One Mile at a Time beat me to the punch, I got an email last night from ANA that I didn't read and I saw a thread on Milepoint but I was pretty tired… Ben was more on the ball. So he posted about an All Nippon Mileage Club Survey offering 100 points. It’s 16 quick questions about their website and about social media. The real value in the offer, as Ben points out, is that ANA has a great website to search for Star Alliance awards but that they’ve implemented a restriction requiring you to have some miles in your account before you can use the search tool without extra effort for a workaround. This should get you the 100 miles you need to save you effort down the road. I really liked the…
250 Free Starwood Points
The recent free points offers for ‘liking’ Starwood hotels on Facebook haven’t worked out too well, they get much greater response than expected and they end the offers early. I haven’t blogged any of them, because I’ve been busy and haven’t seen them until maybe 8-12 hours after they’re posted on various other websites… and they’re already dead. It seems that hotels expect to narrowly target, say, guests at the hotel with a sign in the lobby — connect with their existing guests. But they just say ‘like us on Facebook and we’ll give you points’ with no other qualifying criteria, the offers get posted online, and we all go, “Free points??? YEAH!” And then a motel in Heth, Arkansas all of a sudden has 15,000 fans (most of whom would never be willing to…
792 Free US Airways Miles
Via UnRoadWarrior, the US Airways online maill offers 792 miles for signing up for Rebtel, an international dialing service. Importantly, no credit card or other payment information is required for setting up the account, so it’s just free miles (which will also be good enough to reset the expiration date on your account, if you don’t acquire US Airways miles often).
2 Free Nights at Grand Sierra Resort & Casino, Reno
The Grand Sierra Resort & Casino in Reno is offering two free nights, bookable through December 23rd. You have to enter your zip code when searching for reservations, because the offer is restricted to guests from outside their local area. A “Luxury Summit Suite” upgrade is $25 per night. Although I don’t quite understand how the website describes a standard room as ‘amost 500 square feet’ and then the more expensive suite as being ‘420 square feet’. Meanwhile, a Grand Suite is listed at $55 per night additional and clocks in at ‘558 square feet’. It looks as though the offer is aimed at regular diners of Charlie Palmer’s Steak House, though appears bookable by anyone. The property itself looks ‘fine for Reno’ which is to say that I wouldn’t make a special trip because…
Delta Releases Animated Rendering of New JFK Terminal 4
Delta has released a new Youtube video, an animated rendering of their new JFK Terminal 4 project. The main terminal itself looks great, clean lines, high ceilings, plenty of light. Roughly speaking it reminds me of an Asian airport. We’ll see what it looks like in practice, how the materials hold up to use, and how well it’s treated by my fellow New Yorkers (I no longer live there, but I’m still a New Yorker). The concourses themselves though don’t look nearly as nice, much lower ceilings, although anything new in New York is bound to be an improvement. Some of the marketing copy in the video, though, just seems to set expectations a little bit too… high “We’re investing $1.2 billion of renovations and innovations that will turn JFK into a state of the…
Are We About to See an End to Naked Images at the Airport?
Apparently the TSA has been testing software which will display a generic person instead of your naked body when going through a nude-o-scope. (HT: legalalien on Milepoint.) The idea is to display hidden items under clothing but instead of against an image of your naked body, against a generic naked body drawing that will tell the TSA where to look in secondary screening. They’ll be rolling out the software “in the comming months” to millimeter wave machines, but not yet to backscatter machines. My guess is that this will satisfy many privacy advocates, it’s a brilliant PR move, but does little to address the underlying problems of the TSA — its wasteful inability to do things that actually promote security — all the while making us used to submitting to inspections by the state as…
Reduction in Benefits Coming for the Continental Presidential Plus Mastercard
In a big week for credit card changes, United has announced details of what will become of the Continental Presidential Plus Mastercard, the high-end card that includes lounge access, no foreign currency transaction fees, and on which spending counts towards elite status. This week we already learned that the combined United-Continental frequent flyer program will have expiring miles and that last seat availability for standard (additional miles) awards would be restricted to elites and credit card holders, plus that cardholders who are elites would be eligible for complimentary upgrades on domestic coach awards. Now we know more details on the high-end card product, which incorporates all the benefits of the United Explorer Visa (aka Continental Onepass Plus Mastercard) and includes additional benefits. As expected, the Continental Presidential Plus Mastercard will continue substantially in its present…
Tequila Happy Hour Thursdays in Delta Lounges and Lifestyle Co-Branding
Via Points, Miles, & Martinis, Delta is offering tequila happy hours on Thursdays from 5pm – 7pm in several of their clubs: Atlanta (Concourse A center 2nd level, T6, B25, & C37) New York-JFK (T2 & T3 gate 11) New York-LGA (Concourse near gate 2) Detroit (Terminal across from gate A38) Boston Miami Los Angeles* * Los Angeles tequila hours: Thursdays 7-9pm. Here’s the promo video: What’s interesting isn’t free drinks in a departure lounge. And I suppose pushing happy hour during the key “end of business travel work week” time block makes perfect sense. It’s more that it represents the re-introduction of lifestyle co-branding to airline lounges. I used to see quite often product sample giveaways, mostly circa 2002 and 2003 although certainly I still pick up my McCormick & Schmick $20 off coupons…
Cash Back for Liking American Express on Facebook
Via Carol, if you ‘like’ the American Express Facebook page then you can take advantage of their “Link, Like, Love” promotion: link any Amex card and then you can register for a bunch of different offers including receiving a $40 statement credit for $100 Sheraton spend on the card by the end of August and a separate $40 statement credit for $100 Westin spend by the end of August. There are a few others that may be useful depending on your interest, $5 back on $20 spend at Whole Foods or maybe there’s some non-zero chance of spending $25 at Outback Steakhouse by August 18. I do see $15 off $50 at 1-800-Flowers, presumably you could do a $50 order with full mileage earning through one of the shopping portals, and all that Amex sees…
Big Changes to United Mileage Plus Revealed By New Credit Card Launch
Yesterday I uncovered details on the new United Explorer credit card from Chase, a bit before they had intended to launch it, and divined some details on the future of the Mileage Plus program from the card’s terms and conditions. One of the interesting things was that holding the card would prevent miles in your account from expiring due to inactivity (I guess this would be useful to people who keep the card and never use it, pay the $95 annual fee for the card, and never earn or redeem miles in their account, there can’t be that many of those people). That was a giveaway that in the combined United-Continental program, miles would expire. United has had 18 month mileage expiration. Continental hasn’t expired miles. I fully expected that this would be the approach…
