Hilton’s Biggest Investor Borrowing Big Against Their Stake and a Travel Blogger Went Crazy

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About Gary Leff

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 »

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Comments

  1. Regarding Matt’s trip on Swiss, I wonder if he was even able to enjoy it. Despite the over-the-top comfort he had, I imagine he had to be stressed by the risk.

  2. I think its unfair to say he went crazy. You’ve no idea how his finances look and what kind of impact this has on him personally. Also I strongly suspect that since he’s been taking with legal counsel his move was carefully calculated. It may not have been what you would do but at this point all of us should be applauding him for being willing to fight this fight. Because ultimately it will benefit us all.

  3. @121pilot
    No what he did would never benefit us at all.
    We all KNEW this was a mistake that one could book LX F with Aeroplan miles even though there were those twisted arguments on the words.
    As we have witnessed over the course of last couple years, DOT has stepped in to MODIFY the overly generous rules that had an intended consequences in punishing the airlines for mistaken fares being booked. Let’s face it, there is no fool proof of IT system, there are always chances for mistakes that could cause big financial impacts. Honoring published fares on a normal circumstances is the right thing to do, honoring mistake fares of any kind is insane and just encourage the greedy public to try anything to game the system. As a result, we LOST that over the top pro-consumer rules and now the protection if anything, is very minimal and would involve one to jump thru the hoops to claim the unrefundable expenses incurred.
    My take is, given Matthew has made bold claim about suing Aeroplan should it not let him fly LX F, he has an issue – either he follows thru his bold claim or he concedes and admits he has made a misjudgement. Given his track records he is the one who want to make big splash and gain outsize attention. But this time he might have gone too far – just how much energy and time he needs to spend on this “fight” that Gary has correctly pointed out, with very little upside – at best he would just recoup his cost of the flight, at worst he has squandered a tidy sum that could be put to much better use.

    BTW, he repeatedly said his fare was not the published fare people could see online. That might even further weaken his case to win.

    The whole thing has turned into a circus show but it guarantees enough clicks to his site though. May be that is his ultimate goal? to fight for his position in a very crowded travel blogger field? So far it seems the reaction is more negative than positive of his “fight” and rightfully so as there is no justification to drag on, nor to make a bold claim to begin with. But now he has a “Losing Face issue” if he concedes retreat therefore admits he has made a foolish claim at the beginning.

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