As reported by NotiFlyer, Southwest is imposing capacity controls on its awards.

Currently an award ticket is good on any seat. There are a few blackout dates, but otherwise award tickets aren’t restricted.

As a bone to members, Rapid Rewards credits will expire after 24 months instead of 12. They’re also removing blackout dates, but blackout dates are meaningless once you introduce capacity controls. Now they’ll be able to allocate as many as zero or one seat on a flight. Who needs blackout dates?

Southwest is headlining the change to 24 month expiration of credits, and buries the news in the middle paragraphs. Clearly an attempt to divert attention from the real bad news and soften the blow.

Rapid Rewards members, you have my sympathy.

Book an escort with your American Express Centurion card and get an extra day free.

Jet Set Lara, the blog of an international escort, offers some observations on the generic sameness of many Ritz-Carlton and Four Seasons hotels.

I have a recurring nightmare. In it, I wake up in a hotel room. The bed is perfect with four down pillows, 400 thread count linens, and a 2000 coil pillow top mattress. The clock radio is blaring classical music having been left on as some sort of primitive turf marking by the housekeeping staff. Oh – there is the green/gold bedspread rolled up behind the pale yellow armchair, along with the two overstuffed decorative pillows that will be placed back on the bed when it is made up. Ah yes, there are the faux-tique writing desk and armoire. Rubbing my eyes, I trudge to the bathroom – as I thought – green/brown marble with gold colored fixtures with Federalist era flourishes, a toilet stuffed in its own separate closet, and a glass shower stall with 2 ½ walls of the same marble and lemon verbena amenities by L’Occitane. At this point, I scream “Where am I?”



The answer is both obvious and illusive. Clearly this is a Four Seasons, but which one? In their zeal to determine what Thomas Jefferson’s bedroom might have looked like if he had had electricity and modern plumbing, Four Seasons has stumbled into the sort of routinized design philosophy embraced by mid-market chains with out the wherewithal to spend tens of millions building a hotel. I can only assume that the Four Seasons interior design team was let go in a corporate downsizing and their last cruel act was to commit the company to a 20 year supply of fake chesterfield TV cabinets fitted with mini-bars.

The author prefers Park Hyatts, which are generally nice. But contra this post, the Park Hyatt isn’t the best hotel in Sydney. It has a great location on the water but otherwise isn’t special. And goodness, if you get a room on the back side of the property? (The best property in Sydney would likely be the Observatory. Honestly I like the Sydney Westin just as much as the Park Hyatt.)

And while the Park Hyatt in Chicago is excellent, it isn’t the best property there.. by a long shot. The Peninsula has the Park Hyatt beat, and the Chicago Pen is probably the worst of the chain.

Still, the author’s taste in Hyatt notwithstanding, luxury does not begin and end with Four Seasons and Ritz-Carlton. (On average, I’d say that Four Seasons is superior to the Ritz, but that’s only an average. The Georgetown Ritz is certainly better than the Four Seasons nearby.)

There ARE some wonderful Four Seasons properties. The Four Seasons in Jimbaran Bay and Chiang Mai are amazing. And probably the best City hotel in the world is the Four Seasons George V in Paris.

But it’s true that you have to get beyond these brands if you want real luxury.

For city hotels, check out the Peninsula Bangkok, the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, Grande Bretagne in Athens… in its pre-St. Regis days, the Lanesborough in London.

And for resorts, Aman probably operates the best chain. One and Only has some nice properties. So does Banyan Tree.

Still, there’s a place for the Ritz. They have the best LAX airport hotel, after all (Marina del Rey.. but only if you have a suite).

When the USAirways-America West merger was first announced in May I noted that a key detail was a planned cash infusion from a credit card partner in the neighborhood of $300 million.

It was curious that the partner wasn’t named, while Bank of America was already partner to both airlines.

So, despite the Charlotte Observer calling the news “somewhat unexpected”, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that Juniper Bank (which issues Frontier and Airtran cards) will become the issuer of the USAirways card.

Taking the place of Charlotte-based Bank of America will be Juniper Bank, a subsidiary of British-based Barclays PLC, which agreed Monday to pour $455 million into the merger between US Airways and America West Airlines. In exchange, Juniper will have the exclusive right to market the US Airways credit card beginning in 2008, after a two-year transition period in which both banks can offer US Airways cards, according to regulatory documents filed Monday.

The Vancouver Sun runs a story on the emergence of underwater hotels.

The Maldives Hilton already has an underwater restaurant. This property has been on my list of places to check out, but has been bumped down a notch since I’ve recently been to Bora Bora Nui. How many overwater bungalows do I need to stay in in a year?

When the fully underwater properties are completed, perhaps even by the end of next year, they’ll no doubt make the list at UnusualHotelsoftheWorld.com.

(Hat tip for the news article to Tripso.com and for the Unusual Hotels directory to Marginal Revolution.)

Sign up to receive information about a checking account with Wells Fargo Bank and you’ll be sent a code for a free iTunes download.

You can get one download per email address you use to sign up.

(Hat tip to the Flyertalk S.P.A.M. forum.)

Google SMS is pretty amazing. I saw it recently and made a note to myself that I had to check it out, finally had a chance this afternoon.

You can send a text message to GOOGL (46645) with a request for information, and you’ll get a text back in a matter of moments.

My first test was for driving directions from Reagan National airport to my home. I entered “From DCA to [Street Address City State]” and I had turn by turn directions in seconds.

Then I asked it for a definition, sending “define blog”

Final test, how what is the population of Virginia? “virginia population”

Verdict: very cool.

Time for dinner, and this looks absolutely delicious.

• Bombay Sapphire cocktail book
  

• Your choice of Kraft ingredients
  

• Maxim subscription
  

• Head & Shoulders shampoo sample
  

• Durex lubricant sample here and here

Boston’s Logan Airport offers wireless internet for $7.95. Continental offers wireless internet free in its Presidents Club.

The airport is trying to force Continental to stop competing with its pay service, claiming offering internet for free to club members is “an unacceptable potential risk” to airport security. (Somehow when passenger pay $7.95 it’s no longer a risk.)

Security as a catch-all for prohibiting behavior is a clear risk to liberty. Fortuntaely Continental is fighting it.

(Hat tip to David Rowell.)

Via David Rowell, it turns out the the French realize that they are pathetic losers.

Maurice Lévy, the head of the media giant Publicis, whose company owns Saatchi and Saatchi and has offices in 100 countries across six continents, said France had failed to get the 2012 Olympics because the world now saw it as a nation of perdants – “losers”.



For good measure, he described the 35-hour week as “absurd” and the wails of complaint that followed Paris’s loss of the Games to London as “pathetic”.

…

“What I wrote was hard, but true. France is not in a crisis, it’s worse than that. A crisis is usually sudden and short, while we are in an endemic situation,” he said. “I’ve just had enough and wanted to say what I felt.”



In the article, Mr Lévy said the French had only themselves to blame for losing the Olympics, and that the country needed a wake-up call. “We have narrowed and stunted ourselves and we paint ourselves as losers, and no one wants to be among the losers. It’s time we opened our eyes wide, took an icy shower and looked reality in the face: we are in decline, going down a slippery slope.



“The Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry has reminded us of our [public] debt and the fact that we are living beyond our means. We knew the figures, yet no government for the last 20 years has wanted to draw a conclusion from them. The figures that attest to our decline are known to all.”

Or, as Tom Palmer once explained on an ABC News special

What they’re doing is turning the whole country into a big theme park. You go to Franceland. You have the cheese, you have the wine, you look at some castles, it’s a lovely place to visit. But does much new come out of France anymore, is it dynamic? No.

First there was European no-frill discount airline easyJet. Now there’s easyHotel.

In keeping with the “easy” philosophy, frills are again being ditched in favor of value for money. EasyHotel is charging $35 (£20) a night for double rooms at its first hotel in central London.



Following in the footsteps of Japan’s capsule hotel concept, these rooms are being heralded as Europe’s smallest.



Rooms come in three sizes — small, really small and tiny. At 80, 70 and 60 square feet (7.2, 6.3 or 5.4 square meters), there is little room to swing anything more than a carry-on bag.

Bathrooms are standard. Windows and a remote control for the TV are extra.

Jacqueline Passey is looking for a lover to travel with, apparently because she didn’t get a job in my office.

So send gifts, miles, and upgrade certificates my way gentlemen. You’re welcome.

Through September 15th Delta is offering a 35% bonus on transfers from American Express Membership Rewards. Registration is required.

Bonus points likely won’t show up until mid-November.

Via Free Frequent Flyer Miles, you can get 500 free Delta miles for requesting an auto insurance quote.

An Air France plane skidded off the runway after landing in Toronto and caught fire around 4pm Eastern. Early reports are that most passengers are safe, but this is not yet certain. Thoughts and hopes are with the passengers and crew.

Update: Everyone made it out alive, with just a few injuries.

Eugene Volokh gets a lost luggage call meant for Alaska Airlines.

Sometimes a looming constitutional question is really just a wrong number.

Via Brad DeLong, Iraq’s transportation minister has ordered a ban on alcohol sales at Baghdad International Airport.

The airport’s duty-free shop is not complying, in spite of threats to have their $800,000 inventory destroyed. Alcohol makes up 85% of duty free sales at the airport.

Oddly enough, the decision to ban alcohol is influenced by how it would look to the outside world.

Jabiri expressed concern about Iraq’s image if alcohol continues to be sold. “And this could corrupt the employees also,” he said. “Foreign travelers might not even realize this is an Islamic country when they see alcohol in the airport.”

Oh, yeah, if we didn’t go to war in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist, it must have been to create a secular, democratic state in the Middle East…