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.
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.
Costa Coffee is a UK coffee shop chain, with over 2100 locations in there and over 1200 internationally about a third of which are in China. They began expanding outside the UK 20 years ago, with their first international location in Dubai which probably explains why I know them mostly from the Mideast.
The company that owns Costa Coffee also owns Premier Inns. I never realized the connection though it makes sense why I’ve always gotten my morning coffee from a Costa when staying at a Premier Inn.
You might want to defect from United to American or from Delta to Alaska, but it’s pretty tough to do that and start from scratch with a new airline. You’re well treated as an elite, and it’s rough out there flying without any status (although bottom tier of status can be approximated in many cases with the airline’s co-branded credit card). It’s hard to move your business when you’re used to getting upgrades!
So airlines came up first with status matches. That can be helpful but – from the perspective of the loyalty program – it can also be abused.
Earlier in the month I wrote about how much money US frequent flyer programs have earned so far this year.
There’s no need to do back of the envelope with Qantas, in fact Qantas shares real numbers about its frequent flyer program. It’s not hard to extrapolate to the US market, or to pinpoint devaluation of existing points as well as reduction in points-earn.
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 »
