A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Marriott is offering points with the biggest bonus we’ve seen – you are effectively prepaying for stays at a discount.
A 60% bonus on purchased points, that began May 18, was set to end June 30. This has been extended to run through July 15. The best previous deal I’m aware of was a 50% bonus, though of course Marriott points aren’t worth as much as they used to be either. They’re willing to sell you points at a cost per point of $0.0078.
Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, and United Airlines no longer expire frequent flyer miles. American Airlines expires miles after 18 months of account inactivity. Alaska Airlines expires miles after 24 months of inactivity.
Starting July 1, American AAdvantage will no longer expire miles for accountholders who are less than 21 years old.
TV reporters checked into a Hyatt, Hilton, and a Trump hotel in New York and left marks on pillows, television remotes, thermostats and other areas of the room with washable sprays and gels that show up under UV light to see whether cleaning procedures are being followed.
They checked back into the same rooms the next day to see whether sheets had been changed and high touch points had been cleaned. Two hotels utterly failed, and one hotel partly failed – enough so that you wouldn’t want to stay there.
American Express conjured up a holiday, Small Business Saturday, in a pique of marketing brilliance. They wanted to promote card acceptance with small merchants in a drive to reach parity with Visa and Mastercard, and promote awareness among their own cardmembers that Amex is accepted at small businesses.
American Express has a new small business promotion now – an ‘Amex Offer’ you can add to one personal card that will give you a $5 rebate on up to 10 purchases of $10 or more (total $50) at eligible small businesses.
Three months ago Marriott laid off Ambassador customer service staff as part of customer contact center closures, effectively gutting the personalized nature of the Ambassador program – which still requires customers to spend at least $20,000 annually, even with this year’s reduced elite requirements.
Now Marriott has gone a step further and just announced the closure of two call centers.
This is a good reminder that there are people who are thrilled that international travel has grinded to a halt, and that flying is severely depressed amidst the global pandemic.
My home state of Texas is seeing a surge of cases, including in the Dallas area. But American Airlines flight crew at DFW and Dallas-based ground staff were photographed not wearing masks.
When airline employees don’t wear masks, they’re endangering passengers and scaring them away. That’s bad for business. And when employees don’t wear masks, passengers model them. It’s tough to get passengers to wear masks when pilots don’t.
A crisis is an opportunity to rethink the business. In normal times there are plenty of good reasons not to take chances, and too many entrenched interests standing in the way. Those are largely swept away. And the old arguments favoring the status quo hold little weight when the status quo is no longer an option.
Parker is right that the pandemic and rebuilding the airline’s routes and traffic from almost zero is an opportunity to re-think the business. Unfortunately he does not articulate here a creative new vision for how American Airlines might do that.
There are several surprising side effects of the coronavirus pandemic, that make a lot of sense once they’re pointed out. For instance one of the prime drivers in reduced GDP during the first quarter was drop in health care spending. How can that be with all the investment in treating COVID-19? Elective treatments were put off, nobody was going to the dentist either.
When restaurants closed down, rats had to go scurrying elsewhere in search of food….
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 »
