The Westin Arlington is a lovely hotel.  The lobby is just outstanding, I’m a big fan of their lighting concept.   The gym and pool are nice.  It’s still new construction, I first visited with a hard hat and then attended opening day less than three years ago. 

My only real beef about the hotel is that their standard rooms feel small, and there are very few suites.

Fortunately I managed to snag one for five days recently.  The hotel was a virtual ghost town, occupancy was so low that they had closed off the top four floors.  No suites available at checkin but they were happy to prompt just as soon as one became available and switched rooms without difficulty.

The club lounge was closed for renovation, which is a bummer because the lounge has always been excellent here.

The suites are stylish.  Not all that large, and the bathrooms really aren’t much bigger than in a standard room.  But having that second separate room makes a huge difference, in my view, over the course of a long stay.

The Intercontinental Barclay is a great Royal Ambassador hotel.  The agent at the dedicated Ambassador check-in desk (where you may be seated, instead of standing in the sometimes long lines at reception) explained, “Royal Ambassadors are supposed to get suites.”

And so I did.

This is not a truly world class hotel, by any means.  Turndown service is performed and they… turn down your bed and turn on the CD player.  They didn’t deliver any chocolates or bottled waters, fortunately Royal Ambassadors receive complimentary drinks from the minibar so it hardly mattered.

The bathrooms, even in a suite, are tiny and virtually identical to bathrooms in standard rooms.  The closets, however, both in suites and regular rooms are quite large for New York City.  In fact, rooms here generally are large by New York standards, though perhaps I’ve spent too many nights at the W New York (the one on Lex).

All in all a lovely stay, though I do wish the hotel had a club lounge.

Via Frugal Travel Guy, Dodge is offering $50 for taking a test drive. And dealerships in New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee and Maryland can’t even make you take the test drive to qualify.

In my Christmas Day post on hotel bonuses, I noted that I wasn’t aware of what Marriott was offering.

Carol emails to let me know that they’ve got their ‘MegaBonus’ back up and running (you’ll be prompted to log into your account in order to see the details, and registration is required to earn the bonus).

The offer is 2,500 points for every paid stay with Marriott, starting with your second stay, between February 1 and April 30, 2009 — up to 25,000 points maximum for the promotion. And of course you have to be choosing to earn Marriott points instead of airline miles in order to earn the Marriott points bonus.

Update: As pointed out in the comments — and I should know this is how Marriott does it! — different members will receive different promotional offers, hence the need to log in to see yours. Details of the different offers can be found in this Flyertalk thread.

The new year is bringing a sleuth of new hotel promotions.

Hilton is offering double points (at participating hotels only) between January 6 and April 6.

Priority Club is offering 3000 bonus points for every third qualifying night, up to 30,000 points between January 12 and April 30. For those earning miles instead of points, the offer is 1000 bonus miles for every 3rd night, up to 10,000 miles.

Starwood is offering 500 bonus points for each each qualifying night, plus an additional 5,000 every 10th night from January 7 through April 30.

This Flyertalk thread suggests that between January 9 and April 30,  Hyatt will offer:

~ Stay two nights and earn 2,000 bonus points/miles
~ Stay four nights and earn an additional 4,000 bonus points/miles (totaling 6,000 bonus points)
~ Stay six nights and earn an additional 6,000 bonus points/miles (totaling 12,000 bonus points)
~ Stay eight nights and earn an additional 8,000 bonus points/miles (totaling 20,000 bonus points)

Hopefully they’ll bring back Faster Free Nights as well.

I haven’t yet seen word of a Marriott promo in the New Year.

Registration is required for each of these promotions, and in the case of the Hilton offer you need to register before making your reservation not just prior to completing your stay. Fortunately this requirement doesn’t apply to the Starwood promotion, because they won’t let you register until 9 a.m. Eastern on January 7 — although they’ll remind you to do so if you text “NIGHTS” to 95495 (I’ll pass, but thanks!). Registration is not yet available for the Hyatt offer, either.

It’s worth signing up for all of the offers, of course, you never know which ones you’ll wind up taking advantage of…

Mercedes is offering 1000 Delta Skymiles for a test drive at ten ‘select’ dealerships, fortunately the one in my home town is included.

This isn’t nearly as lucrative as the British Airways offer from about 5 years ago which gave 10,000 miles for test driving a Jaguar — and of course British Airways’ family accounts allow you to combine miles from four different people towards a single ticket which meant that test drive offer was really worth 40,000 miles.

Still, if it’s convenient and if test driving a Mercedes is appealing, this is a reasonable offer.

The participating dealerships are:

• Alexandria, Virginia

• Atlanta, Georgia

• Cincinnati, Ohio

• Eugene, Oregon

• Lindon, Utah

• Northbrook, Illinois*

• Orlando, Florida

• St. Claire Shores, Michigan

• Valencia, California

• Tiverton, Rhode Island

* In Illinois if you actually buy the car, you get appointed to a Senate seat. [duck...]
 

I’ve written in the past that I expect Delta and Northwest to allow members to transfer miles back and forth between their Skymiles and Worldperks accounts at will, prior to the two programs combining into one.  This is similar to what America West and US Airways permitted members to do, outsourced to Points.com to handle the transfers.

Randy Petersen predicts that this will go into effect in February, and offers some inside baseball details on how this is being accomplished, via in-house technology.

This will allow members to combine their points form the two programs towards an award ticket, access partners of one program that may not be partners of the other, and utilize the best award chart or award rules for their situation.

Sadly, they’ve taken steps to limit the opportunities for arbitrage across accounts. Starting January 15, many Northwest awards will be going up in price — to align the Worldperks program with the Skymiles award chart. No more 35,000 coach awards to Hawaii with Northwest, since Delta charges 40,000… no more 50,000 mile coach awards from the US to Europe with Northwest, since Delta charges 60,000.

The January 15 timing of the Worldperks award chart inflation suggests that Randy Petersen’s prediction of a February launch of points transfers between the two programs makes good sense.

The Intercontinental Royal Ambassador program — which has been the most rewarding elite level program of any hotel chain — is making changes come February. Some foolish Flyertalk members believe those changes will make the program better.

One Mile at a Time says the changes will make the program worse.  He is correct.

“[N]ew benefits and a brand new web experience,” as the marketing promises, cannot be good. “New benefits” will mean different and less lucrative benefits rather than “more” benefits on top of the existing ones (like free minibar, exceptionally generous upgrades, and 8am guaranteed check-in). And a “brand new web experience” will offer virtually nothing of value, and will not compensate in any way for whatever is taken away.

Thanks to the Royal Ambassador program I’ve received a Terrace Suite at the Mark Hopkins, the Diplomatic Suite at the Intercontinental Bangkok, a Jimbaran Bay Suite at the Intercontinental Bali, several lovely and massive suites at the Willard, the list goes on an on. These are not just executive suites with a separate living room, these are truly special hotel experiences. I do fear that it was great while it lasted, but I am pleased that it did last.

February here we come, and I hope to be proven wrong!

I only accomplished a limited amount of ‘work’ yesterday, spending more time than I should have developing award tickets for co-workers.

• One colleague is traveling to Bangkok and Singapore. It’s a first class award booked with Air Canada Aeroplan points. But the outbound was especially arduous — the only transpacific flight we could find on the needed day was Asiana’s Los Angeles – Seoul flight, but to connect to it from DC required a 6am departure connecting through Chicago — the early morning LA non-stop flight didn’t provide enough connecting time at LAX. (Asiana’s LA-Seoul flights, to some extent their LA-Chicago flights, and Air China’s flights are perhaps the most available Star Alliance transpac awards in premium classes, just a tip…)As the trip approached, United’s Dulles-Beijing flight opened up. Granted it’s United (and their old seat, to boot), which is clearly not as nice an experience as Asiana’s new first class, but it allowed for a connection to EgyptAir’s Beijing-Bangkok flight in first — making a one-stop trip to Bangkok from DC. So we booked it, paying CAD$55 for the change.

• Two co-workers are getting married in late spring, and they’ve been building up their mileage accounts, mostly by churning American Airlines co-branded credit cards. They each have enough points for a first class award to Europe or Asia, and plenty of Starwood hotel points. So I built two itineraries for them to choose from.
  1. South Asia. Cathay Pacific had two first class award seats for Toronto-Hong Kong on their preferred departure date. Cathay Pacific first class awards are notoriously difficult to get, let alone two seats, and let alone their new first class product which has only six seats in the cabin. But the Toronto-Hong Kong flight is the easiest, and business class had seven open award seats as well on the flight. Then the itinerary, which was really just a discussion document (thank goodness American still allows for holding an award for 5 days, which is not as nice as the old 14 days but still works), took them in first class to Bangkok, and eventually back home in first class through Tokyo.
  2. Greece. That’s the trip they really wanted, and despite my strong Asia biad the one they ultimately picked. American had absolutely nothing available on its own metal in business or first class across the Atlantic — from any gateway to any destination — within a several day span. Neither did Iberia. British Airways had plenty of premium class availability from across all of their US East Coast cities, as I find they almost always do, but you can’t claim those flights with American miles (very frustrating rule!). Ultimately I grabbed Toronto – London, connecting to Athens, with the overwater segments in first class. Canadian flights are permitted for redemption under American AAdvantage rules, just not the US flights.
• Yet another colleague is getting married, and we started brainstorming award ideas. I think I may have them sold on South Asia, and Air Canada’s ability to offer both transatlantic and transpacific crossings on the same award really opens things up. And it lets me give them both first class arrivals and departures on Thai Airways to and from Bangkok. I’m just a huge fan of Thai’s first class ground experience at their home airport, I find it superior to Lufthansa’s first class terminal experience at Frankfurt, for instance. The onboard service can be a mixed back, and the airline is well known for aircraft substitution (new first class for old first class on their 747′s especially).Even with the strengthening dollar against the euro, I really do prefer South Asia as a destination for its affordability. Not to mention the incredible service levels. I like Thai service, but love Indonesian hospitality. And connecting through Japan, well, I tend to believe though much more formal that the service levels there probably exceed anywhere else in the world.

One lesson from doing much award searching is that on the whole, American is a great program for award availability on its own metal in the US and Carribean. Premium class awards were difficult to find across the Atlantic, though several first class awards come up in my searches for Tokyo and South America. British Airways is a great partner for transatlantic availability in my experience, at least departing the US East Coast. But Cathay Pacific, Japan Air Lines, and Qantas awards are notoriously difficult to get in premium classes.

While American is much better than United when it comes to awards on its own planes, especially in the US and on transcons (anecdotally), the Star Alliance is much better for transatlantic and transpacific awards than is oneworld (and, quite obviously for those in the know, than is Skyteam).

Another lesson is how much I’ve come to love the Air Canada Aeroplan program for award booking. British Midland’s is still an even better value with their one-way awards with stopovers and thier cash and points chart, but the general feeling is that the generosity of that program may not be long-lived. Changes do happen across all programs, and the value inherent in Aeroplan could well dissipate but for now I am a huge fan…

For anyone that predicts the spin-off of a frequent flyer program into a separate publicly traded business must mean a devaluation of the program, check out the changes to Aeroplan and see what you think!

The Aeroplan program has recently developed a reputation as stingy, but it’s anything but. Sure, they collect pretty hefty fees on award redemptions, usually called fuel surcharges. But when you combine at least two non-Air Canada partners on a single award they price taxes and fees manually and don’t include a fuel surcharge. I recently ticketed a first class award to Asia with Aeroplan points and the total taxes and fees were less than US$60.

Air Canada is a member of the Star Alliance, so Aeroplan points can be used to book plenty of partners — this solves the frequent flyer availability issue in most cases, at least for the award itineraries that are most valuable. And unlike United, they do not filter otherwise available seats being offered by their partners. So if Thai Airways is offering first class seats from London to Bangkok, you can book them.

With United’s award chart undergoing a massive devaluation come January 1, that leaves Aeroplan (or in some cases US Airways) as the least expensive award chart in Star Alliance. That means their miles are clearly amongst the most valuable.

Now Air Canada has made some really attractive changes to their rules on award itineraries, in place since December 8th.

Their international awards now permit (2) stopovers rather than just one. I haven’t verified yet whether it’s possible to have two stopovers and an open jaw, though I’ve seen reports that this has been permitted.

They also now permit crossing both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans on a single award without bumping up to a round the world award.

Back in March I flew DC – Frankfurt – Singapore on my outbound, made a stopover in Beijing on the way back, but since I was using United miles I had to return back across the Atlantic since that’s how I had flown to Asia in the first place (and United charged me 20,000 extra miles for having done so). That meant extra flying, and because of airline schedules an overnight on the return as well.

Under the new Air Canada rules I could have flown my outbound as-is, and returned even on the United non-stop Beijing-Washington, DC (if that flight was available).

This is also a huge boon to award availability, you get to search availability on both the transpacific and transatlantic carriers for a single ticket! It also means you can visit both Asia and Europe on that one ticket as well!

Assuming bmi Diamond Club gets swallowed into Miles and More eventually, or otherwise devalued, AIr Canada could be my new favorite airline porgram. And since they’re an American Express Membership Rewards partner, since they partner with various hotel programs for points transfers (or straight earning), as well as being a repository for my Club Rewards points (I remain one of the last Diners Club holdouts!) this is a huge opportunity.

Oh, and their change fees are pretty reasonable at ~ $55 (though I believe this increases February 1) as well.

Nicholas Kralev’s Washington Times covers travel blogs this week.

Public relations departments of airlines can’t catch a break. Not only is their industry under constant scrutiny by the public and the traditional media, now they have bloggers to worry about. …

Gary Leff, whose blog is View From the Wing, said the best way to get him to write about something is to understand his interests. “But also be ready for questions. A PR flak who doesn’t know his product isn’t likely to get very far – or might get made fun of,” he said. “Sending me an e-mail about a new credit card is going to be a good thing to do if the credit card is meaningfully better in some way than other existing cards.” …

“Of course, influencing the airline or hotel industry isn’t what I’m after, and I don’t write for PR reps,” Mr. Leff said. “I love travel and miles and points. I love figuring out deals and sharing them. … In a small way, I can help others through the knowledge I come across and through my own travel stories.”

Via Frugal Travel Guy, Hertz is offering one free weekend rental day a month through March 31, no minimum days required.

New York City, Hawaii, and Florida are excluded, and expect a few dollars in taxes.  

The coupon code is PC#127595.

When housekeeping sees a sign (or electronic light, at the case may be) on my door which says “Do Not Disturb” they should…

(A) Knock on the door
(B) Call to ask whether I want my room serviced
(C) Not disturb me

Answer: C

That is all.

The New York Times carried a piece earlier in the week about loyalty programs’ online shopping malls.

You click through a link on their websites to get to the stores you are going to shop at, and earn miles and points (or cashback, depending on the site) for the purchases you make. It’s like the mortgage refinancing commercial tagline, “It’s the biggest no-brainer in the history of earth.”

The one useful bit in the article, of course, is to check EV Reward before making any online purchase. That site will tell you what miles, points, or cashback you can get for the purchase you’re about to make it and puts the link you need to click in order to get the ‘rebate’ right in front of you. Plus it will often show you coupon codes for the online merchants as well.

Holiday shopping or any shopping, online purchases need to be made through a mileage or cashback mall — and the choice of mall is dictated by (a) which one partners with the online store you want to shop at, and (b) which one offers the most generous reward — for example, the same merchant may earn 3 American miles, 2 United miles, or 4 Continental miles per dollar spent. At that point I choose American — 3 AAdvantage miles are clearly worth more than 2 United, and Continental’s award chart is pricey and award availability is poor (though this should change when they enter the Star Allaince) such that the greater number of miles earned would get me less in my experience.

The author of the Washington Times piece (which I wrote about this morning) on United blocking its members from redeeming flights on partners that are otherwise offering award seats for redemption has posted some additional details on Flyertalk about how the process works.

UA has a separate budget for paying partners for award seats and is very careful not to exceed it, because then it has to take money from somewhere else.

Let’s take LH as an example. If the same number of award seats are redeemed by MP members on LH as are redeemed by M&M members on UA, no money exchanges hands. But if more MP members get seats on LH, then UA has to pay LH the balance, which is usually what happens. So UA has to estimate how much of its partner award budget it can afford to allocate for LH — or how many award seats are likely to be redeemed by MP members on LH during a certain period (not sure if they do it monthly or quarterly).

Based on my own observation, that estimate is lower than reality, and UA knows that. So it limits access to LH seats preemptively at the beginning of the budget period by removing entire routes from the availability its agents can see. If toward the end of that period it determines that it has money left — apparently that happens often since blocking LH is so massive — it opens up certain flights. For example, I noticed that many flights in January (beginning of a new budget period) are blocked (including FRA-MUC), but flights at the end of December (end of period) have opened up.

I’m not sure how the fact that M&M includes several airlines factors in this whole game. As many have noticed, OS is rarely blocked — in fact, often when you try to get FRA-CDG, for example, agents tell you that you have to connect in VIE.

The Washington Times carries another piece on United’s blocking its Mileage Plus members from redeeming for award seats offered by its Star Alliance partner carriers.

Despite significant increases in the mileage cost of many awards beginning in the New Year, United will not be ending the practice. According to the article, they’re the only Star Alliance carrier which blocks award seats offered by other Star airlines, and they plan to continue to do this. United just wants its customers to understand why — they have to pay for award seats and they’re expensive, darnit!

Of course, as I’ve written about in the past, United’s frequent flyer program is already the most (and at times only) profitable part of the company. That was true even before they began engaging in blocking of awards.

That’s not to say Mileage Plus isn’t doing it for financial reasons — of course they are. If they can take in money and not have expenditures, of course their net goes up. So if they can get away with it, if their customers continue to accumulate United miles and the loyalty program doesn’t have to spend money for partner award tickets, the program’s bottom-line is better off.

Until now, the airline has been silent about the practice. Their reservations agents usually tell customers that the awards are ‘not available’ … that the partner carrier hasn’t releases seats to United.. or in some cases that flights in question don’t exist (one tell-tale sign of blocking is that the reservations agents don’t even see the flights). A dishonest practice, since in fact the flights exist, frequently the partners have released award seats, and United knows it.

One used to be able to get agents to do a ‘manual sell’ where they input the flight directly and request award space, since hte space was available it would come back confirmed. United didn’t like that, since they were trying to block the redemptions, so they’ve let agents know that manual sells are a firing offense. (One wouldn’t usually request a manual sell outright, there’s a bit of a dance I wrote about in the past here, but now it’s virtually impossible to achieve because agents are truly put on notice that their jobs are in jeopardy if they help a customer out in this way.)

Ultimately, United Mileage Plus — with its award price increases and limitations on award availability — is becoming a much less attractive frequent flyer program to accumulate miles in. Sure, if you’re an elite looking for upgrades you need to credit flight miles to the program. But look elsewhere for partner miles, such as from credit cards or rental cars or shopping.

Air Canada and US Airways offer much more attractive award charts and don’t block availability. This could change, of course, but for now both programs are better at award redemption and at a lower cost than United’s. In fact, even ‘expensive’ programs like Lufthansa are beginning to compare favorably. United will be charging as much as their German partner for many awards, but Lufthansa doesn’t block partner seats. And Senators and HON Circle elites get 50% off redemptions of a second award, so members taking a friend, spouse, or signfiicant ohter on a trip are paying a whole lot fewer miles for better award availabilty than United offers.

United’s is an insidious practice, which hopefully a bit of sunshine can combat. The Washington Times pieces are a useful antidote. I write about the practice in the current Inside Flyer issue as well (subscription required):

Some agents will go to the ends of the earth and back for you, and with some airlines that’s necessary–such as United, which is alone among Star Alliance carriers in denying their members access to award seats being offered by their partners. I once checked 51 days where Thai Airways had 53 separate flights showing two first class award seats available, and United wouldn’t book a single one of them. So United’s availability won’t always match what is shown on the All Nippon Airways Web site.

One Mile at a Time notes that

on my IAD-SEA flight, which was an A319 with only eight F seats, four of us were on mileage runs!

End of year means runs for status requalification. There have been plenty of alternative methods of acquiring status enter frequent flyer programs the past few years, most prominent being co-branded credit card spend. Delta has offered double qualifying miles for specific routes, for Rewards Network dining, and for Hilton stays.

But I’m surprised not to have seen a repeat (or dpread to other programs) of US Airways’ ‘everything counts’ promotion from two years ago. It seemed like an interesting way to generate partner revenue while not cramming up the front cabin with mileage runners.

Frugal Travel Guy says that Delta is waiving the processing fee on mileage transfers in December. You pay just the 1 cent a point to transfer miles between accounts, without the extra charge. Discounts are great, transferring 30,000 miles usually costs $330 but would cost $300 with this offer instead.

Those for whom Delta is honoring the up to 150% bonus on partner transactions (the original terms of which included transferring miles) may have an outstanding opportunity here.

I still don’t trust Delta enough to believe I won’t have to fight for my 150% partner bonus, so I’ll probably take a pass on this. I may have to fight for the points I transferred into Delta from Diners Club as it is. But if you registered for the partner bonus in time, before the offer was pulled (and if you have a steel constitution), this one could be huge.

This has been posted on FatWallet and on Flyertalk, I’ve just verified that it works. ZipCar has $25 driving credits with promotion codes linked to their specific markets. Codes are entered on the Zipcar website and are valid for only 15 days.

The great thing is that the codes are stackable — you can enter codes from each region, not just the region you are in, and you can successfully enter them all. So (6) codes yields $150 in driving credits. The codes are:

• DriveNowPHL

• DriveNowDC

• DriveNowATL

• DriveNowSEA

• DriveNowBOS9842

• DriveNowPDX

Update: It seems that Zipcar has pulled the bonus dollars out of my account, though no word from them at this point.

Reader Sam points me to the Schwab Bank Visa Card which, according to its FAQ, doesn’t hit you with foreign transaction fees. There are other cards with the same feature, it’s the only redeeming aspect of Capital One for instance, but this card also gives you 2% cash back into a Schwab One brokerage account.