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Category Archives for General.

OpenTable is About to Devalue: Redeem Your Points Now

by Gary Leff

Aug 10 2015

Opentable is an online service for making restaurant reservations. It’s the market leader in the space, you can search for a specific restaurant and make a booking or search an area and find restaurants that have availability for when you’d like to eat, near where you want to eat, and for the number of people in your party.

They offer loyalty points, most of the time you earn 100 points for a booking, that’s worth $1 because 2000 points can be redeemed for a $20 gift certificate.

How that works is all about to change.

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The Future of Frequent Flyer Programs: No More Credit Card Rewards But We’ll Use Our Points to Go to Mars

by Gary Leff

Aug 10 2015

Although I won’t make any claims about what the future of space travel will look like (I’ll leave that to @BoredElonMusk) there will absolutely be loyalty programs in the future in substantially the form that we have now.

The fundamentals of any system that encourages repeat business are precisely the core tenets of frequent flyer programs: recognize and reward (elite programs and rebates).

Credit cards will be less important for rewards in the future, because new technology will reduce the margins for processing payments (so banks won’t pay to incentivize transactions). But we’ll definitely be using miles for space travel!

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First Class Passengers Get First Dibs on Overhead Bins

by Gary Leff

Aug 09 2015

American Airlines frequently begins boarding prior to posted boarding time, so when I am going to need overhead space I’m not just boarding 30 minutes prior to departure… I’m showing up at the gate several minutes before that.

Last Tuesday, though, my flight was nearly completely boarded when it was more then 35 minutes prior to departure. I got on and found all of the first class overhead bins closed. A flight attendant opened one for me, directly above my seat. It was empty.

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