News and notes from around the interweb:
- Hotelied offers hotel discounts of up to 50% based on your social media profile. (HT: Road Warrior Voices)
Through Hotelied’s proprietary dashboard, hotel partners designate which traveler segments get access to what rates. Based on its specific business needs, a hotel may be targeting small groups, guests who work in specific industries such as fashion, entertainment, business, or education, frequent travelers, loyal travelers, and more. In addition, a hotel may want to increase their social media interaction with guests, thus searching for guests with high social influence and a strong digital following. …Hotelied does not share its members’ information with hotels; all of the matching is done within the Hotelied system, so members can feel confident their information is kept private.
- Paid business class is expensive enough for one passenger, let alone eight. And finding that many award seats can prove nearly impossible. So Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and their six kids flew to Nice in economy. (HT: Alan H.)
- Carnival Cruise Lines has banned bringing bottled water onboard For, umm, safety.
- I’ve more or less mentally written off the value of Hertz points, but Travel Is Free walks through getting the most value out of them.
- “Dallas Love Field situation getting uglier by the day” (HT: Alan H.) of course the real problem here is the airline cabal that, under the guise of opening up travel at the airport, capped the number of gates.
Love Field legally can’t build more than the existing 20, and there aren’t enough to go around to meet the needs of all airlines currently operating there. It didn’t help that the federal government forced American to offload its gates to Virgin America. Southwest leased United’s gates. And now Delta is without gates when the music stops July 6. So whom are the players running to? The government… Delta to the DOT that claims the airport has to accommodate them, and Southwest to the federal courts to oppose that.
- Air France KLM would love to follow Lufthansa in adding a booking charge to tickets issued through third parties. They’re ‘looking at it’ except they have two years left on their Amadeus contract so they can’t. British Airways, Alaska, and Etihad all tell Lufthansa ‘attaboy!’ but none are yet following suit…
Why have you written off the value of Hertz points? I’d love to understand that better…
Meh, Brangelina didn’t miss much in forgoing intra-Europe business class. “It was on the second leg of their journey that the Jolie-Pitts were seen blending in with their fellow passengers on the aircraft.” It might have been a story if they’d flown TATL in coach.
Unconcerned about which section the Brangelin clan flew, unless they opted to allow the airline to split ’em up. What is more concerning, is flying nonstop from Los Angeles to Paris. How long will that video screen hold a young kid attention, before the plane before a playground.
I just watched an ABC Nightline segment on Delta new VIP program for those who wish no contact with the public, reporters or photographers while traveling. Costs are a first class tickets plus a fee.