A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Hotel loyalty programs like Marriott Bonvoy promise upgrades to their frequent guests, if rooms are available at check-in, but getting those upgrades can be tough. There are too many elites – anyone with their premium credit card is a Platinum – but hotels play games also.
For the most part, upgrades have been tough to get because (1) premium demand has grown while the supply of premium seats hasn’t kept up, and (2) airlines have shifted their merchandising to take less money for those seats from any willing buyer rather than honor frequent flyer upgrades.
However part of the reason why Delta’s upgrade percentage is so low, it seems, is because gate agents at Delta just don’t process upgrades as reliably as they do at other airlines.
Marriott appears to be testing a requirement that guests give up housekeeping during their stay in order to get the cheapest room rates.
The Line Hotel DC is housed in a historic neoclassical church building in Adams Morgan. It was originally built in the early 1900s as the First Church of Christ, Scientist. The property was launched 7 years ago, and has sister hotels in Austin, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Owners couldn’t make loan payments during the pandemic, and ceded control to their lender.
Over the summer, TSA Administrator David Pekoske said that they weren’t going to make public charter operators fly out of commercial terminals, but that they would update security plans. They’ve done this – and will require new screening procedures at private terminals for ‘by the seat’ charter operators like JSX.
Big airlines have special programs for high revenue customers far beyond top elite status of their mileage programs. At Delta there’s the 360 program. At American it’s Concierge Key. At United Airlines it is Global Services. The criteria for obtaining this type of status is generally unpublished, however there are workarounds.
A Frontier Airlines passenger took to the internet to blast her seat opponent. She’s flying the airline’s Airbus A320 from a middle seat. The man at the aisle is spreading his legs into her space. That’s incredibly rude. She has so little space to begin with, and he has access to the aisle!
A hotel like this shouldn’t just be telling you ‘we won’t honor your stay for the dates booked, choose different dates’ and leaving it at that. While that may be their rhetorical starting point (they don’t want to show weakness and reveal that they are going to wind up doing much more), that likely isn’t what’s going to happen here.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
