Along the lines of obscure frequent flyer signup bonuses, the current issue of Inside Flyer carries an offer (subscription required) for elite status and 5000 bonus points when signing up for VOILÀ Hotel Rewards. Those bonus points can apparently be redeemed right away.

InsideFlyer readers who join VOILÀ Hotel Rewards at http://www.insideflyer.com/link/?5075 will automatically receive Orion tier elite membership status and 5,000 bonus points. Orion members earn 25 percent bonus points and receive complimentary space available upgrades, early check-in and late checkout, complimentary WiFi and fitness center access, among other benefits. And 5,000 points can be redeemed for a hotel night award that is $49 or less, 555 Delta SkyMiles, digital music and ebooks or other awards.

Seems like a good enough reason to join, I’m not currently a member. I’m actually surprised at some of the places they have hotels, I’ve heard of the program but never paid it much mind previously.

Via Frequent Flyer Bonuses, Sun Country UFly Rewards is offering 10 points for signing up.

And the Sichuan Airlines Golden Panda Club is offering 888 Golden Panda kilometers for joining their program. They also bonus travel by the end of the year, and referring friends and family. Thank goodness for Google translate. It doesn’t look like referred friends and family need to fly in order for the person doing the referring to earn points…

Similar to past American Airlines offers (here, here, here, and here), Bose is offering Delta miles for you to learn more about their Quiet Comfort 15 product and also to get you to buy from them.

• 150 miles for watching a video about QC15s
  
• 350 miles for an in-store demonstration
  
• 1500 miles for buying the headphones

The offer runs through September 12. At a minimum, plenty of folks will watch the video for 150 miles. And as in the past, it does appear that one can simply fill out the form at the end to get the miles (you could also click on the video and then fast forward to the end), but frankly they’re asking you to watch the video and offering you miles to do so, that seems like a reasonable bargain to make. It’s not very long…

Last year I wrote about my very mundane travel routine. It was really about sharing what most of my travel is like, as well as providing a window into the minutiae of how I think about my travel day. Very ritualized, very much ingrained habit. I don’t write about most of my trips because quite frankly they’re boring. I don’t have the wry sense of humor about travel that Ben has. There aren’t that many lessons to be gleaned from a trip out to Phoenix, Chicago, or Denver. I fly more boring domestic segments than first class international ones, but I write about the first class international trips. Some readers get the impression that’s how I travel most of the time, nothing could be farther from the truth. “My So-Called Travel Life” is a good description of my median trip.

This past week was a good example of what that looks like, the good and the bad but without the glamour.

I flew to Seattle to ahead of the DC earthquake. Transcon, upgrade confirmed at booking, but as most of y’all know it’s nothing like ‘back in the day’. Meal was a decent enough I suppose spinach-stuffed chicken. I ate a bit of it. Arrival was delayed nearly an hour but otherwise little of note.

The only thing that struck me during the flight, I couldn’t stop thinking about the video of Hitler expressing his frustrations with the Star Mega DO: Jeff Smisek really did shrink my cookie! And it was heated oatmeal raisin, the chocolate chip is much better. I don’t really want my oatmeal raisin heated in any case.

I boarded the train from the N terminal to the main terminal and straight up to the Avis where my car, a 4000-mile Lincoln MKZ, was waiting.

I was heading out to Bellevue for a conference, the rental and parking wouldn’t be much more than the roundtrip cab, and I’d have a little bit of freedom. Even if I never actually left the block that the hotel was on, at least I could. (And for those who insist I need to explore the Seattle area, my wife went to school there and her family is within driving distance, so I very much have.)

Hotel was the Hyatt Regency Bellevue.

I checked in and I headed up to my room, the first thing I noticed was the view. The second thing? A musty, mildew smell. That wasn’t going to work. Back down to the desk, I asked to change rooms. Being completely full, the hotel put me in a massive suite on a third floor with no view.

The club lounge had a friendly staff. Breakfast had fruit, yogurt, pastries, meats, smoked salmon, hard boiled eggs, and a hot dish that I really couldn’t identify with certainty. Evening appetizers had decent variety, substantive, dessert was weak I thought. At least unappetizing to me, I burnt out on cheesecake years ago when Eli’s Cheesecake was the United standard dessert.

Thank goodness the Portico white ginger isn’t long for this world. Oddly the room had brown towels, brown bathrobes, which was apparently standard on that floor but many rooms throughout the rest of the hotel had the usual white. Wireless internet was slow, slow, slow and went in and out.

The Hyatt Regency Bellevue is in a sort of neat up and coming area, and I didn’t really mind being locked into the block as it were. Just across the street from the bus exit on the first floor is ViaVita Café and Wine Bar. Across the street from the front of the hotel (and accessible by second floor walkway across to the mall), directly above Maggiano’s, is Din Tai Fung Dumpling House, an Asian change with outposts in Taipei, Tokyo, and elsewhere. I still think Yank Sing in San Francisco is better for dim sum generally, and I didn’t get to try Din Tai Fung’s soup dumplings which they only do on the weekend, but it was a real pleasure of a find.

Still, the stay was pretty vanilla so far. A 7am depart to Ft. Lauderdale via Houston was in my future, upgraded on Continental. Head over to the Continental Presidents Club in Seattle which is fairly sparse, no restrooms inside of nothing worth eating for breakfast, I rather regretted not stopping at Starbucks first when I noticed that about half the patrons in the club had brought in their Starbucks. Continental’s breakfast is surprisingly better than what I’m used to on United. It wasn’t gourmet on the ground by any means, but it was actually tasty.

Now, I do wish a domestic carrier would offer a decent brunch because reheated eggs or cereal really don’t excite me. But it did the trick.

Then the Continental flight to Ft. Lauderdale offered a surprisingly good lunch, the mushroom soup was actually tasty and while the ‘turkey cheese sandwich’ that was baked into bread wasn’t likely healthy, and looked a bit odd, dip that sucker in the soup and it was downright sinful, I confess.

Off to the Avis again, and they had a nice new red Cadillac for me. Make a short drive and I was at the hotel I really wasn’t looking forward to… Some may remember my scathing review of my last stay at the Hyatt Pier 66. Well, the previous hotel General Manager implored me to give them another shot. And I needed to be literally less than a mile and a half from the hotel. South Florida traffic can be a nightmare, I didn’t want to stay farther afield. So I did.

Last time at the Hyatt Per 66 there was a run-in with hotel security over their broken treadmills. Ants on the balcony because housekeeping didn’t remove food. A flooded bathroom, with water coming in through the ceiling. Housekeeping leaving the door of a room open when done… Not a good stay, and that’s only a piece of it. Am I crazy for going back?

Well, this time was… better. Not great. Not even good. But better than last time.

One day housekeeping never came. In the evening, with no desire to go back out to give them the space to work in, I didn’t protest. Being by the elevator was problematic, on a high floor, you could hear the bass thumping from the party in the revolving event space at the top of the hotel that used to be a restaurant. The one time I made it to the hotel’s (unimpressive) breakfast, I saw the ‘chef’ put food that had fallen over onto the counter back into the warming trays. Appetizing. And I generally think that the previous night’s cocktails ought not to be sitting on a credenza by the elevator at 9 am…

But the room worked, it was large, it had a lovely view of the marina and everyone was relatively friendly. When asked how my stay, when checking out, I told them and they immediately removed $50 from the bill as an apology.

The property wasn’t as bad as a year ago, they have a new general manager, perhaps they’re in the process of getting better. Maybe I’ll go back in a year to find out. But I won’t be excited about it. The physical plant is aging, and I’d prefer most other locations, so my likely return hinges strictly on the need to actually be close to the hotel. It seems to work for departing cruise passengers.

That’s the mundane. The interesting stuff is what happens when you try to fly home into a hurricane. Well, not quite, but that seems to be what US Airways thought we were trying to do. They cancelled their entire schedule in and out of DC on Sunday. My 4pm arrival was toast, and they let me know a day ahead of time. It was sad, really, because in the end other airlines were operating just fine by that time.

Call US Airways, and of course I was looking at airline availability at the same time, the agent told me they could offer me a non-stop flight home (great!) … on Tuesday (not great).

Or… a bit of work… would I take a connection? Sure! They’d be happy to put me on something through Philadelphia getting in at … 5pm Monday.

Ok, I don’t mind a forced overnight. Yes I understand hotel is at my own expense, no I don’t want to sleep in the airport. But researching, researching, it didn’t look like there was an open seat on any US Airways flight into DCA before 2pm on Monday.

No problem, other airlines must have seats, right? American out of Miami to Dulles, National, and BWI are sold out until Tuesday. Other airlines are similar. I just started working backwards. What airlines have seats from any city, ideally South of DC? Then I can try to get myself to that city.

I found some seats Raleigh – Washington National on American. And while US Airways wouldn’t put me on the flight since the cancellation ‘was due to weather’, I didn’t much care. Buying the one-way short hop would be nearly $500. Or 12,500 miles. Sold. American couldn’t get me Miami-Raleigh to connect, so I got US Airways to do so. Ft. Lauderdale – Charlotte – Raleigh. Ouch.

So I write this now sitting in Raleigh. With a five and a half hour layover. I decided the Admirals Club wasn’t going to do it for me, I access it with an American Express card anyway and would have had to pay for internet. Instead, a cash and points award at the nearby airport Four Points was $30 and 1600 Starpoints. I got free internet, more space, peace and quiet.

Now I head back to the airport for what should be an on-time departure back to DC. A very long travel day, 3 flights to get back from Florida, but I’ll make it same-day rather than waiting until Monday late afternoon or even Tuesday.

And that’s what my travel life is really like, it isn’t all Cathay Pacific first class seats, ANA first class food, Thai massages at the airport, and Singapore Airlines champagne. Unfortunately.

But because of this, I do know that I enjoy the Charlotte airport, not just for the quaint rocking chairs, wifi, or bathroom attendants. And I like the bright new Raleigh Durham airport. I like them both for accommodating me on my long road home today. Most importantly, I didn’t rely on an airline to fix my trip (or Chris Elliott!). I did it myself, it cost me a few miles but no more than extra lodging would have and most importantly I didn’t kill an extra day out of the office.

US Airways Grand Slam promotion, which I’ve already detailed some of the pluses and minuses of, is now open for registration.

Activities don’t begin to count for the promotion, which offers the potential to earn up to 110,000 bonus miles, until September 14th. But best to register so that you don’t forget, more than once I’ve thought enough about a promotion that I’ve assumed I had registered, when I had not. And of course there is no downside to registering.

(HT: MJ On Travel.)

As revealed on Milepoint, word is that Hyatt has selected KenetMD which is made by Gilchrist & Soames.

I haven’t ever heard of KenetMD but apparently their narrative is a product produced by a dermatologist, scientific approach to skincare or some such. I look forward to trying it out.

Back in May there was discussion of Hyatt’s plans to dump Portico, and goodness knows it won’t come soon enough. I like ginger but their ‘white ginger’ smell doesn’t cut it for me, and my wife tells me that many other hotel products work better for her.

I rather hoped for L’Occitane, with Hilton rather going upmarket and all with Peter Thomas Roth, but perhaps these new bath amentiies will prove to be worth the search that went into them.

I don’t know the timeframe for rollout, but in my view it can’t come soon enough.

What are your favorite hotel bath products? What did you think of Portico? And is this a solid choice for Hyatt?

Update: An informed source contacts me to tell me that while Hyatt is testing this new amenity, and it appears to be a likely choice, that this may not be definite — negative feedback could still affect the final selection.

I previously wrote about Marriott’s and Priority Club’s fall promotions, and have been impatiently waiting to see what the other major chains had in store.

Starwood’s fall promotion is triple points on stays which include a Thursday or Sunday night (double points on all other stays). The promo runs September 6 through December 18, and registration will become available by the 6th of September.

The fact that there’s a long list of properties where you won’t be eligible to earn the bonus suggests that hotels aren’t looking to incentivize additional heads in beds, they’re pretty full with high rates and don’t feel like they need to spend broadly to fill up. Which also likely explains why Hyatt’s new promotion isn’t nearly as valuable as some were expecting or hoping (including me).

Hyatt has announced their fall promotion and it’s 5000 points every 3 nights (capped at 30,000 points after 18 nights) between September 15 and November 15. Registration will be available September 15 at

goldpassport.com/possibilities

Now, I’m glad to see bonus points back of course. This hasn’t been a strong year for promotions and the current 9 Hyatt nights in two weeks are earning me no bonuses whatsoever (other than my 1000 point per stay Diamond amenity). But it’s not what I was hoping for, which of course was a return of some variant of Faster Free Nights, the seemingly annual offer of a free night every two stays with no restrictions (other than relatively short redemption window). It’s the gold standard of hotel promos, the most lucrative in the market every time that it’s offered, and it looks like we won’t see it in 2011. Which is sad, because I’ve heard over and over from the folks at Hyatt Gold Passport that it or something like it would be back. But it’s an expensive promo, and with hotels relatively filling up they likely don’t need to offer it.

Gold Passport is certainly much less rewarding than it was in 2010, with bonuses galore, and not just of the promo variety. They’ve gotten rid of the hotel-specific “G bonuses” (500 to 2000 points per stay at many properties). The stated reason was that the promos weren’t posting automatically and took too much time and effort to manually post, causing member frustration. Fair enough, but they promised a replacement program and we haven’t seen it, many months without bonuses. And frustrated members.

I do still think we’ll see aggressive promos out of Hyatt Gold Passport, and certainly if we see a bit of a hotel downturn, they’ve got the bag of tricks ready to pull out as-needed.

And like Lucky I rather think that any frustrations with Hyatt’s promos are more about how generous they’ve been in the past, rather than about Hyatt being in any way inferior to their competitors. I endorse the following from him in its entirey,

Also, in fairness to Hyatt, they’ve really improved their elite benefits over the past couple of years, and I still think they have among the best loyalty programs, even without lucrative promotions. They pioneered free internet for top tier elites, then added four confirmed suite upgrades per year, and now have guaranteed 4PM late check-out.

It’s still a truly class act loyalty program. So I’m not being an apologist, because trust me, I want to see Faster Free Nights return. And who knows, maybe it will, and they’ll run both promotions at once, which would be awesome.

So I’m still hoping we see some sort of a fun promotion, though I’m not expecting it.

On a related note, with Hyatt’s introduction of guaranteed late check out, I’ve been consistently asked at checkin whether or not I wanted the late checkout benefit. That’s a really great brand standard approach for full service Hyatts (at their lesser brands, elites have to ask for the benefit rather than being asked if they want it). If hotels are required to ask guests if they’d like the late checkout, then there’s little question that the benefit will be honored. In that way they may have even trumped Starwood, which to date has had the best late checkout benefit — almost always honored. At least at the Diamond level, where Hyatt offers 4pm checkout at non-resort locations, just like Starwood. Starwood still offers 4pm late checkout even for Golds whereas Hyatt’s first tier elite members get a lesser late checkout benefit. But by proactively offering it, that’s a huge step forward and kudos to the Gold Passport folks for rolling this out, considering that it was historically a real weak spot in the program. (The weekend of the Frequent Traveler Awards in New York, staying at the Andaz 5th Avenue, they wouldn’t even grant me 2pm… just try that now, Andaz folks!)

That said, the most generous hotel promo this year seems clearly to be (and remain) Starwood’s free resort nights. I think it’s a strong contender for a win at the Freddie Awards.

New Department of Transportation ‘consumer protection’ rules went into effect on Tuesday, and they don’t amount to much — mostly codifying practices that are already in place, and imposing penalties for things airlines rarely do. A very small number of people will be better off, others will be worse off.

Kathleen Pender of the San Francisco Chronicle quotes my bottom line: the rules

“won’t change the travel experience for the vast majority of passengers,” says Gary Leff, co-founder of Milepoint.com

Major components of the new rules are:

The Star Mega DO is approaching in a couple of weeks, it really is likely to be a truly special, amazing, once (or three times?) in a lifetime experience. But it’s quite a lot of effort to put together a charter flight, get everyone on the trip Hyatt Diamond status, coordinate flight simulator time with United, work with Hyatt on a series of receptions, get tours of aircraft facilities, set up buses, etc. And communicate all of the relevant details to folks coming on the trip.

So there are always going to be folks who are a bit concerned about some of the details, lots of questions get posted over at Milepoint in the discussion thread for the event. And though it’s incredibly inside baseball, I thought it worth passing along a video mashup that someone did capturing the handwringing that goes one. After all, folks who figure out the minutiae of frequent flyer programs will also reasonably want to dig into all of the particulars of what to expect on this trip that they’re gearing up for.

A Star Mega DO is really quite something, touring aircraft that haven’t been revealed to the public before, meeting with airline and hotel executives, partying on a charter flight. But some of the pieces come together at the last minute, and some of the ‘specialness’ winds up as a surprise.

There’s an online genre of Hitler videos, capturing a classic film on the last days of Hitler as he frustratingly looks at the direction of the war. And subtitles are added to provide a different storyline. You ignore the German, and watch the subtitles. Hitler has become frustrated with Sarah Palin, with Microsoft Windows… And now Hitler finds out about Star Mega DO 3

I especially love Hitler declaring,

I hate the new United. Jeff Smisek took my pillows and shrunk my cookies.

And the nervous secretary being consoled that she will get her Hyatt Diamond status…

(HT: Randy)

Million Mile Secrets interviews me. An excerpt:

It’s cliché to say that we shouldn’t take this all too seriously, but I disagree: I’m passionate about miles and points. I practice full contact loyalty. I love these programs.

I think they offer a tremendous value proposition, and for all of their success I think they’re still widely misunderstood (perhaps because they’re so complicated, though therein lies the true opportunity).

I do my best to honor those programs that work well – for the travel providers and for the consumer, and to criticize those that I think are missing the boat.

Properly understood, the relationship is win-win and for my part my entire worldview has been changed by these programs, I see the world as much smaller and more accessible and I experience the world in a way I never would have thought possible.

The first three commenters on the post wanted to hear more about ‘earning 15 million miles from stickers’. And funny thing, I believe the amount was actually 16 million. It’s even the opening to the story on page 62 (about me) in the September issue of Town & Country, sadly not online so I cannot link to it.

The US Airways 2009 Holiday Big Bonus shopping promotion offered a 250% bonus on points earned through their shopping portal provided you made transactions with at least 5 different merchants (and the bonus applied to no more than 10 transactions). Track-it-Back was offering 40 miles per dollar for purchases. With the bonus that made 140 miles per dollar, roughly 7/10ths of a penny per point. If you donated the product to charity for a tax deduction, that would reduce your cost basis to half a cent per mile.

Now, the miles weren’t all for me. But Christmas morning 2009 I lined up a stack of credit cards belonging to friends and colleagues. Several Amex black cards, but also a Starwood Amex, Alaska Airlines Visa, British Airways Visa… and proceeded to complete the promotion for each of them, donating $2 trees, buying $5 gift cards, basically ensuring that I would have at least four partners other than Track-it-Back posting to each account in order to be eligible for the full bonus, and doing so at the lowest cost possible. (although I did make a few extra purchases for each account just in case, can’t be too careful with so much money on the line).

All told I executed over $100,000 in Track-it-Back purchases. And I crashed their Amex merchant account. I suspect I’m the reason that they no longer accept American Express, who assumed that transactions of that volume were fraudulent (when their standard purchases were likely under $100). And go get Amex to re-open a merchant account on Christmas Day! Still, I understand that this was the biggest promotion that Track-It-Back could possibly ever have imagined. Talking to their President, I recall that he was planning to go on vacation with his family the week between Christmas and New Years. He cancelled the trip, this was just too big.

They previously had offered 20 miles per dollar in purchases, but decided to make a big push for the holidays and doubled the mileage they’d offer, getting featured as part of the US Airways holiday shopping offer. They really hadn’t done the math to realize that folks would be buying the product purely for the miles with no interest in the stickers whatsoever.

Now, given how overpriced the stickers are for what you get, I’ve always assumed that the basic business model was to be selling miles anyway — people who could buy the product and expense them to their businesses might want to pocket the miles for their own accounts. The miles/marketing cost to the company is quite significant, but all they’re really doing is printing stickers. The idea is that you affix the stickers to important items, if they’re lost the person who finds the item might call the number of the sticker and Track-it-Back helps arrange return fo the item. They even offer a reward, although you can top off the reward amount. They don’t tell you want the basic reward they offer is, though. Guess what? I understand it’s… wait for it… more stickers. Their costs here are pretty darned low.

The US Airways holiday shopping promo burned up pretty much all inventory, they contacted everyone to let them know not to worry — the items would be shipped eventually. But some merchants don’t post miles until the product shipped. The company understood why everyone made the purchases — they would post the miles right away, and ship the product later, which they did.

All in, I did transactions which earned over 16 million miles that day. And lots of folks have been enjoying a ton of premium cabin international travel ever since, thanks to US Airways and their 2009 holiday shopping bonus.

As they say, now you know ‘the rest of the story’.

Though speculation has been rampant over the past couple of years, it became clear by April that American was on the verge of changing its uber-generous million mile status qualification program.

At the Randy Petersen Travel Executive Summit in April, the President of AAdvantage confirmed that they were looking at changes and promised that there would be advance notice. And indeed they’re giving us 3+ months of notice.

For years, American has offered lifetime elite status based on all of the miles you earn in their program. In contrast, every other airline offering million mile recognition only counts those miles earned by actually flying.

As a result, and though I am not a frequent American Airlines flight customer, I’m a 2-million miler and have lifetime Platinum status.

Historically, American has offered:

• Lifetime Gold at 1 million miles earned. Plus (8) 500-mile domestic upgrades for US residents, or (4) confirmed systemwide upgrades for international members.
  
• Lifetime Platinum at 2 million miles earned. Plus (4) confirmed systemwide upgrades.
  
• An additional (4) confirmed systemwide upgrades at each million mile mark thereafter

They’re making two changes to this program.

• Beginning December 1, only flight miles will count towards the lifetime status counter. All miles earned through the end of November will continue to count towards your accumulated balance, but only actual flight miles will add to that balance. Bonus miles from flights do not count even. But unlike with United, miles flown on partner flights do count towards lifetime status. Also, to encourage engaged members of the program to adopt the airline’s new expensive high-end premium credit card, those with the card by December 1 will have miles from their spend through December 2012 billing statements continue to count towards lifetime status. While this could well be extended, as of now after December 2012 there’s no way to accumulate miles towards lifetime status other than by actually flying the airline.

• The bonus on earning 1 Million Mile status converts to 35,000 bonus miles, which is an improvement (and could still be converted to 500 mile upgrades if you wished). Presumably non-US members do not continue to receive systemwide upgrades, however.

Looking at my own projected mileage earn I’m guessing I will end November at around 2.9 million lifetime miles in the program. I could convert hotel points, maybe Starwood points, over in order to push me past the 3 million mile threshold. But I don’t think I’m going to do that. I have enough American miles in my account now, I do like to diversify, and the four systemwide upgrades aren’t enough of an incentive for me. Especially when, being less than 100,000 miles away, I will eventually become a 3 million miler. Now, if there was a higher status or other bonus attached to the incremental million I’d probably go for it!

Deals We Like thinks now and for the next few months could be a good time to pour money in a BankDirect checking account as a way to earn miles quickly towards lifetime status. I’ve long used BankDirect as my primary checking account, and it’s a strong value proposition. I think it’s a great checking account for folks whose average balance exceeds $2500 (to avoid fees). As a place to put money instead of investing, it depends on the opportunity cost of those funds, though some folks like to do it because the miles are awarded tax free and we’re in a pretty low interest rate environment. Much more questionable call. But one could earn a bunch of miles quickly through BankDirect which awards miles based on your average balance each month, and you might even wind up liking the account (as I do).

Others will choose to apply (and quickly meet minimum spend requirements on) a Citibank American Airliens credit card, I was just approved for another one with 75,000 mile signup bonus myself (even though that bonus was supposed to expire at the end of February).

Regardless, I’m grateful for ‘platinum for life’ and figure someday I’ll wind up making good use of it..

Several days ago I shared some details of the upcoming US Airways Grand Slam promotion which offers bonus miles for qualifying activities with their partners.

Deals We Like has an excellent summary of what the promotion actually looks like.

I had been afraid that only elites would be able to qualify for the traditional highest bonus of 100,000 miles, and also that that highest bonus would require more partner activity than in the past (40 rather than 36 ‘hits’). Instead it’s more or less the standard Grand Slam offer of 100,000 miles for 36 partner activities plus an extra opportunity for an additional 10,000 miles when hitting 40 activities, if you’re a US Airways elite member. Now, since various bonus point thresholds actually offer miles towards elite status, and the 10,000 miles towards elite status are now reserved at that 40 activity tier, it may make sense to some to shoot the moon. Especially since buying temporary ‘trial preferred status’ is itself a qualifying activity under the promotion.

One Mile at a Time is skeptical of the value of the promo. For folks who will spend $1500 or more amassing 36 activities to earn 100,000 miles, they’d do just as well and with less effort just buying miles under the US Airways 100% bonus for mileage purchases. (Buying miles is a qualifying activity under this promo as well…) His advice is that if you’re going to spend much more than $500 (I’d push it to $800 or so) then it’s not worth the effort, though I would point out that if you are already maxing out the 100% purchase miles promotions then you might want to take advantage of this on top of those purchase miles bonus offers.

Like Lucky, I am unlikely to go for the full bonus. Still, I will register to take advantage of the promotion and I will accumulate some partner activities and earn some bonus miles through my regular course of participating in the program. I’ll credit some rental cars to Dividend Miles, but I do that anyway, the 3 day Avis rental 3000 mile US Airways bonus is already compelling and this promo makes it even more so. I’ll find some cheapie qualifying activities (which I’ll share back here on this blog of course.) And I’ll find myself probably at 16 hits but not anywhere near 36 (or 40).

At the same time, and while I agree with the logic that there are cheaper and easier to earn US Airways miles than investing in this promotion, these sorts of promos are just fun — scavenger hunts finding the cheapie partner activities, tracking and waiting for them all to post, and earning a big bonus for your efforts. But they don’t make it easy, and I do like my easy…

I suppose since the promo hasn’t started yet I’ll just wait for some brilliant minds to map out the ’100,000 bonus miles for $350 strategy’ and then perhaps I will go all-in!

Wandering Aramean outlines planned actual improvements to United’s inflight product.

I previously reported that United would keep economy plus after its integration with Continental, and that the Continental fleet would be getting economy plus starting in 2012. Seth reports that the timetable is being moved up:

The company expects to see the E+seats on 38 Continental aircraft before the end of the year. Based on some information received from other sources it is quite possible that these first Economy Plus aircraft will be 757-300s or 737-800s. …By the end of Q1 2012 the company expects to have 100 Continental aircraft equipped with Economy Plus seats. That number will include 29 Bombardier Q400 commuter turbo-prop aircraft which will be equipped with both a first class and economy plus section.

Back in May I noted that United would be keeping Channel 9 (air traffic control as part of inflight audio), and then in June followed up with word that Continental would be getting Channel 9 in 2012. Seth highlights this re-affirmation as well.

There’s also updates on installation of new international flat bed seats (eg 12 more 777s converted by the end of the year, plus Continental’s lie-flat business class seats for the New York-San Francisco/Los Angeles ps flights), and improved inflight entertainment options for economy on the 747.

Ben is also covering the changes and notes that Airbus aircraft will double the size of their overhead bins (no more gate checked bags?), also that they’ll be bringing first class and economy plus to more United Express aircraft (the Q400s).

Mommy Points details the upcoming US Airways ‘Grand Slam’ promotion. You can’t register for it yet, but the offer’s FAQ page is up.

The offer will run from September 14 through November 14, and will eventually be detailed (with registration available) at usairways.com/grandslam.

This annual promo stretches a baseball analogy where various partner activities are considered ‘hits’ and the more hits you accumulate, the more bonus miles you earn. For instance, 4 ‘hits’ earns 3000 bonus miles while 8 hits earns an additional 7,000 bonus miles (on top of the 3000 that were earned after 4 hits had been completed). So 8 partner activities is 10,000 bonus miles.

Lots of folks will start to figure out the cheapest ways to get eligible partner activities, and I’ll certainly report on several of those here.

If you have a US Airways credit card and earn points with it during the promotion period, you’ll get a hit. If you transfer points from a hotel program to Dividend Miles, you’ll get a hit — one hit per hotel program you transfer from. They’ve made it a little bit restrictive, Starwood Platinums can no longer transfer over just 1 point, you’ll have to generate a minimum of 850 US Airways miles for the transfer to count.

If you credit your hotel stay to Dividend Miles, you’ll earn a hit, up to 6 separate hotel stays (with the same chain or different chains). But again there’s a minimum earning threshold, really ultra cheapie stays earning very few miles won’t count. Similarly, you can earn 6 credits for car rentals.

Downloading the ‘Dividend Miles toolbar’ and completing 3 mileage earning searches earns a credit. So does sharing miles from your account, or receiving miles (you can earn only one credit from doing so, not one for each). A mileage transfer from another program into US Airways via Points.com will generate a credit, too.

Shopping through the US Airways Shopping portal earns a credit, and so does shopping via the US Airways Skymall site.

Earning the top-level bonus will be restricted to US Airways elite members. If you’re going to get there it could be worth buying ‘trial’ preferred status before the 40th and final credit posts from the promo.

Anyway, this is all rather ‘inside baseball’ at least until the promo goes live which should be shortly.

Earlier in the week I detailed National Car Rental’s new “One, Two, Free” promo — rent twice (mid-size or larger, two day minimum) and get a free rental day which is running through January 31.

Several other bloggers have subsequently noted that National is also offering to status match you if you have elite status in another car rental program. That’s a unique departure from past practice in the car rental industry — airline and hotel status matching has been a long-standing practice but car rental companies haven’t routinely done it.

As I observed in my earlier post, at the base signup level I like National better than the other car rental firms because of their ‘Emerald Aisle’ (choose your own car) concept. But I don’t make National my own rental company of choice because I’m too addicted to the treatment I get from elite status elsewhere.

Apparently National ‘gets that’ and has a strategy to address it.

Now, through a promotion last summer I did pick up Executive status with National, but when the company offered me comped Executive Elite status I gave it away to a reader instead.

Avis First or Hertz Five Star matches to National Executive. Avis Presidents Club or Chairmans Club and Hertz Presidents Circle matches to National Executive Elite.

Honestly, while I think National’s status benefits are good, I maintain that they’re best for the non-status member and that they’re competitive at the first level of status. But their Executive Elite (top tier) level doesn’t compare with the benefits of Avis Chairmans or Hertz Presidents Circle.

For proof of status they’re taking anything which shows Avis or Hertz elite levels between January 1, 2010 and now. They’ll take a scanned member card (with expiration date), screen shot or scanned image of a monthly statement, or a scanned copy of status welcome letter. They’ll take it is jpeg, png, tif, or gif graphics formats or doc, docx, rtf, or pdf file formats, as long as the file does not exceed 5 megabytes. They’ll also take a fax if you can’t manage the upload.

A very aggressive play by National in conjunction with a very aggressive free rental day offer.

A week and a half ago I shared that my talk on booking frequent flyer awards at the Chicago Seminar was 90% full.

Rick (aka Frugal Travel Guy) emails this morning to let me know that my session is completely booked. Anyone who was still planning to sign up for my talk at the October 29-30 event is too late.

While the seminar itself appears at about 70% capacity so far, there are multiple concurrent sessions throughout the weekend and no one of those sessions can go over 300. Of the 370 people or so that have signed up so far, 300 chose my award booking talk.

The point in sharing this is, if you’ve been considering signing up for the Chicago seminar (details here), it’s best to do so asap so that you’ll still have your choice of the rest of the sessions. You can still hear from Ben (Lucky) and Brian (The Points Guy), Pudding Guy, United’s Captain Denny Flanagan, Steve (beaubo), and Rick himself.

I’ve been searching for a new international calling solution. My old throwaway cell phone died. My old favorite SIM card that was useful in several countries seems to be giving me fits. While I’m perfectly happy making calls via Skype (and that’s still the cheapest way to call out, less than 3 cents a minute to the US), my wife is less than happy with the call quality. Plus it’s not a great solution when you’re out and about without internet, or for people who want to call you who aren’t themselves going to be online when doing so. So it’s not enough.

Backing up a little bit here, I Skype all the time — for work or to make calls when abroad. I don’t mind it at all, and I always travel with a laptop. I’m currently traveling with my Samsung Series 9 which is as thin as a legal pad and not much heavier, but powerful enough to be my every day computer. The only thing I don’t really like about it is the track pad, but I’m getting used to it.

Years ago I used to have about the most complicated international calling regimen possible. I had an old cell phone which I unlocked (I got the unlock code from my service providers). It was tri band, meaning it worked on several frequencies and thus several networks and in several countries. So I had no problem throwing a local SIM card into the phone and going from there.

The cheapest way to make and receive calls is almost always going to be a local SIM card. Going to Hong Kong? Buy a Hong Kong chip for your phone. Going to Singapore? Buy one there. But that can be a pretty inefficient strategy if you’re only going to be somewhere for a few days and not regularly, if you’re going to strand money on the card, the cards themselves often cost money and may expire from inactivity. Plus – and though I have a neat little case for my SIM cards (they make ‘em for flash memory cards but they work just as well to hold SIM cards), they can be easily lost too. They’re small!

So it’s much easier to have a single SIM card that is going to provide reasonably priced calling options most anywhere you travel. My own ‘regular’ blackberry service is from AT&T and while they charge about $3 a minute internationally, even with their ‘international’ plans that you pay extra for they’re usually still over $2 a minute. Ouch.

I used to use a SIM card from a company called 09 Mobile, they were out of Iceland and when that country’s financial system collapsed they disappeared. But they were great because you had free incoming calls in more countries than I had ever seen anyone offer.

And I could leverage that to make outgoing calls as well. I used a company called CallBackWorld. I would dial them, they would dial me back and then call a number for me. I was always getting an incoming call wherever I was in the world, even when I was calling out.

And CallBackWorld charged me less than 9 cents a minute to call an Iceland phone number, which is what I was using. So anywhere that had free incoming calls, I paid 9 cents a minute for outgoing calls.

But the really complicated thing about it was the double call back. Most international SIM cards work on a callback basis already. They provide cheap service by treating everything as incoming to begin with, you dial out, hang up, they call you back and connect you to the number.

Here I was actually dialing out, getting connected, calling out, getting connected. It was a double callback. But boy was it cheap, less than 9 cents a minute throughout half the world to be making calls from my cell phone. That was worth it to me.

With 09 mobile no longer effective, I gave up on CallBackWorld. I used an eKit SIM card for awhile, but that gave me a UK phone number and Callbackworld wanted about 44 cents a minute to call me. So I would double callback and still be paying almost 50 cents a minute. Not worth it. I would often just pay the same 50 cents with a single callback using that eKit SIM. The one upside, though, was that eKit gave me a US number as well to use for free.

I was fiddling around over the weekend and had a look at OneSimCard. What I especially liked about them — most of these offerings have free incoming calls in Europe, but are usually very expensive in Asia and I travel to Asia, several countries, at least a couple of times a year. Free incoming calls in Hong Kong. Cheap incoming and outgoing in Thailand. “It’ll work” in Singapore and the Maldives.

And the pricing isn’t crazy, $30 to get started or $45 if you want reasonable calling options for Canada too. I do, since I occasionally find myself up in Toronto especially, so I plunked down the dollars and they sent me the card. Testing it out so far works well.

Here’s the cheap old Motorolla quad band phone I’m using, it’s 5 year old technology but small/portable and gets the job done on most any network, along with the OneSimCard solution.

They send you an Estonian sim card. Now, those Icelandic cards were ‘da bomb’. But Estonian cards have always offered cheap calling solutions. There are networks which don’t like them. CallBackWorld won’t even dial them.

For an extra $20 a year (ouch) they’ll give you a US number. And someone calling your US number adds 20 cents a minute to the call. But you’ve got to have one of those, at least the way I use the phone. Because I’m giving the phone number to my wife’s parents, to my dog’s boarding place. It’s not the cost of the international calls I’m worried about, it’s that international dialing confuses the uninitiated.

But truth be told, they had me at “free incoming calls in Hong Kong.”

Their website is functional, you can set the SIM card to auto-reload or can be reloaded manually, you can check your voicemail online for free instead of calling in. So far I’m happy. And I’m happy to try out a new calling solution.

The basics:

• Calling internationally with your US based cell phone is expensive.

• The cheapest, and to me best, option is just to call out using Skype.

• But when Skype isn’t an option — not online, near a computer, etc. or for people who would call you without Skype, you want an unlocked cell phone that works on various international frequencies (eg. “quad band”).

• And you want to stick in either a local SIM card which you’ll need to load up with money, or a SIM card which offers you rates which aren’t as good as a different SIM for each country but that are good enough that you don’t bother getting a different one for each country.

For now, I’ll play with my Estonian SIM card from OneSimCard.com and my Motorolla Pebl U6. Should be good enough.

How do you handle international calling on the road? Satellite phone? Local SIM cards? A favorite international SIM? Or does your ‘normal’ cell phone provider offer decent enough rates to use them while abroad?

A week ago I posted about the most lucrative mileage offer ever made, the trouble in having the vendor honor the terms of the offer, and what it means about airline ‘mileage mall’ shopping portals.

As far as these things go, I’m relatively savvy, there are likely others who understand details better than I do but I’m reasonably well-informed relative to the average consumer. And the more I think about the proposition being offered, the more I realize I knew very little at all about how things worked or whom I was even dealing with.

Some may recall the details of the offer: any transaction through the US Airways or Hawaiian Airlines mileage malls with web hosting company EasyCGI earned miles. But it turns out that these weren’t offers from US Airways, Hawaiian Airlines, or even EasyCGI at all. Rather, airlines sell the rights to be their ‘mileage mall’ partner to third party vendors. Those vendors sign up for referral commission arrangements with stores. They get paid for the business they drive towards those stores or vendors. They take those commissions and rebate part of them back to consumers in the form of miles, which they buy from the frequent flyer programs. When you buy something from the US Airways shopping portal you may be dealing with Skymall or a company called FreeCause, not US Airways!

When the mileage offer went south, EasyCGI said they didn’t know anything about a mileage mall offer. And they probably didn’t make a mileage mall offer themselves, rather they had affiliate agreements. So they ‘blamed a rogue affiliate’ and said they weren’t responsible.

But — and this is me specualting here, the more I think about it — I’d bet that FreeCause, which seems to manage the technology for the US Airways mileage mall — is the ‘rogue affiliate’ which isn’t really rogue at all.

FreeCause signs up for an affiliate arrangement with EasyCGI.  FreeCause offers miles in exchange for taking EasyCGI up on its offer.  EasyCGI – rightly – says WE didn’t sign up for mileage malls.  Rather, they offered to pay affiliate commissions. 

But now they won’t pay, either because they didn’t foresee how the details of their commission arrangement would be used or because FreeCause misunderstood the terms on which it would be paid and made an error in judgment in its offer.

EasyCGI won’t pay FreeCause so FreeCause won’t pay US Airways for the miles they need in order to reward consumers who took them up on their offer..

FreeCause made consumers an offer thinking it would get affiliate commissions, whether based on EasyCGI’s terms or not Easy CGI won’t pay, so FreeCause gets no cash and therefore they do not wish to pay.

That’s my sense of what’s going on.  FreeCause is supposed to be buying the miles but only wants to do so when they get paid by EasyCGI, who doesn’t want to pay.

None of this is transparent to consumers, who see an offer and follow it, thinking that’s the end of the story.

Now FreeCause is trying to figure out either whether they can get money from EasyCGI or whether they can blow mileage mall shopping consumers off.  And they don’t know yet which strategy is more likely to succeed, so consumers just wait to hear something. 

I admit, I never really understood the relationships involved here before.  In fact I remember wondering why I had to create an online account for AAdvantage eShopping when I already had an AAdvantage account!  After all, shouldn’t my AAdvantage account just work for the shopping portal?  But after all, since this is American AAdvantage after all, I had no concern whatsoever giving them my frequent flyer # and using the same password for both!

I mean, I understood the affiliate relationship – but I just assumed the programs ran those, they get paid by the merchants and rebate part of the commission in miles.  I didn’t really ‘get’ the third party involvement.  And if it’s not transparent to me then what are the odds the average consumer understands who they are even transacting with?  And I wasn’t even in on this deal.

These offers can be good, they can be lucrative, goodness knows I’ve been using them for years. But it’s odd to learn that I didn’t even understand how the whole thing worked, whom I was dealing with, or why it was sometimes so hard to get the miles I believed I had earned.

Via Points Addict, if you’re willing to accept Priority Club marketing messages via text there’s 500 free points for doing so. It’s a Visa promotion, you have to register a Visa card with your signup.

Me, I don’t actually want their texts and won’t invite them to SMS me for 500 points. But some will find this worthwhile for the points.

National Car Rental is running rent twice get a free rental day between August 22 and January 31. Registration required and there’s no retroactive credit for rentals taken prior to registering (but then if you’re reading this contemporaneously as I write, the promo hasn’t started yet, so you’re not worried about this). Unfortunately the promo applies only two rentals of mid-size cars or larger, for two days or longer.

Free rental days will be awarded beginning September 2, and future emails with free rentals will come within a week or two after each free rental day is earned. Free Rental Days are non–transferable and are valid for use through June 25, 2012. No more than three free days can be used on a single rental.

The promo apparently doesn’t apply to existing reservations, if you have any reservations already booked for August 22 or beyond you may want to look at cancelling and rebooking.

The promo also includes a referral component, if you refer someone to the offer and they sign up and rent, you’ll earn rental credits (capped at 10 rental days).

I’m a big fan of Natioanl, at least at the base level. See, Hertz and Avis probably have better (invitation-only) top tier levels. But for a general member of the program I think National’s Emerald Aisle (“pick your own car”) is probably the best thing going. Avis usually has more generous promotions, but this strikes me as the most lucrative promotion for two-day rentals. A three day rental for 3000 US Airways miles with Avis could be more or less generous, depending on how you value US Airways miles versus a free rental day.