Travel and Leisure has come out with its 2006 list of the world’s best hotels. Every year these lists come out, and even though I should know better I allow them to frustrate me. Why is it that people who know little about hotels get treated as experts? How could they make such monumental ranking blunders? Indulge me by allowing me to point out just a few absurdities: The Royal Orchid Sheraton in Bangkok — listed as the #36 hotel in Asia — isn’t even the best Sheraton in the city and certainly isn’t better than the Grand Hyatt Erawan (#42), whose bungalows vault the hotel into the same league as Bangkok’s Peninsula and Oriental properties. The Inn at Little Washington is nice, though more worthwhile for dinner than for lodging and more notable in…
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What Cathy Doesn’t Know, or Why Cartoon Characters Can’t Redeem Their Miles
Yesterday’s Cathy cartoon expressed a common frustration about using frequent flyer miles. I don’t mean to dismiss the idea because it is commonly held and people do have difficulty redeeming miles. But the conventional wisdom doesn’t match reality. If you take the miles and points game seriously, you should be able to do pretty well on the redemption side. Here are some basic tips. Build up miles in a single program until you have enough for the awards you want, and then diversify into other programs. That way when it comes time to redeem you’ll have more than one program to choose from. Sometimes United hasn’t had seats, but American does. Or Delta won’t, but United will. One good way to do this is to accumulate miles through partner activities (credit cards, mortgages, internet service,…
One reporter’s view on how to book whatever award ticket you wish
John Ewoldt of the Minneapolis Star Tribune has nerves of steel and decides to book whatever award tickets are available and just shows up for travel on his preferred dates and times. Not a recommended strategy, and contrary to Ewoldt’s assertions this is not something that will work on all award tickets. Just try it with many carriers’ partner awards or with a good number of Asian or European carriers that don’t permit changes. But I still have to respect his effort!
Diners Club Updates
I just transferred 25,000 Diners Club Club Rewards points to British Airways, since they’re offering a 50% transfer bonus through the end of August. This let me top off for another international business class award, and will be paired with my last 60,000 Cathay Pacific Asia miles. Looking up the award I had forgotten that Diners Club is also offering a 50% bonus on transfers of Midwest Airlines miles through the end of August. Meanwhile, I still don’t know what will replace the Diners Club Restaurant Savings Program (really ‘iDine Prime’) once it ends July 12. This is a program that keeps losing value. They upped the foreign currency conversion fee, ended two billing cycles to pay, and lost the bulk of their US domestic airline mileage transfer partners. Now the Diners Club is going…
The End of Award Charts?
At the moderator gathering in San Francisco I sat with Randy Petersen at dinner Saturday night. He raised some real alarm bells for me. Up until now I haven’t made mention of the new United Choices program. United has introduced new award redemption options for Mileage Plus Visa cardholders. It’s a complex Rube Goldberg scheme where you can only redeem miles earned from the credit card for specific awards on offer through the program. It will probably, eventually, be rolled out more broadly. United already reduced the value of its regular award chart. Now they’ve introduced new awards that have a rough value of 1 cent a mile or less, though of course not subject to capacity controls. I hadn’t mentioned the program because, to me, it wasn’t worth mention. I have a hard time…
What Makes Me Feel Good
This past weekend I was in San Francisco for a meeting of Flyertalk.com moderators. The event was held at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco, and I had a nice stay there. I’ll post photos of my Terrace Suite and a more complete review a bit later. But just as interesting as the conversations and meetings — which were excellent — was my multi-tasking. Sure, I issued a couple of warnings to new Flyertalk members looking to sell their miles and I had to delete a couple of posts (all while everyone else was being more productive than I). But the real joy came from a reader of this blog who emailed a question about award travel. He was taking his mother on a trip to Bangkok and wanted to use United miles for the…
Sheraton Pattaya Resort
April 19-22, 2006 Sheraton Pattaya Resort We were walked outside the terminal by a representative of the Sheraton while the Thai Airways porter pushed our bags. He opened the door to the resort’s BMW M5 and we were off. The car had cold waters, packaged fresh wipes, magazines, and the day’s Bangkok Post. Of course at 10 o’clock at night it was too dark to read, and I was too tired in any case after sleeping 3 hours on my flight from Tokyo. At this time of night there was no traffic at all and most of the drive is freeway. It was dark and we didn’t much of Pattaya on the way to the resort. The entry way to the Sheraton was well-lit and there were plenty of staff to greet us despite the…
Thai Airways First Class, Tokyo to Bangkok
Wednesday, April 19 Narita – Bangkok Thai Airways International Flight 677 First Class, Boeing 747 Departs: 4:55pm Arrives: 9:25pm We checked out of the Hilton Tokyo using the temporary lounge on the 30th floor. I used my remaining yen to pay the hotel bill, which was just some room service coffee and the transfers back to Narita. I asked when the executive lounge would reopen and was told summertime, June or July. “It will be much larger, we are very excited.” Then went downstairs to the front of the hotel for the 12:10pm Airport Limousine Bus. Turns out this was a bit of a mistake, there was no traffic whatsoever and I we could easily have taken the 1:10pm departure. Instead we’re at Narita around 1:40pm. After the perfunctory passport check upon the bus entering…
Kozue at the Park Hyatt Tokyo
I went to lunch at Kozue, the Japanese restaurant at the Park Hyatt Tokyo. The restaurant is made up of rich amber wood walls, floors, and tables. The tableware is all unique. The restaurant has a breathtaking view out towards Mt. Fuji from its 40th floor perch. The menu, much more affordable at lunch than dinner, offers both individual choices (to which you can add rice, miso soup and Japanese pickles) and set course meals (beginning at JPY3900 at lunch and I believe JPY12000 at dinner, our meal was JPY6200). Our first course consisted of several items: Kelp Flavored Snapper and Fresh Seaweed with Vinaigrette Soy Sauce; Marinated Tofu, Konnyaku and Deep Fried Puffy Bread; Simmered Short-neck Clam, Yachiazami and Fuki Greens; Conger Eel and Seri Greens with Sesame Sauce. Everything was delicious, especially the…
Hilton Tokyo for US$3 a Night
After quickly clearing customs and picking up our bags, we walked over to the Airport Limousine Bus desk in the arrivals hall and bought our tickets to the Hilton Tokyo. We paid our JPY3000 apiece for the ride and went outside of baggage claim. We had to wait half an hour until the next bus would be headed to the Hilton. No problem, it was nice to walk around outside and stand up for a spell. Standing nearby the pickup spot for our bus we were questioned by police who asked for our passports as an airport security measure. They wrote down passport numbers and asked our occupations, but I must admit this was the friendliest questioning by police I’ve ever experienced and I didn’t mind a bit (though the thought did cross my mind,…
