Frugal Travel Guy says that if you sign up to follow Priceline on Twitter by May 1 you’ll get a coupon for $50 off your next hotel bid.
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for April 2009.
Double Elite Qualifying Nights — Plus Roll Over Excess Nights — From Marriott
Marriott has opened the gate with double nights towards elite qualifying status. When you see double qualifying miles on airlines (as the major US carriers have been offering this quarter) or double qualifying nights at hotels, you know that a travel provider’s regular customers aren’t traveling. Loyalty programs tend to push their elite customer groups to remain at roughly the same size, either in total numbers or percentage of travelers or members. Marriott has recognized the cliff diving by offering double night credits between May 11 and June 26 (not an especially long period). The interesting innovation here is that they want to avoid folks striving just to retain their status, and they don’t want the existence of double nights to be a disincentive to stays (customers who requalify more easily not needing to stretch…
Play a Game for United Economy Plus Access
United is offering a game — which you can play every day through July 17 — to win economy plus access for a year. Not an easy win, but if you aren’t an elite and might fly United it’s sure nice to have. United is, in my view, the best coach product in the U.S. if you’re seated in Economy Plus. Those extra inches really do matter, and are a great perk for United’s elite members (not sure most consider them to be worth the buy up if you aren’t an elite). United’s partner elites used to have complimentary access to these seats, but that benefit was taken away, much to the consternation of Star Alliance Gold members around the world…
30 United Miles Per Dollar at FTD.com
FTD is again offering 30 United miles per dollar.
Offering Free Flights to Attract Government Subsidies
Imagine the conundrum faced by North Central Regional Airport in West Virginia. They need to exceed a whopping 27 passengers per day in order to be eligible for a federal grant program. But they aren’t hitting their numbers. (Presumably the airport is employing more staff than passengers…) What do you do? Fudge your numbers, of course! Charter a plane and give away free flights — get local residents to take off, circle around the town, and land. Apparently it’s worth the money to the airport authority: “Hopefully we achieve the numbers necessary for the 10,000 passengers that we’re looking for. That’s the difference in a $150,000 to $1,000,000.” said Ron Watson, president of the Benedum Airport Authority. (Hat tip to Chris,)
Some Thoughts on Results at the Freddie Awards
I wasn’t at the Freddie Awards this year, during the ceremony I was in the Thai Airways first class spa at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport. So I don’t have a lot to share about the event. But I’ve been reviewing the results. Certainly I have a different take on who should have won in many cases, I wouldn’t call Alaska’s MVP Gold the best airline elite status for instance. But what really struck me was Delta Skymiles winning the best elite level in Europe. Delta offers almost nothing to the European elite members (although European addressed Skymiles accounts have historically earned Platinum status with only 50,000 elite qualifying miles). There’s no complimentary upgrade program except when Europeans have already crossed the pond. It’s a terrible program for international upgrades. And what else is there, really, for…
Priority Club: Stay 2 Nights, Get a Free Night (Or Earn Double Points)
Priority Club has cobbled together a potentially lucrative but also confusing “stay 2 nights, get a free night” promotion. Registration is required. It’s actually two promotions in one. First, every two nights from May 4 through July 3 earns a free night, up to a maximum of 4 free nights. Those free nights can be used between July 3 and December 26. These free nights are redeemable any night of the week, not just weekends like Starwood’s free night bonus offer. Japanese hotels and members with addresses in Japan are excluded from the free night promotion. Perhaps most importantly, while earning credit towards free nights you do not earn your normal points or miles. The second piece of the offer is double points earning, instead of free nights. That doesn’t preclude earning points (naturally). It’s…
Your Stimulus Dollars at Work
“You’ve heard of the Bridge to Nowhere. You might call this the Airport for Nobody.” The John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport has an impressive $18 million runway made of reinforced concrete that’s big enough to land any airplane in North America. The airport also has a $7 million air traffic control tower, a $14 million hanger and $8 million radar. Most of the time, the only thing the airport doesn’t have is airplanes. An average of just 20 people a day flew out of the Murtha Airport last year. But, the airport was just awarded more federal money — $800,000 in stimulus funds to repave an alternate runway…
It Can Happen to the Best of Us
Upgrade: Travel Better reported on his mistaken Priceline booking. He entered the wrong dates for a hotel reservation that he won, and managed to work with the hotel and Priceline to get them to shift his dates to what he originally wanted. Just a few days ago I realized a similar boo boo myself, not on Priceline but with a similar prepaid, non-refundable booking at the Novotel Suvarnabhumi Airport hotel. Seems I had entered the exact right day – in the wrong month! I had booked for May instead of April, which is why the nice ladies at door 4 in the arrivals hall didn’t see me on their list of arrivals. When I walked up to the checkin desk they couldn’t find my reservation either, so I handed them my printed confirmation. A little…
Hyatt’s (3) Different Suite Upgrade Instruments
Hyatt used to be quite stingy with suite upgrades. Their top tier elites weren’t entitled to suites, even when suites were going empty, and getting into one usually took some cajoling and paying a higher than normal room rate. But now that Hyatt has upped the ante in the elite status game and provided new confirmed upgrade instruments to their top tier elites. Still, the current situation can be confusing because at present there are 3 different types of suite upgrades available through Hyatt. The points upgrade. Spend 6000 Hyatt Gold Passport points to confirm an upgrade to a suite, but you must pay the ‘prevailing rate’ for your room. And this is frequently argued to be rack rate, even though that hardly prevails with most other bookings… Diamond Upgrade Certificate. Historically each diamond member…
