News and notes from around the interweb: (Also known as ‘Alan H. is a one man human clipping service.)

• Earn Starbucks Gold after one purchase

  

• Airlines offer pajamas in premium cabins, now hotels are catching on too (HT: Alan H.)

  

• Starwood has updated its terms and conditions to say that Cubans cannot join the SPG program. Cuba joins “Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, [and] the Crimea region of Ukraine” on the banned member list.

  They’ve also written in an exclusion for meetings-earning for rooms by or on behalf of a government entity. This is presumably a reaction to new Trump administration rules on providing economic benefits to Cuba’s state owned enterprises.

• An attractive feature of hotels over homesharing services for business travelers is the predictability and sameness. You know what you’re going to get in each city, more or less, unless you’re staying at a Sheraton. One small Airbnb competitor wants to offer consistent experiences in homesharing. (HT: Alan H.)

• Sales taxes are imposed broadly in a community (lots of voters) and can push sales to a nearby jurisdiction. Hotel or other travel taxes are imposed on fewer voters — those outside the community, and just a handful of businesses. That’s why Austin’s Mayor wants a hotel tax to fight homelessness. And hotels are major capital investments, they can’t just move. (HT: Alan H.)

  If the idea really was taxing those with shelter to pay for those without he’d be fighting for an increase in property taxes (homeowners can’t move, the tax would hit more people with shelter, and it would be those living in the community helping homeless in the community).

  The mayor estimates the tax would raise $6000 – $12,000 per homeless person per year in the city. Money is fungible of course so even dedicating this money to homelessness allows the city to reimburse itself for what it already spends, so the net effect is more general revenue to use as it sees fit.

• Delta and Blade have a commercial promoting their overhyped helicopter-plane partnership. (HT: Paul H.)

• US chip credit cards take annoyingly long to process and that won’t get better any time soon (HT: Alan H.)