate. While there are lots of wonderful properties on the list, the rankings are truly bizarre. If you believe this list, there are more top luxury hotels in the United States than in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Carribean, Australia, New Zealand (and the rest of the South Pacific) combined. This has to be a function of the limited travel experience of T&L readers. Some of the stranger U.S. listings: The St. Regis isn’t the best hotel in Manhattan. And the Pierre isn’t better than the Ritz-Carlton Central Park, the Peninsula, and the Mandarin…
Save more!
Jane Galt offers good basic financial advice. I do pretty well — readers of this blog know I can get quite a bit out of a buck, and often not just in travel — but I know I don’t save enough, and like Tyler Cowen I’m not going to give up on eating out. But it’s still worth clubbing myself over the head every now and then about what best practices ought to be.
