Last week I learned that each month between 10% and 15% of United Vacations sales are made on credit. Since the same credit provider services AA Vacations I assume the results there are similar, though I don’t know their numbers specifically. I found this disconcerting, but not surprising.
KLM’s Amsterdam – Mexico City flight turned around back to Amsterdam when it had already made it to North America on Thursday, sending passengers back to where they started.
If I were a passenger on the flight I certainly wouldn’t second guess the judgment not to take risks. However I’d hope to land somewhere closer to where I was headed.
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 woman went down to valet parking at the Homewood Suites Austin Downtown and gave what she said was her room number. She was sympathetic. She explained that “she had lost all of her belongings” in the nearby bar district the previous night. The valet believed her story, and gave her the car she asked for.
American Airlines has spent a lot of time moving around little green pieces of paper. Starting this month though the paper burden has been reduced.
Airbnb is politically unpopular in many cities. Opponents of the homesharing service are a mixture of hotel industry lobbyists and local residents who believe they pay higher rents because units that would otherwise be available to them are put on the market for tourists instead.
New research though shows that it isn’t the poor – least able to bear the burden of increased rents – suffering from Airbnb. According to a paper by Sophie Calder-Wang of Harvard (.pdf) the “increased rent burden falls most heavily on high-income, educated, and white renters, because they prefer housing and location amenities most desirable to tourists.”
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.
Major tech companies are moving into financial services because they think their ubiquity gives them the ability to succeed in an adjacent space, because they have strong brands, and because their tech focus allows them to appeal to a younger ‘new affluent’ demographic.
For the tech companies and issuers the biggest play is financial data.
Similar to last year I thought I’d take the Thanksgiving opportunity to express my thankfulness for each of you that reads my blog and interacts with me throughout the year. I’ve said this many times before but I really do consider myself one of the luckiest people, and certainly much more fortunate than I could have ever imagined.
Just as it’s important to remind industry watchers the role that frequent flyer programs play in driving airline profitability it’s important to realize that’s not in the numbers as well as what’s included – although I believe that in some measure the market actually prices these things in fairly already.
My own controversial belief, not fully supported by data, is that there’s a lot of ‘slop’ and misreported estimates in corporate accounting – entirely apart from and beyond the airline industry – and there are potential land mines hidden in plain sight all over the place because gaming of numbers and willful blindness are problems that replicate themselves across decisions throughout companies.
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 »
