I’m a big fan of BankDirect, I’ve written about it in the past such as here, they’ve hosted my primary checking account since July 2003. I’ve found the customer service excellent and the value proposition compelling. I get 100 American Airlines miles for every thousand dollars of average balance each month, which in a low interest rate environment is a pretty good rate of return (and unlike Citibank, they don’t 1099 the miles). As long as I keep an average balance of $2500 in the account I’m avoiding fees. They reimburse my out-of-network ATM fees and give me postage-paid envelopes for mailing in deposits. Yesterday I received a letter explaining changes to their program. They’re capping mileage earning for some very large depositors (hint: it won’t affect me at all!) and they’re upping their new…
Earn 18 US Airways Miles Per Dollar for Travel Purchases
Booking Buddy is a participant in the US Airways Skymall portal and they are offering 18 miles per dollar spent. Not sure how I missed this a couple of weeks back, other than that I was in the air enroute back from Asia when it was posted on Milepoint. A $500 ticket is worth 9000 US Airways miles. As Keri pointed out to me, a W (systemwide upgrade-eligible) fare on United to Sydney for $1300 will get you enough miles for a free domestic coach ticket. BookingBuddy is a free service designed to help travelers search all their favorite travel websites with fewer clicks and in less time. And restrictions? There aren’t any: Restrictions There are no restrictions at this time. The site offers air, hotel, and car reservations. It’s hard to imagine earning 18…
Marriott Comes Forward with List of Hotels Changing Award Categories on March 8
I gave Marriott a very hard time over the weekend for announcing that hundreds of properties would be going up in rewards category, requiring more points, on March 8 — but not telling us which ones. Loyalty Traveler reports that Marriott has made good and announced which properties will be moving up (and which will be moving down). He’s got the full list. Making these details available less than a week before the price changes doesn’t really satisfy me, but it’s still huge progress, in the recent past Marriott hasn’t announced which hotels would change categories in advance at all. Let’s hope they keep this precedent, and provide more notice going forward as well.
Free Award Wallet Premium for New Registrants
I’ve reviewed the various mileage management tools in the past, mentioned my favorites here on this blog and in various media, and the one that I use is Award Wallet. Now, there are certainly others on the scene, the folks at Mileage Manager have a tool that helps you find award seats for redemption and will keep checking the websites of your programs to let you know when seats open up. And Using Miles is a new service that I’ve heard good things about and may have promise, but I really haven’t fully vetted yet. But as I say, I’ve been happiest to date with Award Wallet. They have a free service that tracks the balances on all of your accounts, and their coverage across programs is really extensive even including the rental car and…
Bits and Pieces for March 2
Some things to be aware of: Diners Club is offering a 50% bonus on transfers to British Airways through May 2. (HT: lucky) I usually like to keep my points flexible and don’t get tempted by transfer offers. But with all of the transfer partners that have left the Club Rewards program over the years, I haven’t redeemed Diners Club points in probably four years. They do have some oddball partners that could be useful in the future, but I may still go in for this one — especially since through end of March I can pair it with the 40% bonus for transferring Amex points to British Airways. American Express Centurion (Black Card) members now receive Delta Platinum status rather than just Gold. This is effective as of yesterday and should already show up…
Chicago Seminar DO Scheduled for October 29-30
Last October I gave three talks at the Chicago Seminar DO (see here and here), a weekend-long event with talks on mileage running, getting the most of hotel and rental car programs, and my own talks on booking frequent flyer awards, benefits of the Star Alliance and easiest ways to qualify towards elite status, and taking best advantage of mistake deals. I’ll be speaking again at the next one, which has now been scheduled for October 29-30. Last year about 500 people attended, and they completely sold out the host hotel and had two overflow hotels. The event hotel will again be the Holiday Inn Elk Grove Village, bookable here. I’m told this link is the only way to secure a reservation for the nights of the event, that the hotel is completely blcoked for…
Voting Has Launched for the 2011 Frequent Traveler Awards
Voting has begun for the Frequent Traveler Awards, and will be open for the month of March. The Frequent Traveler Awards fill an important niche. Instead of awards bestowed by a group of self-appointed experts, the Frequent Traveler Awards represent the collective judgment of the traveling public. Instead of an award for best airline product or nicest resort hotel, the Frequent Traveler Awards represent the best in loyalty programs. When voting ends on March 31, real travelers will have spoken. Last year nearly one million frequent travelers participated in the voting. And on April 28 at Citi Field in New York we’ll all know which programs are the best. (Last year’s award ceremony was an amazing night.) There are a handful of changes to this year’s balloting. The Frequent Traveler Awards are divided into (3)…
Milepoint.com has launched — and is Giving Away an iPad a Day Just for Registering
Last month I shared details on Milepoint, a friendly, welcoming new frequent flyer community built on the latest technology, when it opened up its private beta. Today it officially launches. The private beta period was great, lots of opportunities to see what the software could do and plenty of people signing up even though the main Milepoint.com page just had a countdown clock to how many days until the site launched — no ability to come in any further. Still, over 4000 members managed to find their way into the site and make more than 175,000 posts. So there’s plenty going on there already! (Though with additional planned features coming online, Randy Petersen says the current site is about 15% of where it’ll eventually be.) To promote the launch, Randy is giving away an iPad…
Alone in First Class on ANA, Chicago – Tokyo
(This is a Continuation of “Trip Report – A Private Jet Experience: Alone in First Class on ANA and Thai, Plus Singapore First, a Suite, a Villa, and Some Incredible Food Porn”) The Intercontinental’s shuttle dropped us off at check-in for ANA and Lufthansa. We quickly walked up to the red carpet, first class and Star Gold checkin. Bags were tagged all the way to Singapore, even though we were on separate tickets for the Tokyo – Singapore segment. It took the agents a little while to figure out how to do it, the biggest challenge being my explaining to them that the Chicago – Tokyo flight arrived the next day and so they needed to enter the Singapore – Tokyo flight for that day. They kept entering a same day departure and getting a response…
Marriott Rewards Increasing Points Requirements for Redemptions at 350 Hotels in a Week — They Just Won’t Tell You Which Ones
Last week I wrote a fairly extensive analysisof Starwood Preferred Guest’s award category shifts. Every year the hotel chain moves some hotels up and other hotels down in reward category, changing the number of points required for redemption at each. When more hotels go up in category than down, it’s a devaluation in the program. On the whole Starwood moved as many hotels down as up, in fact a handful more went down than went up. So really just tinkering at the margins with a fairly small percentage of hotels. They gave us a full list of the changes in advance, meaning astute readers of this blog could book hotels in advance if those hotels were going up, or wait until March 1 to book those hotels going down in price. A nice little window…
