Starwood posted its Cash & Points award hotel participation for 2006 yesterday. Well, sort of, since hotels in Asia aren’t listed yet. This has been a long time in coming, I understand from Flyertalk that they were trying to get this up much earlier but a glitch in the process delayed it until January 30. They even moved back the date to look for it on the website a couple of times. I don’t really know what the glitch was, but posting a full year of participation by the end of January is actually an improvement on past practice. Starwood used to list these awards only one quarter at a time, and the listing would usually be posted no earlier than a few days into that quarter. Last year they moved to show a full…
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Another Reason Why Continental OnePass is a Joke
Jan
28
2006
Continental is hosting a gathering for its frequent flyers this weekend and one Flyertalker has posted some news. international rewad and upgrade travel will see significant mileage increases for the 2006 program year. It sounds like Y upgrades to BF to Hawaii will jump to 15,000 miles while discount economy upgrades will cost 35,000 miles in addition to any required fees. Upgrades to Asia will jump to 50,000 miles for discount economy tickets (plus fees) and 25,000 for full Y. Europe will jump to 40,000 and 20,000 respectively. Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like offered inventory will change much …nor will the fee for the mileage option on discount economy tickets. Mark Bergsrud mentioned at a Q&A at the ‘Do today that they don’t expect any changes with the system and inventories. An upgrade award to…
A couple of blogs
Leigh Witchel has a new ongoing series on finding the best mileage awards. So far he’s written about credit cards and also mileage programs with awards based on distance. The latter key takeaway is one of my favorites, the neat benefit of Cathay Pacific Asia Miles — awards in business class under 5000 miles are only 60,000 points. So flights on British Airways from the East Coast of the US to most destinations in Europe qualify. Similar flights would cost 100,000 British Airways miles. Separately, the new Gratis Air Blog is posting daily airfare deals, some of which are pretty good.
Continental Increases Pricing for Unrestricted Awards
Jan
16
2006
Continental posted several changes to their frequent flyer program today: You can now receive your BusinessFirst upgrade rewards until 24 hours prior to your scheduled departure. Previously, 72 hours were required. Effective February 1, 2006, you may redeem reward travel within the 48 contiguous U.S., Alaska and Canada on round-trip flights of 1,500 miles or less for only 20,000 miles. Effective April 1, 2006, some Easy Pass BusinessFirst reward mileage requirements will change: Routes between: Miles requiredbefore 4/1/06 Miles required4/1/06 and after N. America and Asia 240,000 250,000 N. America and Europe 200,000 250,000 N.Amer & India/Africa/Mideast 240,000 250,000 N. America and Tel Aviv 200,000 250,000 Hawaii and Europe 220,000 270,000 Hawaii and Tel Aviv 220,000 270,000 Asia or Europe & S. Amer. 240,000 280,000 The introduction of 20,000 miles for flights under 1500…
Travel & Leisure Readers on Crack
I love ‘best of the best’ hotel lists, and this year’s Travel & Leisure‘s 500 best hotels around the world — as voted on by readers of the magazine — is no exception. (Hat tip HotelChatter.) This one, I love to hate. While there are lots of wonderful properties on the list, the rankings are truly bizarre. If you believe this list, there are more top luxury hotels in the United States than in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Carribean, Australia, New Zealand (and the rest of the South Pacific) combined. This has to be a function of the limited travel experience of T&L readers. Some of the stranger U.S. listings: The St. Regis isn’t the best hotel in Manhattan. And the Pierre isn’t better than the Ritz-Carlton Central Park, the Peninsula, and the Mandarin…
Travel & Leisure Readers on Crack
I love ‘best of the best’ hotel lists, and this year’s Travel & Leisure‘s 500 best hotels around the world — as voted on by readers of the magazine — is no exception. (Hat tip HotelChatter.) This one, I love to hate. While there are lots of wonderful properties on the list, the rankings are truly bizarre. If you believe this list, there are more top luxury hotels in the United States than in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Carribean, Australia, New Zealand (and the rest of the South Pacific) combined. This has to be a function of the limited travel experience of T&L readers. Some of the stranger U.S. listings: The St. Regis isn’t the best hotel in Manhattan. And the Pierre isn’t better than the Ritz-Carlton Central Park, the Peninsula, and the Mandarin…
Travel & Leisure Readers on Crack
I love ‘best of the best’ hotel lists, and this year’s Travel & Leisure‘s 500 best hotels around the world — as voted on by readers of the magazine — is no exception. (Hat tip HotelChatter.) This one, I love to hate. While there are lots of wonderful properties on the list, the rankings are truly bizarre. If you believe this list, there are more top luxury hotels in the United States than in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Carribean, Australia, New Zealand (and the rest of the South Pacific) combined. This has to be a function of the limited travel experience of T&L readers. Some of the stranger U.S. listings: The St. Regis isn’t the best hotel in Manhattan. And the Pierre isn’t better than the Ritz-Carlton Central Park, the Peninsula, and the Mandarin…
Massive SAS Award Discount TODAY ONLY
Some 80,000 mile awards between Europe and Asia are on sale today for 25,000 miles. We wish you all dear members a Merry Christmas and to celebrate we’ve got a super offer for you today on bonus flights with SAS between Scandinavia and Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo. The deal is out there and are going quickly, valid only if you book today! … Rules and conditions for our Christmas offer • Only bookable today 00.00CET until 23.59CET, December 24, 2005. • Travel between January 1 – 31, 2006 • Children receive the same discount 25 000 points • Only available in Economy and the number of seats available is limited • Only SAS operated flights and on new reservations only • You can book this offer online and we will reward you with 500 Extra…
Wall Street Journal: Mouthpiece for Labor?
As part of Northwest’s bankruptcy, they’re trying to reduce labor costs. This creates strained relations with their unions. So far, so good. But to borrow Brad DeLong’s phrase, “why oh why can’t we have a better press corp?” This Susan Carey piece (originally in the Wall Street Journal offers a rather odd definition of outsourcing: Those intra-Asia flights are mostly staffed by nearly 700 Asian attendants from bases in Japan, China, South Korea, the Philippines and other countries. They operate under different pay and work rules but have language skills for Asian destinations as well as English. The current union contract allows this limited but longstanding outsourcing. (Emphasis mine.) According to Susan Carey (and the PR voice of the Northwest flight attendants union), staffing planes flying within Asia with flight attendants from Asia is outsourcing?…
Why not hire two caterers?
One area of aviation that I’m not too familiar with is the process of airline catering. In light of the catering strike at Heathrow that crippled British Airways, Lynne Kiesling asks why airlines don’t hire multiple caterers. If the pricing/reliability benefits outweigh the economies of scale, they should be willing to hire different caterers. They can have them specialize in different terminals, or hire one caterer to do meals for flights to Asia, one for Middle East, one for Europe and US, etc. Then, even if you are still facing a duopoly, at least you contract with both of them and you increase your probability of getting a Bertrand outcome. Either I’m missing something, or they’re not thinking very strategically. Which is it? Maybe someone who knows more about airline catering than I do can…
