View from the Wing

According to this thread on Flyertalk and this thread and others at Biddingfortravel.com, La Quinta Resort & Club is coming up on Priceline for $40 when bidding for a resort in the “Rancho Mirage-Indian Wells-Palm Desert” zone… and $25 when bidding for a three-star hotel in this same zone.

Priceline has been known to set minimums for successful bids at a particular quality level. It looks like there’s a rate of as low as $25, but when bidding for a resort Priceline rejects bids under $40. There aren’t any three star properties willing to accept anything even close to $25, so Priceline ‘upgrades’ you to a resort when bidding on a three star property.

My hunch is that La Quinta loaded a Priceline rate of $250, err they meant to load a $250 rate, and loaded it as $25 instead. The mistake has been around since Saturday but still appears to be working.

This is a legendary property living off its past glory, but regularly commands room rates over $400 a night so at $25 or $40 it’s a steal.

As always one must be fairly savvy, read the relevant discussions, and know what you’re doing when bidding on Priceline. But this one is worth looking into. (And of course, bid via fatwallet.com for a 3% kickback.)

Not likely to last long…

According to this thread on Flyertalk and this thread and others at Biddingfortravel.com, La Quinta Resort & Club is coming up on Priceline for $40 when bidding for a resort in the “Rancho Mirage-Indian Wells-Palm Desert” zone… and $25 when bidding for a three-star hotel in this same zone.

Priceline has been known to set minimums for successful bids at a particular quality level. It looks like there’s a rate of as low as $25, but when bidding for a resort Priceline rejects bids under $40. There aren’t any three star properties willing to accept anything even close to $25, so Priceline ‘upgrades’ you to a resort when bidding on a three star property.

My hunch is that La Quinta loaded a Priceline rate of $250, err they meant to load a $250 rate, and loaded it as $25 instead. The mistake has been around since Saturday but still appears to be working.

This is a legendary property living off its past glory, but regularly commands room rates over $400 a night so at $25 or $40 it’s a steal.

As always one must be fairly savvy, read the relevant discussions, and know what you’re doing when bidding on Priceline. But this one is worth looking into. (And of course, bid via fatwallet.com for a 3% kickback.)

Not likely to last long…

According to this thread on Flyertalk and this thread and others at Biddingfortravel.com, La Quinta Resort & Club is coming up on Priceline for $40 when bidding for a resort in the “Rancho Mirage-Indian Wells-Palm Desert” zone… and $25 when bidding for a three-star hotel in this same zone.

Priceline has been known to set minimums for successful bids at a particular quality level. It looks like there’s a rate of as low as $25, but when bidding for a resort Priceline rejects bids under $40. There aren’t any three star properties willing to accept anything even close to $25, so Priceline ‘upgrades’ you to a resort when bidding on a three star property.

My hunch is that La Quinta loaded a Priceline rate of $250, err they meant to load a $250 rate, and loaded it as $25 instead. The mistake has been around since Saturday but still appears to be working.

This is a legendary property living off its past glory, but regularly commands room rates over $400 a night so at $25 or $40 it’s a steal.

As always one must be fairly savvy, read the relevant discussions, and know what you’re doing when bidding on Priceline. But this one is worth looking into. (And of course, bid via fatwallet.com for a 3% kickback.)

Not likely to last long…

I’m sitting at the Bellagio in Vegas, and while it’s certainly an impressive physical plant it isn’t really a ‘nice’ hotel.

Every request takes probably 45 minutes or more to fulfill. (I wanted more towels, so I was sure to pull out my phone while I was down at the pool to call the hotel so that there would be towels in the room when I went up later… there weren’t, but fortunately housekeeping turned up within 20 minutes of my returning to the room.) Turndown service is inconsistent. Housekeeping is inconsistent. The lobby is a madhouse. Valet parking can take a couple minutes or 30.

But that’s really a function of Vegas more generally. There are a few better service-oriented options. Certainly Skylofts at MGM Grand would provide better service (I haven’t stayed there myself). Of course once you leave your room you’re still in the MGM. And there’s the Four Seasons on the top floors of Mandalay Bay, but it does have a separate entrance. It’s at the very southernmost end of the strip, not where I wanted to stay, and price was about three times as much for my dates. So I chose the Bellagio.

All of the missing pieces at the Bellagio can easily be made up for by an outstanding room. Luxury can’t be replicated on a 3000-room scale. But the peace and tranquility of the room itself can help. Booking through Amex Fine Hotels and Resorts I was pre-blocked into a lakeview room. And their standard rooms are large as far as standard rooms go. Lakeview is nice for the water show, with the accompanying music available on the TV channel 31. But it’s just a room, a place to sleep and shower, and not a peaceful retreat.

I’m used to having a bit of juice with the standard hotel chains, and I’ve been the fortunate recipient of several outstanding and lavish suite upgrades this year. But in Vegas my chain options are more or less limited to the Aladdin on the strip or the Westin or Hilton if I want to go off-strip. And I’m not a high roller.

Fortunately, in Vegas you don’t need to be. You just need to tip the checkin clerk. And the best part is that you feel like Sinatra while you’re doing it.

The conventional wisdom is that you’ll have more success with male clerks than females, but the dozen or so people working checkin were all women. I scoped out my choices and picked my line. I walked up to the front of the line when it was my turn, struck up a conversation, and pulled out my drivers license and credit card… with a $100 bill folded beneath it (with the amount clearly showing).

In most properties a $20 should do the trick. At the Bellagio I’m guessing a $20 wouldn’t get me far, maybe the lakeview I was already in. Would a $50 have worked? Probably. But the $100 provides the wow ‘pop’ factor, and I really wanted a better room. Plus, I was planning to stay 4 nights so it’s really just an extra $25 a night (with no tax!).

I politely asked whether any upgraded rooms might be available, and that I’d especially love “one of those big penthouse suites.” She looked at the $100 and said, “let me see what I can find.”

Chances hadn’t seemed good, since I checked online and the hotel was completely sold out. No rooms available for purchase, what if all the suites had been allocated? But I suppose they were probably oversold on standard rooms and someone was going to have to get moved up. I just figured I should make sure I secured that upgrade.

The woman at checkin pounded at the keyboard and was having a terribly difficult time of it. It didn’t help that I was checking in at 1pm. Not all the rooms were cleaned yet, and she couldn’t assign a room that wasn’t ready even if I was willing to wait for it (and she couldn’t risk my coming back to get keys from another checkin clerk!).

Finally she found a room that she promised I’d like. It was a two-bedroom, five bath suite in the Spa tower. Over two thousand square feet, my biggest suite score of the year (topping the 1650 square foot Diplomatic Suite at the Intercontinental Bangkok I had back in April).

She handed me the keys, I pushed forward the $100, and she placed it in her pocket. Pleasure doing business with you!

The whole transaction took place right under the nose of the assistant front desk manager, the checkin line I used was right next to the manager’s station. I really don’t know why clerks in Vegas regularly get away with this, perhaps it’s so ingrained in the culture that the cost to the hotel to monitor and disabuse the behavior is too high for it to be worth it. And perhaps wages for front desk clerks are depressed to account for their ability to supplement their income on their own. I can only speculate on the economics and motives of it.

But someone is going to get moved up to a suite. In some circles it’s done by status. In others it’s random. In Vegas, tips are king — at checkin, at the show, everywhere. It’s culturally acceptable here, where in most other places it’s not. And I’m generally comfortable applying local ethos and customs and not binding myself by my own provincial norms.

Sure, you could read “tip” as “bribe” — but it’s no secret to the hotels and I’ll defer to their judgment on the appropriateness of the technique. Mostly I wanted to see how well it would work.

Thanks to Flyertalk’s skofarrell for plenty of tips on the technique. Here’s my previous post on the $20 trick and my other tips for scoring a hotel upgrade.

Dining room

Living room

One of the two bathrooms attached to each bedroom

One of the bedrooms in the suite

View of the water show with Paris in the background

I ran into Kevin Smith on the way back from the pool. He was smoking a cigarette outside the arcade

I haven’t been through Dulles recently, so this email from United (which came this morning, despite forward-looking reference to July 18) was news to me:

We are delighted to inform you that beginning July 18, 2006, Washington Dulles will offer two new security checkpoints exclusively for our First, Business and elite travelers, their families or travel companions. With the shorter lines and wait times, getting through security will be quicker and easier for you.



Also for your convenience, one elite lane will be available on the east side of the terminal near the United® ticket counter. A second elite lane will be located on the west side of the terminal. Whichever lane you use, we ask that you please be prepared to show your Mileage Plus® card.

I broke the news back in May that Starwood was considering devaluing its award chart 25%. I don’t know the internal discussions or reasons why, perhaps because of the outcry that followed on Flyertalk or perhaps for entirely different reasons unknown, but apparently the devaluation has been called off — at least for now. Starwood Lurker posted the following on Flyertalk this afternoon:

Just as an FYI, the word that I got from on high today was that there won’t be a devaluation of 25%. As far as it stands now, there will not be any major changes to the program’s award chart in the near future.

Good news, or so it seems!

This about sums up the TSA’s security watch list:

“It is essentially comprised of individuals who are a threat to aviation security,” said Andrea McCauley, spokeswoman for the TSA.

…

A four-year-old tearfully told airport agents in Houston earlier this year he didn’t want to be on any list, he wanted to fly to see his grandma.

I may have mentioned this before, but I don’t think so. Via Free Frequent Flyer Miles, Northwest’s co-branded Visa product is matching the standard signup incentives offered by United and American — 20,000 miles with first purchase (though US Bank won’t waive the fee for the first year like Chase and Citibank will).

Still, if you’re going to sign up for a Northwest Visa this looks like the best offer.

United has been emailing out news of its new mileage for cell phone service partnership, Mileage Plus Wireless.

The deals aren’t bad, they’re certainly better than what it seems you’ll get direct from the cell phone provider (either online or in-store), and you earn miles to boot.

However, even with the miles the offers aren’t up to par with some of the independent websites out there such as Amazon, LetsTalk.com, and WireFly.com.

I’m not a cell phone expert to be sure, but I’m moving and my new place really only gets reasonable reception with Cingular. I’ve been with SprintPCS for 10 years but their coverage is spotty in my area, and they don’t offer a Blackberry (my preference over the Treo).

So I checked out Amazon and their offers were good enough, but they don’t support number portability. Not going to work for me.

Mileage Plus Wireless supports porting cell numbers, but the Blackberry 8700c was a couple hundred bucks more expensive than Amazon. Better than Cingular.com, but not good enough to satisfy and I found better Blackberry plans elsewhere.

I ultimately bought without miles from LetsTalk.com. They have a $30 cashback offer via eBates (plus $5, of course, if it’s your first ebates purchase) and their pricing was superior.

They offer the Blackberry 8700c free after rebate with 2 year contract and $45/month Blackberry unlimited data plan (or $180 with no rebate required with $29.95 Blackberry unlimited personal plan which doesn’t support Blackberry Enterprise Server).

Amazon and Mileage Plus Wireless don’t offer the less expensive Blackberry plan. Cingular wanted $5/month more for it.

And LetsTalk is porting my numbers.

(Oh, and I actually got a 3rd phone free with the deal as well.)

Now, I’m going with the less expensive Blackberry plan (I’m paying $360 upfront for the two Blackberries but saving $720 in plan costs over 2 years), so I didn’t explicitly verify that the rebates would be available if porting numbers, so if that’s something you have in mind you’ll want to check that. No worries, while I couldn’t find mention of it on the website LetsTalk also allows you to complete your order by phone without any difficulty though this likely eliminates your ability to claim the $30 eBates credit.

Update: I was looking specifically for Cingular service, and Amazon can’t port numbers to Cingular. That’s what led me to believe they didn’t port numbers. Turns out they can transfer numbers to other service providers.

Following on Westin’s move, Marriott announced today that it is going smoke-free in

all of the Company’s lodging brands in the United States and Canada will become 100 percent smoke-free, beginning in September.

So they’ve taken an idea pioneered elsewhere but expanded it beyond what its competitors are already offering — smokefree not just in a single brand but across brands.

Bad for smokers, perhaps, and those renting rooms to throw parties (!) but good for most travelers whose worst nightmare is getting checked into a smoking room.

Update: HotelChatter has more:

At first, this sounds a little more drastic than it is since 90 percent Marriott’s guest rooms were already non-smoking. But the hotel chain goes one step further banning smoking from public spaces that includes restaurants, bars, meeting rooms and employee work areas. (Uh-oh, we feel like Marriott’s gonna lose more than a few workers this week.)



If you do get caught smoking, Marriott will hit you with a $200 to $300 cleaning fee and any extra charges that could occur in the room needs to be taken out of service. For those who can’t go without a smoke you can hit up one of the hotel’s designated smoking areas which has to be 25 feet away from the entrance, so essentially in the parking lot.

Marriott’s Renaissance Hotels brand is also offering free parking to hybrid car drivers through the end of the year.

Best part is you don’t even need to be a hotel guest to use it, just attending a meeting or dining at the hotel.

So to my fellow DC residents driving hybrids, go have a drink at the Mayflower and you don’t have to take the metro…

Avis’ first level of status (above just regular ‘preferred’ service that anyone can sign up for is Preferred Select. This entitles you to a one-car class upgrade, and the status can be obtained from frequent renting or by having an American Express Platinum card (the expensive one, not the cashback or Delta or Starwood co-branded card that’s also called Platinum).

Some great tips on how Avis assigns car rental upgrades were posted on Flyertalk this morning, particularly interesting

location fleet size can vary from airport to airport. from a low of 700 to a high of well over 10,000. the larger the airport, the better the upgrade possibilites.

…

when your name is on the board and you get to your car and theres no contract, 90% of the time its cause another customer misread the board and went into your car and grabbed the contract and went to the preferred desk.



ORD has an auto print system. If your flight number is in the reservation, ORD will use a service that triggers auto assigning of cars when the status shows “landed”. And that service is pretty accurate. I have visited airports when a plane landed and the machine just starts spitting contracts left and right. It even takes advantage of your status. If your select, if the class above is available it will give it to you. Its indescriminate, it assigns the first car in the class (lowest miles) every time, regardless of make or model or stall number.



So if your contract isnt printing, try checking three things.
1-your reservation has your wizard number in it. This is at least 1/3 of all problems with preferred contracts not ready.
2-your credit card information is updated and current before you make your reservation
3-your flight number is in your reservation. I suggest the 2×4 method. two letter designator and 4 digits. So if your on united flight 1, then it should be UA0001.



And Finally, if you walk in snotty, expect snot to fly back. Regardless of fault, remember they are people trying to do a job. If your going to fling crap around, ask for a manager. they get paid for that. Not the front line staff.

My own best tip is if you want a different car, ask for it. Don’t just take what’s been assigned to you. Of course that requires walking in and takes a few extra minutes. But it’s your call to make.

United has introduced Star Alliance upgrade awards — upgrades on most of their Star Alliance partners confirmed by redeeming miles. These has been available on other Star Alliance carriers for several months, United has just introduced them, but it’s notable that only Star Alliance offers this quite so broadly.

United miles can be used for upgrades on ANA, Asiana, Austrian, LOT, Lufthansa, TAP Portugal and Thai Airways. (United miles could previously be used for upgrades on Lufthansa, but those were space available rather than confirmed.)

Currently there are no upgrade options for other Star carriers such as Singapore, Air Canada, bmi, Swiss, Spanair, SAS, South African Airways, etc. Hopefully they’ll come in the future.

Unfortunately you need to be buying nearly a full fare ticket in order to use this option. Y and B coach fares can be upgraded to business, and C and D business fares can be upgraded to first.

A Flyertalk member reports that they were short points for redeeming a Priority Club hotel reward. This person called and asked if they could go negative in their account, since they were really close, and the agent just gave them a 1000 point bonus to make up the difference. No cost, and better than buying the points for $12.50.

Another member says they were allowed to go into the red in their Priority Club account.

Starwood definitely bonuses people the few points they’re short an award, though the last time I queried this was a couple years ago.

American has told me that if you’re within 500 miles of an award they’ll let you book it.

I’m not an expert on the Lufthansa program, but I recall that Lufthansa Senator members are (or were?) allowed to go negative in their account by something on the order of 180,000 miles!

I’ve never systematically compiled a list of airlines and hotel programs that do this, I’ve never really needed it (and when I’ve been close to an award I’ve always been able to transfer points into an account from another source or quickly earn the miles). But it’s an interesting feature nonetheless. I’d love to hear from anyone with experience here.

The Upgrade Travel blog shares USAirways discount codes good for travel through November 15.

If flying US Airways, and booking on usairways.com, try entering the promotional code RR506FS to receive a 10% discount on purchased first class tickets, or promotional code RR506CU for 5% off economy class tickets. On the flight booking page, enter these codes in the “e-certificate” box located below the “return date” field.

Travel and Leisure has come out with its 2006 list of the world’s best hotels.

Every year these lists come out, and even though I should know better I allow them to frustrate me. Why is it that people who know little about hotels get treated as experts? How could they make such monumental ranking blunders?

Indulge me by allowing me to point out just a few absurdities:

• The Royal Orchid Sheraton in Bangkok — listed as the #36 hotel in Asia — isn’t even the best Sheraton in the city and certainly isn’t better than the Grand Hyatt Erawan (#42), whose bungalows vault the hotel into the same league as Bangkok’s Peninsula and Oriental properties.
  

• 
  The Inn at Little Washington is nice, though more worthwhile for dinner than for lodging and more notable in the dining room for outstanding service than for the food (which is good, even excellent, but I’m not sure it’s truly great). It’s listed as the #12 ’small hotel’ which presumably makes it a better property than the Four Seasons Golden Triangle Tented Camp which doesn’t make the list. But then the editors of Travel and Leisure seem think it’s the 21st best property in the World. They need to get out more.
  

• 
  Hotel Villa Cipriani is ranked #29 in the world and #4 in Europe. Nice enough, and a good redemption value in Starwood points at Category 4, but this is hardly the nicest hotel in Italy. Who exactly decided this was a better property than the Four Seasons George V (#13 in Europe)? I guess the same people who decided that George the V isn’t even the best Four Seasons in Europe (they list Budapest at #2)…
  

• 
  The Bora Bora Lagoon Resort is listed as #3 in Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific. This isn’t even the 3rd best hotel on the island of Bora Bora. The order on that island would arguably be the new St. Regis, the new Intercontinental Thalasso, the Bora Bora Nui, and then the Hotel Bora Bora. Is Bora Bora Lagoon Resort #5 on that island? Even that’s far from clear. (It would get competition from the Intercontinental Le Moana, the Meridien, the Pearl Beach.. Just for the title of #5!)
  

• 
  At least in Sydney they pick respectable properties. Sure, I’d place the Observatory at #1 and the Park Hyatt at #2 (rather than #2 and #3, respectively). And having stayed at both I’m not sure the Westin is nicer than the Intercontinental (or even that both are better than the Sheraton). But their rankings are at least defensible.
  

• 
  Their list of top hotels under $250 betrays their lack of knowledge about what a hotel costs. They list the Peninsula Bangkok as the #4 hotel in the world, and I can book it for $180 a night most of the time but certainly an entry level room should run less than $250. But it’s not on the list of under $250 luxury. They obviously know about the hotel — they just aren’t familiar with the rates?

On to more tilting at windmills…

Yesterday’s Cathy cartoon expressed a common frustration about using frequent flyer miles. I don’t mean to dismiss the idea because it is commonly held and people do have difficulty redeeming miles. But the conventional wisdom doesn’t match reality.

If you take the miles and points game seriously, you should be able to do pretty well on the redemption side. Here are some basic tips.

1. Build up miles in a single program until you have enough for the awards you want, and then diversify into other programs. That way when it comes time to redeem you’ll have more than one program to choose from. Sometimes United hasn’t had seats, but American does. Or Delta won’t, but United will.
   

2. One good way to do this is to accumulate miles through partner activities (credit cards, mortgages, internet service, online shopping, etc.) with a different program than that of the primary carrier you fly.
   

3. Remember partners. Within the United states Delta miles can be used on Alaska, Northwest, and Continental for instance. The Delta website certainly won’t show all these options, and not all phone agents will check either. So know the partnerships and request partner flights.
   

4. Check partner flights using the websites of partners. The real point here is that airline redemption websites are glitchy at best. So if you want the Alaska non-stop between Washington Reagan and Los Angeles, check for availability on the Alaska website. If you find it you still need to call Delta to use Skymiles for the flight, but you know what to ask for. (One website tip is that the ANA and Air Canada websites actually will show you availability for their Star Alliance partners. These are especially useful tools for the United and USAirways flyers.) On caveat is that not all airlines open the same award availability to their partners that they do to their own frequent flyers, but it’s a good first approximation.
   

5. Don’t trust redemeption websites. They are notoriously bad about checking all available flights and routings. So even if the website says nothing is available, call and ask.
   

6. Know all possible routings. If you’re using United miles to try to fly from the East Coast of the United States to Bangkok, make sure you know not just the partners as mentioned about (in this case you have ANA, Singapore, Asiana, and Thai in addition to United) but also all the gateways. If you’re looking for a business class award, the most important and most difficult piece is the transpacific segment. So of course you can try New York JFK to Bangkok non-stop but also the Los Angeles non-stop… Or New York-JFK to Tokyo, or San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC or Los Angeles to Tokyo. Or try flying to Seoul on Asiana. Or try Singapore. Or Hong Kong via Chicago or San Francisco. Then work both backwards and forwards (e.g. Hong Kong to Bangkok on Thai, your departure city to your international gateway).

Truth is, I have yet to come up short and I’ve always booked my premium class awards using the lower ’standard’ mileage table.

Still, there will be some difficult awards to claim. Europe in the summertime can be difficult, but sometimes business class is easier than coach. Or if no awards are available, at least a purchased ticket can often be upgraded (provided you’re using an upgrade-eligible fare with most airlines). Or if you’re comfortable waiting for the last minute, unsold seats are often dumped into award inventory two weeks or a week prior to travel.

Northwest is offering 500 bonus miles for shopping online through their Worldperks Mall and spending $150 or more between July 1 and September 15. Registration is required. See the details on the offer, because some of their participating merchants (eg hotel, car, flowers) are excluded from earning the bonus.

All your online purchases should — of course — receive some kind of reward, whether it’s Northwest miles or something else. The best one-stop sources for learning about the best bonuses are the extensive RewardsDB charts and the Webflyer tool.

It’s always worth checking out these resources before making an online purchase of any kind. (And it’s not just miles - you can earn cash rebates, too.)

I usually write about real travel and real vacations, but Tyler Cowen points to Persey Tours which offers all of the accoutrements of travel without the trip.

For $500, nobody will believe you weren’t sunning yourself last week on Copacabana Beach, just before you trekked through the Amazon rain forest and slept in a thatched hut. Hey! That’s you, arms outstretched like Kate Winslet on the bow of the Titanic, on top of Corcovado!


Persey Tours was barely keeping the bill collectors at bay before it started offering fake vacations last year. Now it’s selling 15 a month — providing ersatz ticket stubs, hotel receipts, photos with clients’ images superimposed on famous landmarks, a few souvenirs for living room shelves.



If the customer is an errant husband who wants his wife to believe he’s on a fishing trip, Persey offers not just photos of him on the river, but a cellphone with a distant number, a lodge that if anyone calls will swear the husband is checked in but not available, and a few dead fish on ice.

Now if only I could get them to write blog entries…

John Ewoldt of the Minneapolis Star Tribune has nerves of steel and decides to book whatever award tickets are available and just shows up for travel on his preferred dates and times.

Not a recommended strategy, and contrary to Ewoldt’s assertions this is not something that will work on all award tickets. Just try it with many carriers’ partner awards or with a good number of Asian or European carriers that don’t permit changes.

But I still have to respect his effort!

Got this last night by email: