Priority Club has just unveiled their latest PointBreaks list, valid for stays through April 30, 2011. This is the promotion whereby select Priority Club hotels are available for only 5,000 points per night. There aren’t any hotels on the list that are particularly exciting, though that doesn’t surprise me given how popular this promotion has become (and something tells me the InterContinental London doesn’t want 200 guests on awards for the same night). There are a total of three InterContinental hotels on the list, one in Costa Rica, one in Mexico, and one in Jordan.

Other than that, if you have plans to be in a city with a PointBreaks hotel, it’s an opportunity to save some money. There aren’t any hotels on the list, though, that make me want to book a flight just to visit the destination because the hotel is that spectacular.

Finally the DOT is fining an airline for something they really did wrong. I remember getting bumped off an American Airlines flight a couple of years back, and scored a $300 voucher. As it turns out, the only way to redeem it was by ticketing at the airport, which comes with a $30 fee. While United has the same procedure, they waive the ticketing fee when you’re using a voucher, as it should be, given that you have no other option for redeeming it. It really is pretty disingenuous to charge that fee, since it’s not a $300 voucher I got, but a $270 voucher.

Well, the Department of Transportation fined American $90,000 due to the lack of disclosure regarding this.

That was well deserved, in my opinion.

(Tip of the hat to Katie)

One of the things I love about Hyatt’s website is that they describe all the room types for each hotel on their wesbsite. That’s insanely useful, since you can see what kind of an upgrade you can reasonably expect (“best non-suite upgrade”), or if you choose to use a Diamond confirmed suite upgrade, you can figure out what a “standard” suite is.

And it’s because they’re good in that way that I’m going to pick on them just a little. They offer pictures of most of their room types on the website, though some of them are so frustratingly useless! For example, I’m using an expiring Diamond suite upgrade at the Andaz Wall Street soon, and it seems I was booked into an “Andaz Suite.” I was excited that there was a link to a picture of the suite, only to find this as the picture:

Not all that useful, if you ask me! The same is true for rooms at the Grand Hyatt Tampa. For some room types, this is one of the two pictures:

Nice to know I can expect such a lovely sink… and lotion!

Anyway, it’s a slow news day and my brain is a bit dead on this Sunday evening, though this is one of those things that makes me lose sleep… kind of like the pronunciation of the word “Colonel.”

After Hyatt’s insanely generous promotions last year, I’m now a loyal customer, since they do have a very good (and consistent) product. While I’m not expecting the promotions to be quite as lucrative this year, I am expecting something. While they didn’t offer a promotion in the first quarter, they have said all along that there will be a promotion coming in March.

Now, ultimately this is complete speculation on my part, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the promotion is announced on Monday or Tuesday. Again, that’s total, uninformed speculation, but that would make sense to me.

So the big question remains, what kind of a promotion will they offer? I don’t expect it will be any form of “Faster Free Nights” (essentially make two stays, get one night free), though I do expect we’ll see that later in the year. If I had to speculate I’d guess it’s going to be somewhat similar to the Great 10K promotion they ran in the fourth quarter of last year, which offered 10,000 bonus points for every five qualifying nights. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it based on stays (as opposed to nights), though, and as a result be a bit more rewarding (maybe 15,000-20,000 bonus points for every five stays)?

Anyone else care to speculate on what we’ll see?

While I’ve posted about this before, I figured I’d post a reminder for those of you that have been holding off. The 75,000 mile sign-up bonuses on the Citi AAdvantage Visa, Citi AAdvantage American Express, and Citi AAdvantage Business Visa expire in two days, on February 28. While there’s no guarantee they won’t extend it, this is an insanely good deal, so there’s no reason not to take advantage of it. If you get approved for a personal and a business credit card, you’re looking at an award ticket in first class to Australia, Europe, Asia, or South America; can’t beat that!

I’ve gotta say, I never thought this day would come. I’ve long hailed the Starwood American Express credit card as the all around most rewarding credit card out there. You earn one Starwood point per dollar, which you can put either redeem for hotel stays or transfer to airline miles. I don’t stay at Starwood hotels often, so all of my Starwood points eventually get converted to airline miles. They have dozens of transfer partners, and when you transfer in increments of 20,000, they throw in a 5,000 point bonus. In other words, you’re essentially earning 1.25 miles per dollar. There is one big downside for me, though: the points don’t convert into miles instantly (or even remotely fast). It can take one to two weeks for many programs, which means you can’t find award space, put the ticket on a brief hold, and then transfer the points to ticket the reservation. Since it takes so long, you just have to transfer the points and then find the award space once the points post to the account. And that’s just very, very risky. When I see a single date the whole month that has availability on the flights I want, Starwood points aren’t very valuable.

Anyway, back to the point of this post. While I have quite a few credit cards, I only keep two credit cards in my money clip at a time (the rest are in my travel wallet), and 90%+ of my credit card spend goes onto those cards. For the past year or so, those two cards have been the Starwood American Express and British Airways Signature Visa card. I think the reasons for the Starwood American Express are obvious. I also like the British Airways card for a few reasons. First of all, it’s a Visa, for those retailers that don’t take American Express. Second, it has no foreign transaction fees, which saves me quite a bit of money when traveling abroad. Third, you earn a companion award certificate good for travel on British Airways when you spend $30,000 on the card annually. Now, redemption opportunities aren’t great for travel on British Airways due to the fuel surcharges, but it’s still nice flexibility. More importantly, I actually find the miles to be useful, thanks to the fact that they allow unlimited stopovers. 150,000 miles to Asia in first class on Cathay Pacific with a stopover or 80,000 miles to South America in business class on LAN with a stopover sound like good deals to me. The 1.25 miles per dollar you earn don’t hurt either.

But I’m thinking of dropping the Starwood American Express and replacing it with the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card, which I signed up for last week. The sign-up  bonus was 25,000 Membership Rewards points after $1,000 in spend. Then the card offers three Membership Rewards points per dollar spent on airfare, two Membership Rewards points per dollar spent on gas and groceries, and one Membership Rewards point per dollar spent on everything else. Best of all, you earn 15,000 bonus Membership Rewards points when you put $30,000 on the card annually.

Now, I put a lot of money in air fare on my card, for family, friends, clients, etc. Say, theoretically, you spend exactly $30,000 per year in airfare on the card. That would earn you 90,000 Membership Rewards points (for the simple three points you earn per dollar), plus the 15,000 bonus points for spending $30,000 for that year, for a total of 105,000 Membership Rewards points. That’s insanely valuable, though to make it even better, American Express often has further transfer bonuses, like they do right now to British Airways, with their 40% transfer bonus. That means with a similar deal, you are actually “earning” 147,000 British Airways miles for $30,000 in spend. That’s nearly five British Airways miles per dollar spent. And the beauty of American Express Membership Rewards points is that they transfer instantly to most programs, and take at most a couple of days for some programs (like transfers to All Nippon Airways).

In fairness the card does come with a steep annual fee of $175 (which is waived for the first year), though it seems well worth it for the miles earned.

So for the time being my Starwood American Express card will be collecting dust. Let’s see for how long that lasts.