Frugal Travel Guy says that if you sign up to follow Priceline on Twitter by May 1 you’ll get a coupon for $50 off your next hotel bid.

Marriott has opened the gate with double nights towards elite qualifying status. When you see double qualifying miles on airlines (as the major US carriers have been offering this quarter) or double qualifying nights at hotels, you know that a travel provider’s regular customers aren’t traveling.

Loyalty programs tend to push their elite customer groups to remain at roughly the same size, either in total numbers or percentage of travelers or members.

Marriott has recognized the cliff diving by offering double night credits between May 11 and June 26 (not an especially long period).

The interesting innovation here is that they want to avoid folks striving just to retain their status, and they don’t want the existence of double nights to be a disincentive to stays (customers who requalify more easily not needing to stretch their stays to requalify). So they’re telling members that the nights they earn above what they need to requalify for their current status will count as a head start towards next year’s status.

Of course that just pushes the ball down the road, potentially siphoning off nights next year, but that’s a hypothetical problem to worry about then and they can always offer rollover elite nights then…

United is offering a game — which you can play every day through July 17 — to win economy plus access for a year. Not an easy win, but if you aren’t an elite and might fly United it’s sure nice to have. United is, in my view, the best coach product in the U.S. if you’re seated in Economy Plus. Those extra inches really do matter, and are a great perk for United’s elite members (not sure most consider them to be worth the buy up if you aren’t an elite).

United’s partner elites used to have complimentary access to these seats, but that benefit was taken away, much to the consternation of Star Alliance Gold members around the world…

FTD is again offering 30 United miles per dollar.

Imagine the conundrum faced by North Central Regional Airport in West Virginia. They need to exceed a whopping 27 passengers per day in order to be eligible for a federal grant program. But they aren’t hitting their numbers. (Presumably the airport is employing more staff than passengers…) What do you do?

Fudge your numbers, of course! Charter a plane and give away free flights — get local residents to take off, circle around the town, and land. Apparently it’s worth the money to the airport authority:

“Hopefully we achieve the numbers necessary for the 10,000 passengers that we’re looking for. That’s the difference in a $150,000 to $1,000,000.” said Ron Watson, president of the Benedum Airport Authority.

(Hat tip to Chris,)

I wasn’t at the Freddie Awards this year, during the ceremony I was in the Thai Airways first class spa at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport.  So I don’t have a lot to share about the event.  But I’ve been reviewing the results.

Certainly I have a different take on who should have won in many cases, I wouldn’t call Alaska’s MVP Gold the best airline elite status for instance. 

But what really struck me was Delta Skymiles winning the best elite level in Europe.  Delta offers almost nothing to the European elite members (although European addressed Skymiles accounts have historically earned Platinum status with only 50,000 elite qualifying miles).  There’s no complimentary upgrade program except when Europeans have already crossed the pond.  It’s a terrible program for international upgrades.  And what else is there, really, for a US-based airline’s elite program from the perspective of a European member?

Similarly, how Marriott can win any best elite level awards is beyond me. The program explicitly excludes suites from the upgrade benefit. Top tier members get lounge access, or the occasional generosity of a hotel that goes above and beyond the program benefits itself. Big deal. I can see an argument for Intercontinental Royal Ambassador, but generally speaking Starwood Platinum is the best top tier elite level offered by a major hotel program, period. At least for the current Freddie Awards that are looking back on last year. Going forward Hyatt’s Diamond status offers incredible value…

I get how Hilton earns “best award redemption” since they’ve matched Starwood’s no capacity controls on awards. But how Starwood finishes 5th in the category makes no sense at all.

Starwood seems to fare the best across the board in Asia, and having just returned from Asia I’d expect this is much a function of the phenomenal properties they have rather than of the program itself (though those outstanding properties are generally also quite good with elite recognition).

Priority Club has cobbled together a potentially lucrative but also confusing “stay 2 nights, get a free night” promotion. Registration is required.

It’s actually two promotions in one. First, every two nights from May 4 through July 3 earns a free night, up to a maximum of 4 free nights. Those free nights can be used between July 3 and December 26.

These free nights are redeemable any night of the week, not just weekends like Starwood’s free night bonus offer. Japanese hotels and members with addresses in Japan are excluded from the free night promotion.

Perhaps most importantly, while earning credit towards free nights you do not earn your normal points or miles.

The second piece of the offer is double points earning, instead of free nights. That doesn’t preclude earning points (naturally).

It’s worth noting that the free nights offer appears to apply only to reservations made after registering for the promo, while the double points offer would seem to apply to all reservations during the promo regardless of when those reservations were made.

That may swing the decision about whether to pick free nights or double points for some, though of course folks that have pre-existing cancellable bookings could cancel their reservations and re-book although of course check to see that room rates haven’t gone up in the meantime! (It’s good practice with cancellable reservations to check rates again anyway, sometimes they go down…)

“You’ve heard of the Bridge to Nowhere. You might call this the Airport for Nobody.”

The John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport has an impressive $18 million runway made of reinforced concrete that’s big enough to land any airplane in North America. The airport also has a $7 million air traffic control tower, a $14 million hanger and $8 million radar. Most of the time, the only thing the airport doesn’t have is airplanes.

An average of just 20 people a day flew out of the Murtha Airport last year. But, the airport was just awarded more federal money — $800,000 in stimulus funds to repave an alternate runway…

Upgrade: Travel Better reported on his mistaken Priceline booking. He entered the wrong dates for a hotel reservation that he won, and managed to work with the hotel and Priceline to get them to shift his dates to what he originally wanted.

Just a few days ago I realized a similar boo boo myself, not on Priceline but with a similar prepaid, non-refundable booking at the Novotel Suvarnabhumi Airport hotel. Seems I had entered the exact right day – in the wrong month! I had booked for May instead of April, which is why the nice ladies at door 4 in the arrivals hall didn’t see me on their list of arrivals.

When I walked up to the checkin desk they couldn’t find my reservation either, so I handed them my printed confirmation. A little bit of typing, an embarrassed grin, and they pointed to me where I had booked the very same night for the following month.

Shoot, they could easily have made me eat that one! But I didn’t have a fight at all, the woman just said, “May I have your permission to move the reservation?” Why… yes you may! And a few keystrokes later my non-refundable, non-changeable booking had been changed to cover that very night. I was handed a key to my room and up I went.

It’s a good reminder though to always check and double check the dates you’re entering on a hotel or airline reservation, March could appear as May, June as July, and once you hit purchase you run the risk of losing a chunk of change.

That said, if you do make a mistake it never hurts to ask for forgiveness. And I’ve always had good luck with Expedia bookings, for what it’s worth, and their willingness to grant a “one-time exception” and cancel a booking made within 24 hours (I must have done this a dozen times, and they’ve told me they can do it with most air bookings though notably not with Airtran).

Hyatt used to be quite stingy with suite upgrades. Their top tier elites weren’t entitled to suites, even when suites were going empty, and getting into one usually took some cajoling and paying a higher than normal room rate.

But now that Hyatt has upped the ante in the elite status game and provided new confirmed upgrade instruments to their top tier elites.

Still, the current situation can be confusing because at present there are 3 different types of suite upgrades available through Hyatt.

The points upgrade. Spend 6000 Hyatt Gold Passport points to confirm an upgrade to a suite, but you must pay the ‘prevailing rate’ for your room. And this is frequently argued to be rack rate, even though that hardly prevails with most other bookings…

Diamond Upgrade Certificate. Historically each diamond member was sent a paper upgrade voucher with their membership card each year. Many of these are still out there and valid even though Hyatt has introduced new Diamond upgrades, which are electronic. This is a space available upgrade, based on availability at check-in, and any paid rate bookable at Hyatt.com qualifies.

Confirmed Electronic Suite Upgrades. Diamond members receive four of these a year, and a Diamond member just calls Hyatt and uses one to get a suite. Any standard (ie bookable at Hyatt.com) paid rate is eligible.

Things will get cleaner next year, once the old paper space available Diamond Upgrade Certificates go away. Even some Hyatt customer service reps are confused, believing that a Diamond has to pay rack rate in order to use their confirmed suite upgrades. Small transition pains, and it pays to be informed, but at the moment the ability to confirm a suite for a Hyatt Diamond makes the program really attractive at the top tier…

Delta’s new bonus mile offer for partner activity is called Pile on Miles. Registration required.

Partner activity through June 22 counts towards incrementally more bonus miles, and each partner can only count once for the offer.

Unique Partner Activities
4 ———– 4,000 miles
6 ———– 6,000 miles
8 ———– 8,000 miles
15 ———– 15,000 miles
25 ———– 25,000 miles

Northwest is making the same offer, which means that between the two programs 50 partner activities earn up to 50,000 bonus miles.

Northwest is offering 1000 bonus miles for shopping with specific merchants through their mileage portal through June 30, up to 10,000 miles total for the promo.

The participating merchants are:

AVON
Bagsbuy
BarnesandNoble.com
Beauty.com
Big Dogs
Bliss
Borders
Brookstone
Charlotte Russe
CHEFS
Cheryl & Co.
Clinique
drugstore.com
eBags
ESPNShop.com
Footlocker
Gaiam
GiftBaskets.com
H2O Plus
Harry & David
ICE.com
JC Whitney
Jos. A. Bank
Kiehl’s
Kodak Gallery
Lab Series
Lancome
Lord & Taylor
macys.com
Magazines.com
Magellan’s
Naturalizer.com
Nautica
Nordstrom.com
Northern Tool & Equipment
Omaha Steaks
Origins
RedEnvelope
Rosetta Stone
Saks Fifth Avenue
Sears.com
Sephora
Shoebuy
ShopNBC
Smart Bargains
Smith + Noble
SpaFinder
The North Face
The Walking Company
Things Remembered
TravelSmith
Vans
Vera Bradley
Vision Direct
VistaPrint
Zazzle

Naturally, there are Flyertalkers trying to figure out how to get 10,000 miles out of this promo as cheaply as possible, building online spreadsheets, and the like.

On the whole though this is just a good offer for purchases you were going to make from these merchants anyway, rather than trying to figure out whether a 1 cent eBook purchase from Barnes & Noble will constitute a qualifying transaction…

One Mile at a Time has links to new, improved Citibank American Airlines credit card offers — 30,000 mile signup bonuses for the Mastercard, American Express, and Business Mastercard products.

The cards have no annual fee the first year, and remember that Citi cards are churnable — you can get the signup bonuses over and over — and individuals can generally apply for two cards every 60 days although this experience on the frequency of successfully applying for cards may vary.

As posted on Flyertalk, Washington-Dulles to Lima, Peru is running ~ $220 all-in, bookable any time through the end of the schedule (March, 2010). Use Kayak and enter IAD as departure city and LIM as arrival city to find it quickly.

You can get the price under $200 by flying United, Dulles – Mexico City and then LanPeru down to Lima. That fare, though, is only valid through June 17, and a Saturday stay is required.

Speaking of Starwood, news of their next promo is out.

Every two stays between May 1 and July 31 earns a free weekend night. Each free night will have to be redeemed by end of September.

While Starwood got great vibes from its members for this year’s recategorization of hotel award categories, it was pretty much as expected — their award categories are driven by each hotel’s average daily room rate for the previous year, and those are down markedly. (Plus the past few years have seen huge increases in the category rankings, and I believe modifications to the daily rate range for each category.)

Meanwhile, Starwood’s two unique attributes are being matched by its competitors: no capacity controls on awards (now matched by Hilton and Hyatt) and upgrades to suites (now offered four times a year confirmed for Hyatt Diamonds instead of unlimited based on availability at checkin for Starwood Platinums).

For some time I’ve wondered what Starwood would do to up the ante on the competition. Speculation heated up last year, and then came disappointment: SPG Flights.

But now that Hyatt – admittedly a smaller program – now offers members both of the things that used to be unique to Starwood (oh, and free internet for elites to boot), it’s got to be time for Starwood to roll out something big. So I’ll offer up a suggestion I’ve made, time and again, though I figured it would be Starwood out of the gate first with it rather than Hyatt: confirmed upgrades for Platinum members.

It wouldn’t be hard to accomplish, Starwood already provides for suite upgrade awards with points — 5 days in advance on a paid stay, or for usually double the points on an award redemption, at participating properties and capacity controlled.

Just use the same inventory to confirm platinums into suites x times per year. The cost to SPG would be the same per upgrade as it already is, and for which SPG charges its members points.

Make it 4 confirmed certs per year for up to category 5, or use 2 certs for a cat 6 or 7. They’d limit each certificate to no more than x nights each, and perhaps get a 25% breakage rate (make them non-transferrable so they aren’t all redeemed). Of course Starwood needs to generate more than that in revenue to justify.

They could offer additional confirmed upgrades for stays beyond the minimum necessary to qualify for Platinum, thus encouragin incremental stays beyond requalification (as some airlines do).

Starwood needs to do this to catch up, it’s no longer follow the leader for them anymore…

Apparently the Red Shirt leaders have turned themselves in to police and the protesters are going home. Meanwhile, I read that Songkran is being extended two days.

Perhaps this represents loss of face for Shinawatra, but the underlying issues are unlikely to go away. He still has plenty of funds and supporters, the government isn’t seen as broadly legitimate, I’d expect that matters have simply been delayed until another day.

I’ve been watching the current protests in Thailand over the past several days, and it’s fascinating from a political science perspective.

• The Thai PM can’t really crack down on the protesters too heavily, he just came to power himself on the back of similar protests
• The ASEAN conference should have been easy to provide security for, there’s basically only two roads in and out of Pattaya but nothing was done
• The PM has lost face in front of the international community. Has to crack down now. If it doesn’t work, he’s inept and has to leave. But if things turn violent he loses confidence of the people and has to leave. So he has to hope that the protesters disburse.
• Roughly speaking the protesters are being paid to protest, and things are pretty nonviolent, even reports of violence are dubious (shots fired at the Prime Minister’s vehicle as a precipitation for the state of emergency… where are the photos??). Thaksin Shinawatra is behind the whole thing, the previous government that was taken down in December was recently installed with his backing. He’s out of the country but over US$2 billion of his assets are frozen in Thailand.
• I assume he wants chaos, and then returns himself to ‘clean up the mess.’

Assuming the current PM fails, the military has to step in as they did in 2006. Governments don’t last long in Thailand, they’re kinda like Italy that way. Ultimately though there’s a real divide in the country between the poor in the North and urban elites in Bangkok, the former being Shinawatra supporters on the whole — regularly considered pro-democracy since they’re a slim majority but really redistributionist — and the latter being Royalists but really proponents of a corrupt bureaucratic status quo.

The military exercises power independently, they either do or do not support whatever regime in power which determines whether that regime can hold onto power. But even if the military takes a hands off approach, and the current government falls, you just get a cycling problem…

The only one with respect and stature in the country is the King, but he’s 82, not clear that he’s in a position to unify the country in a meaningful way.

Things have been pretty nonviolent all things considered, but I’m uncertain of the ultimate end game. Still, won’t stop me from visiting…

Through April 20, Northwest Worldperks is offering discounted international redemption for travel through June 15. The offer applies to Delta, Northwest, and KLM-operated flights only. If you don’t have Worldperks miles, but have a balance with Delta Skymiles, you can of course transfer your Skymiles over to Northwest instantly to take advantage of the offer (it wouldn’t surprise me if Delta is offering the same or similar deal but I haven’t yet checked).

The offer provides for a 10-20% discount on coach awards and a 25% discount on business class awards. Fourteen day advance booking and a Saturday night stay are required.

Update: As expected, Delta is indeed making the same offer.

Several days ago I posted about the Fairmont Friends & Family rate. In the current low bookings environment, hotels are looking for ways to get incremental room nights. Fairmont has been promoting the employee friends and family rate, encouraging employees to have their friends book deeply discounted stays and even offering them a $10 per booking financial incentive for doing so.

The goal of this sort of promotion is to spur incremental business, somewhat ‘quietly’ in a way that doesn’t detract from revenue bookings. In other words, sell a room that would otherwise go vacant for $129 without diverting someone to that rate who would have booked a room at $429.

And since the friends and family rate is capacity controlled, with hotels only making rooms available that would go unsold at higher rates, this is an excellent strategy. It’s similar to what hotels try to do with Priceline, dumping deeply discounted inventory for rooms that would otherwise go unsold, using Priceline’s opaque booking engine as a way to ensure that customers who would otherwise book the same hotel at a higher rate aren’t the ones booking at the lower one.

Intercontinental Hotels Group was first out of the gate with encouraging employees to distribute the friends and family rate broadly. So it wasn’t really a surprise when Fairmont followed suit.

However, they may not have anticipated that the deal would be distributed broadly on the internet, in various forums including Flyertalk. It’s incremental bookings but more public than intended (in the modern age one really shouldn’t assume that such offers stay quiet….) and perhaps Fairmont didn’t anticipate shelling out five figure amounts to their employees for promoting the offer, either.

Barn door open, there’s not a ton that Fairmont can do about the promotion at this point. So according to discussions on Flyertalk it appears that reservations booked using the NFAF promotion code are being honored, but that the required booking IDs for employees that must accompany the rate are being changed — so that the booking IDs distributed broadly on the internet won’t work going forward.

Existing stays should be fine, at least per the discussion, but future stay bookings will need a Fairmont employee to share a new booking ID.

As they say, “developing…”