The Intercontinental Barclay is a great Royal Ambassador hotel. The agent at the dedicated Ambassador check-in desk (where you may be seated, instead of standing in the sometimes long lines at reception) explained, “Royal Ambassadors are supposed to get suites.” And so I did. This is not a truly world class hotel, by any means. Turndown service is performed and they… turn down your bed and turn on the CD player. They didn’t deliver any chocolates or bottled waters, fortunately Royal Ambassadors receive complimentary drinks from the minibar so it hardly mattered. The bathrooms, even in a suite, are tiny and virtually identical to bathrooms in standard rooms. The closets, however, both in suites and regular rooms are quite large for New York City. In fact, rooms here generally are large by New York…
$50 for Test Driving a Dodge
Via Frugal Travel Guy, Dodge is offering $50 for taking a test drive. And dealerships in New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee and Maryland can’t even make you take the test drive to qualify.
Marriott MegaBonus Returns
In my Christmas Day post on hotel bonuses, I noted that I wasn’t aware of what Marriott was offering. Carol emails to let me know that they’ve got their ‘MegaBonus’ back up and running (you’ll be prompted to log into your account in order to see the details, and registration is required to earn the bonus). The offer is 2,500 points for every paid stay with Marriott, starting with your second stay, between February 1 and April 30, 2009 — up to 25,000 points maximum for the promotion. And of course you have to be choosing to earn Marriott points instead of airline miles in order to earn the Marriott points bonus. Update: As pointed out in the comments — and I should know this is how Marriott does it! — different members will receive…
New Year, New Hotel Promos
The new year is bringing a sleuth of new hotel promotions. Hilton is offering double points (at participating hotels only) between January 6 and April 6. Priority Club is offering 3000 bonus points for every third qualifying night, up to 30,000 points between January 12 and April 30. For those earning miles instead of points, the offer is 1000 bonus miles for every 3rd night, up to 10,000 miles. Starwood is offering 500 bonus points for each each qualifying night, plus an additional 5,000 every 10th night from January 7 through April 30. This Flyertalk thread suggests that between January 9 and April 30, Hyatt will offer: ~ Stay two nights and earn 2,000 bonus points/miles ~ Stay four nights and earn an additional 4,000 bonus points/miles (totaling 6,000 bonus points) ~ Stay six nights…
1000 Delta Miles for Test Driving a Mercedes (10 Locations Only)
Mercedes is offering 1000 Delta Skymiles for a test drive at ten ‘select’ dealerships, fortunately the one in my home town is included. This isn’t nearly as lucrative as the British Airways offer from about 5 years ago which gave 10,000 miles for test driving a Jaguar — and of course British Airways’ family accounts allow you to combine miles from four different people towards a single ticket which meant that test drive offer was really worth 40,000 miles. Still, if it’s convenient and if test driving a Mercedes is appealing, this is a reasonable offer. The participating dealerships are: Alexandria, Virginia Atlanta, Georgia Cincinnati, Ohio Eugene, Oregon Lindon, Utah Northbrook, Illinois* Orlando, Florida St. Claire Shores, Michigan Valencia, California Tiverton, Rhode Island * In Illinois if you actually buy the car, you get appointed…
Mileage Transfers Between Northwest and Delta Accounts To Become an Option in February?
I’ve written in the past that I expect Delta and Northwest to allow members to transfer miles back and forth between their Skymiles and Worldperks accounts at will, prior to the two programs combining into one. This is similar to what America West and US Airways permitted members to do, outsourced to Points.com to handle the transfers. Randy Petersen predicts that this will go into effect in February, and offers some inside baseball details on how this is being accomplished, via in-house technology. This will allow members to combine their points form the two programs towards an award ticket, access partners of one program that may not be partners of the other, and utilize the best award chart or award rules for their situation. Sadly, they’ve taken steps to limit the opportunities for arbitrage across…
Changes — Likely DEVALUATIONS — Coming to the Intercontinental Royal Ambassador Program
The Intercontinental Royal Ambassador program — which has been the most rewarding elite level program of any hotel chain — is making changes come February. Some foolish Flyertalk members believe those changes will make the program better. One Mile at a Time says the changes will make the program worse. He is correct. “[N]ew benefits and a brand new web experience,” as the marketing promises, cannot be good. “New benefits” will mean different and less lucrative benefits rather than “more” benefits on top of the existing ones (like free minibar, exceptionally generous upgrades, and 8am guaranteed check-in). And a “brand new web experience” will offer virtually nothing of value, and will not compensate in any way for whatever is taken away. Thanks to the Royal Ambassador program I’ve received a Terrace Suite at the Mark…
Award Booking Day
I only accomplished a limited amount of ‘work’ yesterday, spending more time than I should have developing award tickets for co-workers. One colleague is traveling to Bangkok and Singapore. It’s a first class award booked with Air Canada Aeroplan points. But the outbound was especially arduous — the only transpacific flight we could find on the needed day was Asiana’s Los Angeles – Seoul flight, but to connect to it from DC required a 6am departure connecting through Chicago — the early morning LA non-stop flight didn’t provide enough connecting time at LAX. (Asiana’s LA-Seoul flights, to some extent their LA-Chicago flights, and Air China’s flights are perhaps the most available Star Alliance transpac awards in premium classes, just a tip…)As the trip approached, United’s Dulles-Beijing flight opened up. Granted it’s United (and their old…
Air Canada Aeroplan: My New Favorite Airline Frequent Flyer Program?
For anyone that predicts the spin-off of a frequent flyer program into a separate publicly traded business must mean a devaluation of the program, check out the changes to Aeroplan and see what you think! The Aeroplan program has recently developed a reputation as stingy, but it’s anything but. Sure, they collect pretty hefty fees on award redemptions, usually called fuel surcharges. But when you combine at least two non-Air Canada partners on a single award they price taxes and fees manually and don’t include a fuel surcharge. I recently ticketed a first class award to Asia with Aeroplan points and the total taxes and fees were less than US$60. Air Canada is a member of the Star Alliance, so Aeroplan points can be used to book plenty of partners — this solves the frequent flyer…
The Travel Industry Has Blogs to Contend With
Nicholas Kralev’s Washington Times covers travel blogs this week. Public relations departments of airlines can’t catch a break. Not only is their industry under constant scrutiny by the public and the traditional media, now they have bloggers to worry about. … Gary Leff, whose blog is View From the Wing, said the best way to get him to write about something is to understand his interests. “But also be ready for questions. A PR flak who doesn’t know his product isn’t likely to get very far – or might get made fun of,” he said. “Sending me an e-mail about a new credit card is going to be a good thing to do if the credit card is meaningfully better in some way than other existing cards.” … “Of course, influencing the airline or hotel…
