Scott McCartney covers the new IdeaWorks study of hotel loyalty program value for the Wall Street Journal.
This effort seeks to determine the rebate value that your spend has with the largest hotel loyalty programs, and estimate the value of a hotel point.
They come close to offering reasonable estimates of the value of points from IHG Rewards Club, Hilton HHonors, Starwood, and Marriott (although they slightly overvalue those points).
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 flight was delayed 11 hours after a passenger became unruly, stripped naked, and requested sex from a flight attendant this past Saturday.
Rumor has it the passenger in question lacked elite status in the low cost carrier’s frequent flyer program and was thus requesting benefits he wasn’t entitled to without ancillary fees.
On Sunday a 24 year old attacked another passenger, was restrained, got sick and then died on an Aer Lingus flight from Lisbon to Dublin. The flight diverted to Cork, Ireland.
The most common reaction to the story was this was patient zero in the coming zombie apocalypse. We now know a lot more about what happened on that flight.
The 58 year old man who tried to stop a United flight in August because he was late trying to get to his 40th high school reunion in Ohio pled guilty to “misdemeanor tampering.”
It turns out there’s video…
There’s a 100,000 point signup bonus for the only ‘Visa Infinite’ I know of that’s issued in the United States.
It runs through November 30 but you cannot apply online. Fortunately a blog reader works for City National and is happy to assist with applications. She’s shared more detail on the criteria to get the card as well.
Airline Weekly had some great stats this past week comparing the capacity of airlines in their top 10 cities between the fourth quarter of 2014 and fourth quarter of 2015.
Combined with reports on revenue and growth in number of aircraft, and seats per aircraft, we get insight into the strategies the airlines are employing and the new competitive pressures they’re under.
Starwood has a new co-brand credit card partnership. They’ve just launched the Emirates NBD Starwood Preferred Guest® World MasterCard® that comes with up to 50,000 points as a signup bonus plus automatic Gold status.
I recently needed to stay in the Denver Tech Center area, and settled on staying at the Sheraton. I actually burned 3 Platinum ‘Suite Night Awards’ at the property and was pleasantly surprised.
There are two principles that were at play: Sheratons in the U.S. are hugely inconsistent, and Starwood’s Suite Night Awards, which confirm an upgrade up to 5 days in advance of a stay, are tough to use.
Now that the customer-facing part of US Airways has been integrated into American Airlines, the big question is what comes next?
American Airlines President Scott Kirby has said that integration needed to happen before they could make other changes.
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 »
