Dish Network will give you 12,500 Southwest Rapid Rewards points for signup. But you don’t have to sign up for Dish Network service to get some points. They will give you 500 points for not signing up as well. Rapid Rewards Promotion: Limited-time offer. 500 Rapid Rewards Points will be applied approximately 8-10 weeks from submission. Offer available once per valid Rapid Rewards account. 12,500 Rapid Rewards Points will be applied approximately 8-10 weeks from activation. New customer offer only. Strictly speaking of course the points are for giving them your junk mail e-mail account so they can market to you. (HT: The Points Traveler) You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to…
How Will I Be Able to Talk Miles and Points in 20 Minutes… TODAY?
This will be short because I have nothing unique to add to the conversation. I’m about to give a talk at Chris Guillebeau’s World Domination Summit on travel, and I don’t really want to. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great group of people, and it’s a talk that I love — but with the news of the Asiana crash in San Francisco it’s a little bit difficult to focus on my usual pedantic concerns of points, miles, first class cabins. And yet I won’t be posting much on the subject of the crash because I don’t have special knowledge from being on the scene, or special expertise other than as an observer of travel about crash investigations. I’ve just been following twitter for my updates. And I know to discount much of what’s reported…
Covert Operations: Do Travel Providers Keep Tabs on Us?
The first question I picked out of yesterday’s request or requests comes from Holly. Do airlines and hotels keep notes on us? And if they do, is that information available to whomever on a flight, with a CS rep or upon check-in? Not that I’m paranoid or have anything to hide, but I’m just wondering if miles/points whore – nice customer – complainer is ever in the equation. No. And yes. Hotels and much better than airlines at individualizing their customer service and getting to know specific guests. And individual hotel properties are much better at this than hotel chains tend to be. But even airlines try to use metrics based on customer behavior to guide the way they interact with customers. The blunt tool for all of this, of course, is elite status. In…
Delta Already Rolled Out Their Revenue-Based Redemption (in 2008.. and Lied About What it Meant)
The big theme this year in the frequent flyer universe — at least for US airline loyalty programs — is which ones will be trying to make themselves more “revenue-based” and when? Airline frequent flyer programs — the single most successful marketing innovation in history, and profitable multi-billion dollar businesses in their own right even as the airline business has struggled — have convinced themselves they’ve been doing it wrong all these years. So trying to figure out how to ‘reward’ only those who ‘contribute the most revenue’ is in vogue. Even though frequent flyer programs aren’t supposed to be about ‘rewarding’ people, they’re supposed to be engines with which to drive incremental business. Many in the airline industry have difficulty with marginal analysis, however. Delta is expected to be the first to alter their…
How Obi Wan Kenobi Inspired Airline Executives to Lie
The median customer doesn’t keep up with changes to frequent flyer programs. They only really pay attention when it’s time to redeem their miles. They either have a good experience or a bad experience. Having a good experience does matter — customers who successfully redeem their miles become more engaged in the program than they were prior to the redemption. That was a bit of a surprise to the programs — when they first started it was common to give customers a mileage bonus when they cashed out their account. The last thing an airline wanted was a customer, previously locked into the airline because of their mileage balance, to get down to zero and become a free agent. But the 5000 mile bonus for getting down below that much became a thing of the…
Request for Requests
Most of the time what I write on a given day is really just ‘whatever pops into my head’ although sometimes the very best pieces are those prompted by reader questions. You’re always welcome to email me of course, but what I’d love is for you to share what’s on your mind here in the comments. What’s important to you in the world of travel? What’s the biggest thing right now? What would you love to understand better? What do you want to know? What do you think I could do a better job of covering for you? What would you like to see me write about? What’s on your mind? I won’t promise up front to cover everything, though I’ll read and ponder everything that’s written here in the comments. It may take me…
Will American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts Bookings at MGM Hotels Earn Credit From Hyatt Gold Passport?
Reader Jack reminds me that I promised details on whether American Express Fine Hotels and Resorts bookings at MGM’s M Life properties in Las Vegas would earn points and stay credit in the Hyatt Gold Passport program. Traditionally when making bookings through the Amex program (or through similar programs which confer additional benefits like late checkout, an upgrade upon availability, and breakfast) at a Hyatt property, Gold Passport confers credits. It’s an exception to the general approach that points and stay credits only accrue when booking through a chain directly. And in Las Vegas I was specifically interested in the point, because while there will be elite status matching between Hyatt Gold Passport and M Life beginning next month, Hyatt Diamond members won’t be getting free breakfast at MGM properties as breakfast isn’t a benefit…
Bits ‘n Pieces for July 4, 2013
News and notes from around the interweb: Earlier in the week I wrote about a blogger declining a pilot’s offer to join the mile high club. Now one accidentally joins? Free $45 on-demand car service credit. That’s more than a free ride for most trips, and may be as much as three free rides depending on distance. Turns out the promotion does indeed run through July 7 (at least as long as the $25 Amazon Local component doesn’t get pulled first). On the subject of car service discounts, Online Travel Review says Groundlink will give you 15% off with promo code BLOG15. Garuda Indonesia is slated to join Skyteam and now will be adding a first class product with ‘chef on board’ service. Should be an interesting option for redeeming Chase points transferred to Korean…
Free Marriott Platinum Status and the Trip of a Lifetime
November’s Star MegaDO was the charter of United’s first 787. Frequent flyers got to experience it in a fantastic party atmosphere, and it was covered by the Economist, by the New York Times, by the Wall Street Journal and by… the Wall Street Journal. This year’s Star MegaDO, scheduled for October 22-25, was supposed to go on sale in May. It did. Kind of. The booking engine didn’t work properly, folks that tried to get tickets were eventually processed (many manually), and the sales were suspended. Most seats for the event were sold, but the process was broken. It’s ready to re-open for sales, though, on July 10 at Noon Mountain time. The six weeks that have passed gave the organizers time for vacation (hah) but also to put together more details surrounding the trip…
1500 Free Air Berlin Miles for Joining, and Why You May Care About AIr Berlin
Wandering Aramean reports that Air Berlin will give you 1500 points for signing up. Register until 31th July 2013 (‘promotion period’) for topbonus, airberlin’s award-winning frequent flyer program and look forward to the following benefits: 1,000 award miles as a welcome gift Up to 500 additional award miles for selecting “email” as the form of communication and registering for the topbonus communication. So… why might you care about Air Berlin’s miles? Because Air Berlin is one of the few international airlines which regularly offers to match status you may have on another carrier. There are plenty of successful status match reports. Requests for status match go to service@topbonus.de with a copy of existing elite status credentials (eg elite member card and printout of online activity) And since airberlin is a member of oneworld, their Gold…
