IHG Rewards Club Comes Clean, Reveals List of Hotels Changing Award Pricing Next Week

by Gary Leff

Apr 24 2015

Last week I wrote “No, I Do Not Trust IHG Rewards Club.”

IHG Rewards Club is the loyalty program for Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and related brands. And my ire was prompted by their announcement that they would be changing the redemption categories of a subset of their hotels, but weren’t telling us which ones.

They were doing this at the same time they were announcing there would be changes to their elite program — most of which they wouldn’t tell us until later, but we should trust them those changes will be good — and they announced that points will begin to expire after 12 months of inactivity when in the past IHG Rewards Club points did not expire.

Continue Reading »

Another Way Delta Makes It Hard for You to Use Your Miles

by Gary Leff

Apr 24 2015

Delta didn’t just eliminate their award chart. They didn’t just impose three week advance purchase requirements on saver awards across a majority of their routes. And award seats aren’t just hard to get.

They also impose a practice known as “journey control” — a given Delta flight may be available to some customers as a saver award and not to others.. and it has nothing to do with their elite status.

Here’s what “journey control” is, and what it means for your miles.

Continue Reading »

Tell Me What You Want to Know, and I Will Try to Answer You

by Gary Leff

Apr 23 2015

Here’s your chance. I will my best to cover your questions. Please leave requests in the comments section. As my boss once wrote making a similar request on his blog, “The only promise is that of weak monotonicity, namely that your mention won’t lower the chance of the topic being covered.” In other words, I won’t promise to cover everything, though I’ll read and ponder everything that’s written here in the comments. It may take me awhile to work through, goodness knows there are things I’m behind on (trip reports, cough, trip reports…). But I’d love to hear from you!

Continue Reading »

Are There Limits to What an Immigration Officer Can Ask You? This One Found Out the Hard Way.

by Gary Leff

Apr 23 2015

Apparently he just wanted a date. The immigration officer started by asking probing and seemingly unnecessary questions “like how many children I have, do I drink, do I smoke or eat chicken”, the woman told Indian news channel Times Now. “He also asked me whether I sleep with other men when my husband is at work,” the woman alleged. The passenger was departing Delhi enroute to Hong Kong. Apparently her alarm bells only went up when she was asked “if she would like to have her third child with” the immigration officer. Eventually allowed to clear departure formalities, the officer followed her through the airport. He has since been arrested.

Continue Reading »