Last year I blogged I had been offered gold status in APlus due to my old Sofitel Privilege membership, plus 500 free points.

It took a long time but the points were finally posted late last year. Unfortunately the status offer has been rescinded. It sounded too good to be true (free mid-level status when I hadn’t even used my Privilege card) and so it has turned out. Easy come, easy go.

As with most other hotel chains they are trying to drum up business at the moment with bonus point offers.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

I was reminded this week why it is important to check accounts and itineraries regularly.

Rules change, miles expire

I logged into an account for the first time in a year to check an upcoming booking. It was for a frequent flyer program (FFP) which I have no status and only use infrequently. Nonetheless I have a decent amount of miles accumulated – enough for a business class award or some upgrades to business or first class. I was startled into action by noticing a good chunk of the miles were about to expire.

In the time since I’d earned the miles, the expiry rules had changed for this FFP to something different and more harsh than many other FFPs. So I wasn’t expecting any upcoming mileage expiry issues. I’m sure the FFP did let me know of the change in rules, but since this particular one is perhaps my tenth most used FFP I had put it out of my mind.

In the short time until the miles expire I have a lot of travel already booked, but of course you can book now for flights later than the expiry date*. So after some thought I have booked a business class award that represents about the best value I can for the miles that would otherwise have expired. If I’d realised earlier I could have gotten a much better value from them, but at least I’m still getting reasonable value and not nil (if they expired).

*There is, however, a trap for the unwary in booking future travel before the miles expire, where the date of the flights is after the expiry date. If the award is unticketed at expiry date then you’ll lose the miles. If the upgrade is unconfirmed, on some programs the request will still be honoured (subject to availability) as the miles/vouchers are deducted at time of making the request. However, on some programs an unconfirmed upgrade request is lost at date of expiry as the miles/vouchers are not deducted until the upgrade is confirmed.

Lesson learned : keep up to date with program changes, and log into even the minor accounts at least a couple of times a year (I plan to do this when daylight saving changes to make it easier to remember).

Hotel stay or flight cancelled without notification

Earlier I blogged about a Lufthansa flight which had been cancelled without notifying me. The same thing can happen with hotel stays. I had a stay booked at a newly opening hotel, for which I had a confirmed reservation. I appreciate hotel opening dates are vague, but I waited until only a couple of months before the supposed date and booked my stay which was several weeks later. Unfortunately while checking if I could replace my eye-wateringly high paid rate (booked fully flexible of course) with an award I discovered my booking had been cancelled. Further investigation revealed the hotel had significantly deferred their opening date.

In many places and times of year, this would be of minor annoyance and no concern. Unfortunately this was for peak season and almost every hotel I checked was either completely sold out or had a six or seven day minimum stay requirement! Ouch.

Through stunning good luck I have found another hotel that accepted the one-night stay I need, so I have avoided the potential need to sleep at an airport. I am very glad I spotted the issue now and not be facing a building site instead of reception, and stuck for options in a place I haven’t been to, is difficult to get around, and is sold out almost everywhere.

Lesson learned : check upcoming reservations (flights and hotel stays) earlier than my usual check just days before a trip.

Schedule changes

I had a message from an airline about an upcoming booking. As they didn’t say which booking, I checked all my bookings for upcoming trips with this airline (about a dozen tickets) and found schedule changes for half of them on all sorts of different routes.

Lesson learned : make sure programs have my contact details, and check all reservations rather than assuming there is only an issue with one.

Involuntarily downgraded

Also this week (it has been an odd week for me for travel-related things), I found out through checking some bookings that several upcoming flights on LAN have been downgraded to economy from business class as a result of changes in the marketing of their intra-South America flights. So far I haven’t been able to make contact with them to resolve. I don’t expect I’ll have much option, as my schedule is so tight I cannot fly another airline, but at least I’d like to be seated in premium economy and have a partial refund of the fares paid for the loss of amenity. These resolutions can be difficult to achieve if left until at the airport – premium economy may be full, check in will have no authority and ticket desk may or may not but will certainly require time (which given tight connections and schedules is something I will be lacking in).

Lesson learned : try to build in more flexibility into my schedule.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

Accor is rolling out a new hotel stay program called APlus. It seems they are giving status of various levels to those who already have Accor Advantage Plus or Sofitel Privilege membership.

I have gotten free mid-level status with APlus, plus some bonus points thrown in towards requalifying.

A while back when I expected to stay at a Sofitel I signed up for the Sofitel Privilege program. This was free to join, and had a benefit of late check-out which I was after. As it happened I had to cancel my booking when an airline schedule changed, so I have no status or points with Sofitel currently.

I received an email offering to give me APlus Gold status for 1 year. You have to sign-up as if a new member. On the first page, enter promotional code “BONUS500″ for 500 free points. These have already been credited for me, and they count towards requalification. On the second page there is a box to enter your old Accor or Sofitel numbers to link up with the status offer.

Voila! For 2 minutes work I will have (once they match up the membership numbers) mid-level status in APlus. Benefits include

• 75% bonus points
• a welcome drink and gift
• room upgrade at check-in (subject to availability)
• 4pm check-out

The emails to existing Accor and Sofitel members seem to have been slow to be sent – some received theirs several days ago. So be patient if you haven’t yet received it. If you are an Accor or Sofitel member and don’t receive the email by mid-October, I’d try signing up anyway at the AClub website.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

Sorry for the lack of recent blog posts. While I haven’t had as much travel lately as normal (blame the need to stay in the country while my passport gets some visas for upcoming trips), I certainly haven’t been grounded and have still been busy with travel-related plans.

I managed to rush through ticketing some trips that became “impossible” to ticket after the move to e-ticketing.

Star Alliance has a new member, Egypt Air, and so I have been checking how I can leverage that in an upcoming trip. There normally are some welcome to the alliance type promotions. Since I belong to many frequent flyer programs I can pick the promo that best suits my travel. Check out Flyer Talk’s Star Alliance forum for more info.

In the middle of a couple of big trips later in the year, I’ve planned some side-trips to places I haven’t been before and perhaps not so easy to get to. 2 of these are now ticketed and I have 2 more to sort out.

The Qantas frequent flyer program finally launched their response to Virgin Blue and Air New Zealand’s any seat redemptions. My analysis is it is a pale imitation – awards are more expensive (some simple round trips are well over a million posts!) and yet Qantas will not allow any seat redemptions on the cheapest fares. The ability to flex the any seat award cost between points and $ is interesting, but worthless given the ridiculously poor value assigned to a point. There is also concern that less regular awards will be made available. Conclusion – the changes are good for small business owners who earn vast amounts of points from credit card spend and a yawn for everyone else.

A number of schedule changes have been made with varying impacts on my upcoming itineraries. The worst will have me spend 2+ hours in the middle of the night waiting for transfers to open up (the alternative was spending 3 hours landside with no amenities).

After a long absence I had some more domestic travel – by air and by train. I appreciated that the lounge staff (3 different cities for 2 airlines) had noticed my absence!

I’ve had to chase up several flights that have not been credited from earlier trips. The amount that failed to credit automatically added up to almost 100,000 miles so worth my spending some time following up.

I have decided (I think) to switch my hotel loyalty. I’ve been with Hilton a few years mostly as Diamond (and a couple of years as Gold). However the issues I had earlier in the year (see here for example), plus problems getting my earned status recognised, a total absence of promotions and terrible room rates at the hotels I usually stay at frequently; means it is no longer worth it to me. I still have to figure out how best to cash in my points while I still have some status (thus better award availability). In the meantime I requalified for Priority Club Gold in just 2 1-night stays and by my calculations should reach Platinum with another 3 or 4 nights, thanks to some decent promos.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

Sorry it has been a while since I last blogged here. It has been a busy travel month even by my standards as I have passed through 18 countries on 5 continents. When I travel I have more time to ponder and notice things – look for a few upcoming posts on this.

1) I got an email recently from AAdvantage offering miles to subscribe to some of their email offerings. These are the same offerings which I subscribed to last year (and got bonus miles for then), so it is worthwhile unsubscribing to stuff you don’t need. The only catch is to unsubscribe after the promo period (in this case I’ve diarised for the 3 months subscription that is required to earn the miles). For a minute effort I will get a modest bonus, and the price sure is right.

2) Normally I stay in the same hotel chain where it is available because I struggle to maintain high (meaningful) hotel stay program status given my schedule (lots of overnight flights and same-day return trips) and the locations I visit (lots of places with no or few chain hotels). However, lately I’ve been staying in a few different chains due to location, cost and availability issues. So, what I have done is use these odd stays to credit to various lesser used frequent flyer programs (FFPs) as an easy way to extend the mileage expiry out several more months. For some of these frequent flyer programs I am yet to set foot on one of their aircraft but have almost enough for a basic award, again with just a bit of effort here and there to credit some hotel stays or pick up the odd promotion (such as surveys).

3) I have a lot of flights of many different airlines and so it can be hard keeping track of the frequent flyer miles, hotel points and status earnt. I spent an hour or so the other day reviewing 5 of my accounts which I had credited recently. The result – I found several uncredited flights (which will net me about 70,000 miles when they eventually post), some more flights were I was given too few miles (an extra 3000 miles have already been credited), a couple of flights were the miles credited seems too low (still being investigated by the frequent flyer program), 3 missed hotel stays (2 have credited already which requalifies my status in that hotel program), and another where they forgot to give me points for incidental spend. Not a bad return for an hour of my time (plus maybe some more chasing up). Although ideally these would all credit correctly in the first place. One account took me more time than the others to go through, because they had reversed and re-credited many transactions, and not always at the same rate which then meant more reversals and re-credits.

I’m still looking for an easier way to reconcile my accounts than the spreadsheet I currently keep. If anyone knows of software please let me know.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

In the couple of weeks since I previously blogged about Hilton HHonors No Blackout Dates award issues (see here and here), discussion on Flyer Talk has uncovered yet more problems.

So far the following exceptions have been identified, none of which made it into Hilton’s No Blackout policy announcement (not even as fineprint).

1. Exempted hotels – eg Conrad Maldives
2. Exceptional demand dates
3. Hotels that are new to the Hilton family chains – exempt for 90 days
4. Hotels can require a large deposit that is non-refundable if you cancel the award

There is a further out, which is written into the policy, if no “Standard” rooms are available for purchase the No Blackout policy does not apply. Some hotels have no standard rooms.

For those too lazy to click on the policy announcement above, here is what Hilton HHonors says about the No Blackout policy.

No Blackout Dates

The Hilton Family of Hotels has announced No Blackout Dates for all members
of its HHonors guest reward program effective February 1. As long as a standard
room is available, members will be able to confirm that room using their HHonors
points at more than 2,900 Hilton Family hotels worldwide.

“Our goal is always to make traveling easier for our guests, and No
Blackout Dates is a significant way to offer our loyal members more flexibility
to use their points on their schedule,” said Adam Burke, senior vice president
of customer loyalty for Hilton Hotels Corporation. “Members have always
considered Points & Miles a highly valuable benefit that distinguishes us
from the competition, and combining this unique offering with No Blackout Dates
reinforces HHonors as the world’s most rewarding and flexible hotel loyalty
program.”

Unlike some other hotel programs:

• HHonors program has no capacity controls. All standard rooms are available
  for rewards, not just a limited number each night.
• HHonors does not require additional points to avoid blackout dates. Some
  hotel programs black out reward rooms and require their customers to redeem
  significantly more points to bypass those blackouts.
• With HHonors, there are no exceptions. Every Hilton Family hotel worldwide
  offers No Blackout Dates. Some competitive programs exclude selected properties.

Hilton HHonors remains the only hotel loyalty program that offers guests the
ability to earn both Points & Miles® for the same stay at more than 2,900
hotels worldwide. Other global programs require members to choose between hotel
points OR airline miles, while HHonors members enjoy the benefits of both
currencies. Members also enjoy multiple ways to earn Points & Miles,
offering more flexibility and a faster way to earn HHonors rewards.

Hmmm. 2 of the 3 bullet points appear not to be met in some cases. As for extra points to avoid a blackout, Hilton goes one step further and requires a large cash advance which is refundable only on checking out.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

An update on the 3 issues mentioned in my previous blog entry.

Based on information received to date, the no blackout issue appears to be fairly widespread. It may be that the rollout of the new policy has not gone right. Some readers may recall there was little advance notice of the change – perhaps it was announced prematurely. So I’m somewhat optimistic this will be resolved satisfactorily, eventually.

For the other 2 issues (inflexible flexible rates and deposit required on awards) so far only 2 hotels have been identified (but there may be more) and not on every date.

I’ll keep you updated as I get more news. You can also follow the discussion on Flyer Talk’s Hilton HHonors forum.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

Unfriendly #1 – no blackout dates

I know what you are thinking. How can Hilton HHonors recently announced “no blackout dates” be unfriendly? The announcement wording seems positive enough.

Unlike some other hotel programs:

• HHonors program has no capacity controls. All standard rooms are available
  for rewards, not just a limited number each night.
• HHonors does not require additional points to avoid blackout dates. Some
  hotel programs black out reward rooms and require their customers to redeem
  significantly more points to bypass those blackouts.
• With HHonors, there are no exceptions. Every Hilton Family hotel worldwide
  offers No Blackout Dates. Some competitive programs exclude selected properties.

It seems someone left off the fine print. Exceptional demand dates are apparently being excluded. Not only are Hilton HHonors being deceptive about this clause, but there is no way to identify exceptional demand dates online. It is only when you call Hilton HHonors (for example their Diamond Desk) to make a request for an award that is not available online, that you might be told “sorry the hotel has reserved that date as exceptional demand”. Boo.

There’s some discussion about this on Flyer Talk.

Unfriendly #2 – fully flexible

Many travellers, myself included, have plans that often change. So we don’t mind paying a little extra to have a flexible hotel booking. As long as the booking is cancelled before the deadline (which can be as late as 4pm on the date of booked arrival or as early as 48 hours beforehand), there is no charge.

Depending on the situations booking fully flexible might or might not make sense, and the Road Weary blog has a recent discussion about that.

I was stunned when attempting to make a recent booking at Hilton Frankfurt to find the hotel has made the rate called “Fully Flexible” non-refundable and non-changeable! Perhaps someone had mistranslated from German? But on checking with Hilton HHonors Diamond Desk it seems that no, the hotel policy is indeed to have NO flexible bookings. Wow. It certainly pays to read the rules instead of assuming the rate name bears any resemblence to the offering. Another Flyer Talker ran into the same deal at Hilton Munich City. I wonder how many other hotels pull this nonsense?

Unfriendly #3 – large deposit for “free” award stay

It gets worse. The same 2 German hotels (and there may well be others – these are the two I’ve identified so far) require a deposit for award stays. Again, this is hidden in the terms and could easily be missed by an unwary traveller as it is not expected.

Rules and Restrictions

• This reservation requires a credit card deposit of a confidential rate per
  room and will be charged to your card by February 15, 2008.
• If you cancel for any reason, attempt to modify this
  reservation, or do not arrive on your specified check-in date, your payment is
  non-refundable.

To summarise, at these hotels, 1 free stay =
charged an unknown amount of euros immediately
+ award points deducted immediately
+ no ability to change or refund the booking
+ refunded the deposit less charges at time of checking out (your deposit and points are forfeit if you don’t show up)

The thought of approving a charge to my credit card for an indefinite amount did not appeal. I contacted Diamond Desk. They advised the charge is equal to the rack room rate – ie even higher than what I’d pay for a paid stay! Apparently Hilton HHonors do not feel empowered to override (or are hiding behind) this “hotel policy”.

I’m hoping this nonsense is limited to just these 2 hotels, is soon stopped, and does not spread any further. Please let me know (by comment or email) if you are aware of any other hotels with such unfriendly practices. Also please post to the Flyer Talk discussion.

Summary

Where I live all three of these customer unfriendly practices are of dubious legality. #2 makes no sense. Surely there is some price point where refundable bookings are warranted? Granted, that might be higher than I’m prepared to pay but having nothing available that is flexible seems rather odd. #3 defies all logic. Only those who fail to read would willingly accept those terms for a free award stay.

It is amazing that until a few days ago I held Hilton HHonors in high regard. Can I please be allowed to amend my Freddies Awards votes?

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

Since I posted the Best Western lifetime Diamond offer the other day, the promotion has been expanded to include a few more countries (thanks to Flyer Talk‘s sdsearch for finding this). I wonder what they class as Asia?

From the Best Western website,

Celebrate Best Western’s Diamond Jubileeby earning Diamond Elite status for life!

Stay 60 or more qualified nights at any Best Western hotel worldwide in 2006 and you will earn Diamond Elite status for life, which rewards you with 30% bonus points* with each qualified stay and more. No registration required. Simply book your next stays with us to get going!

Diamond members residing in Holland and Norway earn 15% bonus points. AAA/CAA Preferred Gold Crown Club members will earn additional 10% bonus points as part of their program benefits. Offer valid for Gold Crown Club International (“GCCI”) members residing in the US, Canada, South America, Central America, Mexico, Asia, the Caribbean Islands, Norway and Holland only.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.

As part of their 60th anniversary promotions, Best Western is offering lifetime Diamond Elite status for 60 stays in 2006. Offer valid only to residents in US, Canada and the Caribbean.

BW doesn’t seem to have such a good reputation in the US, but some of the international properties (eg in Europe) are great.

Musings of the Global Traveller
Thoughts, advice and travel news from around the world by a seasoned frequent flyer.