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.
A reader who has lifetime Marriott Gold lost his Platinum status in 2020. He asked Marriott for Platinum status, and the simply gave it to him. Now current Platinums are having that status extended for all of 2021.
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.
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.
The impressions and beliefs we’re forming through this crisis are going to carry forward, and that will have long-lasting effects on travel brands. Here’s an early stab at brands that rise in status based on how they’re handling the crisis, and those that fall in status as well.
New hotel occupancy and room rate data shows that things got even worse for hotels last week than they were the week before when hotels hit what was then their lowest occupancy rate – ever.
It seemed like things couldn’t get any worse, and then last week happened.
Amazon originally built out server capacity to handle the huge order surge for the Christmas holidays, and found that they had spare server capacity the rest of the year – and a huge capability in managing servers. So they expanded into the adjacent space of cloud computing (Amazon Web Services).
They’ve also built out a delivery and logistics shipping capacity to handle their own surges, and that gave them tons of extra capacity. Amazon delivers more of its own packages than other shipping services combined. They delivered over 3.5 billion packages last year, making their own internal shipping business two-thirds the size of UPS.
The lede to a piece in the New York Times on the bungled initial response to the novel coronavirus appears to suggest that the virus was first brought to New York by a Qatar Airways flight. It even further appears to suggest that if only New York had done a better job containing that first case, things would be different today. These claims make little sense.
If airlines are going to receive a bailout, taxpayers should receive some assurance of recovering the funds when times are good. And any deal should be structured to incentivize airlines to get out from under partial nationalization as quickly as possible.
The Treasury Department is asking airlines seeking bailout funds to detail the economics of their frequent flyer programs as one source of collateral.
Elite status is one of the most powerful motivators for frequent customers to stick with a travel brand. When programs extend status outright during this crisis, they’re giving up a tool to encourage business when customers are able to come back. So they’re going to have to reach into a different bag of tricks.
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 »
