News and notes from around the interweb:
- Hyatt has temporarily doubled the number of points you can purchase from 55,000 to 110,000
- Unusual and genius hotel amenities
- Trying to replace small regional aircraft with battery powered planes. There are also hybrid aircraft being developed.
- Comcast – whose reputation was so bad they started calling themselves Xfinity – will start charging customers more who autopay using a credit card. The ‘autopay discount’ drops for credit card users:
- It should be far easier to come to the U.S., and far easier to come here to stay.
The bureaucracy feedback loop, green card edition:
1) overcomplicate the process
2) “we don’t have enough staff or resources!”
3) get more $$, grow
4) goto 1Breaking this feedback loop is one of the great problems of our age. https://t.co/w3UjowrDSD
— Nabeel (@nabeelqu) December 20, 2022
- Using Accor hotels Suite Night Upgrades
- After record 787 order, United claims to be the U.S. ‘de facto flag carrier’
Accor’s loyalty program is quite simple. It might not be the highest reward rate program out there but there’s no jacking around. Earn rates are fixed. Point values are fixed. And, the suite night upgrade awards are confirmed at the time of booking . . . quite unlike Marriott’s SNA.
The only one of those “amenities” (ok, cool that the tub fills from the ceiling but that’s not an amenity) that could possibly happen in the US is the obnoxious alarm clock that you can’t turn away from you when you sleep. It will be the year 2122 and the US will be advancing obsolete alarm clock technology while adopting none of these other improvements.
I’m currently at the Crockfords in Las Vegas (part of Resorts World). My room comes with a Theragun for use. Best amenity ever!
I also remember seeing the Northern Lights wake up call option but alas was never woken up (no lights to be seen)
That green card stuff is unfortunate. American citizens may feel indifferent or adversarial to immigrants, until the day they meet a love interest or rely on a valuable coworker who’s identical to everyone else except for their legal status in the country. Then it’ll easily become apparently how ridiculous the system is. Individuals have drain years (sometimes decades) of their lives, huge financial and legal resources to navigate toward legal residency even if American people and businesses are dying to keep them.
I was at the Intercontinental in Tokyo and they had a shoe horn—the 3 ft long one. Just like home.
Love it when a hotel has a night light so i do not walk into a wall, chair, suitcase in the middle of the night….. $1.00 item and it makes me happy not to have a black and blue toes.
Theraguns in the rooms ughh, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.