Next month British Airways is expected to announce some pretty brutal changes to its Executive Club program. They won’t tell us all yet what those changes will look like, but they’ve been dribbling out pieces of information. (They’ve told some people, for instance I’m told that the moderators of the British Airways forum on Flyertalk have been given the information but have signed non-disclosure agreements so they’re not telling publicly.) The latest bit of detail coming out is detailed by Miles from Blighty, related to elite levels. BA is introducing a new bottom-tier to the program, Bronze, which gets you seat assignments seven days in advance of travel, business class check-in, and a 25% mileage bonus on flights. They’re also no longer resetting tier points when you hit a new level, but European members residing…
Why The Tax Code Encourages American Airlines to Award Bonus Miles for Checking Bags in Boston
AAdvantage Geek points out that through November 22, American is offering its elite members 500 bonus miles for checking a bag in Boston. Of course, elites get free checked bags, so they’re encouraging customers to do something that’s free. So Wandering Aramean suggests, [T]here doesn’t really seem to be a need to care about what you’re checking. I figure just grab a FedEx box, put a bag tag on it and collect your 500 miles. No need to even collect the box at the other end I find this move by American interesting, though not at all surprising. They’re testing whether they can incentivize folks to check bags, not because it generates revenue but because it’ll simplify the boarding process. Airlines have been charging for checked bags, so no one wants to check bags. Not…
TripAlertz Got Slammed, Learned Their Lesson, and is Changing Their Rules
On Thursday I wrote about TripAlertz, a hotel package deal site that was paying way too much for e-mail addresses. Most referral deals require that the person being referred actually buy something before the website will reward the referrer. Not TripAlertz. They were paying for every email address that signed up, and the signup process was really easy, all it took was an email address and a password — not even a name. And they were paying the referrer $10 per email address. Surely that couldn’t last. And it didn’t. Already they’ve dropped their referral fee down to $1. What’s more they’ve changed the terms and conditions of the program and are applying the change retroactively — instead of having two years to redeem the referral cash, you now only have one year to redeem…
Free Points from Best Western
Via Milepoint, Best Western Gold Crown Rewards (which transfer to frequent flyer miles as well) will give you free points for liking them on Facebook and then spinning a wheel to determine your take. You’ll receive between 100 and 100,000 points, and then another 100 points if you send the deal to a friend on Facebook.
Was Hilton’s Lack of Award Availability for their Most Special Hotels Really Just an IT Glitch?
Last week it appeared that with the introduction of new ‘premium room awards’ (better rooms for more points), Hilton HHonors was discontinuing “standard” award rooms at properties which have only “special” room types like the Bora Bora Nui, Hilton Moorea, and Conrad Sanya. This mean spending as much as three times as many points for the same rooms, the very rooms at the very hotels which are the most aspirational — the things I save up points for. Hilton representatives even confirmed this in writing, then indicated that there might be as few as five standard award rooms at a given property, and are now dialing back and saying that there hasn’t been any change, that all hotels still have standard awards, and that the whole thing was an IT glitch tied to the rollout…
Why Flight Attendants Get Less Attractive Over Time
Prior to deregulation in 1978, the government told airlines what routes they could fly and what prices they could charge. They weren’t allowed to compete on the basis of price. In the two years leads up to deregulation, the Civil Aeronautics Board “experimented” with price competition. I vaguely recall Southwest becoming the largest liquor distributor in the state of Texas as a result — they were a purely intra-Texas airline and not subject to Federal regulation, their prices were not set by the Feds. But with these ‘experiments’ their prices could be matched and even undercut by competitors. So they began offering two tiers of pricing, discount fares and then full fares which were valid for the same seat but came with liquor. While the government could control pricing they couldn’t actually stop competition. That’s…
United/Continental New Fare Buckets and Mileage Earning
The Wandering Aramean put together a chart of the revenue, award, and upgrade fare buckets at the new United (i.e. post- Continental merger). Some of the changes are already in place, others are in progress, but his chart will be the new normal going forward. For the most part, it appears that the United fare buckets in economy stay the same, we get more business class fare buckets from Continental, and we migrate over to Continental’s fare buckets for upgrades and awards. That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but seems right at first blush. Of course, along with the changes to elite qualifying and redeemable bonuses for higher-priced tickets which were announced recently. The change I’m most interested in is United publishing its domestic first class awards into the “I” fare bucket. This is important…
American and Southwest Go to War With Award Wallet and Similar Mileage Tracking Websites
Scott McCartney ran a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal on moves by American Airlines and Southwest to shut down websites that help you manage your mileage balances. The two carriers have sent “cease and desist” letters in the past year to several websites that track travelers’ loyalty programs. Southwest argues the third-party sites threaten security of passenger information; American doesn’t want outsiders “scraping” data off its website. I use AwardWallet and would be very angry at American if the site were forced to no longer track my American miles. I’d genuinely be less interested in collecting American miles, since those points would be more cumbersome to track. A few points here, a few points there, I see my account balance update when I check all of my miles on one website at one time.…
Has Hilton HHonors Just Gutted Redemptions at their Best Properties?
Hilton has introduced several new features to the HHonors program recently, all at first blush sound great and some are even quite good. Cash and Points. Stretch your points farther, and you’re generally getting a higher value per point. Good on Hilton. I actually have an upcoming cash and points stay at two hotels in South Asia that represented remarkable value. I’m not all about the Cash and Points rather than traditional redemptions when available. As with Starwood, these awards represent real value. Premium Room Awards. One place where hotel chains can miss is with redemptions, you give them your room nights and earn your points and when it comes time to redeem you’re stuck in a base room. Intercontinental hotels won’t even officially honor elite upgrade benefits on award stays, which seems ludicrous and…
Free and Deeply Discounted Hotel Stays, TripAlertz Will Give You Way too Much Credit for Referring Your Friends
When I ran a contest last week to give away $200 in credit with SniqueAway, what happened was that they approached me and offered me a credit. But I thought it would work better to give it away to a reader. I’ve never been much for pursuing comps, which is probably rather silly, but there ya go. It’s fun to do the giveaways anyway. Sure, I put up my referral link because supposedly you need to be referred to SniqueAway to sign up, and somebody ought to get the referral credit if there is one, but though a couple hundred people signed up with the link I didn’t actually get anything from it (nor did I expect to) because referrers only get $25 per new member who actually buys something from the site. That makes…
