I previously wrote about Asiana Airlines (OZ) and their deal of the holidays in the form of a trans-Pacific business class ticket to North America via Incheon (ICN). For those who don’t mind connecting in Korea, for just JPY270,000 all-in, one could get to sample a 5-star airline (and airline of the year). For travelers aligned with Star Alliance, this provides the finest option to cross the Pacific. But what about oneworld program travelers?

The Cathay Pacific Biz-Toku fare, which connects in Hong Kong via major Japanese airports, is even cheaper than Asiana’s discounted business class. Coming in at JPY240,000 all-in with a mere JPY10,000 to add a Hong Kong stopover one-way, the Biz-toku fare to North America is the classiest and most comfortable way for oneworld-aligned travelers to cross the Pacific.

Now, keep in mind that one has to literally backtrack, connecting the opposite direction of North America to the tune of 1,774 miles, and then embarking on an even longer trip to eastbound. For a global business traveler, who has business in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and New York, this fare is a steal as New York is priced the same as San Francisco and other closer destinations. Pay the extra JPY10,000 for a stopover in Hong Kong one of the ways (I’d go for it on the outbound), conduct meetings in Hong Kong for a couple days, then hit the road from Hong Kong directly to New York, being completely fresh in business class the entire way.

These so-called backtracking fares, while not always the first thought to the business traveler, can provide excellent values. Interestingly, when I look up the Cathay flights on Tornos, I see some additional fees added by the agency, so I suggest going directly to the website unless you plan a package. Connecting through ICN (Asiana) or HKG (Cathay Pacific) does do one more nice thing in addition to the comfort and relaxation: you get more miles. NRT-ICN-JFK nets you over 7,500 miles and NRT-HKG-JFK nets you nearly 10,000 miles. Happy flying!

I’m typing this as I sit in my room at EAST, a chic new business hotel in Tai Koo, Hong Kong. Any hotel that calls itself a single word is making a bold statement, so let’s see how EAST lives up to its name.

I found the room to be very spacious. One thing that so-called “business” hotels often lack, be they “lifestyle,” “value,” or just “pure business,” is comfortable pillows, but EAST actually had a bed I could rest on. So in the “Can I get a good night’s sleep?” department, the answer is: YES!

After putting around the floors and checking out the amenities like the dining floor, pool, etc, I believe I have discovered one of the first “West Hollywood meets East Asia” hotels that captures that Manhattan boutique hotel feeling I like to look for on of Sunset Boulevard.

Technology-wise, I love the complimentary hotel-wide wi-fi as well as the wired option, but what I really like is the repository of cables and connectors that are free to use, stashed under the TV. Need a power adapter? Check! Need a VGA cable to connect your PC to the TV? Check! Want to connect your iPod to the sound system? They got that, too!

One interesting tidbit not everyone may realize is that EAST is owned by Swire, the company that owns Cathay Pacific. Yes, you can earn Asia Miles by staying here, but one thing that is yet to be done (in the near future, hopefully), is the ability on Cathay Pacific’s website to book your flight to Hong Kong along with a Swire Hotel. It makes sense and should be coming in the future, hopefully 2011. From a foreign business standpoint, it could be very interesting to see what Swire can do selling into Japanese travel agencies, leveraging both their airline and hotel assets.

All in all, this is a very convenient hotel on the east side of Hong Kong Island. I was able to walk to the MTR and take the subway to see a friend of mine, and for those who are less adventurous, there is a lot happening in Tai Koo itself. Oh, and the pub on the top floor is a real “destination” in Hong Kong, and that’s not coming from just the hotel staff, but various people I’ve asked. Enjoy!

So I’m flying UA 890 NRT-LAX on Friday and it looked like the flight was “sold out” yesterday, but now it is showing fare buckets of F1 C1 J1, meaning there are three two tickets available: one first class and two one business. Note that open fare buckets and even open seats does NOT translate into how many seats will actually be open for upgrading the day of the flight. In my experience on this flight, people start to get shuffled around (that is, more and more F and C fare buckets open up as real or “phantom” people get moved to other flights) a day out, so I am now getting a feeling that my upgrade WILL clear after all as a 1K. My forecast is that as a non-GS heavy flight, any GS or 1K on the flight will clear, but 1P or lower probably not, with as many as 10 business seats opening up (seatmap currently shows only three, but that is an illusion). If somehow it doesn’t clear, then I always have the E+ Hindu meal as my delicious consolation prize.

Meanwhile, my bag is almost packed. Like usual, carry-on ONLY.

Fingers crossed for the upgrade!

Do you remember the good old days, where on most airlines, you were able to get a ticket “put on hold” so you could pay after reserving it? Nowadays, this is getting rarer and rarer, but someone forgot to tell All Nippon Airways (ANA).

On ANA, you can actually get a ticket on hold for 14+ days and here’s how.

1. First, this only works on ANA’s website. So go there instead of a travel booking site.
2. Second, you need to pick travel dates far in the future (perhaps 9 months out…it really depends as ANA loads fares on a staggered and not rolling basis).
3. Once you have your dates, search for your routing, and proceed to pricing.
4. You will get a total price of TBA and this message: “ANA will contact you when the fare is published by e-mail. Please purchase the ticket within 14 days after sending e-mail otherwise the reservation will be automatically cancelled.”

This means you actually have 14 days from the time they email you with a fare. Obviously, this ability to hold should not be abused, but can be a great tool when you are thinking about a trip and want a no-risk, no-obligation hold.

There are two “worlds” when it comes to the restroom in Japan.

First, there are the sometimes zany, automatic toilets which…do all the cleaning for you. With more and more buttons every year, their increasing complexity is a fine demonstration of Japanese ingenuity in all facets of life. Many a hotel will feature these kinds of toilets as Japanese are accustomed to and expect them. And the more deluxe versions of these one can find at office buildings even feature “self-cleaning” which eradicates the germs for the next person.

On the other side of the spectrum are the non-automatic, so-called “regular” toilets. While you might find the old-fashioned “hole in the ground” toilets at a traditional restaurant or someone’s house in the country side, the standard “Western” toilet is what you’ll find at the train station. Now, here is where the travel tip comes in: toilets at JR and subway stations do not have toilet seat covers. Further, they do not have soap. Therefore, plan on bringing toilet seat covers and a small soap dispenser with you for proper sanitation.

BONUS TIP: If you find yourself walking around and are too far away from an office/hotel, one thing to consider is the Japanese convenience store. It’s an unspoken rule that Seven Eleven, ampm, Lawson, Sunkus, Family Mart, etc, all have public trash/recycling bins for people to use and restrooms as well. Unlike other parts of the world, the Japanese convenience store is quite nice and clean, so don’t be afraid.

Hopefully, this information helps a business or leisure traveler next time in Japan…gambatte (good luck)!

This fare isn’t exactly new, but given that SQ’s (Singapore Airlines) phenomenal deal of NRT-LAX in C (business class) has gone up by about JPY80,000, OZ (Asiana Airlines) remains the best value in business class now out of Narita at JPY270,000 all-in. Although you have to connect through Incheon (ICN), for the little bit of extra time you have to spend, you get a phenomenal world-class airline.

To get a Japan origin, Asiana’s own site won’t actually let you book a flight with an origin in Japan to the United States, so you’ll need to go to a handy Japanese travel website like Tornos. Note that the site is in Japanese, so if you have trouble with the language, ask a friend to help you book.

I’ve plugged in quite a few dates and OZ turns out the best price in C every time. Here is a sample output screen from the Tornos site:

PS: Don’t pay attention to OZ’s 3.6 rating on Tornos…the experience of the typical Japanese person on OZ is only NRT-ICN or some similarly short intra-Asia route that doesn’t really get to show off the OZ longhaul product.

Enjoy!

Now that November is upon us, it’s time to take a look at what kind of in-flight entertainment (IFE) will be available to most of the major carriers serving Asia. All movies are rated as “WATCH ON THE PLANE,” “WATCH OFF THE PLANE,” “WATCH IF BORED,” or “AVOID AT ALL COSTS!”. Brief comment(s) follow in parenthesis.

The “big” Hollywood movies pretty much everyone has:

• Toy Story 3: WATCH ON THE PLANE (just too amazing to pass up a chance to watch it again!)
• Inception: WATCH OFF THE PLANE (remember what trying to watch “Avatar” on the plane taught us? Don’t do it!)
• Salt: WATCH IF BORED (yawn)
• Despicable Me: WATCH ON THE PLANE (the surprise all-ages hit of the year, will charm you if you have a soul)
• Killers: WATCH ON THE PLANE (fun to watch if you are into romantic comedies)

And some notable ones that many have:

• Predators: WATCH ON THE PLANE (pure 80′s sci-fi goodness re-imagined today…pretty violent so not for the faint of heart)
• Twilight Saga – Eclipse: WATCH IF BORED (or tired…not exactly a movie you’d watch outside of a theater of home entertainment system with Blu-ray and surround sound)
• Beauty and the Beast (1991 picture to commemorate the 20th anniversary): WATCH ON THE PLANE (get in on the anniversary action with one of the greatest animated films of all time)
• The Last Airbender: AVOID AT ALL COSTS! (ugh…)

And finally, some quirkier local Asian content:

• Hanamizuki (Japan) – All Nippon Airlines, Japan Airlines: WATCH IF BORED (a definite “WATCH ON THE PLANE” if you are into Japanese melodramatic romance or are secretly a Japanese girl on the inside…)
• Here Comes the Bride, My Mom! (Japan) – All Nippon Airlines, American Airlines, Singapore Airlines: WATCH IF BORED (bit of a yawn, watch if you must watch Japanese cinema and already saw Hanamizuki)
• K-On! (Japan) – Japan Airlines: WATCH ON THE PLANE (cultural phenomenon…it’s a shame only JAL has this!)
• The Legend is Born – Ip Man (Hong Kong) – American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines: WATCH ON THE PLANE (has that epic, through-the-ages Chinese sense of drama that so many directors miss…grab a Coke and give it a shot!)
• Patlabor 2 the Movie (Japan) – All Nippon Airlines: WATCH IF BORED (don’t get me wrong, this is a Japanese anime classic, so give it a WATCH ON THE PLANE if you are into that or have already seen the big hits)
• Raajneeti (India) – American Airlines, Japan Airlines: WATCH ON THE PLANE (almost three hours long of Bollywood political thrillerness, but worth a shot if you want to give a movie that was heavily talked about 5 months ago a try)
• Twilight Gangsters (Korea) – All Nippon Airlines, Japan Airlines: WATCH ON THE PLANE (“old people rock” movie)

SOURCES:

• Air Asia
• All Nippon Airways
• American Airlines
• British Airways
• Cathay Pacific
• Continental Airlines
• Delta Airlines
• Japan Airlines
• Korean Air
• Lufthansa
• Singapore Air
• Thai Airways International
• United Airlines
• Virgin Atlantic

If you’ve ever set foot inside a Japanese travel agency here in Japan, like JTB or H.I.S., you’ll notice a few things. First, they are far from snazzy. Covers of brightly colored catalogs showing off all corners of the globe line the walls, but aside from the smörgåsbord of photographs on glossy paper, you’ll notice one more thing: the white boards.

White boards, the nice old-fashioned kind that use dry erase markers and mostly erase, can be prominently seen, but not quite from the entrance. They are in the line of site of the chairs — not just any chairs, but the ones where you sit down across a narrow table from the agency’s travel rep, themselves just a mere arm’s both to you and the board. The Japanese who so often famously do things by the book are no exception when it comes to in-person visits to travel agencies. In the time when you are being prepared before you even get to really tell the rep what you want, you’ve already had a good ten minutes to stare at the handwritten scribbles in red marker showcasing the best of the best deals.

It is not that it is a tactic to hard sell on the daily deals, but rather, the positioning of board to one’s vision is a symptom of the system. All kinds of services here in Japan have similarly bureaucratic processes that make American chores such as getting a driver’s license at the DMV trivial — it’s just everyday business for us here in Japan.

Most of the deals you’ll find on these boards aren’t too bad. In fact, some can be real steals. But aside from the board, there is one more key element to the real deals at the agencies when it comes to hotels: the book. The book is a dusty, thick piece of literature containing all the pre-negotiated rates the agency has with hotels around the world. Regardless of actual market demand, the book has a price. The book does not care about if the hotel has an amazing sale, but neither does it care about the hotel being almost sold-out. Taking market supply and demand into consideration, with the book, one can take advantage of these very special, unpublished rates. A word to the points and miles maniacs, though: you might not receive points for a stay as the rate is not booked directly with the hotel, but you often get a cool freebie like a breakfast.

Case in point: last year, I booked a high class hotel at an international destination about a month in advance, and the rate as published in the book at the particular JTB I went to was about 20% below both the hotel’s own pre-pay rate and any travel site I could find. It included free breakfast and didn’t even require pre-pay. (An aside, the concept of “pre-pay” with the Japanese is quite different than the West; most hotels here outside of the global chains do not require a credit card guarantee, as it is the honorable thing to do and show up on time. Not showing up gets the hotel extremely worried and a constant barrage of inquiring phone calls will ensue.) The only drawback to this rate was that it didn’t earn points, but given that it was one of the deepest discounts I’d ever seen for this hotel, I went for it.

Truly, there are lots of deals to be had at the Japanese travel agencies. In this service-oriented country, service has always been great, even as a foreigner. The trick is to have your tools ready prior to visiting. If you do, you’ll be able to take advantage of both the board and the book.

Anyone in the midst of planning a destination wedding lately? I know I have been. Amidst all the hectic scrambling for guests, dates, and what to wear, there is one very important (to some) factor: the points and miles!

Weddings are big spends, on hotel, catering, and travel, so why not optimize to reap the rewards of that spending down the line?

One trick of the frequent flyer, so it appears, is to request that hotel catering be put on the room rather than a separate catering bill. The reason for this is because points are earned at one rate for events, and one rate for stays, with hotel stays being the better earner. (This proves important not just for destination weddings, but any wedding or event!)

About destination weddings in particular, you can also get a block of rooms from the hotel, which might be important if you’re in an expensive hotel. But one more thing you can do you might not know about is get a discount code from an airline since you are a “group.” (Did you ever notice how on the airline sites there is a limit to the number of seats per plane you can buy at a time and it asks if you have a group of 10 or more? This is it!)

Remember, a destination wedding typically requires a lot of travel and expenditures from everyone, so why not make sure you (at least!) get some points out of it? Finally, if you are looking at a chain where you have status, try to leverage your status. Or if you are looking at a chain where you’d like a status match, consider this as well (especially if you are a frequent traveler!)

Last tip (especially for brides): watch out for the “hard sell” from every vendor along the way. A simple “can you ship this outfit internationally?” question posted to a vendor can get them licking their chops. A good negotiator should be able to get any deal a third-party can get, so I myself went direct to the hotel. In the midst of a lot of this myself, so when I get some interesting tidbits along the way, I’ll be sure to report particularly successful tactics when I can.

Good luck with your destination wedding!

So I was almost right on my prediction of slot allocation from the US to Tokyo International Airport (Haneda – HND). I predicted that American Airlines would get JFK-HND, Delta would get DTW-HND and LAX-HND, but was wrong on the final slot. My clairvoyance has its limits, and was skewed by the need for business travel, so I thought that SFO-HND was a shoe-in for a slot. However, the U.S. Department of Transportation thinks that there is a great benefit to having a new carrier get international service, and from an article I read at Hawaii News Now, the addition of a direct flight could boost incoming Japanese to Hawaii by 10%.

Taking off my business cap for a moment and putting on my resident (of Tokyo) cap, I am ecstatic. While the United Mileage Plus aficionado inside of me wishes I had another UA route to hop onto and earn miles on, the person who lives and works in Japan will get a HUGE benefit from this Hawaiian Airlines flight.

You see, unlike the States where people can easily get off a little bit early if they have to catch a flight for vacation, many Japanese cannot do this. A work day is a work day here for many, and that means trying to make a 7 or 8PM departure from Narita is extremely difficult. Now, I myself am lucky to have flexibility in my job to be able to head to the airport early and make such flights, but my traveling companion does not have such a job, and I can surmise many Japanese are in the same boat when it comes to making these evening flights.

Only with a flight as late as JAL’s 10PM Narita (which is already cutting it close), or even better, Hawaiian Airlines and their pre-midnight departure, can someone safely plan to make it out without burning a vacation day or a weekend. Now, one can just go to Haneda after getting in their day of work and get to Hawaii the same day. And the late return is nice in that one gets more time to hang out in Hawaii before coming back.

On a three-day Japanese weekend where there might be a Monday holiday, this means a late departure Friday, and having Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday to have fun in Hawaii without even taking a single day off. While business travelers or people who might not live in Japan wouldn’t understand this, the addition of a late night flight is of extreme value to people here, and I myself will definitely chose Hawaiian Airlines for my Hawaii trip in 2011!

Golden Week, Japan’s busiest travel holiday, is just around the corner. With a series of public holidays crammed next to each other, many people often combine GW with their own vacation time to create the equivalent of a Japanese “summer vacation.”

With the increased demand comes an increased price. Airfare to Europe, North America, and even close places in Asia skyrockets. Hawaii and Guam are quite popular destinations, too.

So in the midst of this, how do you find a good value? Two ways:

1. Check the last-minute deals at HIS and JTB, the two biggest travel agencies here. (Note to hotel program loyalists: you often don’t get points for hotels in these, but do get pretty killer rates that usually include breakfast!)
2. Check out Expedia Japan, Tornos, Kayak, and your favorite travel sites
3. Check out the airlines’ own sites

Depending on your budget, there may be a go, still. Korea, Guam, and Saipan are still affordable. However, Hawaii is pretty jam-packed full of people and getting a good deal will be tough. (United Airlines is sold out of economy class!)

Hotels are still pretty reasonable, so if you are on the DIY path, your biggest concern will be airfare. If you’re going to pull the trigger, do it soon, though. I myself got some OZ R/Ts NRT-ICN for JPY60,000 apiece and that was a real “steal” this time of year (normally are JPY25,000!)…GW, here we come!