Hyatt used to be quite stingy with suite upgrades. Their top tier elites weren’t entitled to suites, even when suites were going empty, and getting into one usually took some cajoling and paying a higher than normal room rate. But now that Hyatt has upped the ante in the elite status game and provided new confirmed upgrade instruments to their top tier elites. Still, the current situation can be confusing because at present there are 3 different types of suite upgrades available through Hyatt. The points upgrade. Spend 6000 Hyatt Gold Passport points to confirm an upgrade to a suite, but you must pay the ‘prevailing rate’ for your room. And this is frequently argued to be rack rate, even though that hardly prevails with most other bookings… Diamond Upgrade Certificate. Historically each diamond member…
Delta and Northwest Offer Big Bonuses for Partner Activity
Delta’s new bonus mile offer for partner activity is called Pile on Miles. Registration required. Partner activity through June 22 counts towards incrementally more bonus miles, and each partner can only count once for the offer. Unique Partner Activities 4 ———– 4,000 miles 6 ———– 6,000 miles 8 ———– 8,000 miles 15 ———– 15,000 miles 25 ———– 25,000 miles Northwest is making the same offer, which means that between the two programs 50 partner activities earn up to 50,000 bonus miles.
Northwest Online Shopping Bonus
Northwest is offering 1000 bonus miles for shopping with specific merchants through their mileage portal through June 30, up to 10,000 miles total for the promo. The participating merchants are: AVON Bagsbuy BarnesandNoble.com Beauty.com Big Dogs Bliss Borders Brookstone Charlotte Russe CHEFS Cheryl & Co. Clinique drugstore.com eBags ESPNShop.com Footlocker Gaiam GiftBaskets.com H2O Plus Harry & David ICE.com JC Whitney Jos. A. Bank Kiehl’s Kodak Gallery Lab Series Lancome Lord & Taylor macys.com Magazines.com Magellan’s Naturalizer.com Nautica Nordstrom.com Northern Tool & Equipment Omaha Steaks Origins RedEnvelope Rosetta Stone Saks Fifth Avenue Sears.com Sephora Shoebuy ShopNBC Smart Bargains Smith + Noble SpaFinder The North Face The Walking Company Things Remembered TravelSmith Vans Vera Bradley Vision Direct VistaPrint Zazzle Naturally, there are Flyertalkers trying to figure out how to get 10,000 miles out of this promo as…
New 30,000 Mile American Airlines Credit Card Offers
One Mile at a Time has links to new, improved Citibank American Airlines credit card offers — 30,000 mile signup bonuses for the Mastercard, American Express, and Business Mastercard products. The cards have no annual fee the first year, and remember that Citi cards are churnable — you can get the signup bonuses over and over — and individuals can generally apply for two cards every 60 days although this experience on the frequency of successfully applying for cards may vary.
$220 from DC to Peru
As posted on Flyertalk, Washington-Dulles to Lima, Peru is running ~ $220 all-in, bookable any time through the end of the schedule (March, 2010). Use Kayak and enter IAD as departure city and LIM as arrival city to find it quickly. You can get the price under $200 by flying United, Dulles – Mexico City and then LanPeru down to Lima. That fare, though, is only valid through June 17, and a Saturday stay is required.
Starwood’s Free Weekend Night Promo
Speaking of Starwood, news of their next promo is out. Every two stays between May 1 and July 31 earns a free weekend night. Each free night will have to be redeemed by end of September.
Starwood Needs Confirmed Suite Upgrades for Platinums
While Starwood got great vibes from its members for this year’s recategorization of hotel award categories, it was pretty much as expected — their award categories are driven by each hotel’s average daily room rate for the previous year, and those are down markedly. (Plus the past few years have seen huge increases in the category rankings, and I believe modifications to the daily rate range for each category.) Meanwhile, Starwood’s two unique attributes are being matched by its competitors: no capacity controls on awards (now matched by Hilton and Hyatt) and upgrades to suites (now offered four times a year confirmed for Hyatt Diamonds instead of unlimited based on availability at checkin for Starwood Platinums). For some time I’ve wondered what Starwood would do to up the ante on the competition. Speculation heated up…
Bangkok Protests Ending
Apparently the Red Shirt leaders have turned themselves in to police and the protesters are going home. Meanwhile, I read that Songkran is being extended two days. Perhaps this represents loss of face for Shinawatra, but the underlying issues are unlikely to go away. He still has plenty of funds and supporters, the government isn’t seen as broadly legitimate, I’d expect that matters have simply been delayed until another day.
An End Game for Thailand?
I’ve been watching the current protests in Thailand over the past several days, and it’s fascinating from a political science perspective. The Thai PM can’t really crack down on the protesters too heavily, he just came to power himself on the back of similar protests The ASEAN conference should have been easy to provide security for, there’s basically only two roads in and out of Pattaya but nothing was done The PM has lost face in front of the international community. Has to crack down now. If it doesn’t work, he’s inept and has to leave. But if things turn violent he loses confidence of the people and has to leave. So he has to hope that the protesters disburse. Roughly speaking the protesters are being paid to protest, and things are pretty nonviolent, even…
Northwest Discounts International Award Redemption
Through April 20, Northwest Worldperks is offering discounted international redemption for travel through June 15. The offer applies to Delta, Northwest, and KLM-operated flights only. If you don’t have Worldperks miles, but have a balance with Delta Skymiles, you can of course transfer your Skymiles over to Northwest instantly to take advantage of the offer (it wouldn’t surprise me if Delta is offering the same or similar deal but I haven’t yet checked). The offer provides for a 10-20% discount on coach awards and a 25% discount on business class awards. Fourteen day advance booking and a Saturday night stay are required. Update: As expected, Delta is indeed making the same offer.
