View from the Wing

Starwood posted its Cash & Points award hotel participation for 2006 yesterday. Well, sort of, since hotels in Asia aren’t listed yet.

This has been a long time in coming, I understand from Flyertalk that they were trying to get this up much earlier but a glitch in the process delayed it until January 30. They even moved back the date to look for it on the website a couple of times.

I don’t really know what the glitch was, but posting a full year of participation by the end of January is actually an improvement on past practice.

Starwood used to list these awards only one quarter at a time, and the listing would usually be posted no earlier than a few days into that quarter. Last year they moved to show a full year at a time, but that didn’t happen until March. So showing all of 2006 participating hotels on January 30th is their best performance yet, a real improvement to the cash and points program.

However it does seem that fewer hotels are participating this year. I haven’t actually counted the number of hotels in any quarter, so it’s just an impression, but certainly fewer hotels that interest me are participating. (And with more hotels bumping up to category 5 you don’t even have a chance that they’ll participate, since cash and points tops off with category 4 properties.)

There does seem to be a problem in getting hotels to participate. It’s possible that there was just a glitch in soliciting the hotels, which would also explain the delay in getting things posted. And it’s also possible that more hotels could be added later to the list.

But it’s worth remembering that unlike traditional awards — which hotels have to offer if they’re a participating property in the Starwood Preferred Guest program — cash and points is entirely voluntary.

Perhaps many hotels are reluctant to participate either because

1. they view Starwood’s internal reimbursement rate — what Starwood Preferred Guest pays a hotel on top of the cash portion of the reservation, or

2. hotels can’t plan several quarters out, perhaps their revenue modeling is only accurate and useful 90 days forward or so

A hotel has to see cash and points as valuable (incremental revenue) in order to be induced to participate. No doubt there would be more participation if Starwood Preferred Guest offered more money to hotels on these reservations. Could it be that with higher occupancy rates hotels are less likely to see value in a cash and points award?

A hotel would only want to make cash and points nights available on rooms that would otherwise go unsold. This is similar to the decision to list a hotel on Priceline. At a higher reimbursement rate they might be more willing, but if they’re going to see money similar to Priceline they might only want to make the same level of inventory available. (A rough generalization.)

They can adjust Priceline inventory real-time, and even not make it available until the last minute. But with a full year of cash and points, a hotel would presumably have to make some rooms available now for Oct - Dec if they were going to participate during the fourth quarter of the year. So if a hotel forecasts sales wrong they might crowd out higher paying guests with lower-revenue cash and points nights.

I wonder if an unintended consequence of moving to a full year of cash and points offerings is that hotels are more reluctant to participate since they don’t do a good job forecasting revenue more than 3 months out?

This could be alleviated of course by a higher payout to the hotels from Starwood Preferred Guest, but they’d presumably only be willing and able to do that if they raised the points requirement on the award. (Or they could raise the cash co-pay and pay the same amount for their kickin.) But that would defeat the value proposition of cash and points.

On the whole I’m happy with the ability to see farther out on these awards. It would be nice to have greater participation, though.

A tough nut for the cash and points gurus at Starwood to work out I imagine.

Starwood posted its Cash & Points award hotel participation for 2006 yesterday. Well, sort of, since hotels in Asia aren’t listed yet.

This has been a long time in coming, I understand from Flyertalk that they were trying to get this up much earlier but a glitch in the process delayed it until January 30. They even moved back the date to look for it on the website a couple of times.

I don’t really know what the glitch was, but posting a full year of participation by the end of January is actually an improvement on past practice.

Starwood used to list these awards only one quarter at a time, and the listing would usually be posted no earlier than a few days into that quarter. Last year they moved to show a full year at a time, but that didn’t happen until March. So showing all of 2006 participating hotels on January 30th is their best performance yet, a real improvement to the cash and points program.

However it does seem that fewer hotels are participating this year. I haven’t actually counted the number of hotels in any quarter, so it’s just an impression, but certainly fewer hotels that interest me are participating. (And with more hotels bumping up to category 5 you don’t even have a chance that they’ll participate, since cash and points tops off with category 4 properties.)

There does seem to be a problem in getting hotels to participate. It’s possible that there was just a glitch in soliciting the hotels, which would also explain the delay in getting things posted. And it’s also possible that more hotels could be added later to the list.

But it’s worth remembering that unlike traditional awards — which hotels have to offer if they’re a participating property in the Starwood Preferred Guest program — cash and points is entirely voluntary.

Perhaps many hotels are reluctant to participate either because

1. they view Starwood’s internal reimbursement rate — what Starwood Preferred Guest pays a hotel on top of the cash portion of the reservation, or

2. hotels can’t plan several quarters out, perhaps their revenue modeling is only accurate and useful 90 days forward or so

A hotel has to see cash and points as valuable (incremental revenue) in order to be induced to participate. No doubt there would be more participation if Starwood Preferred Guest offered more money to hotels on these reservations. Could it be that with higher occupancy rates hotels are less likely to see value in a cash and points award?

A hotel would only want to make cash and points nights available on rooms that would otherwise go unsold. This is similar to the decision to list a hotel on Priceline. At a higher reimbursement rate they might be more willing, but if they’re going to see money similar to Priceline they might only want to make the same level of inventory available. (A rough generalization.)

They can adjust Priceline inventory real-time, and even not make it available until the last minute. But with a full year of cash and points, a hotel would presumably have to make some rooms available now for Oct - Dec if they were going to participate during the fourth quarter of the year. So if a hotel forecasts sales wrong they might crowd out higher paying guests with lower-revenue cash and points nights.

I wonder if an unintended consequence of moving to a full year of cash and points offerings is that hotels are more reluctant to participate since they don’t do a good job forecasting revenue more than 3 months out?

This could be alleviated of course by a higher payout to the hotels from Starwood Preferred Guest, but they’d presumably only be willing and able to do that if they raised the points requirement on the award. (Or they could raise the cash co-pay and pay the same amount for their kickin.) But that would defeat the value proposition of cash and points.

On the whole I’m happy with the ability to see farther out on these awards. It would be nice to have greater participation, though.

A tough nut for the cash and points gurus at Starwood to work out I imagine.

Starwood posted its Cash & Points award hotel participation for 2006 yesterday. Well, sort of, since hotels in Asia aren’t listed yet.

This has been a long time in coming, I understand from Flyertalk that they were trying to get this up much earlier but a glitch in the process delayed it until January 30. They even moved back the date to look for it on the website a couple of times.

I don’t really know what the glitch was, but posting a full year of participation by the end of January is actually an improvement on past practice.

Starwood used to list these awards only one quarter at a time, and the listing would usually be posted no earlier than a few days into that quarter. Last year they moved to show a full year at a time, but that didn’t happen until March. So showing all of 2006 participating hotels on January 30th is their best performance yet, a real improvement to the cash and points program.

However it does seem that fewer hotels are participating this year. I haven’t actually counted the number of hotels in any quarter, so it’s just an impression, but certainly fewer hotels that interest me are participating. (And with more hotels bumping up to category 5 you don’t even have a chance that they’ll participate, since cash and points tops off with category 4 properties.)

There does seem to be a problem in getting hotels to participate. It’s possible that there was just a glitch in soliciting the hotels, which would also explain the delay in getting things posted. And it’s also possible that more hotels could be added later to the list.

But it’s worth remembering that unlike traditional awards — which hotels have to offer if they’re a participating property in the Starwood Preferred Guest program — cash and points is entirely voluntary.

Perhaps many hotels are reluctant to participate either because

1. they view Starwood’s internal reimbursement rate — what Starwood Preferred Guest pays a hotel on top of the cash portion of the reservation, or

2. hotels can’t plan several quarters out, perhaps their revenue modeling is only accurate and useful 90 days forward or so

A hotel has to see cash and points as valuable (incremental revenue) in order to be induced to participate. No doubt there would be more participation if Starwood Preferred Guest offered more money to hotels on these reservations. Could it be that with higher occupancy rates hotels are less likely to see value in a cash and points award?

A hotel would only want to make cash and points nights available on rooms that would otherwise go unsold. This is similar to the decision to list a hotel on Priceline. At a higher reimbursement rate they might be more willing, but if they’re going to see money similar to Priceline they might only want to make the same level of inventory available. (A rough generalization.)

They can adjust Priceline inventory real-time, and even not make it available until the last minute. But with a full year of cash and points, a hotel would presumably have to make some rooms available now for Oct - Dec if they were going to participate during the fourth quarter of the year. So if a hotel forecasts sales wrong they might crowd out higher paying guests with lower-revenue cash and points nights.

I wonder if an unintended consequence of moving to a full year of cash and points offerings is that hotels are more reluctant to participate since they don’t do a good job forecasting revenue more than 3 months out?

This could be alleviated of course by a higher payout to the hotels from Starwood Preferred Guest, but they’d presumably only be willing and able to do that if they raised the points requirement on the award. (Or they could raise the cash co-pay and pay the same amount for their kickin.) But that would defeat the value proposition of cash and points.

On the whole I’m happy with the ability to see farther out on these awards. It would be nice to have greater participation, though.

A tough nut for the cash and points gurus at Starwood to work out I imagine.

Cathay Pacific is offering 250 AsiaMiles for completing a short survey on duty free.

(This offer is currently listed on the front page of the Cathay Pacific website under Hot News.)

Update 2/3/06: Survey seems to have closed and is no longer available.

The famed American Express Centurion Card (U.S. version) is certainly not worth the $2500 fee any longer.

Centurion members used to get Diamond status in the Hyatt Gold Passport program. Last year that benefit was pulled, and American Express added Platinum status in the Priority Club program instead.

That’s hardly a like exchange: anyone can get Platinum status by doing as little as transferring some points into their account from Membership Rewards, the status provides very little in the way of benefits, and I can’t imagine that too many Centurion cardholders find themselves staying at Holiday Inns all that frequently in order to take advantage of it.

Now comes news that Platinum status in the Starwood Preferred Guest program will no longer be offered. Everyone signed up for the status through January 21 (about a week ago) will be Platinum through February 28, 2007. New signups will receive Gold status from here on out, and existing members will drop to Gold (unless the requalify on their own) beginning March 1, 2007.

If there was ever a card that you’d expect not to be devalued, wouldn’t it be this one? But American Express has opened the floodgates to anyone willing to pay (and demonstrate a history of large charges on an Amex charge card) so it’s no longer even that exclusive a product. Without Starwood Platinum status as a benefit I won’t even be tempted to get one of these (Delta and Continental Gold status just aren’t that alluring).

The February issue of Inside Flyer predicts (subscription required) that the combination of USAirways and America West will allow you to combine your miles in the two programs in “late March or early April.”

Readers of this blog know better. As I mentioned last month, you can combine the miles in your accounts now on a self-service basis using Points.com.

Points transfer between USAirways and America West on a 1:1 basis at no cost. Transfers from America West to USAirways appear to complete in real-time. Having tested it the other way as well, it looks like transfers from USAirways to America West take somewhat longer.

This method will let you combine points to top off for an award, or even move all your miles from one account to the other to take advantage of current partnerships that the other program has or to take advantage of the other program’s award chart.

Best of all, you can even use Points.com to move your points back if you change your mind (bearing in mind that going from USAirways to America West doesn’t seem to happen real time).

It used to be that points could only be moved out of a USAirways account if you had a USAirways co-branded credit card. These America West transfers are an exception. And using Points.com usually means devaluation, again these transfers are an exception. And best of all it’s free.

Of course, USAirways and America West will be trying to combine accounts in a few months on their own, and where they aren’t able to figure out which accounts match (perhaps due to slight variations in name or different addresse) they’re certainly be able to handle it for you. But in the meantime your best bet is do-it-yourself.

Goodies Blog tells you how to get your soda and chips for the Super Bowl for free.

Flying doesn’t lend itself to private conversations, even flying in first class, or even in an international first class ’suite’.

That’s a lesson that someone needs to teach Under Secretary of State Robert Joseph.

The Washington Note reports that Joseph was not much of a diplomat on a recent Dulles-Oakland flight.

Bob Joseph was on his way to meetings at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories.



He was having a loud conversation with someone he was sitting next to.



(Of course, “loud” is a relative term — but let’s satisfy that with “loud enough to be heard by others in first class.”)



The key point of conversation is that Joseph reportedly stated “I miss the Soviet Union, because they knew what the rules were, and now we are stuck with these ’surrender monkeys’ in France and Germany.”

The French as surrender monkeys I’ll buy (gotta love the Simpsons), but the Germans?

Brad DeLong observes

In World War II, governed by the logistically incompetent Nazi regime, the German armed forces took on powers that outnumbered them 7-1 in manpower and 9-1 in industrial capacity–and almost won. That’s not what “surrender monkeys” do. Not at all.



Minimal acquaintance with military history should be a prerequisite for employment in the Department of State.

Craig Depken looks at what it cost to travel from New York to New Orleans and back in 1906.

From the Jan. 28, 1906 NYT is an advertisement for the Washington and Southern Railway:


MARDI GRAS - NEW YORK TO NEW ORLEANS AND RETURN - $37.75.

Tickets on sale February 21 to 27, good returning until March 3, 1906. Extension of limit March 16th can be had by depositing ticket and paying 50 cents at New Orleans.

I don’t know how long it would have taken to get from the Big Apple to the Big Easy on a train, but I would figure two days or so. The folks over at EH.net estimate the following 2004 values for the $37 round trip:

In 2004, $37.75 from 1906 is worth:
$789.69 using the Consumer Price Index
$628.95 using the GDP deflator
$3,459.73 using the unskilled wage
$4,577.43 using the GDP per capita
$14,789.21 using the relative share of GDP

Ouch. As a relative share of GDP, the train trip was extremely expensive. However, it wasn’t too cheap using the CPI adjusted figure. Today’s cost of flying from NYC Laguardia to New Orleans? Travelocity has reasonably timed flights for around $160. Travel time from NYC to NO is about 2.5 hours.

I’m not going to complain this week about higher prices to fly out of Dulles since Independence Air ceased operations.

Continental is hosting a gathering for its frequent flyers this weekend and one Flyertalker has posted some news.

international rewad and upgrade travel will see significant mileage increases for the 2006 program year.



It sounds like Y upgrades to BF to Hawaii will jump to 15,000 miles while discount economy upgrades will cost 35,000 miles in addition to any required fees. Upgrades to Asia will jump to 50,000 miles for discount economy tickets (plus fees) and 25,000 for full Y. Europe will jump to 40,000 and 20,000 respectively.



Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like offered inventory will change much …nor will the fee for the mileage option on discount economy tickets. Mark Bergsrud mentioned at a Q&A at the ‘Do today that they don’t expect any changes with the system and inventories.

An upgrade award to Hawaii from a discounted fare costs 17,500 miles now plus as much as $450 each way. That’s going to go up to 35,000 miles. Roundtrip that’s 70,000 miles and as much as $900 to upgrade.

In contrast, United offers upgrades to Hawaii from anywhere in the U.S. on any fare for 15,000 miles each way or 30,000 roundtrip. No fee is required.

What possible reason is there again to acquire Continental miles? Conceivably if you live in Houston, but even then you could be a member of Northwest’s program (which is only marginally better) and receive elite benefits. And if you’re not going to earn status and you’re going to fly on Continental for goodness sakes accumulate your miles in a real program like Alaska Mileage Plan.

The increase in upgrade prices remains a rumor, but it’s a sufficiently believable one that it underscores why you wouldn’t want to accumulate miles with Continental whether this particular change pans out or not.

Update: One conceivable reason to accumulate miles with Continental did occur to me, but it’s a fairly limited circumstance. If you live in a Continental hub city and buy discount fares and fly just enough to make elite status and are able to buy your tickets online at Continental.com you’ll get full elite credit for those flights, which you wouldn’t get accumulating miles in the Northwest program.

So if accumulating miles with Continental makes the difference between elite status and not, and elite benefits are more important than awards, then accumulate those OnePass miles. But don’t delude yourself into believing they’re worth anything.

I’ve been promising a review of Randy Petersen and Tim Winship’s new book, Mileage Pro, for some time.

I read it about six weeks ago, and really did enjoy it. It’s absolutely the best introduction to the miles and points game I’ve ever come across. But I didn’t actually learn anything from it.* They’re quite upfront about their target audience, and it’s not the expert with over 10,000 posts on Flyertalk. Even so, I absolutely enjoyed reading it and I even gave a copy to my father-in-law — who poured through it voraciously.

(* Strictly speaking that isn’t true — I learned that you can swap miles into Delta via Points.com on p.94, and though the book and I agree that this is rarely advisable I didn’t even think this was possible since Delta’s participation in the program is so limited.)

My recommendation, by the way, isn’t bought and paid for — even though this blog gets a mention in an appendix.

But if you want other perspectives, David Rowell reviewed the book, so did the Charlotte Observer, and Randy himself blogged the story of how it all came together.

The book is at its best relaying the history and color of programs. It’s good context for someone like me who came along late to these programs, sometime in the late 90s but not seriously until around 2001. Having this sort of context is useful as you evaluate claims about how much ‘worse’ programs are today than in the good old days. Sure there were some lucrative offers at the beginning, but no alliance-wide awards. Which is better is hard to say, but the story is much more complicated than ‘old days good, current times bad.’

The book is less good with offer causal analysis, explaining the whys of a program’s decision-making (which is secondary to the book’s purpose anyway). From page 7:

Because the airlines believe car rental companies get extra business from the airlines’ mileage incentive programs, the airlines charge the car rental companies for the miles.

That may explain why car rental companies are willing to pay for the miles but it certainly doesn’t explain why airlines charge — they charge everyone whether it benefits a company’s bottom-line or not. One doesn’t say “grocery stores charge for milk because it builds stong bones and makes people healthy.” Grocery stores are in business to sell a product and mileage programs are too.

It’s difficult to write a book like this. It’s especially tough for it to be current, with the way that frequent flyer programs change their rules all the time. On the one hand it can be written so generally as to not be useful. On the other it can be so particular that it’s outdated before it hits the bookstore.

The book strikes a nice balance — it isn’t a rehash of airline award charts — but I had to feel for the authors. Almost immediately after the book hit the shelves on piece of advice became outdated. In the chapter, “The Best Frequent Flyer Advice You’ll Ever Get” number 6 says

Delta Platinum Medallion members get club membership for free allowing them, because of the Skyteam alliance, to also visit the airline clubs of Continental and Northwest.

But Delta killed this very benefit, which was perhaps the only truly distinguishing thing the Skymiles had to offer to their top tier elites.

The way that details change over time and vary across programs explains the frequent use of words like ‘usually’ and ‘most’ to describe program practices like upgrades. It would be too easy to get mired in the details of specific programs, fortunately this book doesn’t fall into the trap and draws out the important lessons rather than confusing a reader with an array of mileage prices and rules.

Still, there’s so much to the arcane details of these programs that no one can get everything right. I’ve made mistakes myself. A reader once asked me a question about qualifying for American Airlines status based on segments, and I replied that it wasn’t possible. They then got very confused, since they were sure it was based on American’s website but they also knew everything I said had to be right (heh). I was thinking about Executive Platinum status, which couldn’t be reached through segments, and they were just asking about Gold which of course could.

The chapter on the best frequent flyer advice suggests a status match if you have elite status but want to fly American. It mentions the American challenge that lets you earn status with fewer miles over a shortened time frame, but incorrectly suggests that you need to already have status in order to participate.

So the book isn’t perfect. It calls United’s Ameniti program “Avanti” (p. 118).

And outdated is the claim (p. 51) that American Express Membership Rewards points can be transferred to USAirways, that relationship ended December 31 (after the book was published). Fortuntaely — and not noted in the book — points can be transferred to USAirways (and Star Alliance) partner Air Canada, and new since publication is the entry of Airtran as an American Express transfer partner. The list of Diners Club transfer partners has become similarly dated already.

I suppose this is just an argument for frequent updating and new editions!

Speaking of Airtran, the book notes (p. 115) that Airtran permits upgrades to business class from full fare tickets for a small additional payment. It doesn’t mention that Airtran permits these upgrades from any fare. It’s a reasonable omission as Airtran describes this as “a special promotion” though it’s a promotion that’s been running for as long as I can remember and one that doesn’t have a specified end date.

I do wish the book would take more firm stands. True statements like “not all programs are equally generous” with award availability are followed with “there are no definitive data on redemption success rates.” (p. 25) Fair enough, but it’s also true that Continental award availability is relatively bad, while American’s availability is relatively good. And I’d go a step further and say that across the board Skyteam partners don’t offer nearly the redemption opportunities as oneworld or Star Alliance (though Qantas is a oneworld member and quite stingy in the premium classes).

Similarly the book does a good job outlining issues to consider in picking a rewards credit card but doesn’t come down firmly as to which one to choose in any given situation. (For that you might check out my primer on the subject.)

One of the fun ‘way-too-inside’ games to play is guessing which author wrote which chapter. I’m willing to bet money that Randy Petersen wrote chapter 6 on award redemption, if only because of the statement

Here is a simple, if hard-to-believe fact: On any given day, 100 percent of airline seats are available for award redemption.

Randy is fond of saying that any seat on any plane is available with miles using anytime awards, and that in the early days of frequent flyer programs all awards were those anytime awards, at higher mileage pricing than current saver awards.

To a certain extent that’s true, but it isn’t as meaningful as it seems. Would concerns about an ability to redeem miles disappear if you could use ten times the ‘normal’ miles for any seat? Or 25,000 miles and a $1000 co-pay to use your points on any domestic itinerary (that might normally cost $300)? 50,000 miles for a $150 roundtrip ticket is silly.

Pricing matters and the price of premium class anytime awards has been going through the roof — 250,000 miles for a business class ticket from the US to Europe with Continental OnePass or Delta Skymiles.

One of the things I was happiest to see is that Randy has apparently come around to seeing things my way on whether to save your miles or burn just as fast as you earn. The August 2003 cover story in Inside Flyer (subscription required) was on saving your miles for retirement. I’ve long explained why this is a bad idea, that your miles will never be worth as much in the future as they are today. Now Mileage Pro agrees (p. 77) “Saving miles for travel during retirement — a common strategy — is a very risky proposition.”

I really enjoyed the book. It was a great read, an honest read (unlike some travel books), and a great introduction to the subject. It’s one that frequent flyer fanatics will enjoy reading, and will pass on (or by extra copies to give) to friends and family that ‘just don’t understand’. But I’ll never see eye to eye with everything that the authors say, and you can read about our differences here on this site and decide for yourself how best to earn and spend your miles and points.

Reading through the February issue of Inside Flyer and some recent posts on Flyertalk by Randy Petersen I’m struck by a few of his predictions for changes to frequent flyer programs in 2006.

Among the no-brainers, American and United are extending their 15,000 mile awards for short-haul travel (flights under 750 miles). Other airlines will certainly match. Continental has announced its own 20,000 mile awards for flights under 1500 miles — more miles, but longer flights, and interesting competitive response. Short-haul flights tend to see better award availability, since most flyers don’t see them as a good value for use of points. Fewer points make sense. But in most cases they’re still not a particularly good value. Randy has seemed very high on these award offerings, but they really don’t excite me one bit.

More controversially, Randy sees programs — or perhaps just Delta — moving to a new regime where all capacity controls are lifted on awards, presumably offering only one tier of awards (no more saver and anytime offerings) for an amount of points somewhere between the current two prices such as 35,000 miles for a domestic coach award utilizing any seat on any flight.

Inside Flyer has reported that in 2005 Delta ran a brief test eliminating capacity controls on international premium awards. A fascinating idea, and one that seems plausible, but I’d expect to see it on domestic US awards only at least at the start. I don’t think we’ll see this on international business class flights, since the mileage cost of anytime awards has been on the rise. Both Continental and Delta recently raised their anytime awards for business class from the US to Europe to 250,000 miles.

Since it’s so difficult to redeem miles on these programs, customers have been using anytime awards. And these have been cutting into revenue sales. So the mileage requirements have gone up. It’s difficult to see the airlines agreeing to reduce the mileage cost to redeem these seats.

(A somewhat implausible conspiracy theory would be that they’ve increased the mileage requirements for these awards so they coulod ‘reduce’ them back to their earlier levels, offering one class of award all at the old anytime price and misleadingly advertising it as a better value.)

Randy also sees an airline offering elite status based on credit card spending. Several airline credit cards have already offered miles towards elite status based on spending thresholds (United, Delta, and USAirways spring to mind). He expects an airline to go all the way and offering status wholly based on spend.

Hotels already do this. Several chains offer low-level status just for signing up for their card. And Hilton introduced Gold (mid-tier) status for spending $25,000 in a year on their co-branded Amex.

This is certainly a trend. Credit card partnerships are hugely lucrative for travel providers. USAirways and Delta have received several hundred million dollars in pre-purchased miles from their credit card partners. United got both debtor-in-possession and bankruptcy exit financing from theirs. These partnerships can only deepen. (Sidenote: it amazes me that Hyatt can remain without a credit card partner, this would seem like it has to change, so this might be my prediction.)

My own expectation is that the airline offers will (1) come on premium cards with annual fees and (2) will offer only the lowest tier of status based solely on spending. Still, this is a step forward. Personally I’m waiting for top tier status to be offered based on spend..

Haven’t been over to the Freepay (aka Gratis Networks) sites in awhile, as they haven’t introduced anything new and I’ve gotten just about every electronic item they offer.

But I checked it all out this morning and there’s what looks to be a new easy offer: a free four-week Stamps.com trial which you can cancel at no cost, and credit for the offer should post to your account in a few days. My kind of offer!

Though I’ve received all the iPods (the original, shuffle, photo, nano) and the Mac Mini, the desktop computer, the xbox, the TV, the camera, and the handbag, I still have three to complete:

• Free laptops
  

• 
  Free PS3
  

• 
  $300 SuperCertificate (from giftcertificates.com)

I’m going to use the Stamps.com offer on the PS3 because I’m closest to completing that one.

Get a free sample of Post-It Wall Stick pads. I use these in meetings at work, they’re great!

Through February 8 USAirways is offering 10,000 bonus miles for purchase of a club membership.

Certainly not worth it for the miles, and I heavily object to their charging extra for access to United clubs and those of their other Star Alliance partners. But if you were going to join anyway this is a reasonable offer.

Existing club members are not eligible for the bonus.

When I need to book travel online, I may go to an airline or hotel website or to Orbitz, Expedia, or Travelocity.

A small business can go to one of the major online travel retailers and have them set up a special portal customized to the business, implementing the company’s own travel policy. Depending on the volume of travel it may be free or a small setup fee may be involved. Employees of the company then book travel through the dedicated site.

Government generally approaches this ‘problem’ by working with GAO-approved vendors.

The Department of Defense, though, goes its own way. They’ve spent almost $500 million over the past 8 years on their own online booking system. And it doesn’t work.

Among its many problems, the system doesn’t properly display flight and fare information, causes duplicate payments for purchases, and permits premium-class travel when travel rules don’t allow it.

In theory, this half a billion dollar (so far) project is supposed to save money. (Compared to what?)

Senator Tom Coburn proposed killing the project but that vote failed by a 2-1 margin.

(Hat tip to Tripso Daily.)

It’s part of their broadside against Southwest, they’ve titled their press release American Airlines Gets Serious About Competing at Love Field

Starting March 2 through May 26, customers who fly three roundtrips between Dallas Love Field or DFW International Airport and Kansas City, St. Louis, Austin and San Antonio can earn 30,000 AAdvantage bonus miles

…

Fly six roundtrips in the same time period and earn an additional 30,000 bonus miles

Registration is required with promo code FLY3.

Hotel Chatter fires Donald Trump as its travel agent. The Donald apparently has a travel site (who knew?) called GoTrump.com.

GoTrump.com is all about “The Art of the Travel Deal. ” Online travel is a huge business – an $80 billion business. That is why negotiating to get the best rate matters. There are plenty of other sites out there, but only GoTrump.com gets the best deals.

And on the site, Trump offers his recommendations for best hotels.

Hotel Chatter’s criticisms are twofold — that it’s unlikely Trump has even been to some of the properties he recommends, and that the suggestions are boring and unimaginative:

Considering that there are about 53 cities listed, we doubt that Trump has been to all these hotels but there’s a good chance he may have. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt today.



Each hotel in cities far and wide, like Bali and Hong Kong, and near like New York and San Francisco, gets a special page on the site, complete with a description, updated information, facts, pictures and lists of amenities.



The only problem is his choices are consistently the top luxury brands such as Fairmont, Ritz Carlton and the Four Seasons.



For instance, the Donald recommends the Four Seasons for Los Angeles, the Fairmont for Chicago and San Francisco and a combination of the Four Seasons and the Ritz-Carlton for New York. Oh, and of course, he recommends his own Trump International Hotel for the Big Apple as well.



So if you’re the kind of guy who buys Trump suits and will apply for The Apprentice’s 20th season, Trump’s picks could be very helpful indeed. But for the rest of us, it’s boring.

Okay, no need for the jokes. They’re too obvious. But if you’re actually flying to Wichita anyway, there can’t possibly be a better way than Airtran’s Buy One Get One program. Through February 28 every roundtrip to Wichita earns enough credits for a free roundtrip ticket.

You have to sign up for Airtran’s “A2B” business program to be eligible for the promotion.

Through March 31, when you sign up for Continental Airlines OnePass Dining (the free Rewards Network a.k.a. iDine program that awards miles for eating at participating restaurants) and create an online profile, you’ll get 500 Continental miles.

Details can be found via Continental OnePass News and Offers using the link “Join OnePass Dining For Free By March 31, 2006 and Earn 500 Bonus Miles.” However registration is not required, so all you need to do is go to the OnePass dining site and register (if you haven’t already) and create an online profile.

Members who created profiles prior to January 15 aren’t eligible for the bonus.