I covered new hotel discount site Club1 Hotels when they first launched. They were offering free memberships for a year and many readers took advantage of it.
The website was a bit clunky, but there were plenty of deals. Because it’s a membership site they’re able to sell hotels for less than hotel websites and less than Expedia, Booking.com, and others.
The Business Travel Coalition’s Kevin Mitchell apparently sent out an email criticizing Delta’s call for protectionism against Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar. And Delta sent out an email attacking back.
There are a lot of vested interests in this debate and each side tries to advance its commercial case, including by hiring experts to represent them in the court of public opinion. There are also facts.
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 two-time Olympic wrestler spent much of his life working as a butcher. But when he retired from that job at age 72 he went to work for Spirit Airlines as a baggage handler.
After 16 years on the job, at age 88, his family says that he “lifted 500 pieces of luggage in one shift, triggering a hernia that would send him downhill.”
United sent an email to elite frequent flyers that can be translated as, “Customer who fly 100,000 miles a year and spend perhaps $30,000 aren’t worth giving an advance seat assignment to unless they cough up an extra $20 on their trip.”
Booking.com admits listing the Hudson Hotel in New York more than once under slightly different names with different star ratings, to see whether customers bookings would be any different.
Booking.com may have charged some customers more even when they were listing the same hotel at a lower price.
A JetBlue flight from Fort Lauderdale to Barbados returned to Fort Lauderdale on Thursday after 3 flight attendants fell ill complaining of headaches.
While the Barbados flight was on the ground in Fort Lauderdale, a JetBlue flight from Boston to San Diego diverted to Buffalo “after several crew members reported feeling ill and were taken to the hospital.”
American is planning to offer tighter seating than any other US legacy airline had ever offered before. The plane with this plan is the new Boeing 737 MAX and that will go on sale over the weekend, and make its scheduled debut in service November 29th.
I don’t want the $172 that I don’t deserve, but I don’t want to spend time fighting American to get them to take back the money either. What’s my obligation here?
A few days ago several blogs wrote about an American Express offer of a $100 statement credit when spending $500 with Ritz-Carlton. That’s great, but the offer was targeted. It wasn’t available in my account.
And I don’t usually write about targeted offers unless they’re noteworthy for some other reason such as indicating testing that a program is doing that may paint the program’s future direction.
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 »
