I mentioned yesterday that hotel booking website PointsHound would be offering a double points promotion starting today. The promotion is now live on their website. With PointsHound you can choose to earn points in the following programs when you book hotels through their site: I reviewed PointsHound extensively back in May. Key things to know: It pays to compare rates — in the past I have noticed occasional outliers where the site winds up more expensive than booking directly, but that hasn’t been frequent in the searches I’ve done. Always check prices against other sources. They offer some prepaid rates, usually giving you more miles, but those likely will not earn elite stay credit or points in the hotel program of the property you’re staying at. They also offer “Double Up” rates which do earn…
National Car Rental’s 1-2-Free Promotion Returns Next Month
National Car Rental is bringing back its One-Two-Free promotion with registration opening September 9. Assuming this promotion is run similarly to last year (which ran August 20 through January), it will offer a free rental day on every two paid midsize or larger rentals of 2 days or more through the end of January. Last year there was also a referral component to the offer which allowed you to earn up to 10 free rental days as well (the 1-2-Free earning from eligible rentals was uncapped). We’ll see if that component of the offer is being repeated. While the requirement for a mid-size two day rental to earn a free day limits the ability to come out ahead just by renting for the free days (although as a National Executive Elite member, my free days…
Bits ‘n Pieces for August 26, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: Don’t make a booking with PointsHound… until tomorrow. A little birdie tells me that Tuesday mid-day PointsHound will be launching a “double earning promotion” such that a reservation that would normally earn 3000 miles will instead earn 6000 miles. The promotion will run for bookings made through August 31. I mentioned on Friday that the list of IHG Rewards hotels participating in PointBreaks was out, so you could see which hotels would be bookable for just 5000 points per night. Booking is now available online for stays through October 31. Star Alliance member EVA Airways is bringing a Hello Kitty 777-300ER to its Taipei – Los Angeles route. With 3 daily Los Angeles roundtrips, we do not yet know which flight will get this aircraft. But the very…
How IHG’s New Promotion Bucks Trends in the Loyalty Industry That Hate on the Gamers
The new IHG Rewards Big Win promotion gives points for a variety of different categories of hotel stays — stays in different cities, stays at different brands (like Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holkiday Inn, etc), stays that include Saturday nights. And it gives points for online booking and points for hitting a certain threshold of nights. IHG Rewards (I keep typing “Priority Club” and have to delete it) describes the promotion as “offers created just for you.” Loyalty Programs are Increasingly Using Data to Target Offers, and Letting Members Choose How to Invest Program Dollars In Ways That’s Best for Them ‘Customization’ is all of the rage in the loyalty industry, using data to come up with offers most likely to incentivize individual behavior based on whatever characteristics they know about you on the one hand,…
American’s Premium Cabin Hawaii Service
Hawaii Flights Usually Don’t Have the Quality Product That the Distance Might Suggest Flying to Hawaii from the East Coast takes longer than flying to most destinations in Europe. And yet with few exceptions airlines do not offer their premium long haul seats to Hawaii. Los Angeles – New York JFK may be a five hour flight, but airlines scramble to give forward cabin customers lie flat beds. That’s just not the case with Hawaii. While there’s some demand for paid seats upfront, much of which either by wealthy vacationers or honeymooners, Hawaii service doesn’t have the same density of business travel that many other markets do. It’s a disproportionately leisure-oriented destination. And that also means that – though elites will fly there on vacation – the flying tends not to be all that elite-heavy…
Bits ‘n Pieces for August 25, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: Earn free Las Vegas comps from your computer Don’t fly during Ramadan A chilling tale of TSA, opting out, and what happens when the hand swab alarms. Last month Gordon Ramsey did a cook off against Singapore Hawker stalls… and lost. Apparently he did well with chili crabs, but his laksa fell flat. He graciously acknowleged the hawker chefs “kicked [his] a*se” (HT: Marginal Revolution) US Airways lost a motion to dismiss a lawsuit complaining that they award point-to-point mileage for flights instead of actual miles flown (if you take a circuitous route to avoid weather you should earn more miles since you’ve flown more miles). I’ve always thought the better suit would be airlines that award 1 to 5 fewer miles per flight than the actual point-to-point…
Singapore Airlines First Class Passengers Can’t Use the Bathroom in Hong Kong
Singapore Airlines does an outstanding job in the air (though service is usually phenomenal long haul it does vary and can be quite mixed flying short haul). Their food is very good as well. But Singapore Airlines does not match the quality of its inflight product with its ground services. Even most of its lounges in Singapore are just ‘fine’. Lounges outside of Singapore? Not nearly so impressive. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Hong Kong. Singapore Airlines has a fairly large presence in Hong Kong with 7 daily roundtrips between Hong Kong and Singapore. One of their flights heads onward to San Francisco. San Francisco – Hong Kong – Singapore and return flights are dubbed SQ1 and SQ2. This flight has seasonally been served by an A380 with ‘Suites class’. And yet… the…
Just How Little an Impact the American-US Airways Merger Will Have on Competition
The very first thing I started subscribing to and reading regularly about the business of aviation was Holly Hegeman’s PlaneBusiness about fifteen years ago. I’m not sure I stumbled upon it, but it was well worth the fee I paid at the time. And oddly enough I think it was through Holly’s website that I stumbled upon Flyertalk.com for the first time. Without that I wouldn’t be writing this blog, or have had the chance to co-found Milepoint.com. Last month Cranky Flier contributed a piece there that looks at the underlying data in the Government Accountability Office’s review of the proposed American-US Airways merger. It turns out the much of the analysis isn’t very good. Cranky had to create his own data set. GAO apparently outsourced the data work and won’t make the supporting data…
Special Edition Rimowa Suitcase Now Available
Last month I wrote that there would be a special edition Rimowa carryon in conjunction with the upcoming Star MegaDO. You can win one. And they’re now also available for purchase. The Rimowa Salsa Deluxe 21″ Cabin Multiwheel (spinner) bag sells for $595. You’ll pay that here, but in this case it’s for a limited-edition version of the bag, and $200 will go to charity. This custom Rimowa Salsa Deluxe Cabin bag features a custom matte black finish and a MegaDO logo, both exclusive to the MegaDO and not available anywhere else. $200 of the purchase price is donated by Rimowa back to Milepoint Cares to help others. The $590 price includes tax and shipping for US and Canadian orders. (Shipping outside the US and Canada is not available, international participants on the upcoming MegaDO…
IHG Rewards “Big Win” Promotion Launches Early, Details Revealed
Last night I wrote that IHG Rewards (Priority Club)’s September through December promotion launches Monday. Except that the website to register and unveil your targeted offer is live early. My offer is for up to 72,100 points, what you’re offered may vary both in amount and in degree of difficulty. And while 72,100 sounds like a lot, scale matters here — these points, like Hilton HHonors points, are a bit ‘inflated’. This will not get you two free nights at the time participating hotels (and remember that the terms and conditions of the program exclude most elite benefits, hotels don’t have to give upgrades for instance, making the free nights themselves less valuable in my view). What I’ve been offered: Try one and done 1000 points for my first stay Stay more and earn more…
