Search Results for "ASIA".
Indian airline Vistara was banned from flying to Hong Kong for two weeks earlier this month after bringing in passengers who tested positive for Covid-19 on two separate flights.
While four passengers initially tested positive on April 4th’s Delhi – Hong Kong flight, 25 people on that flight have now tested positive.
The Maldives has lifted testing requirements for vaccinated travelers, and is preparing to offer ‘vaccine on arrival’ in a bid to boost tourism. Most of the world is far behind Israel, the U.S. and U.K. in vaccination, so this may become an attractive reason to visit from many parts of the world.
Mary Schlangenstein who covers airlines for Bloomberg asked CEO Ed Bastian during Delta’s earnings call about Southwest’s no-notice 6.5% devaluation of Rapid Rewards points yesterday and whether they’d considering doing something similar.
Bastian offered SkyMiles as a contrast to Southwest, “we’re not considering that, and we’re very excited about the value [of the SkyMiles program].” Wait, wut?
On Saturday a fight broke out on board a Tunisair flight with combatants “exchanging beatings and slurs” on the aircraft as crew tried to intercede. They were attacked as well. In fact, masks came off of both passengers and crew as the fight roped in several aisles-worth of passengers, and as the brawl made its way down the aisle and back through the aircraft.
The melee began when a passenger put their carry on bag in the overhead bin above another passenger’s seat.
Qatar has one of the best business class product in the world in its ‘QSuites’. These are revolutionary suites with doors and movable partitions that allow two and even four passengers to travel together in their own space. Right now there’s fantastic award availability booking for the start of 2021 for Qatar’s QSuites product – out of several U.S. cities – with four business class seats available.
IHG will be bringing back a generous offer for joining or renewing its Ambassador program, which is the chain’s paid status program for Intercontinental hotels..
With the greatest drop in travel demand in history, hotels in many parts of the world have struggled mightily – although in the U.S. and some other regions business has been coming back – especially in popular leisure destinations that have been largely open during the pandemic like Florida and Cancun.
Hotel chains have relaxed the rules that their properties have to follow, limiting how much each has to spend on forward-looking investments and during each guest stay. Hilton recently updated its brand standard waivers, including outlining when some services have to return.
Radisson Hotels was purchased from Carlson by Chinese conglomerate collapsing HNA Group, and then sold to Jinjiang International.
Come June Radisson in the Americas (United States, Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean) will be separate from Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia. And they’re splitting the rewards program in two. This satisfies a U.S. government demand to separate U.S. customer data and firewall it off from its Chinese ownership.
Vaccine passports can be a temporary tool that allows travel to re-open. Since several Covid-19 vaccines have been shown not just to protect the person that’s vaccinated, but also to prevent spread, they can help assure a country that visitors who have had a shot are less likely to infect their citizens with the virus.
There are complex arguments – both practical and ethical – around vaccine passports. But this celebrity doctor’s complaint about them seems ignorant of the facts..
Starting mid-November, a majority of days have at least 4 business class saver award seats available flying American Airlines New York JFK – Milan. Some days even have 6 or more.
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 »
