Topguest, a San Francisco-based startup company providing loyalty and social network engagement products to travel companies has been acquired by ezRez which is a provider of provider of travel, loyalty and payment solutions and counts many big names as its customers.
Topguest has been quite popular of late due to the fact that it enables members of leading travel loyalty programs, such as United MileagePlus, Continental One Pass, IHG Priority Club and Hilton HHonors, to earn reward points for geo-located check-ins via their mobile devices and its website by linking their accounts with Topguest service. The utilizes the check-in feature of the social apps such as Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and Twitter to help its subscribers earn miles and hotel points and receive exclusive offers and bonuses for simply using some of these popular social services. As I had blogged earlier Topguest recently announced a white label product that will enable traditional loyalty programs to implement a fully branded social network component. Based on data derived from their members’ social networking activity, loyalty programs can carefully target and customize offers that are relevant to each member. The white label product is currently in beta with starting with Hilton as its launch partner.
ezRez plans to integrate Topguest solution into its existing travel booking platform for airlines, hotels and online travel agencies to help people earn points for various activities. Points can then be redeemed for travel via ezRez’s loyalty travel platform, or for merchandise via ezRez’s new digital wallet product that allows points to pay for merchandise and services across the internet. The digital wallet product was announced in October with inaugural partners PayPal and United MileagePlus, and will launch in 2012. The details about the same can be found here and here.
It seems to be a great combo for the frequent travellers as they get to earn some extra points for almost every activity of their travel schedule and other related aspects of their daily life. Lets see how this partnership shapes up in the coming year and what all new products they have to offer the frequent flyers.
Cathay Pacific has announced the launch of its new Premium Economy class and also an overhaul of its international economy seating. The airline to bring these changes onto its aircrafts starting March 2012 with the firs flight from Hong Kong to Sydney. The other routes which will be getting the Premium Economy seating will be Singapore, New York, Toronto and Vancouver followed by other destinations.
In contrast to the usual practice of placing Premium Economy seats in the same cabin as Econ0my, Cathay plans to create a seperate cabin space for the same having 26 to 34 seats based on the aircraft config. The Seat pitch will be 38 inches, which is six inches more than Economy Class and 19.3 inches wide, with an 8 inch recline and will have a large meal table, cocktail table, footrest, a 10.6-inch personal television, in-seat power outlet, a multi-port connector for personal devices andnoise-cancelling headphones. Economy Plus passengers will be welcomed aboard with juice and champagne, and get an enhanced onboard meal selection, they will also receive a bottle of water and additional snack choices to include more fresh fruit, energy bar and dessert.
In order to prove its point of being an Economy plus and not a Business minus, Cathay will provide priority check-in at dedicated counters and priority boarding ahead of Economy Class passengers. The baggage allowance will also be increased from 20kg to 25kg (for luggage allowances measured according to weight) or two pieces of baggage from 23 kg to 25kg each (for allowances measured by the number of pieces).
The new Premium Economy cabin will be installed on all Cathay Pacific long-haul aircraft including Boeing 777-300ERs, Boeing 747-400s, Airbus A330-300s and Airbus A340-300s with the first ones being rolled out in service in March. Cathay plans to have 87 aircraft fitted with the product by the end of 2013. In order to add the Premium Economy cabin inside its Boeing 777-300ERs, the airline will remove the first class cabin and also reduce the number of business class seats which is really a sad decision for people like me who love to redeem their OneWorld miles for the Cathay First Class experience but from the airlines perspective, it makes much more economic sense.
The Economy fixed shell seating will be replaced with new recliner which is a long overdue change in my sense given the fact that how uncomfortable those shell seats were, this will really help enhance the Economy Class experience.
All in all the changes seemed to be geared towards bringing in much more customers to experience better comfort abeit at a lower price point, am just waiting to get to try the Economy Plus cabin for whatever benefits that are being promised by the airline.
As reported in a business daily in India today, Kingfisher pilots have started a unique a form of protest against the company for the non-payment of their salaries since the last two months, the pilots have been announcing and I quote “it is their sense of duty towards the guest that is making them fly despite not being paid salaries for the past two months"
The announcements which started this Wednesday on flights out of Delhi seem to be spreading to other flights too, The announcements which are a part of a wider protest by pilots after a deadline set by them passed without any payments being made. Some pilots say they now plan to wear black armbands while reporting for work seem to have left the passengers wondering as to how long can the airline survive if things continue the same way.
The announcements don’t seem to break any protocol as such as the same happened after the aircrafts were parked but may very well invite disciplinary action from the airline, but in the current situation I guess they really have no choice, the airline which is undergoing considerable financial stress has already been put on cash and carry by most of the Indian airports and also Oil companies for non-payment of their previous dues, also with the Service tax authorities freezing their accounts today, the situation is turning out to be grim. It’s only a matter of days now before the airline either shuts down shop or gets some big ticket investor to invest in it. Till then the passengers can only hope that the airline keeps flying for their booked itineraries.
Just got this interesting mail from Awardwallet stating that they will be purging the American Airlines data from their systems in order comply with the American Airlines cease and desist order, the hugely popular loyalty program site which almost every frequent flyer uses as a one stop shop for tracking all their loyalty account balances has stated that they will remove all American Airlines account details starting Dec 4, 2011.
The site plans to bring out a browser plugin for checking the AAdvantage account info right in your browser with all the AAdvantage data stored in your browser itself, you can sign up for the beta for the same here. I’m not very comfortable with the thought of having a browser extension store my important data but maybe I’m being paranoid here. Also the plugin would not be supported for all browser version so either you get the compatible one or stop tracking the AAdvantage account info with them.
I really hope that American Airlines gets back to its senses and stops creating this ugly mess, after all no one would like to go through logging into the website to check the individual balance for them when they can do it all in just one place with just a click of a button.
I mean really what does American intend to gain by doing this, publicity, sure they will but this is a pretty bad one and specially when you are undergoing a bankruptcy a move like this definitely wont please your most frequent flyers which are your biggest source of revenue.
You can read more about this on the Awardwallet FAQ page here and post your queries here.
After being the only major airline in the US history to not have filed one, American Airlines and its parent company AMR Corp filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today.
There had been speculation going around ever since AMR shares suffered a hug 40% drop in October that airline may file for bankruptcy sooner or later to cut costs specially its labor costs which are currently the highest in the industry but the timing of this announcement seems to have caught everyone by surprise. While the bankruptcy protection gives AMR some elbow room in its ongoing discussions with the pilots and other work groups, it also renders the airline a ripe target for takeovers in an industry that is currently in a very fluid state due to high operational costs specially fuel and labor.
As per its Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in a New York court, the company listed assets of $24.72 billion and liabilities of $29.55 billion and around $4.1 billion in cash. During the 18 months of bankruptcy protection that the airline is seeking both American Airlines and its regional carrier American Eagle were expected to fly normal schedules. The airline has also stated that it would be business as usual all during this time so the transatlantic venture with IAG members British Airways and Iberia is expected to be operating smoothly all during this time.
With this all focus now comes down to American Airlines frequent flier program AAdvantage, which is a cash cow for the company and may prove to be a decisive tool in this whole process just like the Delta FFP proved to be for its parent Delta during its bankruptcy protection when American Express brought loads of miles from them which provided a very valuable lifeline. A similar kind of step maybe expected from Citi but as of now that’s to early to say whether such things materialize or not. As for now the best advice would be burn the accumulated miles with the AAdvantage program as the program seems to be not going anywhere for some time to come but in the long run no one really knows how things turn up.
British Airways which has been running trials of using iPad for its staff to provide customer service on-board has plans to implement the service onto all its flights very soon. The airline which has been using the iPad customer service app to provide to provide its on-board crew with real-time insight into customers preferences across a whole range of areas, from special meal requests to onward travel plans has found that this has resulted in helping add a personalized touch to their customer service and also deal with specific needs of its frequent flyers.
The app which is configured to run on a 3G enabled iPad2 is based on the British Airways in-house Enhanced Service Platform app, which helps cut down the usage of tonnes of paper for passenger manifest and meal preferences etc. The airline going forward will feed all the necessary info onto the app for the crew to utilize the same and obtain data for the passengers on-board to serve them effectively. The airline states that the data in the app is password protected and hence accessible only to authorized personnel thereby relieving any data privacy fears.
All in all i think this is very good move as it helps the airline cut down on its wasteful expenditure on paper which in turn is a good initiative. also it enhances customer experience by providing the crew with the necessary info to serve its frequent flyers in a much better way by accessing their data online and also take necessary notes which they can use as future reference to make sure issues like broken In-Flight Entertainment (IFE) and other technical or personal issues can be minimized by taking action at the earliest.
British Airways is still trialling the personal iPad usage for its premium customers and plans to take a decision regarding the soon. All these steps may soon turn traveling into an altogether different experience in itself.
The French hotel group Accor hotels has launched a 9 day crazy sale where they are offering upto 50% discount on the participating properties worldwide. The booking needs to be completed before 25th November 2011 and the stay has to be from 11th December 2011 to 12th February 2012.
Accor’s loyalty program A|Club members enjoy the 50% discount whereas non-member enjoy a 40% discount. The list of the participating hotels can be found here and the booking can be made here.
Accor which has Pullman, M Gallery, Grand Mercure, Novotel, Mercure, ibis, All Seasons, Orbis and adagio brands in its portfolio has a good network worldwide and this sale seems to be a good opportunity to try out their properties at reduced prices and earn the A|Club points for your stay.
Dubai Airport recently launched the DXB Connect package product for travelers coming to Dubai or in transit, the package which consist of a prepaid travel card, a SIM card and discount coupons.
The event which saw 55 dancers break into a well choreographed dance routine at the Sheikh Rashid Terminal has become an internet sensation and also seemed to have caught the passengers during its filming quite startled. Check out the video yourself at the link given below.
Just when i thought that Kingfisher was at its lowest point, they made me realize that there was still so much to achieve, its been an eventful day for them, it all started with a simple web check in that i wanted to do for a very close friend of mine but every time i would enter the details and select and BOOM!!! the site would throw me an error asking me to check the Guest details and try again, I kept scratching my head for nearly an hour and it still didn’t budge, Next step i tried calling up their Customer Center and the thing was unreachable for a good 15 minutes and when i got through, guess what they tell me “Sir! We do not have Web check in enabled for the sector” Damn you…. couldn’t you have simply put that on your website or as a step in the check in process? I mean isn’t that the first step in creating a user friendly website?
That said its not been a good day for the airline, first their Rs. 15 crore cheque to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for paying airport related fees bounced due to which they have again been moved to daily Cash and Carry basis, this has really put their schedule into a mess and they still have nearly Rs 200 crore worth of dues to be paid to the AAI.
In a separate news with the recent outflow of Cabin Crew and pilots, the airline had to cancel atleast 12 of its flights yesterday leaving its passengers in lurch with no clear cut info provided to them, Out of more than 55 departures from Delhi, 12 flights were cancelled including IT 213 to Bangalore, IT 2312 to Jaipur, IT 4305 to Amritsar, IT 316, IT 320, IT 304 and IT 310 to Mumbai, IT 234 to Chennai, IT 812 and IT 802 to Hyderabad, IT 4363 to Pantnagar and IT 3344 to Bagdogra.
In addition the airline has decided to cancel 31 of its flights daily till November 19 which include international flights to Bangkok and domestic flights on some its major routes. you can read more about it in a post from fellow blogger Live from a Loungehere.
Its really bad times for the airline with employee morale hitting an all time low and the airline being run with no clear direction from the management and if the slide continues at this rate it is really doubtful that the airline would survive to join the OneWorld alliance at all. I’m really glad that i burnt up all my King Miles before the rot set in and nowadays try to avoid flying with them as much as possible. Lets hope that some good sense dawns on the airline management and they can work to restore the airline back to its glorious days.
Malaysia Airlines is planning to start its A380 service from KL-London Heathrow from 2nd July 2012, As per the information provided at Airlineroute.net The 503 seater aircraft will be operating 3 times a week service initially and switch to daily service from 15th August 2012. The reservation for the same is open and the schedule will be as follows:
Kuala Lumpur – London Heathrow
MH002 KUL 2340 – 0550+1 LHR
MH003 LHR 1200 – 0725+1 KUL
The airline has opted for a 3 cabin configuration with 8 First Class seats on the Lower deck, 52 Business Class seats on the Upper deck and 96 Economy seats on the Upper Deck and 347 Economy seats on the Lower deck. For more details check out the link here.
Given that Malaysia Airlines and KLM have quite close links, people had been placing best on Amsterdam to be first city to be served by the A380 but now given that Malaysia airlines is set to join the OneWorld alliance Kuala Lumpur-London Heathrow route makes perfect sense and also with the Olympic games approaching British Airways would relish the idea of the superjumbo from the alliance bringing in traffic to the city. Now here is the catch, Malaysia Airlines will get the delivery of the aircraft in the Q1 2012 so you never know if they have any other plans in mind to fly the aircraft in the meantime. Till then folks who want to fly on the MH A380, let the bookings begin.
The second update is that Air France will replace the Boeing B777-200ER/-300ER on its daily Paris-Dubai flight with an Airbus A380, the change will be in effect from 5th December 2011 until the end of the Winter schedule i.e. 25th March 2012. This seems to be a great strategic move for luring customers from the Middle East markets to the Air France hub at Paris Charles DeGaulle Airport and undercut competition posed by the Middle East carriers specially Emirates. The schedule for the same would be as follows:
