I love Starwood Preferred Guest points. In many ways, Starpoints are the single most valuable currency. They transfer one-to-one into more airline mileage currencies than any other program, and they add 5000 bonus miles with the transfer when moving Starpoints into 20,000 mile increments. That’s incredible flexibility. Oh, and they can be used for hotels too! But the one knock on the points, and the reason I ultimately value Starpoints less than I do Chase Ultimate Rewards, is how long they take to transfer to mileage programs. Whereas Chase is ‘live’ with most of its partners — meaning that points show up in the mileage accounts instantly when you make the transfer — Starwood takes several days to up to a month to put points into a mileage account. That means you cannot just find…
British Airways Introduces Lifetime Elite Status, Leaves Lifetime bmi Elites in the Cold
British Airways has announced the introduction of a lifetime elite status program. (This has been fairly expected.) Your lifetime Tier Points earnings are listed when you log into your Executive Club account. Lifetime Gold status is earned after accumulating 35,000 tier points. That’s a lot — Gold for a single year requires 1500 points. Compare that to a “million mile” program where flying 100,000 miles for 10 years is enough to earn status. The minimum required with British Airways is more than 20 years of flying at the top tier level. On the other hand, Gold is the top British Airways status you can generally earn based on flying alone. So that should probably be compared to 2 or even 4 million miles in a miles-based lifetime program in the U.S. At that level, it’s…
Bits ‘n Pieces for September 10, 2013
News and Notes from around the interweb: Starwood and Delta introduced “Crossover Rewards” back in February. It was originally rumored that Starwood Platinums would receive space available upgrades on Delta but that benefit wasn’t included in the rollout. It’s now official: Beginning September 12 Starwood Platinums registered with Crossover Rewards will be in the queue for space available upgrades at the gate, behind all eligible airline elite members (even behind Alaska’s elites). So don’t count on ever getting one, and don’t make your flying decisions based on this. But it’ll be a nice surprise for some if it happens. Back in January Delta announced that unless your account is based outside the US or you put $25,000 in spending on a co-branded Delta credit card, you’ll have to spend a minimum amount on Delta tickets…
Can Sites That Give You Miles for Hotel Bookings Also Get You Better Rates?
I’ve written about Rocketmiles several times in the past, such as here, here, and here. And I’ve written about PointsHound several times in the past few months as well (Here, here, here, here). Both Rocketmiles and PointsHound are hotel booking sites that rebate much of their commission to you in the form of frequent flyer miles. Earning Frequent Flyer Mile Rebates for Your Hotel Bookings For the most part, you may not earn hotel points or elite status credit when booking through these sites — just as you wouldn’t when booking through an online agency such as Expedia or Orbitz — although PointsHound does have ‘double dip’ rates where you will. (Hyatt and Marriott will generally honor elite treatment during your stay on these rates, while as a general proposition Starwood and Hilton will not.)…
Qatar Airways Joining oneworld on October 30
Over the weekend I shared an amazing fare on Qatar Airways that I said would be great for mileage running — earning American Airlines miles and American status — once Qatar joined oneworld. Well, the oneworld website now says that will happen on October 30. It’s been a rocky road getting here. Qatar used to be a United partner. Word leaked a year ago that Qatar was expected to join oneworld. (Incidentally, a one-year transition into an alliance is very fast – I generally expect at least 18 months.) The airline’s CEO emphatically denied it, boldly declaring that they would not join oneworld… only to announce just over a week later that it would happen. Back in May we learned that the launch date would be in October and indeed, October 30 is still October.…
Time to Register for National Car Rental’s One-Two-Free Promotion
Two weeks ago I shared that National Car Rental was bringing back its One-Two-Free promotion which is one of the very best in the rental car space. Registration is now open. They’re offering a free rental day on every two paid midsize or larger rentals of 2 days or more through the end of January. Plus, a series of activities can earn points towards a free rental. A free rental day requires 600 points, and you can earn: 25 points for downloading their mobile app 75 points for making a reservation with their mobile app 50 points for opting into emails 300 points for referring a friend that rents 50 points for opting in to ‘virtual credentials’ 200 points for a week long rental 200 points for an ‘Enterprise local’ rental 25 points for a…
Time to Register for Hyatt’s New Promotion
Hyatt’s new promotion was announced August 22 but registration wasn’t available until today. The Hyatt twitter presence threw me for a loop yesterday teasing news with a picture of an airline passenger, but it was really just a reminder that registration for the new promotion would open Monday. You’ll earn bonus points every 5 eligible nights between September 9 and November 30 as follows: Stays at MGM M Life-participating properties in Las Vegas count, and registration must be completed by October 31. It’s actually a pretty lucrative promotion for guests racking up lots of nights. Last year’s similar promotion gave 35,000 points after 20 nights and this year’s gives you 50,000. In general Hyatt Gold Passport offers the most rewarding program for free nights and is also the most generous for room upgrades with points…
And That’s What British Airways Avios Are For (Last Minute Short Haul Domestic)
Goodness knows I’m not a fan of British Airways Avios. I like my mileage redemptions long haul and in premium cabins. There used to be some fantastic values in the British Airways program for that — such as Cathay Pacific from the US to Asia in business class for 100,000 points with stopovers permitted. Sadly, since November 2011, no longer. But there are great strategic uses for the points and they generally center around shorter flights (since British Airways award tickets are priced based on distance), non-stop (since British Airways charges separately for each flight segment), and coach (since the program charges a full double miles for business class and triple miles for first — and US domestic front cabin is triple miles for “first”). You can still work the award chart to your advantage…
Free Hilton Gold Status
… with a European Hilton HHonors account address, and upon entering a Visa Infinite card number. Back in December 2011 I flagged an opportunity to get instant Gold Hilton HHonors status for free. It was an offer meant for Visa Infinite cardholders, but anyone could sign up. Some Visa Infinite numbers stopped working, while others remained functional. The offer was still available come March of 2012. Every time Hilton would tweak the signup process, commenters here would figure out how to get it to work again. The offer was still alive come mid-year. Finally, it was pulled. Some people who used the offer to signup for instant status had that still removed, while others got to keep it. Many who used the free Gold signup to get status have since had their status lapse (although…
Wild Speculation Time: What’s Hyatt’s Big Announcement Tomorrow?
Update: Ok, they got me. I read waaaaayyy too much into the photo of a happy passenger flying. It’s registration for Hyatt’s new promotion which starts tomorrow. Heh. Hyatt tweeted that they’ll be making a Gold Passport announcement tomorrow. And the accompanying picture is of a happy passenger sitting in an airline seat. The suggestion seems to be that Hyatt is about to improve the airline experience. Starwood and Delta have done a tie-up this year. So have United and Marriott. Could we see a deal between Hyatt and American? The man in charge at Hyatt used to work for American, after all. I actually don’t think so. Timing. Hyatt doesn’t seem like it moves quickly. The MGM M Life deal took two years to come about. There were lots of things supposedly in the…
