This bonus will make Hyatt’s coming point increases go down a bit smoother.

Hyatt is offering 3000 bonbus American miles per stay, on top of the usual 500 miles when crediting your stays to American Airline miles.

The bonus can be earned 5 times between May 3 and July 5, and if you do earn it five times you earn an additional 10,000 bonus miles.

This period coincides nicely with their Big Welcome Back offer of a free night every two stays, which runs through June 30.

All told if you make 6 airport stays at $70 each, you might be all-in with tax around $475 and clear 3 free nights at any Hyatt in the world (valid through August 31) and 28,000 American miles.

Registration is required.

And don’t forget that if you aren’t already elite, Hyatt will give you instant Platinum status.

(HT: Carol.)

Hyatt Gold Passport posted on Flyertalk early this morning that they’d be making changes to their award chart.

Currently hotels are spread across five categories. They’re creating a new category 6 as of June 4 at 22,000 points per night. That will include 20 properties.

They’re also moving hotels up and down in categories, a total of 89 going up (including the 20 moving to category 6) and 65 going down. On the whole it seems that the reductions are all at the low end, e.g. there are 46 category 2 properties moving down to category 1. And the increases are more evenly distributed and even clustered towards the high end.

There are even some two-category jumps, like the Grand Hyatt New York going from Category 4 to Category 6. Hey, I remember when you could priceline that dog for $77. Those were the days! I’d never spend Gold Passport points there after the miserable night I spent with paper thin walls and a party going on in the room next door, and surly lounge staff who waited in the buffet line to fill their own plates.

Details of which properties will be changing are now up on the Hyatt website.

As far as category changes go, all hotel chains do it and this one isn’t nearly as bad as Hilton’s recent one was. I suppose I’m not outraged because I’ve been expecting it for awhile, Hyatt has been too generous for awhile. And they’re about to be flooded with points as they inttroduce a co-branded credit card. They probably figure it’s better to make the adjustments before the credit card product comes online than after when their new credit card customers might perceive a bait and switch.

Hyatt is also being flexible in allowing members to use the current award chart –

Points, Miles, and Martinis says that you can get 100 free Continental miles for adding an Avis Wizard Number to your Onepass profile.

Took just a couple seconds (but then, I know my Avis Wizard number).  Many folks complain that the various Continental 100 mile promises never actually materialize, but they do seem to post for me for often than not.

Lucky points to an offer where you’ll be able to buy Starwood Starpoints for 1.45 cents apiece (e.g. 10,000 points for $145).

Starwood points normally cost $35 per 1000 (but who would buy them at that price except to top off towards a specific award need?).

The offer will be up at Discover America Daily Getaways sponsored by American Express on May 3rd. And there are a limited number of each points package, such as only 470 of the 10,000 point offers. And each purchase transaction is limited to 5 packages.

There’s been speculation that this means you can only buy a total of 5 points packages, and so the interest has centered around the 10,000 point packages for most effect. But it’s not clear from the rules as to whether that’s per person or just per purhcase transaction. And in the end even that doesn’t matter.

What no one has yet pointed out in the Flyertalk thread on this deal is that Starwood offers the equivalent of family accounts — points can be transferred between any two members at the same residential address. So two people buy points and then one tranfers those points to the other. Boom, no more restriction.

Loyalty Traveler loves the offer. He likes it for hotel stays. I prefer it for miles conversion, since 100,000 Starpoints yields 120,000 Air Canada Aeroplan points — enough for first class from the US to Singapore. $1450 for international first class isn’t terrible if starting from scratch.

Via TM Travel World, Marriott is offering 5000 bonus Delta miles per stay beginning with your second stay between May 1 and September 6, 2010.

The bonus can be earned up to 12 times for a maximum bonus of 60,000 miles.

Registration is required (and begins May 1…) and you must set your earning preference to miles.

In February I said that tomato juice is especially popular on planes.

Upgrade: Travel Better throws down with ginger ale.

So the real underlying question here of course is: bloody marys or whiskey and ginger?

Not only do we have two winners of the Big Welcome Back Free Hyatt Nights Giveaway, we also have a theme.

Michael plans to use his two free nights for his wedding and Rachel plans to use hers for her honeymoon.

Congrats to you both!

The winner of the Tom Bihn Empire Builder Laptop Briefcase giveaway is patrick yee.

I’ve sent him an email for his address, a really great bag is on its way…

A quick ride over to the airport and we were walking into the terminal. Documents checked upon entering, then all bags screened prior to reaching the checkin counter. We each checked a bag and then they weighed our carryons. So we checked two bags. These were not heavy rollaboards — two 20″ bags, not pushing a size limit by any stretch — and there was plenty of space on the flight.

Then we had to stand in line to pay the airport usage tax. They give you a receipt, which is then immediately collected. Then men and women stand in separate security lines. Computers didn’t have to come out, but everyone got a pat down. And off to the mediocre lounge downstairs.

Couldn’t get the wireless internet to work, and didn’t bother trying to convince the agents at the desk to try the age-old “turn it off and turn it back on trick.” So I just checked out the snacks. Nothing special. The lounge was fairly barren, nondescript, and not a particularly interesting place to wait for the flight. So we went into the terminal a few minutes early — much brighter, lighter, airy than the underground dungeon of a lounge.

Boarding was quickly called. Unfortunately, when I had booked the tickets the flight was supposed to be operated by a 747 with new business class seats but our aircraft that day was to be an Airbus with a regional-style seats. Perfectly plausible for an hour-long flight up to Cebu.

The inflight meal was spaghetti and meat sauce, which was surprisingly not terrible for a quick snack.

The Hilton’s car met us outside baggage claim and drove us the short 10 minutes or so to the hotel. We checked in in the club lounge and I realized I left my camera on the plane. Which is why this section of the trip report has so few photos.

The Executive Lounge assistant manager started calling around Philippine Airlines and managed to track down the camera. Then he took a copy of my passport and letter of authorization for the hotel to claim it on my behalf. And it was delivered to my room. The staff at the hotel, and in the lounge in particular, were as friendly and as helpful as any that I’ve met – anywhere.

The hotel itself, on the other hand…

It’s an aging physical plant, and it’s all pink. It’s their motif, and they’ve painted even the cars and their bus pink. The pink is fading and the property looks even older than it is.

Sandwiched in the middle of a working fishing village, the hotel isn’t a secluded oasis. But it does have some fantastic views from the upper floors. And we were given a large suite on the second highest floor with stunning panoramic views of the ocean.

The décor tries to be modern but doesn’t quite hit stylistically. And the water never got especially hot in the shower. The pool and beach area was fine, service there wasn’t especially good, they ran out of towels one day and promised to bring extras to our beach chairs but didn’t remember.

The spa on the other hand was quite good and very reasonable for a resort, with treatments running about US$40 per hour.

Breakfast was never available in the lounge during our stay. Occupancy was pretty low and I snuck a peak at the list of rooms eligible to use the facility. For most of our time there it was only five guest rooms. So we took our complimentary breakfast in the buffet restaurant.

It was typical Asian resort fare with a mix of Korean, Japanese, and local dishes plus standard Western cook-to-order eggs, breakfast meats, fresh toast and the like. The particulars were changed up a bit each day.

What really didn’t work, though, is the Hilton Breakfast branding, cards on the tables, and promotional materials in the rooms. It’s fine for a Western city Hilton hotel, or the median Hilton Garden Inn, but it’s a small thing that really diminishes any sense of place. It’s an observation that repeated itself later in the trip, staying at the Waldorf in London. No proper hotel striving to be unique, luxury, or boutique can survive if it displays Hilton Breakfast corporate-produced materials around the property.

The lounge was a nice refuge, largely because it was so quiet and the staff couldn’t do enough to please. They were bored there, though. Our second evening they even rang us in our room to remind us that they had complimentary cocktails and would we like to come up? (We didn’t.)

This is a friendly place and a decent beach vacation. But the dreary hallways and faded décor make it show its age. The most compelling argument for it is just how inexpensive it is. Actually booking an oceanview suite runs about $130 a night. And when you’re on-property things are generally inexpensive as well — my new standard metric for gauging the costliness of a property is the cost to have a pot of coffee delivered by room service. Here it was all of US$2.50.

Now, not everything is inexpensive. Somewhere along the way I cracked the face of the only watch I was traveling with. So I went into one of the hotel shops, where a cheap knockoff was running ~ $100. I didn’t see anyone buying anything of the sort in the shops, but they continue to insist on silly pricing. I bought a watch to use elsewhere.

Enter here or follow @garyleff (or do both) to enter by noon eastern time on Sunday, April 25.

US Airways is offering 1500 miles to new members who join by July 31. Just enter promo code NM15 when signing up.

(HT: Free Frequent Flyer Miles)

For bookings by May 18 and and travel through October 31 that is booked at least 21 days in advance, United is reducing the cost of a ‘standard award’ for domestic travel from 50,000 miles roundtrip to 40,000 miles roundtrip.  The discount applies only to domestic coach awards.

In United’s parlance, standard awards are the higher-priced awards that permit travel on any flight without regard to capacity controls. Other airlines have referred to these as “rule buster” or “anytime awards.”

Prior to October 2006, 40,000 miles was the regular price of a domestic standard award.

Yet something is strange going on here, I can’t quite put my finger on it. Now, it seems that United’s award redemption ‘specials’ seem always to be for coach tickets. That makes them unexciting to me.

And I’m not especially interested in paying 40,000 miles for a domestic coach award booked three weeks in advance, when the “regular price” of such an award is 25,000 miles (although standard awards obviously offer greater flexibility in flight choice).

United’s domestic award availability has been absolutely abysmal in 2010, especially for hub-to-hub flying and cross-country flying. So anything that buys members out of those constraints is good.

But I’ve never seen a standard award sale before. Perhaps flights are so full and domestic saver inventory so scarce that award bookings are way down? Or perhaps they’re looking for data to test how price sensitive members are relative to bargain-hunting through capacity controls. I don’t have any reason to suspect anything nefarious here, like a move towards Delta-style three-tiered pricing. Maybe as they move towards one-way awards and the ability to combine saver and standard awards in a single roundtrip as a result, this sort of thing will become more the norm as they push members towards the more expensive end of the spectrum?

I really don’t know, but United’s move towards specials on fully sticket price standard awards makes me a little bit uneasy, because (and please correct my memory here!) this feels like new territory for Mileage Plus’ current management.

The just-launched JAL Hotels loyalty program, My JALHotels is offering free silver status to all new members as a promotion through the end of 2011.

Silver gets early check-in, late check-out, complimentary newspaper, and 10% off at Nikko Hotels (5% at Hotel JAL City) including in restaurants and even when not a hotel guest.

From The Times (London): Brussels decrees holidays are a human right

AN overseas holiday used to be thought of as a reward for a year’s hard work. Now Brussels has declared that tourism is a human right and pensioners, youths and those too poor to afford it should have their travel subsidised by the taxpayer.

Under the scheme, British pensioners could be given cut-price trips to Spain, while Greek teenagers could be taken around disused mills in Manchester to experience the cultural diversity of Europe.

The idea for the subsidised tours is the brainchild of Antonio Tajani, the European Union commissioner for enterprise and industry, who was appointed by Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister.

The scheme, which could cost hundreds of millions of pounds a year, is intended to promote a sense of pride in European culture, bridge the north-south divide in the continent and prop up resorts in their off-season.

Apparently, members of qualifying demographics will be chosen to receive about a 30% subsidy. I’m just left to wonder whether this will be enough to satisfy governments’ obligation to protect the rights of its citizens, summed up thusly:

Tajani’s spokesman said: “Why should someone from the Mediterranean not be able to travel to Edinburgh in summer for a breath of cool, fresh air; why should someone from Edinburgh not be able to travel to Greece in winter?”

Hyatt has been on a tear for the last year, figuring out how to add more value for members, especially elite members and frequent guests. Honestly, I haven’t seen anything like it in years.

Last year they pioneered free internet for elites, at the same time they (1) lifted capacity controls on award nights — if there’s a standard room available, it’s available on points, matching Starwood’s redemption proposition and (2) offered confirmed at booking suite upgrades for their Diamond members four times a year.

I wish there were more Hyatt properties, because over the last 12 months they’ve clearly been offering the best value proposition of any hotel chain.

They also continue to bring back the richest bonus promotion in the hotel industry. I will always call it “Faster Free Nights” but thehy call it The Big Welcome Back: a free night anywhere in the world for every two Hyatt stays made by June 30, with free nights valid for use by August 31.

Starwood and Hilton have their own free night promos, Hilton takes 4 stays or 10 nights for a freebie though they offer a longer redemption period, and Starwood takes 3 stays rather than two and only lets you use the award nights on the weekend.  I do consider Hyatt’s to be the benchmark bonus in the industry.

For about 12 months I’ve been saying that it’s time to tkae a hard look at Hyatt to see if you can make it work for your stay pattern. And they’re making it especially easy to do that, since for all of 2010 they’re offering instant platinum status and fast track to Diamond status — just 15 nights in 2010 for Diamond status through February 2012.

So I was thrilled when Hyatt offered to let me give away two sets of Hyatt Place free night packages. They offered me a package as well for myself but instead of keeping it I decided to give it away on Twitter instead. (I admit, I’m more of a luxury hotels guy than a Hyatt Place, though I don’t mind accruing Big Welcome Back nights with mattress runs at Hyatt Place properties or Summerfield Suites and redeeming them at Park Hyatts…)

And now it gets even better: my contact has now offered me two sets of two free Big Welcome Back nights to give away! So here it is.

Two chances to win:

1. Leave a comment in this thread, ne comment entry per person. Preferably your comment would speculate on which Hyatt you’d like to redeem your nights at if you win.

2. You can also follow me on Twitter.

I will draw two winners at random from the pool made up of Twitter followers and people who leave a comment on this post. You can enter via either method or both.

The free nights, being Big Welcome Back nights, expire August 31.

Comment here, follow me, or both by noon Eastern time on Sunday, April 25 for a chance to win!

By way of full disclosure, like with the Hyatt Place night giveaway, they’ve offered me a couple of nights for myself. Guess what? Those I’m not offering up, I plan to use them though I will probably need to top off with a few more to make a really nice redemption trip.

Via MJ On Travel, Citibank is offering their various American Airlines co-branded credit cards with no fee the first year and 30,000 miles after $750 in purchases (a common but good offer) and now also throwing in an additional 5000 miles after $5000 in spend during the first 12 months you have the card.

The offers are here and apply to the Visa, American Express, and Business Visa.

The most common cards have always been the co-branded Mastercards. That’s what most people have or have had. Citibank isn’t as generous with allowing people to get the same signup bonus over and over any longer. But if you haven’t had these other cards, you should be able to get signup bonuses for them even if you’ve had Mastercard products in the past. And this represents as much as 105,000 bonus miles (plus the $15,000 in spend it would take to get that final 15,000 miles in bonuses, you’d have 120,000 miles).

Update: thanks to Lindsay for a link to this offer that includes the annual fee waived for a year.

Back on April 9 I posted an offer for free instant Virgin Atlantic Gold status.

Enroll at this link for instant Gold status in Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club.

Benefits of Gold, Virgin Atlantic’s top tier, are detailed here.  Basically benefits apply primarily when actually flying Virgin — bonus miles, lounge access and priority checkin even when flying economy, extra baggage, and Heathrow fast track.  You can also nominate a Silver.  And there are reciprocal benefits with Virgin Blue, VAustralia, ANA, and Singapore.

This puppy won’t last long.  I believe it’s intended to incentivize folks buying higher-priced business class transatlantic fares, who already have status in another program, but was made available to all comers.

Those that used the link received Gold status, and it seems have been able to keep it.

The link was taken down, however, after word of it spread.

Points, Miles, and Martinis though pointed to the link yesterday and it does seem to be live. Give it a try and sign up and post in the comments if your new account shows Gold status immediately.

Jared Blank shares the future with luxury travel bloggers, once they have kids.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Two ways to enter, and you can do both, leave a comment in the official entry thread (one comment/entry per person in that thread) and follow @garyleff on Twitter.

The contest will close at 12:00pm Eastern time on Friday, April 23.

Any questions?  Feel free to hit the comments in this thread.

On arrival at the Intercontinental Manila we waited for the bomb sniffing dog at the entrance to give us the all clear. Not bringing any bombs into the hotel, so we were cleared to head to the checkin desk.

After a long overnight flight I didn’t want to think about, “where is the club?” to handle checkin there, a waiting staff member at the main desk in the lobby would do just fine.

Now, it was still a bit shy of noon. As a Royal Ambassdor I’m entitled to 8 a.m. checkin, one of the great unsung elite status benefits out there and one which no other chain matches.

However, I was told my room wasn’t ready yet. After all, there was only one of my room… the Presidential Suite.

I had actually wanted to stay at the Peninsula, but I just couldn’t justify it because the deal at the Intercontinental was just way too good, especially as a Royal Ambassador and with some of the publicly available discount rates that are out there.

Intercontinental’s Royal Ambassador upgrade program is a bit unique and even unpredictable unless you contact each hotel in advance or read the relevant thread on each property at Flyertalk. The chain has tried to standardize things a bit but each property remains a bit different.

Some hotels offer a single standard type of room as its upgrade for Royal Ambassadors, such as a junior suite with club access (or without). And they’ll give you that regardless of the room category you book.

But some properties have a clearly defined rubric of a one-category room upgrade for Ambassador members and a two category room upgrade for Royal Ambassadors. That’s especially typical in Asia. Now, some hotels cap the upgrade — they won’t offer anything about a specific room type as a benefit. And others, like the Intercontinental Manila, do not. The hotel even emailed me a chart of what upgrade would be given based on room type booked.

Please see below upgrades due to Royal Ambassadors:
If he/she books a: Upgrade will be:

DELUXE ROOM JUNIOR SUITE

EXECUTIVE ROOM PREMIER SUITE

JUNIOR SUITE EXECUTIVE SUITE

PREMIER SUITE** STATE SUITE

EXECUTIVE SUITE PRESIDENTIAL SUITE

I queried whether ‘all rates booked online’ would be eligible for these upgrades, and they replied in the affirmative. I also queried whether the Presidential Suite was available for my dates, it was. So I booked a prepaid Friends and Family rate — the 40% discount got me about a $170+tax rate for an Executive Suite. Once booked, I emailed the hotel again and they confirmed me into the Presidential Suite.

… but since the Presidential Suite wasn’t yet ready they assigned me to another room down the hall to use until I could be moved. I probably do know better, but still took a bit of a nap. I woke up and called down to the desk to see if my room was ready. They called me right back, it was, which is curious because they had promised to ring me just as soon as I could be moved. No matter, they sent someone right up to help with bags. But, tired as I was, I didn’t realize that we weren’t even turning a corner, just heading down the hall on the 12th floor.

And there it was.

Walkway to the room. On one side is a doorway into the kitchen, and on the other side another room

Entryway

Entryway turns right to the living room (and has a guest bathroom behind a hidden panel in the wall)

Baby grand piano, off the living room

Living room

Formal dining room, to the left of the entryway

Kitchen off the dining room

Bedroom

Desk in bedroom had the Royal Ambassador gift and welcome materials

Bedroom sitting area

Fruit was waiting for us in the sitting area

And a bottle of wine was there as well

Chocolates were provided at turndown

The bathroom had dual sinks, a soaking tub, and an exercise bike.

The bathroom also had a sauna

The shower had water coming from more places than I’ve ever seen, if I recall correctly water could be set to come from four different directions. And it also had a steam shower function as well. A great way to start any day!

Between the bedroom and bathroom was a dressing room, that I just used for luggage storage.

And of course I have to provide an obligatory look at the minibar:

I had already taken a few waters and juices out, but it wasn’t especially generous in any case.

There were also complimentary bottles of water by the television, as well as in the kitchen. And I picked up a few more when I visited the club lounge.

Evening canapés were fairly limited, and not especially good in my mind. But it’s a nice enough space and the staff are incredibly friendly. They have wonderful fruit juices on offer, and they can’t do enough to help you.

Unpictured, in the evening there were also cheeses.

Morning breakfast though was much more bountiful, the coffee and juices were excellent, as were the options in the refrigerator. Everything was self-service but the staff wanted very badly to bring you things, carry things for you, or get you whatever you wished.

Perhaps because of my nap in the first standard room to which we were assigned, and because it was my first night in Asia coming from the States, I got up quite early, probably 3 a.m. I ordered room service, tapped into the internet (complimentary for Royal Ambassadors as a ‘limited time promotion’), and tried to watch a DVD.

Now, the televisions in the bedroom and in the living room are ancient, not even flat screen I don’t think let alone LCD. And the DVD player in the living room wouldn’t play a US-region DVD without an error.

So I plugged away online, while enjoying a snack. A pot of coffee costs about US$5 here delivered to the room, compared to the $15-$20 that I’m used to. My entrée was perhaps $10. At those prices I’ll order up food whenever I wake up in the middle of the night.

So what did I think of the Presidential Suite? In a lot of ways it reminded me of the Diplomatic Suite at the Intercontinental Bangkok, which I stayed in back in 2006. And that’s not the best room at that other hotel. The room was large and well stocked, but pretty well showing its age. Not only was the technology dated, but the room itself really needed a refresh. There were some scuff marks on walls in less obvious spots, like between the desk and wall in the bedroom. Similarly, carpet was pretty marked up in that area as well. And stylistically I much prefer a modern approach. This room was decidedly old school.

At the price I certainly couldn’t complain, the bathroom was fabulous and the steam shower really wonderful. But somehow the details didn’t quite come together, and the room was a bit less than the sum of its parts. The hotel has a card to hang on your door for newspaper selection. I put my card outside the door, but my preferred paper was never delivered. Little things like that, combined with the little maintenance issues in the room, and I just didn’t think the details got enough attention.

We’d be returning to the hotel in about a week, and I had confirmed the same room, I thought a good experiment would be to leave something behind in the room, hidden, to see whether it was still there. My wife didn’t want to know if it would be, so we decided against the science experiment.