The new Marriott program rollout has been riddled with glitches. There are members who still show the wrong elite status, wrong lifetime status, and who still cannot merge accounts.
One interesting quirk of the transition that benefited members was discounted overwater villa award availability at the St. Regis Maldives.
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 really great burger starts with quality beef. It should have processed cheese that melts well. And it should be inside of a potato bun.
Don’t give me ciabatta bread for a bun. Don’t give me a kaiser roll. As good as brioche can be, it’s not well-matched to a burger. The bun is a delivery vehicle for the burger. It needs to be big enough to contain the burger, but shouldn’t be so large that it overwhelms the burger.
Everything you put on the burger needs to fit inside of the bun. You don’t want the burger to fall apart when you eat it.
The key to these rankings is subjective weight that goes into different components of the product. I value personal space more than anythnig else, so a first class configuration that’s four seats across isn’t going to rate as well for me as one that’s two or three seats across.
I’d never rate Air France or Garuda as highly as others — despite phenomenal ground service and attentiveness — because of the lack of real estate each first class passenger gets in the cabin.
Earlier in the month I wrote that Chase is expected to introduce ‘Sapphire Banking’ on August 27. Chase is now confirming the project.
You don’t pay fees for most things — checks, foreign transaction fees, out of network ATM withdrawals (and the other ATM’s fee gets reimbursed), wire transfers or stop payments.
The staff here are friendly. The lounge is gorgeous. Tarmac views are fantastic. Everything about the Polaris lounge Houston is well designed.
There are showers and nap rooms, an extensive buffet and a sit down restaurant. What’s more even though the lounge is small most of the day it doesn’t seem to be crowded, since the airline’s flights are better space throughout the day rather than clustering solely around 5 o’clock.
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.
It’s still possible to get value out of the SkyMiles program and it’s worth highlighting when you’re able to get saver business class award space using those miles.
The bizarre thing is that the price of even saver space varies widely on Delta, although sometimes that rebounds to your benefit. Virgin Atlantic saver award space is cheaper than Delta saver award space, and both are available for four or more passengers in business class.
The Star Alliance program Avianca LifeMiles has a hotel booking site that is really Rocketmiles. And they have a one-day triple miles offer (there’s only about 12 hours left). You can earn up to 36,000 miles per night.
After each earnings call American Airlines hosts a ‘state of the airline’ meeting with employees. Not everyone gets to ask all of their questions live, so the airline collects additional questions and follows up with answers.
Those responses tend to be much more anodyne that the live ones given by top executives. Nonetheless they can sometimes reveal useful tidbits that either confirm things I thought I knew or tell me something I wasn’t already aware of. Here are some of the things that were shared with me and seemed worth passing on.
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 »
