Similar to the Air Canada promo I posted this morning, Hyatt is offering progressively bigger bonuses for staying up to 8 nights through April 30 — this time as many as 20 Southwest Rapid Reward Credits are the prize, and registration is required.

Not a bad return on eight nights, clearly Hyatt is looking to leverage their loyalty program to fill up someotherwise empty rooms. 

Perhaps one of the more interesting low-end redemptions I’ve seen. It’s 1000 Northwest Worldperks miles and you can even upload your own images for the tags.

US Airways Dividend Miles is offering 1000 miles for new signups. Usually these offers require some sort of flight activity before earning bonus miles. This one gives you the miles just for joining. So a good chance to join if you aren’t already a member.

For a limited time, enroll in Dividend Miles online and receive 1,000 bonus miles. That’s right, all you have to do is sign up and we’ll automatically credit 1,000 miles to your account. The miles don’t count toward Preferred status, and you can’t combine this enrollment bonus with any other offers. Enrollments must be made on usairways.com and only one bonus is permitted per individual.

Hyatt stays through May 3 accumulate significant Aeroplan bonuses. The bonuses grow with additional nights up to 8 total nights, as follows:

2,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles (two nights)
+ 4,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles (four nights)
+ 6,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles (six nights)
+ 8,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles (eight nights)
= 20,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles

The offer is valid at all Hyatt brands, and Registration is required.

Air Tahiti Nui is pulling out of the New York-JFK market. JFK-Papeete didn’t do especially well for them, even during high season, and they previous pulled out of JFK-Paris. They’ve also ended their Osaka service, and are pulling out of Sydney.

This leaves Auckland, Los Angeles, and Tokyo from Papeete and Paris from Los Angeles (providing one-stop service from Tahiti, matching Air France’s offering and allowing their politicians to visit the administrative bosses while flying their state carrier).

Fewer than 200,000 people visited Tahiti in 2008. I seem to recall a statistic (which I never validated) that more people arrive in Hawaii in a day than in Bora Bora in a year.

While I don’t always trust with 100% certainty the accuracy of Tahiti Presse stories, there’s been some speculation amongst frequent flyers about what would happen to the Northwest Airlines – Air Tahiti Nui partnership once Worldperks is swallowed up into Delta’s Skymiles program. The piece suggests an Air Tahiti Nui-Delta partnership, which is somewhat hopeful. Of course, such a partnership has been rumored for a long time.

Currently Air Tahiti Nui partners with American Airlines and with Northwest. I redeemed American miles for a 2005 first class trip to Tahiti and on to Australia (returning on Qantas). A Delta partnership would give Skymiles what I consider to be a second decent redemption option in addition to premium class awards on Singapore, at least if Delta allows redemptions from the U.S. to New Zealand on the carrier…

One Mile at a Time says the passengers from US Airways flight 1549 will get top tier elite status for a year.

Unless US Airways did something wrong, I’m not sympathetic to lawsuits. Something really bad happened, people survived, from what we know at this point the pilot did a remarkable thing and the emergency response crews were outstanding. Thanks are deserved, not lawsuits.

Still, going above and beyond is the appropriate response from US Airways. Sending out checks immediately for lost luggage in excess of the maximum permitted under the contract of carriage was a good immediate step. I’d have liked to see “free travel for a year” or “elite status for life.” Somehow top tier for a year (while nice) doesn’t quite feel the same or seem to get US Airways very much. It’s a gesture that seems to fall flat.

It was supposedly coming in February, they’re even a little bit early. You can now link your Northwest and Delta frequent flyer accounts and they’ll give you 500 bonus points for doing so by March 15 which will post to your Skymiles account 2-4 weeks after the end of the promotion (or 4-6 weeks, depending on whether you believe the transfer website or the e-mail confirmation after linking accounts). And then you can transfer points back and forth between your accounts, the transfer happens instantly. Excellent functionality!

It’s certainly taken long enough, but we finally have some specifics on when Continental miles will become worth something (i.e. when Continental will leave Skyteam and join Star Alliance).

From their mass email yesterday:

Regarding SkyTeam, Continental intends to end its participation in the SkyTeam Alliance after the last scheduled flight on Oct. 24, 2009.

We continue to work through the details of our planned exit from SkyTeam and entry into Star Alliance, but anticipate our participation in Star Alliance will begin promptly after we leave SkyTeam.

And of course Continental offers a nicer domestic product than United does.

The ill-advised flyer who has been accumulating and hoarding Continental miles for years will finally see their unlikely strategy pay off!

With hotel bookings exceptionally down, and New York suffering both from the general decline in leisure travel expenditure and a drop in business travel tied to financial firm troubles, it’s unsurprising (yet pleasant) to see Hilton offering a New York-specific sale.

A handy rate calendar offers specific prices on given dates at each participating hotel. Through April they promise:

Hilton New York: Rates as low as $159 (code QO, 14 day adv. purchase

Millenium Hilton: Rates as low as $159 (code P9)

Waldorf=Astoria: Rates as low as $175 -(code QO, 14 day adv. purchase)

Unsurprisingly, the Millenium Hilton down in the financial district is offering both a low rate and no advance purchase requirement.

While these are advance purchase, non-refundable rates, they’re not much higher than one often finds on Priceline and of course qualify for Hhonors points and status benefits.

Having just blogged about the end to Platinum award change fee waivers over at the new Delta/Northwest (sourced from the head of the Skymiles program), perhaps responding to the outcry Northwest has sent out an email which clarifies that Platinums will still get 2 free changes a year and changes thereafter will be $50. That’s better than the original plan to end fee-free changes entirely, but still a hit.

[W]e will modify the reissue and redeposit fee waiver for Platinum Elite members. Effective March 1, 2009, we will waive this fee for two different reservations per year and collect $50 for each additional award ticket change.

It’s not yet completely clear to me whether this means that two award bookings will have unlimited changes, or whether only one change per booking is allowed with a maximum of waived fees on two award bookings a year. And since the language is specific to a reservation (presumably a single PNR), perhaps the waiver applies to multiple passengers on the same award booking? Again, an open question still to be confirmed.

Through January 30 (I meant to blog this awhile ago…) Vinesse Wine Club is offering 4500 Northwest miles for signup, in addition to 8 Northwest miles per dollar spent. Here’s the offer.

This involves signing up for their wine club, so assuming you don’t want to continue you’ll have to cancel which I understand is relatively painless (under a minute) by phone. And the miles do appear to post as promised.

You’ll get (6) bottles for $6.99 each with no shipping charges on the first order. I’m not valuing the wine a whole lot, but it’s less than a penny a point for Northwest miles and the wine value must be nonzero…

Hertz is offering their top status level, Platinum, for sale.

The price ranges from $1200 – $1500 a year depending on your current membership level with them. (Though no one should ever pay more than $1350 since that’s the Hertz Gold price, and that status can be had free any number of ways — and even if you were paying it’s only $60 so the $1500 no status price seems silly, see for instance here or here and search on the page for ‘gold’ or find plenty more versions of this by Googling ‘free hertz gold’.)

The benefits strike me as similar to Avis Chairman’s status, which I much enjoy: vehicle delivery, upgrades, valet service back to the airport so you don’t have to ride the shuttle bus. As an Avis Chairman I pay market rate for gas, an unpublished benefit. Perhaps there are unpublished benefits with this Hertz program as well, though I do note as a unique feature that they offer a 4-hour grace period on returning a vehicle which is nice.

Pricing is quite steep, but for someone who rents a car every week it could be worthwhile.

An interesting finding about the effect of successfully redeeming frequent flyer miles, from the head of the Aeroplan program:

One thing that’s very interesting is that when they do a redemption for an airfare or a gift card or an iPod they actually become more loyal afterwards for about a six-month period. Actually, the accumulation rate of the currency goes up substantially.

He suggests that frequent flyer programs aren’t just a rebate, they’re a way to leverage a relationship.

[B]y developing a longer term relationship with a consumer, you actually encourage them to focus their spending in a way that they wouldn’t normally do. And, it’s not normally because they get 1 or 2 per cent cash back, because that’s what loyalty schemes essentially represent. You’re actually becoming part of their behaviour and their everyday lives as opposed to just a transaction.

Read the whole interview.

Jeff Robertston, who runs the Delta Skymiles program, posted on Flyertalk that as part of integrating Northwest into Delta, Northwest Platinum elites will earn a 100% mileage bonus instead of a 125% bonus, and Silver elites will earn a 25% bonus instead of 50%.

Losing benefits is unfortunate. This one doesn’t surprise me. First, because it’s an area where Northwest remained generous compered to competitors (Continental made a similar move, but then allowed their elites to earn at the earlier more generous levels if they held Continental’s premium co-branded credit card>) and that just doesn’t fly under the new leadership, and second because my working model has been that where the features of the Skymiles and Worldperks programs were different, the default would be to opt for the less generous benefits. So far that assumption has proven out quite well, for example as Northwest’s award chart now requires more miles in many cases for awards.

Mr. Robertson also reported that Platinum elites would no longer have fee-free changes to awards (and free-free award cancellations/mileage redeposits).

He claimed that it wasn’t for the fee revenue, but rather as a deterrent to making reservations that Platinums will not use — which he claims accounts for 10% of the awards Platinums claim. In other words, taking away this benefit from Platinums would, in theory, make more awards available for everyone else.

Here’s the problem, though — awards with Delta can be very hard to book. Platinums have been able to grab awards that were available and make changes to improve their itienraries later when seats opened up. That was a huge benefit that offset some of the negatives about Skymiles (and in fact, Skyteam) redemption compared to competitor programs in oneworld or Star Alliance.

The difficulties in claiming awards or in improving awards were only exascerbated by Delta’s decision to shorten the hold time on awards reserved online to 24 hours, and to disallow any holds whatsoever on awards booked over the phone (and some awards can only be booked over the phone).

Now Delta’s (and Northwest’s) Platinums will have to book their awards right away without opportunity to continue to work with Delta’s agents to improve their trips — because in most cases grabbing the right award is not at all easy on the first attempt. This makes Delta’s award redemption completely uncompetitive.

First, Delta and Skyteam availability is on the whole inferior to award availability on oneworld or Star.

Second, competitor programs still allow much more generous award itinerary hold provisions prior to ticketing.

Third, competitor programs permit their top tier elites to fee-free changes to awards.

So the Delta is inferior on all three levels. They just keep making this program worse and worse.

If you’re hub-captive to Delta or Northwest, in many cases it makes sense to continue to fly them. Other than living in a Delta/Northwest hub, one really ought to at least consider another airline. But even those living in Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis, etc. should only accrue Delta/Northwest miles when the offer is so generous that it dwarfs that available in competitor programs.

Now that the Delta co-branded American Express no longer gives “always double miles” on ‘everyday purchase’ categories, the only reason to put any spending at all on (or even carry a) Delta Amex is for those hub-captive flyers who need spending on the card in order to earn bonus elite qualifying miles.

Do I participate in Skymiles? Sure. When they’re giving out 10,000 miles for a cheap one-day Avis rental. Or when I can earn 20,000 miles for a Bosley hair-replacement consultation. But not for credit card spend, everyday hotel or car rental transactions, dining for miles, online shopping, or the myriad other things I do that earn a mileage return.

 Via Taking Off Travel Blog, CNN has a piece on the world’s best airports They rank ‘em as:

• Hong Kong International Airport
• Changi International Airport, Singapore
• Incheon International Airport, Seoul, South Korea
• Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia
• Munich Airport, Germany

The problem, of course, is best for what?

About Munich, they say, the architects wanted the airport “to be less an ‘anonymous transfer location,’ than a ‘foyer to the city’.” Except that what makes Munich a great airport is precisely how easy transfers are there! (I’d say the only other airport in Europe that is its rival in this regard is Vienna.)
 
Seoul-Incheon is also outstanding for transfers, in addition to being a lovely structure.

Singapore Changi, to me, is the ‘nicest’ airport. For the median passanger there’s certainly no better airport in the world to spend a long layover in.

Kuala Lumpur, though? It wasn’t built large enough. Operations are too costly there. Pretty must not be the only standard for being amongst the ‘best airports’. And of course the aesthetic ranking will be an incredibly subjective one. I may be one of the few who actually likes Suvarnabhumi in Bangkok — original runway construction issues, lightbulb supply issues, and temperature issues notwithstanding…  But then I like Beijing’s Terminal 3 as well, so what do I know?

I’d rather see more broken-down lists, “best for transfers” … “best for layovers” … “best lounges” … “most efficient for on-time arrivals/departures” and then perhaps amalgamate these things in a statistically meaningful way if one must come up with a best overall list.

As discussed on Flyertalk, US Airways and Delta appear to be matching Spirit’s “Big Seat Sale” and offering $359 roundtrip between Reagan National and Ft. Lauderdale in paid first class.

On US Airways it’s a non-refudable seven-day advance purchase “A” fare (AA7UPN). The non-refundable Delta fare basis is QUPNL.

Boston-area Hilton properties are offering the “And Baby Makes Three” package which includes “fantastic overnight accomodations” and

The Everything Getting Pregnant Book, Champagne and Chocolates and a romantic CD to get you in “the mood”.

My favorite part is the disclaimer:

***Note: We do-not gurantee conception

british midland is offering new members signing up by March 31 a choice of triple redeemable miles or triple status miles on bmi flights taken by April 30th. The offer also comes with instant Blue Plus status.

Through March 31, Avis is offering third weekend day free with a three or more day rental and also 50% off of weekend rentals of two days or more.

Both deals were advertised to me while logged into my Yahoo! e-mail account. They’ve gotten very good at targeting ads based on web-surfing behavior, they have..

FTD is offering 25 United miles per dollar plus 100 miles for flower purchases.

It’s a campaign tied to Valentine’s Day and the United Visa, but the offer doesn’t appear to require having or using a United Visa for the purchase. Unclear if or when the offer will expire, as most FTD offers stay around quite a long time. I used a temporary targeted 30 miles per dollar offer successfully for years, and as long as the offer details appear at the top of the landing page it should work.

This one is incrementally better than the 25 United mile per dollar offer which has been around for years.