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New Starbucks credit card
Starbucks has introduced an affinity credit card. I was hoping for something a little bit more rewarding. This no annual fee Visa earns 1% of your spending back as Starbucks credit. In their marketing terms (“Two remarkable cards in one!”), your Visa doubles as a Starbucks Card. 1% of your total purchases are deposited onto the Starbucks card each month, and you hand over your Visa as though it were such a card to pay for lattes, etc. Sounds good, no? The concept is good but the rewards are on the low side. You get $10 in Starbucks for every $1000 you put on the card. I’ll take 1000 Starwood points for $1000 over this any day. To me, that’s at least three times as rewarding. While many folks consume a whole lot of Starbucks,…
Competition comes to online travel sites
Overstock.com is offering an online booking engine. Graphically it looks most similar to Orbitz, which suggests that it has the same backend, although I haven’t spent but 30 seconds on the site to see if that’s the case. Overstock’s unique selling proposition seems to be that it is undercutting the booking fees charged by other online travel sites, tacking on $2.95 rather than the customary $5 or $6.Update: The Washington Post has more Overstock Gets Into Travel: Overstock.com Inc. — a four-year-old Web company that sells items from closeout merchandisers — begins selling discounted hotel rooms, car rentals and airline tickets today. The site, which says it gets about 8 million visits a month, is entering an online travel field already crowded with the likes of Travelocity.com L.P., Expedia Inc. and others attracting price-conscious customers.…
New Starwood web booking promo
Book online and stay three times by the end of the year for 2000 bonus points. You have to register.
How to score the Presidential Suite
This morning’s New York Times piece on hotel room upgrades offers some basic advice. My favorite: Randy Petersen, publisher of Inside Flyer, a magazine that covers travel-loyalty programs, suggests making a joke of your request. “You can say, ‘By any chance, is that big presidential suite available? I just feel important tonight,’ ” he said. But, he added, “You shouldn’t demand it or tell them it’s your entitlement.” It happens most frequently though when you check in very late when all the other rooms might just be gone. A single night stay, late check in, often means that they can give you the upgrade without tying up the room that they might otherwise sell to a higher paying guest. When the room would otherwise go empty, it’s a costless perk for the hotel to deliver.…
From the ‘we needed a law for that?’ department
Outgoing Governor Davis of California signed a law that says that BB and pellet guns aren’t toys. Which is more important than you might think. This means they don’t have to be orange or green.
Reader mail
A reader asks: I was wondering if you can help me find what would be the best credit card to earn miles on my Lufthansa account, can I use the United Visa for that it looks like that card has the highest sign up bonus, but I am not sure if I can transfer the miles to Lufthansa and how? Or would it be safer to just use the Lufthansa Visa for that? There’s no good way to transfer miles from the United Visa into Lufthansa. You can, of course, use United miles to claim awards on Lufthansa as they are both members of the Star Alliance. If you actually want Lufthansa miles, your only real options are the Lufthansa Visa (you already have the link) or the Starwood American Express (choosing to convert your…
Why Loyalty Programs Should Reward Frequency not Revenue
A Joe Sharkey column in the New York Times last week points to changing trends in air travel pricing and passenger growth. A slightly buried item, but perhaps the most significant, is A permanent change in the way business travelers plan most trips, to take advantage of low fares originally tailored to lure leisure travelers. “The business traveler has taken a powder” from dependence on the top-level walk-up fares that once supported the finances of major airlines, Mr. Boyd said, and airline executives who think the old fare structures will come back are deluding themselves. This is precisely the argument used to justify recent changes in elite status at Delta and Continental — that the fares paid are changing and that they need to incentivize the truly lucrative traveler. That’s one bet. But if Michael…
Award Prices Will Keep Going Up and Up
I’ve posted much more extensive thoughts over at Flyertalk.com on why mileage award prices are going to be going up across the board. I’d love it if someone could poke holes in my reasoning, though. I really would…
You never know what you’ll find when Googling yourself
I’m mentioned in a Dallas Morning News story today on getting inexpensive hotel deals.It’s actually a rewrite of a good piece from the Washington Post that I mentioned in July.
