A year ago I broke down the deficiencies in the Marriott Rewards elite program. Some of those have since been corrected, at least a little bit. Marriott Gold status comes after 50 nights, which is average for top tier status with other chains. Platinum takes a whopping 75 nights. One would expect superior or at least industry average benefits at that level. And yet late checkout is on request only, day of departure (rather than guaranteed). Resorts are excluded — but since it isn’t guaranteed, why exclude resorts? Other chains exclude resorts from their guarantee, but will generally oblige subject to availability which is all Marriott is offering anyway. Marriott’s breakfast benefit has also been weaker than the competition’s — free breakfast in the US and Canada has been guaranteed Monday – Friday only, with…
Bits ‘n Pieces for May 20, 2013
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: Back in October I explained how to get free Marriott silver status. It still works. Travelocity is offering $50 off a hotel booking of $150 or more when you download their mobile app. Anyone with a valid American Express card can get a free one-year membership to Shoprunner (or an extension of a free membership). That gets you free two-day shipping with a variety of merchants, and is generally stackable with mileage mall earning. (HT: Dan’s Deals) In March I wrote that American Express’ Bluebird 100 paper checks tied to your account for free. The last day to take advantage of this is Tuesday (tomorrow).
Why Didn’t You Hold the Plane for Me? Don’t You Know Who I Am!?!
Heels First Travel has a DYKWIA seatmate furious that the airline didn’t hold her connecting flight and muses on why an airline may choose to do so – or not to do so. It was something like “I showed up at the gate at 7:59 and they said the flight was supposed to leave at 7:55 and was already taxiing. I don’t know why they couldn’t have held the flight, it’s the same airline, they knew my flight was arriving late, I mean they even had new tickets printed for me. Now I can’t leave until 1:20PM. I’m never flying this airline again.” Airlines won’t generally hold an aircraft for a late arriving passenger. Holding a plane for 10 minutes may cause other passengers to misconnect on their next flight. Holding a plane means it…
Star MegaDO 5 Goes on Sale at 1pm Eastern
Earlier in the month I shared details of the upcoming Star MegaDO frequent flyer charter adventure. Join a couple hundred of your newest frequent flyer enthusiast friends, meeting with airline executives, getting behind the scenes tours, bringing home amazing souvenirs and memories, and earning bonus elite qualifying miles in the MileagePlus program along the way. These events sell out quickly in days or even minutes. So if you’re interested, pay attention. “North of the border to the desert to the sea” When? October 22nd-25th Partners: Air Canada, Marriott, Rimowa, Star Alliance, United Routing: Toronto – Tucson – San Francisco Touring: Rimowa factory, Air Canada, Aircraft Maintenance And Regeneration Center, plus a United Airlines Hanger Party Miles: 2500 – 15,000 elite qualifying miles with participating airline(s) depending on class of service The new MegaDO website is up and bookings for this…
$50 Rebate on 2-Night Weekend Stays at Priority Club Hotel Properties
Intercontinental Hotels Group (includes Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, etc) will be offering $50 rebates when staying 2 consecutive weekend nights and paying by Mastercard between May 31 and September 1. Registration will be required, but the website to register is not yet working. You can earn no more than one rebate per weekend, and no more than four total per household during the promotion period. And like last time, they make the process just cumbersome enough that I suspect the intentionally are hoping people don’t fulfill all of the steps necessary to get the rebate in order to lower their fulfillment costs. You actually have to mail documents in order to claim the rebate. You send them a copy of your registration confirmation and also your hotel folio with reservation number. As with all such…
Ooops! Have You Ever Wound Up in Asia Instead of Africa By Mistake?
One couple did, getting ticketed to Dhaka (Bangladesh) instead of Dakar (Senegal). It turns out the mishap all came down to the three-letter airport code airlines routinely use when making bookings or entering information on baggage tags. Instead of entering DKR (for Dakar) in the computer system, the airline representative entered DAC (for Dhaka), sparking the intercontinental travel nightmare. The couple, flying on Turkish Airlines, transited in Istanbul before joining their connecting flight to what they thought would be Dakar. They told the LA Times they didn’t notice anything was wrong, because they went by the flight number on their tickets. And the similarity in city names didn’t help matters. “When the flight attendant said we were heading to Dhaka, we believed that this was how you pronounced ‘Dakar’ with a Turkish accent,” Valdivieso said.…
View from the Wing on Video: Award Booking and Elite Status Advice
Conde’ Nast Traveler has just posted three videos featuring my advice on a variety of subjects. In this week’s edition of tips from our Top Travel Specialists Collection, we hear from Gary Leff, our specialist when it comes to award tickets and cashing in all manner of frequent flier (and frequent guest) points. In these clips, Leff talks about the very best time to cash in your frequent flier miles for free seats—and it’s not necessarily on the 331-day timeline that’s so commonly thought of as the gold standard for award bookings. Leff also shares good tips about getting into business- and first-class cabins, where service is naturally that much better. As aircraft shift and global airline alliances change, Leff shares his tricks for making sure you’re in the best seat available. In another clip,…
How Will Online Hotel Booking Change in the Near Future?
Via Reader Alan H., TripAdvisor is finally going big in hotel metasearch as a way to drive bookings. Hotel chains’ have long tried to push guests towards booking through their own channels, such as by denying elite stay credit (and in some cases elite benefits) to bookings made through online travel agents and by offering their ‘best price guarantees’ meant to suggest that customers will get the best deals there (not always true, it just means that on some rare occasions the chains will reward customers who discover they haven’t). That’s because the payouts to online agents for hotel bookings are huge, although seem to have been coming down somewhat recently. I used to see major chains paying out commissions in the high 20% ranges, while more recently such high payouts seem to apply more…
United No Longer Deceiving You With Lufthansa Award Seats That Aren’t There
Just yesterday I was musing that United.com no longer showed ‘phantom availability’ for Lufthansa, and I needed to write a blog post about that. But Lucky beat me to the punch. United and also at one time Aeroplan would show Lufthansa first class award space more than two weeks out, when Lufthansa seems not to release those seats to their partners more than two weeks out. While the seats would show up when doing a search online, you couldn’t actually book the seats and would get an error instead if you tried to do so. My working theory had been that the seats were available to Lufthansa’s own Miles & More members and that there was something wrong with the ‘point of sale’ settings when searching for these awards — United was displaying availability as…
Washington DC Taxi Protection Racket Tries to Put Uber Out of Business Again
One of my favorite posts last year was Why Taxis Suck and What You Can Do About It. With protection from competition and fixed pricing, cabs have little incentive to go beyond bare minimum regulatory standards for maintenance. Drivers may not know where they’re going, and in my city usually don’t take electronic forms of payment. Competition solves these things but local taxi regulators are the archetypical example of regulatory capture, protecting incumbents from competition rather than protecting the public. New York, like many other cities, tried to crack down on Uber as a competitive threat to incumbent interests. But like in so many other cities, customers who love the on-demand car service and taxi app spoke out loudly enough that it was too much of a threat to politicians and so the regulators more…
