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.
Hyatt’s major problems are that their footprint is so much smaller than major players IHG, Hilton, and Marriott (they’re about 10% the size of Marriott), and that they’re building a high-end strategy while their growth has come largely in the limited-service sector.
But they may be about to grow their number of properties by 50%, centered in Europe and Latin America.
Singapore Airlines will be flying non-stop from Newark to Singapore — the world’s longest flight — starting October 11.
When the flight was first loaded into the schedule you couldn’t get premium awards. However for some reason they’ve opened the floodgates. Most flights have business class awards available. And many have four or more business class awards available.
It’s difficult to see how United can stand alone, though, with the most draconian restrictions among the largest US airlines. With Delta’s claim that American and United basic economy were driving revenue to them, and with American abandoning their own carry on restriction, it’s just a matter of time before United must react.
Club1 Hotels has a new booking engine and an app and booking through them seems easier and cleaner than before. There are also tons more top hotels than before, too, when I’m searching their site I’m generally finding the inventory I want. There are cruises and car rental deals, too.
Since joining for a year with this offer is free – something they usually charge for – I don’t see a downside to signing up just in case you have a use for their deals in the coming year. And search the site because any good deals are 5% better with my promo code. They appear to take their best rate guarantee seriously, too.
On American’s earnings call this morning the airline tried to get ahead of disappointing financial performance both in absolute terms and relative to its largest competitors by announcing new aircraft deferments (reducing, or pushing into the future, capital expenses) and making other changes to their fleet in order to reduce the amount of product (seats) they sell.
On July 3rd I shared that American was poised to relax the most draconian restriction on their lowest-price Basic Economy fares, once again allowing customers on these lowest fares to bring both a personal item and a full sized carry on bag onto the plane. American refused to comment.
However this change has now been announced in this morning’s earnings release, and points to the failure of the business strategy of making your product worse in hopes of generating more revenue.
Three months ago Marriott shared details on how they’d be bringing their three loyalty programs together with Marriott Rewards, Ritz-Carlton Rewards, and Starwood Preferred Guest all operating on a single platform and single set of rules starting in August.
The new Marriott program launches August 18. I spoke with David Flueck, Marriott’s Senior Vice President of Global Loyalty, on Tuesday to talk about the transition and get several more questions answers about what to expect.
While at first it appeared that American’s Chairman Parker and United’s Chair Garvey had surrendered to Chairman Mao, the reality seems a little more nuanced than that.
We’ll see if these State Department-worthy maneuvers suffice to stay out of China’s crosshairs, whether China declares US airlines to be failing to comply, or whether there are problems with airport slots in China, with convenient gate access, or myriad other permit problems on the ground.
Air Canada along with Aeroplan’s financial partners has made an offer to buy Aeroplan, the spun-off frequent flyer program with which Air Canada has an exclusive agreement through June 2020.
The market seems to like this deal, or at least believes that the move signifies some deal will occur at a price premium over prior-day trading.
Aeroplan has now issued its response.
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 »
