From 2004-2006 the Renaissance Boca Raton was probably the hotel I stayed at most often. Once upon a time it was actually a Sheraton, it’s on 19th street but you turn off Glades Road onto Renaissance Way which brings you a block down to the property. I remember driving past Sheraton Way years back. It happens to be the closest decent place to where I was traveling. And it was a hidden treasure. Service used to be incredible. Some of the friendliest, most engaging people I had come across at a hotel, I thought the place was flagged with the wrong Marriott brand or at least they had sent the staff over from the Palm Beach Ritz. An oasis of a suburban hotel, the pool area was more akin to a resort. Without a resort…
Did You Win My 60,000 Starwood Starpoint Giveaway?
My 60,000 Starpoint giveaway — in which 2 readers win 30,000 Starwood Starpoints apiece, courtesy of American Express — has now ended. The American Express folks wanted to know how you would ‘stretch your summer’ with 30,000 Starwood points, the new limited time bonus offer on their Starwood American Express personal and small business credit cards. So I asked y’all, and 3770 entries were submitted before the close of the context. I drew winners with the help of Random.org. The first winner was entry #606: and that was Tina Trin who wrote: W in Los Angeles Our second winner was entry 2408: That winner was revealed as Austin who wrote: St Regis Bora Bora! Now, I should note that in checking the eligibility of these winners I did find an Austin mentioning a different St.…
Last Day to Win Starwood Starpoints
Today is the last day to enter to win Starwood points — 30,000 points apiece to two lucky readers. The deadline is 5pm Eastern (and you can enter once every 24 hours, so if you’ve entered before, don’t forget that). American Express offered the points to help you “stretch your summer” with a last-minute getaway. Way back in May 2002 when I first started this blog I wrote, “the credit card I recommend most often for earning miles is the Starwood American Express, because points transfer 1:1 into most airline programs and you get a 5k mile bonus for transferring 20k points — equivalent to earning 1.25 miles per dollar on all purchases.” Last month I attended a launch event for a new credit card and the rep from Visa saw the Starwood Amex as the card to beat.…
Virgin America and JetBlue take Different Rhetorical Tacts With Their Elite Programs While American Makes Premium Cabin Investments
Over at CreditCards.com Cathleen McCarthy has a piece on the new Virgin America and JetBlue elite status programs. I recently flew JetBlue for the first time in a decade and didn’t mind it a bit, I was able to credit my mileage-earning to American AAdvantage (albeit not for status miles, which is cool because I had already re-qualified for Executive Platinum). Their offering is a decent mid-tier status equivalent, it doesn’t come with a first class upgrade benefit since the airline has no first class, but then most mid-tier elites don’t wind up with complimentary upgrades all that often anyway. I covered their elite status a few weeks ago and called it ‘animal farm’ status, since the airline insisted on claiming that all of their customers were still equally important (some customers were just more…
Singapore Airlines Plans to Introduce New Seats in Second Half of 2013
I’ve only ever flown Singapore’s old style first class, such as on the since-retired 747s, as in this trip report. I’m looking forward to upcoming mileage redemptions in Singapore’s new first class seat, and I’m hoping that the route I’m on goes Airbus A380 (for suites with doors!). I still haven’t been in the ‘new’ first class. But along comes news that that won’t even be ‘new’ first for much longer, since Singapore is working on introducing new new seats starting in the second half of 2013. Revamped seats and cabin interiors as well as the latest generation of in-flight entertainment offerings will be introduced progressively, starting on new Boeing 777-300ERs that will enter service from the latter half of next year. This will be followed by Airbus A350s and Boeing 787s, in addition to…
Bonus for Transferring Points to Aeroplan
Aeroplan is offering bonus points for transfers from hotel programs, car rental programs, and points.com through September 9. Registration required. The total points you transfer in during the promotion period determines your bonus: 5000 Aeroplan miles = 1000 bonus miles 10,000 Aeroplan miles = 2000 bonus miles 20,000 Aeroplan miles = 4000 bonus miles 50,000 Aeroplan miles = 10,000 bonus miles Bonus miles post 7-10 days after reaching the required threshold. They offered a similar bonus in late spring, but with options to earn up to 40,000 bonus miles for transfers in of 150,000 miles. Under this promotion 40,000 Starwood points yield 60,000 Aeroplan miles. Good, but not quite good enough in most cases since Aeroplan gutted their reward chart and began adding fuel surcharges to most partner awards.
Priority Club Shopping Toolbar: a Glitch I Decided Not to Write About
Priority Club offered 300 points for downloading their shopping toolbar. That’s the software that helps you automatically earn Priority Club purchases when you visit a merchant you can earn points with. (I don’t recommend earning through the Priority Club portal most of the time as it isn’t as rewarding as other alternatives.) Friday evening I realized that they didn’t actually make you complete the download and install the toolbar to earn the points, and the only way they kept you from earning the points over and over was cookies or a similar technology. Unsurprisingly, since I realized it, others did too. Folks were clicking through the download offer over and over using Google Chrome’s incognito mode, earning 300 points each time. Some just hit the back button and then re-submitted over and over, others wrote…
Avis Introduces Pick Your Own Car and Upgrade Yourself
Since June Avis has been rolling out new features branded as “Select&GO” which I experienced for the first time at their Miami airport location. Normally they generate a rental contract for Preferred members their flights land, that’s what they do with the flight information you add to your reservation. Arrivals generate contracts auto-printing. Now they send an email with car information and space number, there’s no contract in the car, you show your drivers license at the checkout booth and they print a contract to hand to you. Now, I assume because I have status with Avis they actually assigned my car early and that generated an email to me. I was about to leave for the airport, I hadn’t even taken off yet. I don’t actually like the Chrysler 300 so I rang up…
A Personal Flying First — a Missed Approach Last Night
Surprising that it took this long, but as I tweeted last night I had my first-ever missed approach on arrival at Washington National airport, flying American AA1136 in from Miami the pilot pulled up just before landing. Then he came on the PA and announced that air traffic control had cleared a takeoff too close to our arrival, that it hadn’t yet cleared the runway, so we’d have to go around. Without access to air traffic control information myself I don’t know more details than that, it’s one of those times that I especially miss United’s “Channel 9” audio which allows you to listen to air traffic conversations (when the pilot is willing to turn it on). But interesting that it happened at National, less than a couple of weeks after July 31’s near-miss of…
American AAdvantage Fuel Surcharge and Oneworld Addition Speculation
JonNYC is speculating (and such speculations usually pan out) that American AAdvantage will begin adding fuel surcharges to awards on another partner imminently. Currently they add fuel surcharges onto awards booked on British Airways. A London roundtrip might add $850 cash cost in addition to taxes. A South Africa roundtrip from the US might add $1450. American began adding these fuel surcharges with the advent of their joint business venture. Previously AAdvantage members could not book awards between the US and London on British Airways (but could between Canada and the Caribbean and London, as well as between London and the rest of the world) but with no fuel surcharges. The US transatlantic restriction was lifted, but these cash surcharges were added to all BA awards. And they began adding much more modest surcharges to…
