Category Archives for General.
Monday news broke that Marriott is acquiring Starwood.
The deal may make sense for Marriott, at least there’s a chance it’s a good deal, because Marriott has strength both in full service and select service and in the United States while Starwood has a global footprint (they are a smaller company but in more countries than Marriott) with iconic hotels.
Starwood is offering a discount of up to 25% on purchased points through December 31. Starwood points are the most valuable loyalty currency.
If you need to top off most any frequent flyer account this could be strategically useful.
These are among the most valuable points because of their flexibility, and because of the value of the programs that Chase partners with. Here are my 8 favorite things to do with the points:
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
American is back with their offer to let you buy the difference in miles or segments you need for the elite status you’re after.
You don’t have to take an end of year mileage run. You don’t have to spend time in planes, away from family at the holidays. And you don’t have to take up seats and upgrades when planes are already full.
A week and a half ago changes to the AAdvantage program leaked. I broke the details, for instance, that American would be moving to revenue-based mileage earning for flights sometime in the second half of 2016.
I have new answers to outstanding questions that help fill out the picture of how the program will work and where they’re going. And they’ve also shared the changes they’re making to their award chart which fills out most of the rest of the picture.
American has come out with its award chart changes. These have been much anticipated, because we really haven’t seen changes to the saver award chart in a big way since the introduction of one-way awards in 2009.
While United and Delta were busy raising award pricing, American was focused on integration of two airlines. In some sense we had a couple of years where American AAdvantage was just more generous than their competitors. Now they’re making changes that narrow that gap.
For the past week or so American’s website has had intermittent issues when searching for and booking award travel. The site has frequently errored out, necessitating a call. Fortunately American no longer charges a telephone booking fee for awards that cannot be booked online (which unfortunately remains the majority of partner airline awards).
For the past few days there have been several reports of American’s phone agents unable to see Etihad first class award space that can easily be found on the Etihad site.
Air Canada’s Aeroplan, a Star Alliance member, is offering a bonus for transferring in points of up to 40,000 miles through December 21.
American Express Membership Rewards is excluded from this bonus. But Starwood points transfers (and most others) are eligible.
Last summer I attended ‘All Access Day’ at Gogo, the inflight internet provider, and shared a behind-the-scenes tour of how internet gets beamed into space so that an aircraft traveling at over 500 miles per hour can access the rest of the world (very slowly).
This week I was invited back to sample their fastest internet, and see their latest technology which had only just been announced when I visited last summer. They promised a test flight onboard the Gogo Boeing 737 equipped with ‘2Ku’. For avoidance of doubt, I paid my own way to the media event and covered my own hotel.
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 »
