Tag Archives for american express.
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.
On Monday the City of Charlotte is expected to approve a 10 year lease (and two five year extension options) to American Express for building of a Centurion lounge at their airport. Here’s the detail:
On Saturday I wrote about four great ways to earn LifeMiles, points in Avianca’s Star Alliance frequent flyer program.
They’re now an American Express transfer partner as well as a Citibank transfer partner.
A year ago Citibank added Avianca’s LifeMiles as a points transfer partner. Now American Express Membership Rewards has done so as well.
LifeMiles is a fantastic Star Alliance program. I have a few hundred thousand of their miles, and I’ve never used them to travel on Avianca. Instead I use them for premium cabin awards on airlines like Lufthansa, Asiana, and Thai Airways. And I use their cash and points awards to book United’s domestic first class.
Dining for miles is one of the easy and free ways you can rack up points. Register, use your credit card when you dine out, and if it happens to be at a participating restaurant you’ll earn miles automatically. And now there are several bonuses on top.
For years American Express has had an ‘International Airline Program’ for Platinum and Centurion cardholders which amounted to 2-for-1 business class tickets provided you were buying full fare.
This has had limited usefulness for many cardmembers, often full fare business class is about twice as much as discounted advance purchase business, at most you’d save a few hundred dollars buying business class for two passengers. A limited subset of cardmembers, though, found this very useful.
Last June they revamped the program and made it much more useful. And now you do not even need to call to use it.
A week and a half ago the Dallas Fort-Worth Centurion lounge re-opened in its new larger location.
At the time I wrote that “I still expect that the lounge will get crowded at peak times.”
American Express just refreshed their Premier Rewards Gold Card and renamed it “American Express Gold Card.”
Most importantly the card raises the bar for points-earning at US restaurants and US grocery stores, while retaining strong points-earning on airline spend. And they’ve added a new monthly credit for dining. Today’s changes to the product – for me – make it the most rewarding card for ongoing spend.
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.
Yesterday an American Express executive offered what seemed like the next step they would take in managing crowds at Centurion lounges: advance reservations via mobile app.
American Express reached out to suggest that booking via app is an example of something they’ll consider not something they currently plan to implement.
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 »
