View from the Wing

Alex Tabarrok points to a discussion of a travel website that appears to price the same hotel differently depending on how results are sorted — offering lower prices for the same room if a person search the site chooses to sort by price (presumably indicating that price is their key criteria for choosing a hotel).

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen results precisely the same, but I do understand that Hotwire has been known to offer slightly different pricing to users of different web browsers (perhaps the theory being that more obscure browsers indicate net-savvy individuals who would be more price sensitive?). And there’s a current Flyertalk discussion on whether the ever-problematic USAirways website prices flights higher for Dividend Miles members that are logged into their accounts (although I suspect that it’s a preferences issue for the member reporting the phenomenon).

Hotel Chatter reports that Doubletree hotel properties are giving away their chocolate chip cookies to anyone who walks in and asks for 24 hours on the Fourth of July.

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban are
honeymooning at the new St. Regis Bora Bora.

According to Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, the newlyweds are staying in the luxury $15,000 a night U.S. Royal Estate at the new St. Regis resort.

…

Kidman and Urban are among the first guests of the Royal Estate over-water bungalow in the resort, which just opened a few weeks ago.



The massive over-water villa boasts a 24-hour butler service, an in-room Jacuzzi and a room with a private swimming pool.

And to think, part of my own honeymoon was just at the nearby Bora Bora Nui Resort & Spa. But then that was the most posh property on the island at the time, the St. Regis only just opened this month. And I had the room next to where Christina Applegate honeymooned, though didn’t she recently file for divorce?

The Nui used to be the most expensive points redemption property in all of Starwood, but it has since been surpassed by both the St. Regis Bora Bora and by the new W Maldives.

The best paid rate plan at the St. Regis is SPG25, or 25% off rack, and is only available on certain dates. For those redeeming awards, I believe a room here is 70,000 Starpoints a night (with fifth night free) in low season but I haven’t verified the total. When I stayed at the Nui an Overwater Bungalow as 44,000 points a night (also low season) but the amount there is now 50,000.

That’s a lot of points, but you too can honeymoon like Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban.

Update: Eva Longoria is there too.

Marriott is ramping up their checkin kiosks from 32 properties now to 150 within two weeks. All Marriott and Renaissance properties are targeted to have the machines by the end of September. The kiosks will have the functionality to print airline boarding passes, a nice feature indeed.

Marriott is actually a bit behind the curve on this one, Hilton announced the capability of their kiosks to print boarding passes back in April, but Marriott looks like it will jump ahead of its competitors with the ubiquity of the feature across two of its brands within a few months.

This is one of the easy no-brainers of the hotel industry. If done right the cost to set up the machines with internet connectivity and a printer should be low, and it’s a major convenience. But in the interim — if I haven’t had my own printer or access to a complimentary one in the lounge — I’ve always had good luck just asking the concierge to print boarding passes (I don’t recall anyone I know ever being charged for such a request).

Furthermore, as a workaround, Northwest and Continental both allow you to fax your boarding passes — though many hotels will charge you to receive the fax.

Still, it’s all better than waiting on line at the airport. A couple days ago in Miami there was even an hour-long line to checkin at a kiosk which permitted baggage check!

Now if only Marriott could figure out how to check bags at the hotel and pre-clear you through security they’d have my loyalty!

(Full disclosure, I won a not-insubstantial number of Starwood points for naming the “Sheraton SpeedCheck” back in early 2004.)

Update: I was mistaken in my original understanding of the Marriott devices. I had assumed they would be hotel checkin/checkout terminals with the added functionality of interfacing with airline checkin websites which would then spit out boarding passes. I’m told that the Marriott kiosks are actually computer stations with an attached printer whose sole purpose is to facilitate airline checkin, these are separate from Marriott’s hotel check-in kiosk project.

Update 2: I’ve edited the post title for clarity based on the above.

Update 3: Hotel Chatter has more.

Via Free Frequent Flyer Miles, there’s also a
Delta 25,000 iDine bonus on offer. Registration is required by July 25.

The deal is that you need 25 qualified dines of $25 or more by 12/31/06 for 25,000 bonus miles.

Here’s the biggest iDine bonus I’ve ever seen.

If you spend $125 a month at iDine restaurants on qualifying dines during each of the last six months of the year you’ll earn 25,000 bonus United miles.

Registration is required by July 25.

Pago Pago (American Samoa) is served by only one scheduled airline, Hawaiian.. and the Governor of American Samoa wants them to discontinue service.. because they refuse to offer DigE Players on their Pago Pago - Honolulu flights?

In fairness, the Governor also complains about “high fares” and fare rules for Pago Pago flights that are more onerous than other Hawaiian Airlines destinations. But somehow I imagine that having the major competitor pull out of the market won’t help to lower fares.

Demagoguery, American Samoa style.

Starwood is offering 500 bonus points for the first stay, 1000 for the second, and 1500 for the third at participating properties in Japan, Korea, and Guam from June 20 through August 20, 2006. Registration is required.

Participating hotels include:

Guam

The Westin Resort - Tumon



Japan

Sheraton Sapporo Hotel - Sapporo

The Westin Tokyo - Tokyo

Le Meridien Grand Pacific Tokyo - Tokyo

Le Meridien Pacific Tokyo - Tokyo

Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay Hotel - Chiba

Yokohama Bay Sheraton Hotel & Towers - Yokohama

The Westin Nagoya Castle - Nagoya

The Westin Osaka - Osaka

The Westin Miyako Hotel Kyoto - Kyoto

Kobe Bay Sheraton Hotel & Towers - Kobe

The Westin Awaji Island Resort and Conference Center - Hyogo

Sheraton Grande Ocean Resort - Miyazaki



Korea

The Westin Chosun, Busan - Busan

Sheraton Grande Walkerhill - Seoul

The Westin Chosun Seoul - Seoul

W Seoul – Walkerhill - Seoul

Bellagio has probably been surpassed by the Wynn, and it depending on the experience you’re after no Vegas hotel can really offer true luxury. Plus summertime can be brutal in Vegas (I’m still going myself in a few weeks).

But if you do plan to go, these rates are pretty good — many weekdays from $149 between June and September.

I’m sitting here in one of my absolute favorite hotels, the Westin Diplomat in Hollywood, Florida. I reviewed it extensively with photos this past September, so I’ll spare most of the details.

This isn’t the highest-end property in South Florida — it’s not the Mandarin Oriental Miami or the Ritz-Carlton South Beach, for instance — though it’s more than nice and at a much better price point.

What sets it apart is that there is no better property in the world for elite recognition. They upgrade platinums to suites consistently, and have even been known to let Platinum members know in advance when a suite upgrade might not be forthcoming. And those suites are large, with nice bathrooms, and wraparound balconies overlooking the ocean. It’s a very large hotel with nearly 1000 rooms but they still manage to execute service well. Housekeeping isn’t flawless but a phone call takes care of things quickly. Most hotels of this size have significant issues with valet parking, but I’ve never been made to wait here. Even when my trips have me needing to be 30 miles away I still find an excuse to stay here.

A real kudos to a wonderful staff that always smile and go out of the way to help. I just feel comfortable here.

I’ve gotten some email questions about Avis status levels recently, and I thought I’d relay a story about Chairman’s Club. I rented at the Miami airport yesterday (I fly in there so I can swing by my favorite Cuban restaurant — Las Culebrinas — for lunch when I land). Reservation was for a mid-size car. I was put into a Cadillac, and what I especially liked was the cooling seats. After lunch, heading up on the freeway to the Diplomat, I noticed a screaching noise on acceleration. Got to the hotel and rang up the Avis Chairman’s Club number. Within minutes I had a call from the Miami location. They were sending someone immediately with a replacement car, they would do the switch at my hotel (which isn’t even in Miami). They waived the day’s rental charge and also gave me (3) combinable $25 rental certificates. An hour later I was in another Cadillac. And as usual the airport location offers priority dropoff, they’ll drive me to the terminal in the rental car instead of having me unload luggage and take the Avis bus. Not bad for a $22/day rental.

Two recent email correspondents were looking for help with award travel.

As I’ve mentioned before the best place to search for Star Alliance availability is on the ANA website, though Air Canada works well too. Sign up for accounts with both, start with the most difficult (transatlantic or transpacific) legs of your trip using all possible gateways one at a time, and construct an itinerary that you’ll know to ask for when calling up to make a reservation through your program of choice. Award availability isn’t always a perfect match across programs, but it’s generally close. One correspondent even found two first class seats on Singapore, an admittedly difficult task (don’t try this at home, kids).

Another correspondent was looking for award seats to Tahiti. In my past experience seats on Air Tahiti Nui were incredibly easy to come by. Looks like things have tightened up significantly. Every flight used to begin with 2 out of 6 first class seats available for award redemption (availability in the A bucket). Now I generally see only 1. And business class seats are also tighter. From memory (and if this matters, please check this or email me and ask me to) business awards used to come from the Z fare bucket and now they’re out of I inventory, and I seems few and far between. A real disappointment. I enjoyed my trip to Tahiti and Auckland in their first class last summer.

If you enter promo code BTN06 while signing up for BizPerks, the Northwest Airlines small business program, you’ll receive 50,000 bonus Biz Perks points.

These covert to, say, 5 free club passes and 5 free drink coupons or a domestic upgrade and a couple club passes.

The offer expires September 30th.

Update: To qualify for the points you need a flight in full fare coach (B fare) or higher by September 30th credited to the Bizperks account. Still worth signing up just in case, but no longer the gimme it first appeared.

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) runs its Blow Watch column today on film and airlines.

View from the Wing gets top billing under travel:

Which hotel hands out 1,000 American Airlines frequent-flier miles for each night you stay? And is it really possible to earn a free flight on Delta by drinking Coke? View from the Wing, a blog for airline passengers, solves these riddles and more. (Answers for those above: Hyatt hotels and yes.)



Gary Leff’s brief, informative posts point readers to sometimes bewildering mileage promotions.



In April, he wrote that fliers could score 25,000 Delta miles for signing up to Earthlink Voice, an Internet phone service. He also posts on how to rack up smaller amounts, like 4,000 United miles for signing up to Netflix, and 200 Northwest miles for taking an online quiz.



The blog is also a watchdog of frequent-flier policies. In one of his longest, most detailed posts, Mr. Leff denounces United program changes as “pretty much all bad.” Among the changes, he wrote, United reduced the routes passengers can fly when redeeming “Domestic Short Haul Saver Awards.” A United spokesman said the changes balance rising operating costs with “the need to provide customers more ways to travel using their miles.”

I like this. I’m the watchdog of frequent-flier policies.

Shout outs go to the Upgrade Travel Blog, InflightHQ, and Practical Nomad for their favorable mentions as well!

(Thanks to Marginal Revolution for the heads up.)

I just transferred 25,000 Diners Club Club Rewards points to British Airways, since they’re offering a 50% transfer bonus through the end of August. This let me top off for another international business class award, and will be paired with my last 60,000 Cathay Pacific Asia miles.

Looking up the award I had forgotten that Diners Club is also offering a 50% bonus on transfers of Midwest Airlines miles through the end of August.

Meanwhile, I still don’t know what will replace the Diners Club Restaurant Savings Program (really ‘iDine Prime’) once it ends July 12.

This is a program that keeps losing value. They upped the foreign currency conversion fee, ended two billing cycles to pay, and lost the bulk of their US domestic airline mileage transfer partners. Now the Diners Club is going to be without a dining program. When will the cuts stop?

I still carry it because of the versatility of its points (in spite of partner losses), especially for spending I cannot put on an American Express, and for the primary rental car insurance.

The British Airways transfer bonus remains nice (though I miss the old days of 100% bonuses) but my patience is wearing thin.

Yesterday I was asked about mileage bonuses for brokerage accounts, and I’m aware of the following:

• Ameritrade has several offers with June 30 expiry. A $50,000 deposit nets 25,000 miles on Continental, Delta, United, or USAirways (USAirways offer expires Sept 30). Even better, a $25,000 deposit nets 20,000 points with Starwood.
  

• Fidelity also offers 25,000 United miles for a $50,000 deposit.

There are other offers, but those are big ones from large industry players. The best place for checking on a listing of such things is Gary Steiger’s Free Frequent Flyer Miles website.

And of course brokerages aren’t the only financial offers for miles — there’s mortgages, car loans, bank accounts, insurance… and of course credit cards credit cards credit cards (here’s a brief primer on the best ones though while I still carry a Diners Club card I no longer recommend it quite as highly).

My correspondant wanted to know whether Ameritrade would offer signup bonuses to individuals who have already had accounts with them, presumably either a past customer who reopens an account of an existing customer who opens a new (e.g. joint) account. I actually don’t know the answer to this from personal experience (as opposed to from the program terms and conditions which aren’t always the same in practice). If anyone does know, please drop me a line.

In contrast, I do know that many credit card products allow you to sign up for their bonuses over and over.
(Credit card signup bonuses can often be earned over and over — especially cards from BankOne)

Via Hotel Chatter, I’ve been reading up on blogs written by hotel employees. Hotel Chatter recently linked to Not Your View — which hasn’t been updated in awhile but which refreshingly acknowledges both the good and the bad in their hotel — and a blog by the General Manager of Vancouver’s Opus Hotel.

I find this genre an interesting read but haven’t found anything both consistently good and frequently updated. Any suggestions?

Via Online Travel Review, Air New Zealand is investigating employees’ use of travel perks in exchange for sex with prostitutes.

Under airline staff discounts, staff can buy unbooked seats at as little as 10% of the full fare, and can use a “Buddy Fare” for a companion to travel anywhere in the world on the airline up to four times a year.



According to the article, some Air New Zealand staff used the Buddy Fares and discounted tickets as payment for sex with prostitutes.

I started pondering new mileage redemption options, how the scheme could have been set up in the first place, and whether the prostitutes in question managed to negotiate hotel and rental car discounts as well. And then I stopped.

Monday night I attended a reception hosted by All Nippon Airways celebrating 20 years of service between Tokyo and Washington-Dulles and commemorating the introduction of their NewStyle cabins on the DC route.

ANA’s new first class is arguably the best cabin in the sky (I haven’t flown the new first on Emirates yet, but I hear great things, so I caveat this as ‘arguably’). It’s the widest seat in the sky, has a 15″ LCD TV at each first seat, is complemented by Boeing’s on-board internet product as well as ANA’s fabulous food offerings and outstanding service.

The real drawback to ANA is ground service, there’s very little done for passengers before boarding and upon arrival and ANA lounges are universally spartan (though perhaps improved with their recent relocation at Narita, I haven’t passed through on ANA since April when I was flying their old style first).

ANA introduced their new product slowly, beginning with Tokyo-New York service in 2002, so the DC route was a long time in coming. They began offering their improved product every other day in late April, so I just missed flying it myself both directions recently.

Their reception at the Fairmont had NewStyle seats on display: a working First seat that folks could try, 2 business seats to try, and the Premium economy seat.

They provided an open bar with midshelf liquor, several sushi bars, dessert and h’or dourves stations.

There were plenty of dignitaries on hand from the Japanese embassy, Ministry of Transportation, the US State Department, the airport authority, and from ANA.

They were quite proud of 20 years of Dulles service, although they joked about 18 years of financial losses. Even when I flew on a Friday in April the only non-stop from the nation’s capital to Tokyo couldn’t have been more than one-third full.

The Connexion by Boeing folks were well represented, and included one of their pens and a 30 minute free onboard internet card in the gift bag. ANA also included a model of their Boeing 777-300.

Via my father-in-law, Progressive offers 500 Alaska miles for an auto insurance quote — but only for residents of Washington state and Alaska.

I’ve probably undercovered the introduction of the Mileage Plus Choices program (okay, I’ve undercovered everything since I haven’t had the time or brainspace to post for the last couple of weeks).

The June 2006 issue of Inside Flyer calls the Choices program “The New Golden Egg” so it certainly warrants a mention, though I’m not nearly as high on it as Randy Petersen seems to be.

United’s new bombshell, Mileage Plus Choices, means looking at the future of frequent flyer programs in a whole new way.

The “Choices” program allows United Visa cardholders to use the portion of their miles earned through their credit card as a form of cash to buy airline tickets, hotel nights, or rental car days (along with a few specialty items) with their miles.

The program is incredibly confusing at first glance because United now has two parallel currencies. Miles are earned from a variety of sources including credit card spend, but only credit card miles are in a special bucket with a different name (’choices’) which can be redeemed for these awards.

Presumably JPMorgan Chase, which issues the United Visa, kicked in with cash and marketing muscle to launch this program. It’s a shot at Capital One and other proprietary programs which offer unrestricted redemption of miles for flights. Of course, United already offers this (it’s called ’standard awards’). But here’s another version of a standard award, where only a subset of miles can be used.

Like Capital One, which offers ‘miles’ that can never amount to a better-than-1% rebate from credit card spending, the Choice program offers similar lack-of-value.

Choices can be redeemed for a 1% rebate - subject to certain restrictions - on airline tickets purchased from United. When redeeming for hotel nights or car rental days there’s just a 0.8 cents/mile return.

To a certain extent, more choices are better of course. So it’s difficult to complain about having more redemption options. But I can hardly conceive of a time when it makes sense to actually use this option.

Inside Flyer offers this example of the value of the Choices program:

For instance, when you decide to redeem a domestic award, always start with “pricing it out,” using miles from the Choices program. Let’s say you price out an award from San Francisco to Phoenix. Given the competitive market and airfare sales, you might be able to snag a seat for $159 roundtrip. Using the Choices program this will cost you 15,900 Choices miles, far fewer than the 25,000 miles you might have had to pay if seats were available using your normal miles.

Sure, fewer ‘choices’ are required than miles for this hypothetical ticket. And if no saver award seats were available, then even more miles would be required for a standard award. But you shouldn’t be redeeming your miles for $159 domestic tickets anyway. So Choices is being compared to a straw man.

Miles are best spent on international business and first class awards and for international upgrades. Occasionally domestic upgrades and first class awards can make sense. But a coach domestic ticket? And one that could be purchased for $159? Hardly.

Choices looks favorable compared to a hypothetical silly use of miles, but remains almost as silly itself.

Leave aside just how complicated this program is (just check out their FAQ), a sure recipe for disaster in loyalty marketing. All the program does is create a benefit floor, United miles can be worth no less than 0.8 to 1 cent per mile. But that’s just damning with faint praise. Even the unattractive Diners Club travel program offers a 1.25 cent/point value, and I have no interest in using my Club Rewards points that way.

The only interesting component of the program is the ability to redeem ‘choices’ for elite qualifying miles, so if I’m a hair short of my status I might use this option. But for most folks Choices is an option worth ignoring.

So why even write about it? The real risk here is that this is an industry directional shift. The Inside Flyer piece cites the underpromoted partnership that Delta has with American Express offering a similar deal, and the Air New Zealand Airpoints program where ‘dollars’ are earned instead of miles. The risk is that this is a trend, where ‘miles as money’ with an anemic rate of return ultimately replaces award charts. The program may become the goose that killed the golden egg of my 8-10 cent per mile return itineraries.

Ultimately I’m a bit more optimistic, though. Completely gutting frequent flyer programs, turning this redemption floor into a ceiling, makes little sense when the programs themselves are profitable entities. There’s no reason to drive away consumers, which is exactly what would happen. Why accumulate points that can only be used for a 1% rebate with United Airlines, when you can nab a credit card that yields 1.5% cash deposited into a brokerage account, or 1% cash with certain spending bonuses up to 5%?

Award availability, and perceptions about the difficulty redeeming miles for flights, is a serious problem for airline programs. And no doubt some program managers will overreact and undermine the value propositions they offer consumers in the process. But ultimately I can’t believe a program like this could foretell the end of the mileage program.

Amazon is having a sale on ‘travel apparel’ although their idea of what people wear while traveling (as opposed to other times) is anachronistic at best.

Still, coupon code wetravel takes $20 off an $80 qualifying order, and I picked up a few pairs of pants at a nice discount.

• Lee Jeans Men’s Wrinkle Resistant Relaxed Double Pleat Pant $38 on sale for $21.99 before coupon
  
• Tommy Hilfiger Men’s Pleated Trousers $49.50 on sale for $17.89 before coupon

Also available are

• Tommy Hilfiger Men’s Flat Front Trousers $49.50 on sale for $17.89 before coupon
  
• Lee Jeans Men’s Wrinkle Resistant Relaxed Plain Front Pant $38-$41 on sale for $21.99-$24.99 before coupon

This SlickDeals.net thread also has a list of several shirts that qualify, though none appealed to me.