I’ve written in the past about the great auction values at Luxury Travel Diary, many of which seem to go for 30% – 70% off, probably because there just aren’t that many people bidding so you can scoop up bargains. Folks who already know about these auctions won’t like the added attention.
If you want to go to Asia with the family in business or first class, there’s one airline that’s got you covered and even one best route though there are several good routes.
Star Alliance member Asiana simply offers fantastic award space. The United website is great for seeing this quickly at a glance. Their award calendar will show you which dates have availability — in this case non-stop availability from Los Angeles to Seoul for four passengers. Dates with solid lines have coach award space and dates with dotted lines have premium cabin award space.
It seems to me that if checked bags are going to be separately charged, then customers should be refunded if their bags are lost and offered compensation if their bags are delayed. But it’s a special type of gall to raise the price of checked bags and not offer such basic assurances in return.
At the beginning of the week I spoke with Marriott’s Senior Vice President for Loyalty David Flueck for an update on the integration of Starwood accounts onto the Marriott IT platform as they launched their new loyalty program on August 18th.
I reached out to Marriott for another update on where things stand fixing issues.
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 couple of weeks ago we learned that if you have an Android phone, Google tracks you even when you turn location history off. Although Google says that when you turn location history off “the places you go are no longer stored” an Associated Press investigation found that isn’t true and “turning off your Location History only stops Google from creating a timeline of your location that you can view. Some apps will still track you and store time-stamped location data from your devices.” Now we know that Google has a deal with Mastercard – and possibly with other payment networks – to track retail purchases and compare those to online ad clicks in order to help determine the effectiveness of online advertising beyond immediate online purchases. Google then shares date with a test group…
In 2010 a traffic jam in China lasted for two weeks and stretched 60 miles. There were drivers stuck in the jam for five days, with some cars moving no more than a single kilometer per day.
Perhaps the closest we come to that in the U.S. was Wednesday night at Atlanta airport’s north terminal parking garage.
As we enter Labor Day weekend, it’s important to remember that union shop or not management cannot abdicate its responsibility to select and retain the best talent while transitioning out employees who aren’t a good fit for the company — ensuring that everyone inside the business is able to respect the contributions of their colleagues. And management has to set a vision that inspires employees to be their best.
At the beginning of the week JetBlue increased checked bag fees to $30 for first bag. At the time I suggested that the larger US airlines were certainly looking at it, but that a major airline especially Delta needed to do it before we could say everyone would.
United turns out to be the large US airline to go first.
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 »
