Marriott Wants To Expand To Manage Restaurants, Spas And Golf Courses – Not Just Hotels

by Gary Leff

Apr 22 2021

Job listings can offer insight into a company’s strategy. For instance decade ago a leaked job listing for someone to drive Delta’s revenue-based changes to SkyMiles gave us a couple of years’ advance notice to the dumpster fire that earn and burn would become in that program. An HR job listing at American Airlines tipped the world to the carrier’s CEO succession planning.

Marriott posted a new job on Monday that could offer insight into the company’s growth strategy.

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American Airlines Business Class Saver Awards To Europe For The Whole Family This Summer

by Gary Leff

inside airliner
Apr 21 2021

American Airlines is known for being particularly stingy with international business class award space on its own flights. I redeem AAdvantage miles more than any other airline currency, but almost always for flights on their partners.

Right now, though, there are some good opportunities to spend miles for summer business class to Europe – just as several European destinations plan to re-open at least to vaccinated Americans.

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American Airlines Launching More India Service And Several Other Routes

by Gary Leff

first class cabin
Apr 21 2021

With the Department of Justice ramping up its investigation of American’s partnership with JetBlue at the behest of competitors, this ‘Northeastern alliance’ is out today with exciting new routes demonstrating the additional flying that becomes possible through the partnership – and just how much more formidable the competition with Delta and United becomes in the Northeast as a result.

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Why There’s So Much More Travel Demand On The Australian Side Of The Trans-Tasman Bubble

by Gary Leff

sydney opera house
Apr 20 2021

Australia and New Zealand have launched a ‘travel bubble.’ That means citizens of either country are permitted to travel to the other, and then return home without a government-enforced quarantine. There is three times as much travel going from Australia to New Zealand as there is the other way around.

A reader asks why this is considered “lopsided” in media reports when there are 5 times as many people in Australia as there are in New Zealand?

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Is There A Constitutional Obligation To Offer Vaccine Passports?

by Gary Leff

picture of american passport
Apr 20 2021

Some state governors have issued orders against vaccine passports, but these have only limited meaning, such as not requiring state employees to get vaccinated and not requiring proof of vaccination for state business. The Biden administration has said they’ll facilitate but not require vaccine passports.

But do governments have a constitutional obligation to offer vaccine passports? That’s the argument that two law professors make, that government action to protect people from public health risks must use the least restrictive means possible. – and vaccine passports are required because they allow people to escape restriction.

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6 Reasons The New Federal Warning Not To Travel To 80% Of World’s Countries Is Bizarre

by Gary Leff

Apr 20 2021

The State Department announced a ‘do not travel’ recommendation for 80% of the world’s countries. They are explicit that this decision is not their assessment of risk for those countries, but a change meant to mirror what the CDC already says. Indeed the CDC’s current guidance does not match actual risk.

However this is the wrong direction for travel guidance, and it’s the CDC that should be updating risk assessment.

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