The New York Post runs a piece on the devaluation of Starwood points resulting from annual ‘category creep’. The author of the piece (and her editors at the Post, apparently) can’t do match and or catch reverses of some of the numbers. For example: A 66 percent hike for what Starwood calls “elite” hotels, including W New York, the Westin St. John Resort and the Meridien Beach Plaza in Monte Carlo (now 12,000 points instead of 20,000). A 40 percent hike in points needed to stay at the Westin Embassy Row, Washington, DC, or the Westin Sydney Australia (now 16,000 points instead of 10,000). (Emphasis mine.) I find the tone of the piece overly alarmist, especially this year as compared to last. But then I guess that’s the New York Post. “It’s sneaky. Did they…
Some Airfare Discounts, Specific Routes
American is offering a 15% discount to either Cozumel or Cabo San Lucas for tickets purchased by February 27, 2008 for travel between March 1, 2008, and April 30, 2008 with promotion code AA44MEX3. American is offering a 10% discount between New York-JFK and Los Angeles or San Francisco and between Washington-Dulles and Los Angeles for tickets purchased by February 26, 2008 for travel between February 26, 2008, and April 7, 2008 with promotion code AA178E1W. American is offering a 15% discount to Hawaii for tickets purchased by March 4, 2008 for travel between April 1, 2008 and June 20, 2008 with promotion code DFHAWAII. Alaska is offering a 10% discount to Seattle from any US or Canadian city for travel between June 22, 2008 and July 2, 2008 with code ECCMR9910.
5000 Delta Miles for Airport Budget Rentals of a Day or More
Budget is offering 5000 Delta miles for car rentals at airport locations through March 31. There are a few terms and conditions, and not all Budget locations participate, but it’s rare to see a large mileage bonus that’s valid on just a single day’s rental. So I have a feeling that some folks may want to steer their airport business to Budget for the next month.
Iraqi Airways Buys Boeing!
Via Online Travel Review, Iraqi Airways has agreed to purchase 50 aircraft, 44 of which will come from Boeing. They say the reason for selecting Boeing is because their “technicians and pilots are more used to planes from the US planemaker” and not because of, unmm, like, the U.S. military occupation. Boeing planes may well make more sense for the airline, the story doesn’t say which ones or at what price they’re actually going to buy them. And the aircraft apparently won’t be arriving until 2015, so it’s also unclear how really committed this sale is. Again, details in the piece are sparse. But I just have a hard time believing the airline’s government minder that it was because Iraqi Airways’ current pilots knew how to fly Boeing aircraft (I mean, did Iraqi Airways buy a whole…
Grist from the Merger Rumor Mill
United-Continental merger gossip from the PlaneBusiness Blog: [T]he bulk of the existing United Airlines brand will continue to be used internationally, but Continental will take over the domestic operation for the most part. Other details we were told included the fact that there has already been a transition team put together. The deal will be announced after Delta/Northwest goes public. There will initially be a holding company set up to run both airlines. This operation will continue for three-five years. This will allow for a “smoother transition” from the two airlines into one operation. Meanwhile, this Bloomberg piece (hat tip PlaneBusiness Blog) outlines details of how and why pilots are holding up the Delta-Northwest merger. Northwest union chiefs want their members to be ranked by when they were hired, while their Delta counterparts want a…
Priceline Lives
This USA Today story provides a good introduction to Priceline. (I’m quoted in the piece.) With hotel rates and occupancy as high as they’ve ever been in some major cities, Priceline has seen less inventory and higher rates… but still occasionally some incredible deals, as the spread between Priceline rates and otherwise-available rates is even higher. I’ve personally moved away from Priceline for much of my travel over the past several years, in large measure because I’m addicted to the upgrades and other benefits of hotel loyalty programs, but for city stays where I don’t really value a suite Priceline still offers a real bargain, especially for multi-night stays and bookings involving more than one room, where the savings multiply. And I’ve probably made about 80 Priceline bookings a year for other people. I save…
Qantas Explains Frequent Flyer Program Accounting and Value Proposition
Via the Global Traveller, Qantas’ half-year results (.pdf) include a discussion of how airlines account for their frequent flyer programs on pages 45-50 of the document (pages 29-34 of the 38 page Acrobat file). Nothing revolutionary, and regular readers of this blog will be familiar with most of it, but it does represent a clearr explication of the concepts (with visuals, whereas I use only words).
What to Do with An Expiring United Systemwide Upgrade?
Tonight I received my weekly MilesLink E-Newsletter from Randy Petersen’s shop. It contains an Ask Randy feature, with advice for a frequent flyer who wanted to know whether there was anything that they could do with their otherwise-expiring United systemwide upgrade (such as trade it with someone else for a future expiring upgrade)? Randy outlined the Coupon Connection forum on Flyertalk. Quite natural advice. I’d add that every United 1K member should know about an unpublished practice over at Mileage Plus: In each of the last couple years, United has been willing to extend the validity of one systemwide upgrade for a year upon request. There’s a long discussion of the phenomenon in the United Mileage Plus forum on Flyertalk.
Advances in the Corporate Travel Space
Sabre’s version of Facebook is coming to an Amex Corporate Travel booking engine near you. But no one can tell you exactly why they’re spending money on this, other than the promise of cost savings like once employees know they are traveling to the same location, they can arrange to share ground transportation, for example. Technology investments predicated on reducing taxicab expense seem like a great idea to me.Not to worry, the business rationale promises to be “more of a play that might compete with applications that do social networking for the entire enterprise, such as ones delivered by CoreSpeed and IBM, to benefit beyond the travel program and into a space where Sabre is competing with these generalists,” Or something like that.Oh, it’s also about inverting the corporate travel dialogue, so that travel managers…
Can I Redeem My Miles for a Job in the Obama Administration?
Now that Intrade has Obama over 80% likely to win the Democratic nomination (post-Wisconsin and better than 70% likely to win the most delegates in Texas, though lose Pennsylvania and Ohio), I’d love to transfer some of my millions of frequent flyer miles into Obama points. Maybe I could try to redeem for a job as Secretary of Transportation? That is sort of how the system works, right, and miles are just a proprietary currency? After all, I once had a friend do her taxes and try to deduct her political contributions as a ‘job search expense’….
