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News and notes from around the interweb:
- New booking site Upside by Priceline founder Jay Walker has raised $50 million on a $200 million valuation and its full functional launch is only this week! Promo code VFTW guarantees a minimum $200 rebate in gift cards on all purchases through February 28. Enter it here.
- NBER Working Paper: “We find that tweet volume increases when quality – measured by on-time performance – deteriorates, especially when the airline operates a large share of the flights in a market. We also find that airlines are more likely to respond to tweets from consumers in such markets.” (HT: Marginal Revolution)
- Langham Hotels adds nights as a new way to qualify for elite status in addition to stays. Note that despite Starwood getting swallowed up by Marriott and Hyatt eliminating stays as a way to qualify, this remains a program that allows qualification based on stays. And they have some interesting benefits…
- Air India will launch Delhi – Washington Dulles service in July (HT: One Mile at a Time) More flights are great of course, and another option for using United (and other Star Alliance miles), though it will be interesting to see how this 3 times weekly service affects Etihad, Emirates, Qatar, and Saudia who all fly out of Dulles.
- On January 9 Southwest Rapid Rewards was collecting airport fees (PFCs) on reward tickets, not just the usual security fees. That mistake was fixed quickly, and Southwest tells me that:
- If is not something they’re going to be doing, it was a mistake and not the early roll-out of a pending change.
- Customers who were overcharged are being proactively refunded.
- If is not something they’re going to be doing, it was a mistake and not the early roll-out of a pending change.
- If flight attendants make a safety announcement, and no one in onboard to hear it, did it really happen? (Ok, there were two passengers on the flight — one of whom is filming.)
I’m not impressed with Upside so far…
You have to pay $5 to download the paper about the tweets from NBER, unless of course you are a gov’t employee, member, or resident of one of a long list of developing or transition economies. some of those places on the list are pretty interesting. My favorite is SU – Soviet Union. they also have Russia, but maybe that is just to insult them.