Frequent readers of this blog likely know the general disdain in which I hold most hotel ranking lists. The various ‘best of’ compilations are usually written by people who haven’t been to the properties, and many of the lists seem influenced by advertising buys. TripAdvisor has issued its new 2008 Travelers’ Choice Awards, which represent a slightly different take… it amounts to an amalgamation of traveler opinions. And while I find TripAdvisor to be a useful site for picking up very specific comments on properties and looking for consistent themes across reviews, picking the best properties from the masses of opinions on the internet doesn’t work very well in practice. Here are just a few of the oddities which show up at a quick glance: The Signature at MGM Grand is supposedly the best luxury…
ASIA
Search Results for "ASIA".
$100 Rates at the Fairmont Empress, Vancouver Island
The Fairmont Empress Vancouver Island has $100 room rates bookable through 2008. They’re capacity controlled, of course, and you must book by January 31. But this represents an excellent deal, especially in summer when room nights can go for over $400. The rate is fully prepaid, but you can cancel 45 days or more prior to stay to receive all but one night’s accomodation back. Update: Yes, yes, of course, commenters are right, this hotel is not in Vancouver, British Columbia but rather in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. Good deal nonetheless, I guess “Canada” is just “Canada” to me (funny, since I can pick apart the nuances of geography across South Asia. Heh).
New Year’s Resolutions for Miles and Points
I’ve seen several New Year’s Resolution stories, most of them are silly, and none are worse than the median piece on New Year’s resolutions for managing your miles, points, and travel — because anyone who would actually use the advice likely knows far more than the person writing the piece. So here’s my brief attempt at a set of New Year’s Resolutions. As always, your mileage may vary… And for many of my readers, even these will seem utterly pedantic. Keep track of your miles. A free tool like MilePort is my preferred method. It’s a program on your computer, you enter your frequent flyer numbers and passwords, and it updates your balances with a single click. And since they’re all in one place it’s easier to keep track of what miles you still need…
Redeem Continental Miles for Helicopter Flights?
Continental has started offering complimentary helicopter flights to Newark for business class passengers flying to Europe, Asia, and select other destinations. Paid business only, no upgrade or award customers need apply.That’s a good perk when the helicopter schedule matches your schedule, and when the two helicopter departure locations are convenient. The interesting thing for me, though? The moderator of the Flyertalk Continental forum adds this nugget: You can tack a helicopter flight onto a reward ticket for 10k miles each way. Interesting way to add a bit of a more unique experience to an award redemption! I’ve never seen this discussed anywhere though, so anyone with experience please chime in!
Who to fly, which program to earn with?
For top-tier elites, those that fly 100,000 miles a year or more, the best benefits are with United and American. United’s 100,000 mile flyers get (6) international upgrades a year valid on most fares and confirmable at booking (subject to award space availability). In addition there are up to (8) confirmed domestic upgrades a year, and that’s on top of the upgrades earned by lower level elites (4 500-mile upgrades per 10,000 miles flown on United or United Express). American’s 100,000 mile flyers get (8) international upgrades a year valid on most fares and confirmable at booking (subject to award space availability, but most importantly these are exempt from American’s required ‘buy up’ requirement to pay cash in addition to miles for international upgrades). Unlike at United, domestic upgrades are ‘unlimited’ with no upgrade coupons…
Dinner at The Source
Last night I had dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s new restaurant in DC, The Source. It’s attached to the Newseum in Penn Quarter, which hasn’t opened yet, and it’s across the street from Capital Grill. Brand new place, I don’t think it’s even been reviewed in the Washington Post yet. Verdict: outstanding. Not quite in the league of CityZen, either in terms of service or quite the same heights of cuisine. But really excellent nonetheless, especially with so many good trendy places having fallen recently (IndeBleu and Zengo are classic examples of the phenomenon).There really is something to the idea that the best places seem to burn out quickly, perhaps after six months or a year, so it’s best to go to good new places early. Don’t know whether the excellence here will last, but the…
Slaying the StarNet Dragon
Last week I described United’s system for denying awards on its partners, StarNet. Airline partners offer award seats, United won’t book them, and its representatives say the award “isn’t available.” I didn’t manage to get United to book first class award seats between Bangkok and Europe. But Lufthansa seats were easier to secure. I knew the flights I wanted, the ANA award search tool showed them as available. And when the United outsourced customer service rep said she couldn’t “see” the flights I gave her the flight numbers and she entered the request — they came back confirmed. The best hint, it seems, that United is ‘filtering’ an award for a given flight is that the rep won’t just say “there aren’t any award seats on that flight” or “all I have is coach on…
Korean Air Skypass Introduces Expiring Miles
Miles earned on or after July 1, 2008 will expire after five years. Previously, miles never expired.The announcement claims that miles in the majority of international programs expire after 18 months or three years. What they don’t say is that any activity in an account with most of those programs will extend the validity of those miles another 18 months or three years.That doesn’t seem to be the case with this new change to Skypass. Instead, they’ve gone the route of programs like Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles — use ’em or lose ’em.
StarNet: United’s Weapon of Mass Award Destruction
Dec
10
2007
Back in July, I wrote up a primer on securing Star Alliance awards. In it, I alluded to Starnet, the system that United uses for booking these awards for Mileage Plus members. Its search capabilities are primitive (you often can find better availability searching segment-by-segment that you can telling the agent your origina and destination, simply because it doesn’t search many possible connections). But most vexxing for frequent flyers is that the system filters availability. That is, a partner airline may be offering a seat for award redemption — but United’s system will still tell you it’s unavailable. The agent will usually blame the partner (“they aren’t offering any seats”) when that isn’t true at all. Instead, United doesn’t want to pay for the seat. United is known to ‘filter out’ availability especially of Luftansa…
Reader Wants to Know Whether to Use the British Airways Transfer Promos
Dec
03
2007
Reader Keith asks: One of your latest posts, about the Starwood to BA bonus, made me wonder whether you think it would be worth moving the miles from Starwood to BA even if I have no current plans to use an award. I generally park miles in Starwood, but a 30% bonus seems tempting, so I was thinking about moving over enough for a business class ticket. I’m not sure how I’d use them, but I live in Chicago, so I wouldn’t think redemption options for BA would be that hard. I wouldn’t. BA miles just aren’t a great place to park miles, or a value even with a 30% transfer bonus. These are all great bonuses if you need to top off a BA account, or need an award for which only BA miles…
