Tag Archives for tokyo.
American Express is running a pop up Centurion lounge in Manhattan next weekend. They want to be where their customers are, and they want to be where their customers are shopping.
Other pop ups have foretold where they wanted to offer a permanent lounge. For instance they had a pop up at LAX before getting a deal done to build a lounge there. They did a London pop up and then announced a London Heathrow Centurion lounge.
Forget the TWA Hotel as an avgeek’s paradise, the Haneda Excel Hotel Tokyu attached to terminal 2 at Tokyo Haneda airport has them beat, hands down.
The property has just introduced a “Superior Cockpit Room” which includes a full sized Boeing 737-800 flight simulator. And they offer one of the best deals anywhere for experiencing a sim.
On May 23 a 42 year old Japanese man flying from Bogota to Mexico City and on to Tokyo Narita on Aeromexico caused his transpacific flight to divert to Hermosillo, Mexico when flight crew “noticed a person suffering convulsions and requested to make an emergency landing.”
An autopsy determined the man died of a drug overdose. His stomach and intestines contained “246 plastic packets of cocaine..measuring 1 by 2.5 centimeters each.”
If you’ve never missed a flight you’re spending too much time in airports. Non-stops are nearly always better than connecting, though on the longest flights the time a connection adds to your overall journey is relatively smaller (if everything goes as planned).
Passengers prefer non-stop travel over connections, but at what margin? How much are people willing to spend to avoid a connection and does it depend on how long of a connection they’d have to take?
Tokyo Narita airport is going to forego transit security screening of passengers flying from the United States and connecting to other destinations in Asia. The goal is to make Tokyo Narita a preferred airport for connecting passengers.
Tokyo’s subway is offering vouchers for free soba noodles and tempura to passengers who consistently travel at off peak times. Don’t like surge pricing? The idea has tremendous potential.
There’s no question that immigration and customs develops a different culture and reputation at different airports in the U.S. While you’d hope they would apply standards and procedures from their handbook uniformly, there’s a difference between de facto practice and de jure rules.
People learn procedures by watching other people, and by discussing how to go about doing their jobs with colleagues. In other words, customs and immigration procedures are carried out by people.
Over the course of 3 days in Tokyo we had three amazing sushi experiences, each one very different, and planned based on my expectation that each would surpass the previous one.
We started with a good, recommended ‘local’ sushi restaurant for dinner in Ginza. The next two would be lunches: Jiro Roppongi, Jiro’s son’s place, and finally Sushi Masuda.
The Park Hyatt Tokyo is a great value property for Hyatt’s top tier elites. I used a confirmed suite upgrade and got nice value from breakfast which can be taken in the restaurant or via room service (or both). I enjoyed the complimentary happy hour for top elites as the sun set.
This is a property that appeals to me emotionally because years ago I really enjoyed Bill Murray in Lost in Translation, much of which takes place inside of this hotel.
The first time I visited Tokyo many years ago I wanted simplicity. I took the Airport Limousine Bus, which drops off at hotels. By the time I had gotten out of the airport I was on a bus departure after 5 p.m. and we got stuck in terrible traffic. The ride took almost three hours, and the bus seats weren’t particularly comfortable. I never did that again.
Taxis just aren’t an option from the airport in my view, they’re just too expensive, the idea of spending hundreds of dollars for a car and getting stuck in traffic doesn’t appeal to me either.
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 »
