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Starwood posted its Cash & Points award hotel participation for 2006 yesterday. Well, sort of, since hotels in Asia aren’t listed yet. This has been a long time in coming, I understand from Flyertalk that they were trying to get this up much earlier but a glitch in the process delayed it until January 30. They even moved back the date to look for it on the website a couple of times. I don’t really know what the glitch was, but posting a full year of participation by the end of January is actually an improvement on past practice. Starwood used to list these awards only one quarter at a time, and the listing would usually be posted no earlier than a few days into that quarter. Last year they moved to show a full…

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The famed American Express Centurion Card (U.S. version) is certainly not worth the $2500 fee any longer. Centurion members used to get Diamond status in the Hyatt Gold Passport program. Last year that benefit was pulled, and American Express added Platinum status in the Priority Club program instead. That’s hardly a like exchange: anyone can get Platinum status by doing as little as transferring some points into their account from Membership Rewards, the status provides very little in the way of benefits, and I can’t imagine that too many Centurion cardholders find themselves staying at Holiday Inns all that frequently in order to take advantage of it. Now comes news that Platinum status in the Starwood Preferred Guest program will no longer be offered. Everyone signed up for the status through January 21 (about a…

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Flying doesn’t lend itself to private conversations, even flying in first class, or even in an international first class ‘suite’. That’s a lesson that someone needs to teach Under Secretary of State Robert Joseph. The Washington Note reports that Joseph was not much of a diplomat on a recent Dulles-Oakland flight. Bob Joseph was on his way to meetings at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. He was having a loud conversation with someone he was sitting next to. (Of course, “loud” is a relative term — but let’s satisfy that with “loud enough to be heard by others in first class.”) The key point of conversation is that Joseph reportedly stated “I miss the Soviet Union, because they knew what the rules were, and now we are stuck with these ‘surrender monkeys’ in France and Germany.”…

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Craig Depken looks at what it cost to travel from New York to New Orleans and back in 1906. From the Jan. 28, 1906 NYT is an advertisement for the Washington and Southern Railway: MARDI GRAS – NEW YORK TO NEW ORLEANS AND RETURN – $37.75. Tickets on sale February 21 to 27, good returning until March 3, 1906. Extension of limit March 16th can be had by depositing ticket and paying 50 cents at New Orleans. I don’t know how long it would have taken to get from the Big Apple to the Big Easy on a train, but I would figure two days or so. The folks over at EH.net estimate the following 2004 values for the $37 round trip: In 2004, $37.75 from 1906 is worth: $789.69 using the Consumer Price Index…

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