Nicholas Kralev speaks to the head of United Mileage Plus and learns that the initial rollout of United one-way awards have been United metal-only because they started with the website, and the web doesn’t offer the ability to book partners. (I don’t expect that functionality anytime soon; perhaps if United and Continental merge they can keep the Continental site?) But the intention is to roll out one-way awards with partners. For the time being, United’s one-way “awards,” as well as its new “miles and money awards,” are limited to its own flights for technical reasons — those tickets can only be booked on its Web site, which doesn’t offer access to partner “awards,” Mr. Atkinson said. When phone agents are able to book them — sometime in the summer — partner-carriers will be included, he…
Priority Club Comes Down On Online Quiz Double (and One Million) Dipping Members Like a Ton of Bricks
TM Travel World reports on a Priority Club glitch. They offered a ‘quiz’ you could take for 100 points. But you could take the quiz over and over, and earn the points each time. With the assistance of a computer script, there were some members who ‘earned’ millions of points. Apparently Priority Club has frozen the accounts of folks who ‘took advantage’ of the quiz, earning 2 or more bonuses. They cancelled award reservations that had been booked by those accounts. And they haven’t been much for notifying affected individuals. I can sympathize with Priority Club. They view it as a form of fraud, even if their own IT systems are partly to blame. Personally I would have just deducted the points they didn’t intend to award. Perhaps they could have scalated things with the…
El Bulli to Close Permanently
A couple of weeks ago I reported that El Bulli (I wrote a trip report of my dinner there in 2008) would be closing for two years — the 2012 and 2013 seasons — and re-opening in 2014. Now Ferran Adria, the chef-owner, has decided to close the restaurant permanently, after the 2011 season. The restaurant and Barcelona workshop combined lose a half a million Euros per year. In fairness, that’s really by choice. The restaurant is said to get 10,000 requests per table. It’s certainly been the most difficult reservation to get in the world. They could easily raise price (my wife and I ate there for about 500 euros all-in, which isn’t unreasonable for a Michelin 3-star and certainly not for arguably the best restaurant in the world). But Adria has long said…
Taste on a Plane
Via Marginal Revolution, research by Lufthansa suggests (article in German) that tomato juice is popular on airplanes because, as Tyler explains, During a flight, everything tastes quite a bit weaker, as if you had a cold. You might think die deutschen would turn to Sichuan Chili Chicken, but no…Tomatensaft! And an anonymous commenter adds that it’s popular Because it’s an excellent source of both vitamin C and vodka? I find that onboard I frequently order bloody marys in the morning myself.
United Will Continue to Allow Stopovers on their Roundtrip Awards
Ever since United announced the introduction of one-way awards, some folks (like me) have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. When American introduced one-way awards, they took away stopovers. They made all awads one-way awards, but said no stopovers were permitted – except in the internatioanl gateway city when connecting from a domestic flight. (American still permits stopovers, of course, on their distance-based oneworld awards.) Now, this was far from necessary. Programs like British Airways and british midland permit stopovers on their one-way awards. But United usually comes pretty close to following American. Without stopvoers, if you want to visit 3 cities, it takes 3 one-way awards. And you spend more miles. Pretty tempting change from a mileage program’s perspective, huh? So United introduced one-way awards and those so far are limited to…
Two More Free Hilton Night Giveaways
Submit a comment at Things in the Sky and make Lucky’s brother laugh at One Mile at a Time. Wow, that’s four free Hilton night giveaways at the same time, courtesy of BoardingArea.com. Thanks, Randy!
United Announces New Award Chart Effective April 27
United has announced a new award chart set to take effect April 27. On the whole the changes aren’t drastic, split up a couple of regions, and basically copy Continental. They created separate regions for Northern and Southern South America. Currently the cost of an award from North America to South America is 55,000 miles in coach, 100,000 miles in business, and 135,000 miles in first class. Under the new award chart, “Northern” South America is 35,000 miles in coach, 70,000 miles in business, and 90,000 miles in first. Meanwhile, “Southern” South America remains at the old (55/100/135) pricing. So this is actually an improvement, awards to Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Surinam, and Venezuela are less expensive. Awards to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay remain the same price. Business Class between…
Another Free Hilton Night Opportunity
Marshall Jackson on Travel is also giving away a free Hilton night. And like my giveaway, you just have a leave a comment to enter. And as of this writing, there are only 9 entries. So time to jump over there and throw your hat in the ring!
Enter Here to Win a Free Hilton Hotel Night
Thanks to Hilton Hotels and BoardingArea.com I am giving away a free Hilton hotel night. And this is the official entry thread. Specifically, I’m offering a Hilton “Be My Guest” free night certificate valid “for one night of complimentary lodging [room and tax only] at any participating Hilton Hotel in the United States” with an expiration of June 30, 2010. To enter, just leave a comment in this thread! Any comment will do. One entry per person, please. The contest will run through noon Eastern time on Friday, February 19. And one commenter will be selected at random as the winner. I’ll be traveling when the contest closes but it shouldn’t take long for me to announce who has won. You have a pretty great shot of winning. I don’t have all that many readers,…
How the Hilton Free Hotel Night Giveaway Will Work
Thanks to everyone for the input on how I should manage the giveaway of a Hilton “Be My Guest” free night certificate (valid “for one night of complimentary lodging [room and tax only] at any participating Hilton Hotel in the United States.” Most folks didn’t like “enter as many times as you want.” I enjoyed watching my comment count go up when I gave away the travel power strips and allowed unlimited entries. But this time we’re going to try something new. Some commenters suggested that entering require some kind of value-added on readers’ part, leaving a tip for the community of readers. Others suggested that entry require some statement about how the winner would use the certificate, at some level getting at how much a winner deserves the certificate. Either of those would require…
