Courtesy of Free Traveling, the Regent Kuala Lumper — a very nice property — is available for $29 a night

$29/night – The Regent Kuala Lumpur
The Regent Kuala Lumpur, 160 Jalan Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur. $29/night. Feb 13, 17, 20, 23, 25, 27, March 2, 7, 12, 15, 17, 22, Apr 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26, May 1, 6, 11, and other dates. Book on travelocity.com.

Now, the hotel is usually available for just under $100 usually, so this one isn’t worth making a special trip for. Still, a great value!

Air Marshalls as drug couriers. Now I feel even better about them bumping me out of my first class seat.

Apparently all it took was a few thousand dollars to get the air marshalls involved to do this. As one commentator asked, “If a few grand gets one to smuggle some cocaine, I wonder how much it would cost to get someone to “forget” their firearm or an explosive device underneath a seat or in some other concealed place? After all, these guys bypass the checkpoints…”

Joe Turner attends a timeshare pitch with the promise of a free vacation, and walks away with a single gas coupon.

I’m not a fan of timeshares because I get most of my vacationing free on points anyway, and can get deals that make the rest of my travels less expensive than a timeshare anyway.

I can imagine scenarios where “vacation ownership” might make sense for some people, in part as a planning tool and in part to economize on the knowledge gathering necessary to do better than a timeshare offer.

But the sales tactics of many operators suggest that the deals they’re offering may not be that compelling on their own, and at the very least it’s important to recognize that you need to

1. get all the facts and dig through the fine print
2. take your time, high-pressure tactics like suggesting a deal will only be available for 24 hours aren’t credible, they absolutely want to sell you and will be happy to do so in a week or a month, and
3. negotiate on price, there’s plenty of flexibility that the sales folks have, don’t take the first/second/or even third offer.

I’m sure there’s plenty of good advice out there, such as whether it’s ever better to buy directly from a timeshare company as opposed to in the secondary market, which companies have the best reputation and offer the best value, what questions to ask and what to avoid. I’ve never looked for this information myself, but would certainly want it before seriously considering a pitch.

Chris Elliott looked into hotel rating sites like TripAdvisor.com and found that hotels are sometimes cooking the books, posting fake reviews themselves or offering discounts to travelers in exchange for positive reviews posted online.

This is in addition to all of the other problems with using broad-based experiences of travelers posted online, such as that only the best and worst experiences tend to get posted, that hotels do change and renovate over time (so recent stays are key), and that each guest has a somewhat different filter. Numerical rankings aren’t going to be consistent across individual travelers.

All of this is true, but I’m not sure how much it really matters. It’s important obscure and lesser-traveled destinations, where hotels may have only a couple reviews at most. But it’s difficult to overwhelm the vast majority of reviews which are genuine.

The key to understanding a hotel review is never to look at a numerical ranking. I’ve seen plenty of people downgrade the Ritz-Carlton Central Park because room service breakfast is expensive. It’s the flippin’ Ritz-Carlton. In Manhattan. Of course it’s expensive. Some would even consider that a feature — to the extent it’s offered in exchange for quality — rather than a bug.

You want to look for consistent themes, most of which would potentially warn you off of a property rather than encourage you to go there. Do several people mention mold? Dirty carpets? That valet parking takes forever? It’s the consistent mentions of specific items that are useful to catalog, and which you then need to filter through your own preferences in a play to stay.

While you may need to have your bogus detector on when reading glowing reviews, I do find Trip Advisor to be hugely valuable.

InflightHQ points to a neat online offering from Magellans that helps you determine what you’ll need in order to use your electric and electronic appliances abroad.

My super-duper all-purpose converter/adapter burned out a few months ago when my wife used it with her curling iron. After 6 years, may she rest in peace. The online guides I’ve looked at have been helpful, but this one is better because it’s both user friendly and comprehensive — I was looking for information on Rwanda yesterday but couldn’t find it. This one has it.

(Note, ebates offers 7% cash back at Magellan’s, and you can also earn miles via the online malls of Alaska and Delta there.)

United is offering up to 15,000 bonus miles for roundtrip flights to Australia from the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico or U.S. Virgin Islands from March 1 through April 30, 2006. Registration is required.

• 15,000 bonus miles for purchasing and flying a paid, qualifying roundtrip in United First® (F fare only)
  
• 10,000 bonus miles in qualifying United Business® (C, D fares only)
  
• 7,500 bonus miles in qualifying United Economy® (Y, B, M, H fares only)
  
• 5,000 bonus miles in qualifying United Economy (Q, V, W fares only)

(No bonus miles are offered on the absolute lowest — S and T — fares.)

Partner and code share flights don’t qualify for the offer. Tickets must be electronic. Miles should post 6 to 8 weeks after completing the return flight.

USAirways and America West haven’t quite gotten their act together combining their two frequent flyer programs. They don’t want to send out new elite membership cards under the old programs and can’t send out new cards under the combined programs (which count status from having flown both airlines) until they’re further along with integration. So they’re extending everyone’s elite status in the meantime.

If your status was set to expire or be downgraded on February 28th, you have a reprieve. If you were counting on combining last year’s flying from both carriers to boost your status, you’ll have to wait. An email like the following was sent to current elite members:

As a valued Gold Elite member, we want to make you aware of some important information about your membership.



The new Dividend Miles program will debut in late spring of 2006. At that time, we will be combining qualifying elite miles and segments earned in both US Airways Dividend Miles and America West’s FlightFund programs into a single Dividend Miles account. When the new Dividend Miles program is introduced, we will send you updated membership credentials and benefits information.



In the meantime, your FlightFund Elite status, membership card and existing benefits are valid until your new Dividend Miles membership credentials arrive. Please be sure to:

• Ignore the expiration date on your FlightFund Elite membership card even if it expires in February 2006.
  
• Continue to use your existing FlightFund Elite membership card when you travel on US Airways, America West or our partners. We have advised employees, partners and airport security to honor cards with a February 2006 expiration date.
  
• Update your account information. If you have accounts in both programs, make sure your contact information is identical.
  
• Go to americawest.com Benefits-At-A-Glance for program benefits and information.


All of us at US Airways are pleased to serve you. Thank you for flying with us and for continuing to be a loyal customer.

American Express is offering a 20% bonus (up to 10,000 bonus miles) on spending with their Delta card from March 1 through April 30, 2006. Registration is required by April 30, and bonus miles should post eight to twelve weeks after that.

Sir Freddie Laker died today.

May he rest in peace. My thoughts are with Lady Jacqueline and his family.

A true pioneer and a gentleman, whom I had the pleasure to meet in Colorado Springs in 2003 and again in New YOrk in 2004 at the Freddie Awards.

Update 2/11/06: The London Times ran a nice obituary on Sir Freddie Laker yesterday.

Register to receive 1000 bonus miles on a roundtrip flown on United’s low cost subsidiary, Ted. The bonus can be earned twice between February 12 and May 12, 2006.

The bonus is meant to “Wish Ted a Happy Birthday.” Personally I wish the operating gurus in Elk Grove had smothered him at birth. RAR!

FTD offers 30 United miles per dollar spent.

It’s an old offer that’s been around a long time, I’m not even sure who there realizes it’s still active. And it says it’s for United’s top-tier elites only.

But it still works and it works for anyone — elite or not. Truly a great offer.

Jared Blank points to $598 + tax ($786 all-in) fares from New York to Auckland, New Zealand on Air Tahiti Nui. Tickets must be purchased by February 22 for travel between March 27 and June 10. A stopover in Tahiti is permitted.

The explanation for fares like this is simple. Air Tahiti Nui’s service out of New York is failing miserably.

[T]he New York and Paris trips are clear disasters with passenger loads of only 25-35%, way below the 70% minimum needed for profit.

Pursuant to Regulation FD, United filed its presentation to the JPMorgan Annual High Yield Conference with the SEC. It makes for interesting reading.

United has cut labor costs per available seat mile by 32%. Only USAirways — which went through two bankruptcies — has gone further. Northwest, just entering the bankruptcy process, has only cut their labor costs 3% over the same period of time. Northwest has the highest costs of any major carrier.

Shocker — United has far less debt after bankruptcy. The reduction is all centered around rejecting pensions, retirement benefits, and some leases.

Playing with numbers — United compares its operating margins with Southwest’s by removing Southwest’s fuel hedges.

Going forward United plans to de-peak hubs (more continuous flow of aircraft so they don’t pay people to sit around, people wait for planes rather than planes waiting for people) and continue outsourcing call centers and automating them (“agent agent agent”).

Mileage Plus has 45 million members and contributes over $800 million in revenue. That makes the frequent flyer program even bigger than flying cargo.

Lincoln is offering American Airlines miles — 250 miles for watching a short online promo video, 2500 miles for test driving a Lincoln Zephyr, and 25,000 miles for buying or leasing one.

Here’s the video (or just skip the video and give them your mileage number). Here’s the test drive certificate. And here’s the purchase certificate.

My greatest fear is that the awards offered by airlines and hotels will go away, that the great values will disappear. What if I can’t use 60,000 Cathay Pacific miles to fly British Airways business class to Europe anymore? What if 90,000 United miles no longer buys a business class ticket from the US to Australia?

I have this recurring nightmare, I hope speaking it aloud doesn’t make it more likely to come true, and fortunately it’s just my worrying and not something based on insider information.

United’s award chart is so much better than any of their U.S. competitors’. Many other airlines devalued their award charts in the past few years while United was in bankrupty (the Qantas term for it was ‘rebalanced’). United didn’t make award chart changes, I assume they didn’t want to alienate their best customers at such a fragile time. Will they change their award chart now?

United was printing miles like mad during that period of time (in part due to bankruptcy, to retain customers, etc). And I suspect that some concessions were made on the Mileage Plus revenue side with Chase bank which issues the co-branded visa and provided debtor-in-possession financing, exit financing, and favorable terms on credit card processing.

More miles alone suggests revaluation. Superior chart relative to competitors suggests revaluation. That most others have gone through revaluation and not United suggests that they may follow. Separately, Randy Petersen has said that he expects Mileage Plus to “relaunch” this year. The implication was that it would be a positive relaunch, but I’m not so sure. Re-launching an already excellent product scares me. Think New Coke.

Whenever I see real value, I assume it’s going to disappear. And the United chart really is quite good for international premium class travel.

Take a simple comparison between Northwest and United.

Northwest is 100,000 miles in coach to Australia. United is 90,000 in business.

Northwest’s standard business award to Australia is 150,000 miles. That’s the price of United’s “rule-buster” equivalent. United offers last seat availability for the same number of miles that Northwest makes you scrounge for seats.

This difference is little understood. When people say that not all miles are created equal, they’re usually referring to the ease of finding award inventory. But award pricing is perhaps even more important.

And relative to many competitors, United’s is just so much better that it almost has to be revalued. Doesn’t it?

I’ve mentioned Fare Alert before, a website that sends out emails when amazing travel deals like $51 tickets to Fiji shows up.

Now there’s a new entrant into the mistake rate game. Free Traveling posts hotel deals, some of which are outstanding and others of which are just plain odd … like $5 a night for the Travelodge in West Dennis, Massachusetts. Still, this is the place to go for truly great hotel rates, even if a large number of them will be in obscure places or available only for a small set of nights.

I just wish they either emailed out their deals or set up an RSS feed so I didn’t have to keep hitting that refresh button!

KLM was an Alaska Airlines partner. Then it wasn’t. Now it is again, along with Air France. And Alaska is giving out double miles for KLM and Air France flights credited to an Alaska Mileage Plan account through April 30.

Best part is that this seems to apply to all fares. So fares where the Flying Blue program would only award 25% of miles, through April 30 Alaska will be awarding 200%!

Naturally, registration is required.

In addition to discounted coach awards to Sydney, United is offering coach awards between the U.S. and London for 35,000 miles for travel through March 31.

The text of the offer says

You must book your award ticket online only.

However, the terms and conditions of the offer say

You may purchase the reduced award through united.com or through United Reservations (call 1-800-UNITED1). The $15 booking fee is waived.

Either way, it appears as though awards are still pricing at 50,000 miles even though the promo should have gone into effect February 1.

Flyertalk.com discussion of the offer is here.

Via InflightHQ, here are instructions on how to use a Blackberry to get internet access for your laptop.

If you don’t have a wireless subscription, don’t have access to free wireless, and don’t want to pay connection charges this is a reasonably decent second-best.

Starwood is offering 3000 bonus points for every three stays between February 15 and March 15. It is not targeted, and it is combinable with other offers. Registration is required.

It’s a ‘special Flyertalk offer’ and was announced on Flyertalk yesterday.

Strictly speaking the terms and conditions of the offer require you to be a Flyertalk.com member to receive the bonus. You should be one anyway. It’s not clear to me how they would exclude non-members, though.

(In theory they could look at the referral URL you used to click on the promo, but even if you click on the link from this blog it will say blogs.flyertalk.com and even that wouldn’t show whether you were a member or not. Odd terms and conditions, but a much appreciated offer!)