Despite some information out there to the contrary — you can book award rooms now to lock in availability, and then get any points price difference for the same room back in late summer or fall if the points price of the hotel drops. And that’s true even if the hotel is sold out or is sold out of standard rooms.
Marriott offers ‘travel packages‘ where you redeem points for airline miles and a seven night hotel stay (there are also 5 night packages, intended for timeshare owners, these have become tougher to get if you aren’t a timeshare owner).
The value here is that you get transfers of points to miles at a rate that’s good enough you’re more or less getting a free hotel stay thrown in.
On Wednesday I attended a briefing with Chase and Hyatt executives about the new Hyatt co-brand card that launches today. I’ll have more on that today.
We talked through the reasons for the new card benefits and had time for some question and answer. I asked about Chase’s “5/24” rule.
I’m seeing a ton of coverage of Marriott’s new award chart lauding the top points price of the most expensive hotels. For instance, Dan’s Deals: wrote AMAZING! Marriott’s New Award Chart Is A Dream Come True For Aspirational Hotels. This is indeed good news, but it needs to be tempered.
In many cases this won’t actually be a price cut of two-thirds like it appears at first glance.
Marriott has finally released hotel category assignments, letting us know the redemption pricing of hotels starting sometime in August. Hotels only received what category they’d be assigned to two weeks ago.
They’re highlighting that “Nearly 70 percent of all participating hotels can be redeemed for the same or fewer points.” That doesn’t actually sound good to me, though they point out 52% of hotels go down in price while 31% go up which is a little better.
American Airlines has redesigned the look of the AAdvantage website account page which may presage more targeted promotions. There are two new promotions announced to start.
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.
Frequent Miler asks “Is Hilton considering new elite benefits?”
Head for Points reports on attending a Hilton event that bloggers were invited to. And in fact says “We were also given advanced notice of some new Hilton Honors member benefits which may come later this year.”
Bookable via Priceline, Mexico City – Santorini is bookable from $988 roundtrip. Dates are very limited at this price but under $1000 roundtrip to Greece seemed worth a mention.
A man wearing only underwear — that means he was running on a hot tarmac with bare feet — scaled a fence and ran towards a Delta flight on from Miami that had just landed in Atlanta on Tuesday.
He “jumped on the wing and began to pound on the windows.” Naturally there’s video.
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 »
