United made a move towards shoring up its significant weakness in Latin America via an announced codeshare with TACA. Necessary approvals are expected in the second quarter of the year. Not a replacement for Mexicana dropping out of the Star Alliance, but sorely needed.
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Category Archives for Uncategorized.
3000 bonus Starwood points with first stay after registering for Starwood Preferred Business
Register for Starwood Preferred Business with promotion code PBAN and you’ll receive 3000 bonus Starwood points with your first stay by April 30. Plus your company earns a point for every (“eligible”) dollar spent with Starwood hotels on top of regular Starwood points earned by an individual. And since in this free agent nation we’re really just consultants anyway, we’ve all got personal companies…
1000 Bonus AsiaMiles Per Night at Hyatt
Normally you have to choose between hotel points and miles when staying at a Hyatt. And normally I suggest that the hotel points have more value, except on inexpensive single-night stays where fixed-mileage earning can be more lucrative. Hyatt has a new promo through May 31 where you can earn 1000 bonus Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles per night on top of the usual 500 miles per stay. Registration is required. AsiaMiles are a great currency to collect outside of your normal frequent flyer program. Their distance-based partner awards have some real sweetspots, e.g. 60,000 AsiaMiles gets a business class ticket on British Airways from the East Coast of the U.S. to most points in Europe.
I finally broke down and bought a wireless router for travel
Finally purchased a small wireless router for travel. It wasn’t expensive, less than $50 and there was a rebate to boot. I can’t explain why I didn’t have one before now. I’m sick and tired of wired high-speed internet in hotel rooms. I understand that it was expensive to install, but adding wireless shouldn’t be a particularly large capital investment. Inexplicably, some brand new construction even goes wired, which I have a hard time understasnding. This may sound like the smallest of concerns, and I can hear all of the worlds smallest violins playing “My Heart Bleeds for You” amongst my readers when I say this, but I can’t even express the frustration of finding myself in a corner suite at the Westin Diplomat, looking out of the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway, and…
Tyler Cowen Does Paris
Tyler Cowen offers some good advice about Paris. He says that Pierre Gagnaire is better than Taillevent, which I have a hard time accepting for purely emotional and irrational historical reasons (the same logic by which I retain an attachment to the Fairmont in San Francisco when there are several objectively better properties in the city). I keep a Taillevant vintage chart pinned to the cork board on my office wall. I find the best of Paris to be extremely overpriced yet strangely an outstanding value. It’s home to the best city hotel in the world. (I can’t afford it, but it’s worth every penny. Alas, for such luxury I must confine myself to the better properties in Hong Kong or ever Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.) Perhaps the best advice: 7. Watch The Triplets of…
Bad PR for American, but Shouldn’t Capital One Get Some Blame Too?
The Chicago Tribune‘s “What’s Your Problem” column comes up empty trying to help some Haitian aid workers who were forced to overnight in Miami and pick up hotel costs because of an American Airlines schedule change. [T]he rooms are expected to cost about $450, money the volunteers had hoped to spend to help sick Haitian children. “It’s hard, because all of us keep putting our money in, and we’re like, man, this could go to a much better purpose,” Walsh said. “That would be a lot of X-rays and a lot of lab work.” Wow, sick kids. And how do American’s PR geniuses respond to the newspaper?An airline spokeswoman told the Problem Solver that the company’s policy is to refuse to distribute hotel vouchers in case of canceled or rescheduled flights. “That’s just the way…
Miles, Points, and Celebrity Honeymoons
Via Hotel Chatter, the London Telegraph carries a piece on where celebrities honeymoon.Chains like One & Only Resorts and famous resorts like Sandy Lane are common. The point of the article, it seems, is how superstars and the super rich live beyond the rest of us. But comparable properties are available… for free… with enough miles and points. One & Only may not have a points program, but Marriott points can be used for Ritz-Carlton stays (and for that matter, so can Amtrak points). And Starwood certainly has some high-end properties. While La Taha’a Private Island makes the list of resorts in the article, I’d actually argue that Bora Bora Nui, where I stayed on points in June, is superior. And the new St. Regis — opening this June — should blow it out of…
W Los Angeles (Westwood)
I spent Sunday night at the W Los Angeles in Westwood. It’s a nice hotel and I had no problem getting an upgrade. All rooms are supposedly suites, but the standard room is a 350 square foot offering that they call a one room suite. To my mind that doesn’t qualify, so fortunately they offered me something that does. It’s a W so the lobby is a hip lounge, though not too active on a Sunday night. The pool area must be a scene most of the time, but the was unseasonably cold even for February so it was more or less deserted with only one person on a lounge chair and only one cabana occupied. The W was guilty of one of my major hotel pet peeves. They didn’t do a turn down service.…
Rating the domestic premium cabins
Domestic first class is just about a (somewhat marginally) bigger seat. Once upon a time there was a nice meal, probably a steak option and maybe a shrimp appetizer, and a made-to-order ice cream sundae to look forward to. Now you’re lucky if the food resembles the worst of what used to be served in coach. But not all domestic premium products are equal. I’d give Continental the nod for domestic food service, with United still occasionally doing a decent job under admittedly difficult financial circumstances (and additional kudos for their transcon p.s. service between JFK and both San Francisco and Los Angeles). United gets my overall nod for domestic premium offerings simply because of the amount of widebodies flying within the United States. And with the exception of the domestic configured 767-300s and a…
Dinner at Grace
Sunday night I went to dinner at Grace in Los Angeles, which was recommended by several Flyertalk.com members. I liked the decor and atmosphere. It felt a bit like walking out of one W (in Westwood where I was staying) and into another (the restaurant) with the color scheme — especially in the back dining room — and music. The food was generally good, though whatever seasoning they coated my foie gras with was burnt slightly. It took almost half an hour for my entree to come out after my appetizer was cleared. And one of the stranger things I’ve seen lately, they came around to brush crumbs off the table a couple of times during the night… and brushed them right onto the floor. That’s a first for me at an upscale U.S. restaurant.…
