Feb 19 2016

The best use of Chase Ultimate Rewards points isn’t having them just buy you a ticket. It’s transferring your points to frequent flyer programs, to top off an account or just to have enough miles for an award outright.

Once you’ve found the award availability your looking for, you’ll want to transfer points. In many cases the transfer is instantaneous, which is great because that minimizes the risk of losing out on award seats pending a transfer.

Here’s long long points transfers usually seem to take:

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Feb 19 2016

When you search for hotels through online travel agency sites, you only thought you were the customer. It turns out you’re the product.

Expedia now lets hotels bid to have higher placement in search displays. So Expedia monetizes your eyeballs, selling a better likelihood you’ll book a particular property to hotels with a product they call Accelerator.

Ultimately online travel booking consolidation can be seen less as exploitive and more as desperation. Hotel chains are consolidating, and they’re paying less. Booking sites are trying to figure out ways to extract revenue as their income per booking is declining and as they face new competition from Google and from other potential competitors in mobile. Still, it’s a risky move that Expedia makes. And the competing claims Expedia makes about it underscores that point.

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Feb 19 2016

Alaska Airlines has removed its award chart for Aeromexico travel. You can no longer book Aeromexico awards using Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles or even change existing Aeromexico travel plans that were booked via Alaska Airlines.

I have no reason to suspect anything other than that this is due to technical issues. That’s Alaska’s story, and it’s certainly believable interfacing with Aeromexico’s IT (having dealt with both their computer systems and their human IT).

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Feb 18 2016

Starwood just announced changes to hotel reward categories going into effect March 1. (HT: SPG Champion As with Marriott there are no new higher redemption categories being introduced (Starwood introduced category 7 back in 2007).

As I understand it hotel categories in the Starwood system are determined based on projected average daily room rates for the year ahead. When rates are expected to drop, categories fall. With rates projected to be higher than they had been projected to be the year before, categories rise.

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Feb 18 2016

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.

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Feb 18 2016

To be the airline that American wants to be, they need to offer a high quality product and they need to do it consistently. In other words they need to offer the same high quality product every time.

One area where they once led, but have lagged behind in recent years, is inflight internet. Fortunately American Airlines wants to improve internet speeds onboard. That’s fantastic. They exercised a contract right they have with Gogo to start the clock terminating their contract for about 200 aircraft. This allows American to seek a bid from a competing provider (so far disclosed as Viasat) while also obtaining a bid for better service from their current provider, Gogo.

But it would be bad for both customers and the airline to add a new internet provider.

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Feb 18 2016

Delta and Starwood introduced Crossover Rewards, an attempt to share each others’ best customers — they will tell you that Starwood customers fly Delta more and spend more with Delta, for instance. Marriott and United got into the act together.

That’s left American and Hilton as the only remaining possible dance partners. Hyatt has too small a footprint to be the major partner of the world’s largest airline, and IHG Rewards Club doesn’t have a meaningful elite program.

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Feb 18 2016

Marriott Rewards hotel category changes going into effect March 24. You can redeem hotels that are going up in price now for stays after March 24 and pay the current lower price.

560 hotels are going up a category (6% of those are outside the US). 237 hotels are going down a category (36% of those are outside the US).

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Feb 18 2016

“Segmentation” isn’t the word customers want to hear. It’s not “relationships,” “value,” or “loyalty.” It generally suggests extracting more revenue, and providing less value except to a subset of members.

American brings thousands of employees to Dallas for a day of presentations from senior executives about the direction of the airline and opportunities for networking. Some outsiders attend as well.

We get word out of American’s Leadership Conference that we can expect more segmentation at the top of AAdvantage in addition to the bottom of American’s customer base.

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Feb 17 2016

When I experience flight delays that force an airport overnight, I make my own hotel booking and send the bill to the credit card company I used to buy the ticket.

I don’t stand in line and wait for the airline to give me a voucher for a hotel of their choosing. Because it’s highly unlikely to be a hotel I’d choose.

That’s a lesson learned by two women whose flight was delayed on Valentine’s Day.

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