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…
Bits ‘n Pieces for May 17, 2013
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: And your reward for 10 bus trips is… another bus trip: Southwest extends double points for another month Those friendly Canadians offer up a small bonus: Aeroplan is offering 1000 bonus miles for activity with many of their partners through August 31 It’s no Grand Slam, but.. US Airways is offering a 50% bonus on hotel stays and car rentals credited to the Dividend Miles program (points transfers into Dividend Miles don’t count). Registration required. I Still Like Southwest’s Original Secretary’s Program Better: United’s new small business program lets you accrue miles in a separate account for the business for a variety of activities and should even offer the ability to transfer those miles to a personal account. Most airlines offer small business programs, usually those earn ‘credits’…
JetBlue’s Brilliant Change Fees and the End of Changeable Tickets Altogether
Lucky notes that JetBlue has increased their ticket change fees — but will waive those fees for elites (cough, Mosaic is their Animal Farm elite program). And those fees will vary based on how far in advance you book your tickets and on the price of those tickets. Change/Cancel Fee Amounts – Effective May 17, 2013 Changes and cancellations made 60 days or more prior to departure date: $75 per person fee Changes and cancellations made within 60 days of departure date: $75 per person fee for fares under $100 $100 per person fee for fares between $100 – $149 $150 per person fee for fares $150 or more *Note: Customers who booked their reservation prior to May 17, 2013 will be allowed one change or cancellation at the previous fee structure – $100/per person…
Now Bigger Mileage Bonus for Your First PointsHound Hotel Booking
On Wednesday I wrote about improvements to hotel booking site PointsHound — that by this coming week there would be about 1000 major chain hotels that you could book on the site and still earn elite status credit and in-hotel benefits, while earning a rebate in the form of a fairly substantial number of frequent flyer miles. I offered up my referral link for the site. Everyone being referred by an existing member gets 250 bonus miles with their first booking, and the referrer gets 250 miles as well. But I didn’t even mention the bonus miles that folks would get by using the link, that’s not why I suggested it. It’s that they gave me a link that would allow new members to earn more miles during their first 60 days (and with 6…
Should Passengers Without Bags Get to Board First?
Airlines have tried all manner of boarding processes for years in an attempt to load the plane more quickly. Turnaround time for an aircraft matters — to remain on schedule (delays are costly in terms of labor and misconnects), for customer satisfaction, to avoid losing air traffic control slots (delays can cascade and increasing costs can themselves increase costs). And what seems to work for awhile no longer works — due to customer complacency, due to changing behaviors, and also varies with how full an aircraft is. Checked bag fees mean more bags are brought onboard where possible. Although whereas airlines used to allow two carryon bags US government regulations now only allow one (and a ‘personal item’) as a way of speeding up a still-slow security process. The net effect of more bags is…
Why PointsHound is My New Favorite Hotel Booking Site
Back in October I covered the launch of hotel booking site PointsHound. They were giving out free miles for joining, which was cool. But at the time I said that I probably wouldn’t use the site. That’s all changing. PointsHound is a site that gives you miles – often quite a lot of miles – for your hotel bookings. Here’s what I explained at the time: [W]hile many websites like TopCashBack and eBates will offer cash back for the hotel bookings you make through the hotel’s own website, PointsHound rebates you in the form of miles and has you book through their own system. The downside to making bookings through third party websites is that some chains do not allow accrual of elite stays and nights for those reservations, some do not allow points-earning, and…
Bits ‘n Pieces for May 15, 2013
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: Delta’s Lawyers Move to South America? AviancaTaca LifeMiles makes some mostly minor tweaks to their award chart. I don’t like unannounced changes. Some programs are more trustworthy than others, and the ability to make changes at will is why I don’t like keeping huge balances (sometimes unavoidable) and why I don’t generally buy miles that aren’t for immediate use. Let’s Spend All The Loot Before The Cops Catch Us: The FAA awarded bonuses to a substantial portion of its workforce right before making sequester-imposed cuts, despite a directive from the Department of Transportation not to do so. (HT: Alan H.) 90% of Expensive is Still Expensive: Reader S.B reminds that the British Airways Visa still offers 10% off on paid BA tickets. At one point the benefit was…
