I hate tipping because of the frictions. You don’t know what you’re supposed to tip, it’s ambiguous. You’re supposed to have cash? It’s so much better when employees are compensated by their employers and listed prices are the amounts you actually pay.
If tipping is supposed to ensure better service, why is it such a bad customer experience?
The best airport lounge in the world is probably the Air France La Premiere lounge at Paris Charles de Gaulle. It has true gourmet dining, a spa, and a car service to take you to and from the plane. However, almost nobody can use this. You actually need to be an Air France first class passenger. They only make one award seat available per flight, and you have to be a Flying Blue Platinum member to book it.
However there are many great lounges that most of us have real world access to. These are my favorites.
Airline passengers will show up earlier, and stay longer (and eat more) at airport lounges than you expect when there’s a great lounge option at no added cost. And that’s true even when you expect that they’ll show up earlier, stay longer, and eat more.
So even as these lounges have expanded, and Capital One and Chase have both gotten into the airport lounge game, there’s just not enough space for the passengers who want to use these lounges.
After the Super Bowl, Taylor Swift tells Travis Kelce how proud she is of him, “I’ve never been so proud in my life. I can’t believe you. How did you do that?”
And he says, “How do you not have jet lag right now?” She’d performed in Tokyo and flown to see him play in Las Vegas. She shakes it off, “Jet lag is a choice.”
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.
Football fans booked themselves a room at the Detroit Club hotel months ago for April 25 to be near the NFL draft. The room rate was $350 ($427.50 with taxes and fees) per night. The hotel cancelled their reservation, and told them if they wanted to stay the night they’d have to pay an $1,100 room rate.
Pan Am founded Intercontinental Hotels. After all there needed to be places for American consumers to stay in the far flung destinations they served, and as a tool of US foreign policy.
At one point United Airlines owned both Hilton and Westin hotels as part of their attempt at horizontal integration in travel under the Allegis brand. United wouldn’t just sell airline tickets, they’d market the full trip to consumers.
But I’d forgotten that American Airlines had a hotel chain.
Shawn Mackey filed a lawsuit against his Airbnb “superhost” Pamela Fohler and the platform for privacy invasion, emotional distress, and marital damage after a contentious stay and an alleged extortion attempt involving a photo taken by a doorbell camera.
Both chains report that 78% of their revenue comes from the U.S. Their international footprints are smaller than you’d think!
Marriott has more than twice as much booked liability for hotel award night redemptions as Hilton. But that does not mean “Marriott’s loyalty program generated a far higher total volume of rewards for members than Hilton’s did” since Hilton pays hotels less when members redeem than Marriott does.
You’re allowed to carry bags onto the plane – but only if there’s enough space on board. That’s the main reason it’s better to board planes early, rather than being last onto the plane. Priority boarding is a benefit to ensure you get access to carry on bin space – even though no one wants to spend more time on board the aircraft than they have to.
Overhead bins are stuffed full, and passengers are forced to gate check their carry on bags, even though airlines are installing bigger overhead bins – bins that are supposed to have enough space for everyone. And it didn’t used to be this way!
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 »
