On December 22 I posted an offer for free Hilton HHonors Gold status through May 2013.

Hilton’s offer was that any Visa Infinite cardholder could have the status, and they simply verified whether a member was qualified by asking for the first six digits of the Visa Infinite card, which is the Bank Identification Number.

With that as the test, it was fairly easy for folks to Google, Wikipedia is the first page that would come up, and a bank in Russia was the first Visa Infinite card listed. Apparently folks hit that code pretty hard, or at least it was talked about a lot, and so after a few days it and the others listed most obviously on Wikipedia stopped working.

Folks in the comments to my original thread found that other numbers, however, were still working. Commenter Ernie, for instance, offered up first six digits 442394 which appears to still be functional.

Which means you can still sign up for Gold status, yielding free internet, continental (at least) breakfast, and the occasional upgrade plus bonus points and access to elites-only hotel reward redemptions.

Alan H. and several others alerted me to the declaration of the Maldives government that all spas in the country had to shut down, in a bow to the country’s opposition calling for greater adherence to Islam and concerns over prostitution.

Except something didn’t seem quite right about the stories and the reporting, and I couldn’t actually verify that any of the hotels actually had shut down their spas.

So I very much appreciate this piece, sent along by Win which does a nice job I think laying out the situation.

The Republic of Maldives is an Islamic nation, nearly its entire population is Muslim, and religious freedom is very much restricted. It is a dry country. Except at the resorts. Tourism, after all, is the driver of its economy.

So ‘shutting down all spas’ and including at the resorts garnered lots of attention, as though the country was going through a dramatic transformation. Certainly the opposition parties claim the government isn’t Islamic enough, that’s the sort of rhetoric you would expect of an opposition in a country where the vast majority of people at least publicly claim their allegiance to such ideals. But it was especially interesting that the government declared that their decision to close spas at the resorts was in response to calls being made by the opposition.

And now, it seems, that the opposition is backtracking and saying they didn’t actually call for resorts to be affected after all!

Oh, and some of those resorts are owned by… leaders of the opposition. Who complain about government policies being too permissive.

“The government has decided to close massage parlors and spas in the Maldives, following an opposition-led religious protest last week calling for their closure,” President Mohamed Nasheed’s office said in a statement.

“Ironically, the same opposition leaders who railed against spas and the selling of alcohol and pork to tourists are some of the country’s biggest resort owners.”

However, former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom’s opposition coalition Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) said the government move was aimed at leisure business owned by some opposition members.

“We never asked for the ban,” PPM spokesman Ahamed Mahloof told Reuters.

“We wanted the liquor and massage clinics banned in inhabited islands to prevent prostitution and spread of drugs and alcohol to locals. Nasheed is misusing the demands to take revenge by imposing the ban on resorts owned by the opposition members.”

I have an upcoming trip to the Maldives planned, and I’m not worried in the least.

The country’s tourism minister said the move has already prompted calls from resorts affected.

“Several have raised concerns over our decision. We are considering allowing resorts to operate spas. They are also aware of the reasons that led us to take the decision,” Tourism Minister Mariyam Zulfa was quoted as saying on the local Haveeru News Service.

Emphasis mine, and in other words “wink wink, nudge nudge.”

Even in the middle of the Indian Ocean, politics isn’t really about policy.

With the first ever oneworld MegaDO just around the corner, which I’ll be blogging and am super thrilled about — an aviation-enthusiast’s dream of inside operations with American in Dallas, Boeing in Seattle, and other oneworld carriers in Los Angeles all connected by a chartered 757 party plane — it’s actually time to start the thinking, planning, and scheming for future trips.

Now, for those unfamiliar, a group of frequent flyers first got together and chartered a plane and set up tours and activities with some Star Alliance airlines, enthusiasts and loyal customers that the airlines decided to pay attention to. There were crazy moments like pillow fights gone viral on YouTube and sliding down an evacuation slide in Europe. The media quickly started paying attention, there was a feature article in Conde Nast and there’s been plenty of coverage of the events in the Wall Street Journal and other major media.

It’s a trip run at cost, for the pure thrill, with any leftover funds donated to charity — which makes what amount to once in a lifetime experiences affordable. The current oneworld event running in January is just $799 for a coach seat on the charter which includes all group meals, activities, and transportation during the days-long event. It sold out in less than 20 minutes.

There’s rumor of a first-ever Skyteam MegaDO in the offing, and there’s a planning discussion on Milepoint for the fourth annual Star MegaDO. You can go over there and express your thoughts and preferences among possible itineraries.

The event will be in September 2012, and will take place entirely outside the United States, but its up to you which trip to do:

• The Nordic affair with a touch of Poland. Participating airlines: SAS, Blue1, LOT Polish and Lufthansa. Charter flights would be Frankfurt – Stockholm – Helsinki – Warsaw – Frankfurt.

• The Mediterranean medley. Participating airlines: Turkish, Aegean, TAP and Lufthansa. Charter flights would be Frankfurt – Istanbul – Athens – Lisbon – Frankfurt.

• Asian Dawn. Participating airlines: All Nippon, Asiana, Singapore OR Thai and United. Charter flights would be Tokyo – Seoul – Singapore/Bangkok.

The Asian trip would be more costly for positioning flights (getting to the start/back from the end) for North Americans.

Head on over to the planning discussion on Milepoint and express any thoughts or preferences or just follow the action as this develops.

Alitalia is offering 50% off all economy ‘classic’ (capacity controlled) redemptions booked by January 15 for travel through March 24.

Somehow this promotion has been around for awhile and I wasn’t aware of it, but it certainly provides real value for instance U.S. to Italy in coach runs 25,000 miles roundtrip instead of 50,000. (A one-way ticket under this promo runs 15,000 miles.) The offer is available on Alitalia flights only, not on partners or codeshares, and isn’t available on intra-Italy domestic routes or between Italy and France.

Alitalia is an American Express Membership Rewards transfer partner and a Starwood Preferred Guest transfer partner, among others. Just 20,000 Starwood points are enough for a roundtrip coach ticket between the US and Italy with this offer.

(HT: beaubo)

Loyalty Traveler brings us details on Hilton’s first quarter promo:

1,000 bonus points per night plus 5,000 bonus points for two night weekend stays from January 1, 2012 through March 31, 2012. There is no earning limit for bonus points. Stays with check-in prior to January 1 or checkout after March 31, 2012 will count for this promotion for nights stayed within the promotion period.

Hilton HHonors More Points promotion registration is required before hotel checkout to be eligible for this bonus points offer.

…Weekend nights include the four nights from Thursday through Sunday, but only one 5,000 point bonus may be earned per weekend. These are combinable bonuses of per night and weekend bonus, so two nights as Thursday-Friday, Friday-Saturday, or Saturday-Sunday stay earns 7,000 bonus points for the two nights and 1,000 bonus points for any additional nights of an extended stay.

Marriott is running MegaBonus again (a free night at a mid-range property after two stays), Priority Club is offering various stay X nights earn Y bonus points promos, ad Starwood is offering double points on two-night stays and triple points on longer stays.

So among the major chains we’re really just waiting on Hyatt Gold Passport to announce, which isn’t unusual as they often don’t stick quite as strictly to calendar quarters for their promotions. I suspect we’ll hear something soon, though.

It’s always worth registering for all of the promos when you first hear about them, that way you don’t have to go back and do it later and run the risk of forgetting to do it prior to a stay you hadn’t expect to have which would qualify.

Christopher Elliott is one of those great enigmas in travel, I actually like some of the things he has to say and so I think he can get a bad rap from frequent flyers at times. Though in his Travel Troubleshooter columns I think he often sides with customers and against travel providers even when the travel providers are in the right, a bit too much ‘sympathy for the little guy’ rather than a focus on justice but he frequently lets his readers vote on whether to intercede so I suppose his readers are as much at fault!

Where he really misses the mark, and sometimes even goes totally off the rails, is in his criticisms of frequent flyer programs. This new piece from the January/February National Geographic Traveler is a perfect case in point, Chris is just out of his depth on the facts and that leads him to erroneous conclusions and bad advice.

He begins by harkening back to a ‘golden age’ of travel points rewards, when you earned points just for travel and it was easy to redeem those points, when the truth is in many ways the exact opposite.

t used to be so simple.

If you belonged to a loyalty program, you’d get a point for every mile flown. Collect enough of ’em and you’d qualify for a round-trip ticket. The same formula worked for hotels and rental cars.

But today you can score miles without darkening the door of an aircraft, hotel, or rental car. Buy a box of cereal? Ka-ching! Talk on a cell phone? More miles. Get a mortgage? Even more! Unfortunately, the “free” ticket comes with a bundle of restrictions, including blackout and expiration dates, and extra charges or higher minimums to fly on more desirable dates.

…It didn’t start out this way: When American Airlines offered the first mileage-based rewards program in 1981, it wanted to reward its frequent customers and generate loyalty to the company—a mutually beneficial compact. Back then, airlines attracted customers the old-fashioned way: with good service and competitive prices.

Within a few weeks of AAdvantage’s launch, United unveiled its own frequent flier program, followed by TWA and Delta. Plans in those early years were simple and straightforward: On many airlines you could get a coach ticket for 20,000 miles with no expiration dates.

First of all, when American and other programs launched their frequent flyer programs, you could not get a coach ticket for 20,000 miles roundtrip.

United Airlines introduced ‘saver awards’ at that price point in 1988, a full seven years after the introduction of the modern frequent flyer program. And when those 20,000 mile rewards were introduced, they came with capacity controls. There was never a time when the median frequent flyer program offered 20,000 mile rewards without capacity controls. It simply never existed.

The original rewards, without capacity controls, were offered at 40,000 miles roundtrip. And when airlines introduced half off awards that booked into seats the airlines didn’t expect to sell, they still offered double mileage awards without capacity controls.

To a large extent they still do. Sure, those 20,000 mile awards are now usually 25,000 miles. And double miles awards are now 50,000 miles. Delta offers last seat availability for 60,000 miles and United will begin offering those 50,000 mile rewards with true last seat availability to their co-branded credit card holders next year. But those are certainly exceptions.

The point is that the world Chris described simply never existed, his facts are wrong. And that doesn’t even get into the matter of partner and alliance awards, the ability to use your points across a wide array of airline partners and even combine those partners into a single award ticket, something that didn’t exist in the first twenty years of frequent flyer programs.

Furthermore, Chris’ claim that it ‘used to be that way’ for the ease of redemptions in hotel programs too? Quite the contrary. Most hotel rewards until very recently came with capacity controls. When the Starwood Preferred Guest program was introduced, its unique selling proposition was the lack of capacity controls — you could have any standard room that was available for sale with your points. In the past few years Hyatt, Hilton, and to large extent Marriott have matched this. It is now easier to redeem your hotel points than it has ever been in the past.

But the debut of rewards programs coincided with the deregulation of the airline industry, which led to a shift away from service as a selling point. Cheap fares moved most of the tickets.

Wow, how many canards can you cram into two sentences?

Deregulation preceded the introduction of frequent flyer programs by four years. It’s certainly true that when the government no longer enforced monopolies on domestic routes, and no longer set prices, airlines had to compete. And one way that they competed was on the basis of value provided to consumers through their frequent flyer programs.

But Chris Elliott says above that he liked the good old days of those programs, up through the 80′s in fact, so surely he can’t place his complaints now at the feet of deregulation, without a theory of why it took at least 10 years from deregulation for him to become unhappy with the course of events?

Furthermore, yesterday Dan Webb posted a really useful chart on historical airfares. Even with the big spike in airfares over the past two years, with oil prices at historic highs and planes full, prices are still about 15% below where they were in 1995 in inflation-adjusted dollars. Somehow the consumer advocate Elliott thinks this is bad for consumers?

The airlines have perfected the art of manipulation, crafting ever more complicated incentives to stimulate our worst hoarding instincts. And as the points-earning opportunities mushroom, the real rewards are being contained behind growing walls of elite and super-elite status, available to only a chosen few.

Cue evil laugh! What Elliott calls the art of manipulation, one might also just as easily call “offering a value proposition that appeals to consumers.”

And here I think he conflates two very different things — elite status and redeemable miles.

There is very little difference in redeeming miles for general members versus elite members. Take United, their 50,000 mile flyers do not receive any better award availability at all than the general member. A 100,000 mile flyer will have access to additional coach reward seats, on United only. No additional reward seats for a premium cabin, no additional award seats for partners like Lufthansa or Thai.

Award tickets are hardly available ‘only to a chosen few’ (unless that chosen few numbers in the millions, those with enough miles in their accounts to redeem!). Instead, the same international first class seats are available to every single member of the program with enough miles in their account — except for United’s “Global Services” members who can effectively book awards into upgrade buckets on United metal only, though this is very much the exception that proves the rule.

While Elliott cites blogs on BoardingArea (like this one!) as “evidence of our collective delusion” I think he really misses the point. In fact, he gets unhinged when he claims that “miles have negative value.”

Instead, I’d argue that this column of his has negative value, to the extent it convinces some readers not to participate in loyalty programs. The programs are free. You add your account number, track your points at AwardWallet, make sure they don’t expire with just a little bit of activity every few years, and eventually you get something for almost zero effort. You maybe won’t find five seats to Hawaii at the last minute over Presidents weekend. But you’ll certainly do better than ‘negative value’ and if you pay a little bit of attention you’ll even have opportunities to see the world in a style you couldn’t possibly afford on your own for just the price of taxes and maybe a fuel surcharge.

Elliott might even say he doesn’t disagree, just don’t spend more for your tickets to get miles. But he concludes the article saying “[Y]ou have to regulate your own behavior. So, kick the habit, now.”

When in reality, you shouldn’t “cut up the frequent flier affinity credit card.”

You should

• Get the card that is best for you.

• Look at total trip cost — if you’re going to make elite status with an airline, it may be a lower cost solution overall to stick to a single airline or single alliance, based on savings from checked bags or extra legroom coach seats or better chance of re-accomodation during irregular operations.

• Check evreward.com for the best mileage and cash back deals from your online shopping.

• And consider cost, location, and overall treatment (including elite status treatment and promotions) when reserving a room.

For the super elite, it can really make sense to focus on a single airline or hotel chain. For everyone else, pay attention to miles and collect miles and save up, eventually you may have enough for what you want. And it costs very little to stay active and engaged.

About a week and a half ago, the excellent Gary of Free Frequent Flyer Miles posted that the supposedly-expiring Fidelity brokerage offer for United miles has been extended, and that the American and Delta offers are still available. (Last year’s offer of American Express Membership Rewards points appears not to be available any longer.)

Fidelity will give you up to 50,000 miles based on the amount you deposit into your account within 90 days of opening.

• 15,000 miles for a $25,000 deposit
  
• 25,000 miles for a $50,000 deposit
  
• 50,000 miles for a $100,000 deposit

You can choose to earn the miles currently with three different programs. And you can even earn miles, apparently, with two of the three — not just one.

• United/Continental offer
  
• American offer
  
• Delta offer

Yesterday The Points Guy wrote that he just got started on the United offer, intends to do the Delta offer as well, and reports that there is no credit pull when opening one of these accounts so it doesn’t stand in the way of churning credit cards for signup bonuses.

The United and American offers say that they are for first time accountholders only. The Delta offer’s terms and conditions does not include that same stipulation. So you want to choose United or American first. And then after you begin funding your account, register for the Delta offer. (An Apple Gift Card offer is also running through December 31 and apparently stackable with United or American and with Delta. I believe the gift card will be tax reportable.)

While it seems like a lot of money is required to earn the miles, you don’t need to actually deposit the money to earn the miles in a single go — based on the reports of many over time you can deposit, withdraw, deposit. So $10,000 in and out 10 times should earn the top bonus for a $100,000 deposit.

The minimum amount for initial deposit is $2500 and you could just keep cycling the $2500 deposit/withdrawal amounts. But since each cycle will take about a week, that amount is too low to get up to $100,000 total deposited — since it would take 40 weeks. You need to fund the full amount you’ll get bonused for within 90 days of account opening. So $10,000 seems doable, but it’s probably worth saving the hassle and using a larger amount if you have access to it.

It appears that the most you can deposit initially, without waiting for your linked account to be verified, is $25,000. If you want to do a larger amount right away just wait for the link to be processed.

Cycling certainly isn’t the intent of the promotion and it’s certainly the case that this could stop working at any time. There’s a couple of speculations out there that it’s already stopped, but based on no evidence other than a weekly expected mileage posting didn’t happen in late December but that’s also consistent with it simply being Christmas-time when lots of work seems to stop until the New Year.

You can also transfer in assets from another brokerage, some time back I took advantage of the TD Ameritrade offer for Starwood Starpoints and may go this route myself.

The TD Ameritrade offer of 20,000 Starwood Starpoints for a $25,000 initial deposit supposedly ends December 31. The other offers say the same thing, and require greater deposits for a similar number of miles (e.g. $50,000 deposit for 25,000 American Airlines miles and of course since 20,000 Starpoints transfer to 25,000 American miles I like the Starwood offer – which only requires a $25,000 deposit – better). Here’s the offers for United, Delta, US Airways, and Amtrak. These have been around for awhile and getting extended for years so if I had to guess I imagine the offers will get extended again but of course there are no guarantees.

In doing any of these deals, read all the terms and conditions, my post shouldn’t be considered financial advice. And while most don’t have a problem pulling funds out right away after miles post, the rules usually say you’re supposed to leave it in the account at least six months and there’s enough at stake that I’d follow those rules, occasionally there are at least unverified reports of folks who have closed out their accounts in less than six months having miles clawed back. I’m not sure how credible those reports are but I wouldn’t risk it.

I had to book several tickets over the past several days for other people, either where the tickets are reimbursed by work or where they’re favors for friends who are paying me back.

And I’ve decided that one of the greatest things in the world is buying travel for other people, when you’re not the one coming out of pocket for it.

I suppose an unlimited amount of reimbursable flowers at 30 miles per dollar would be better. But few other things are quite as lucrative.

Back in the late 70s Southwest Airlines was really innovative, offering a program that rewarded secretaries for booking travel on the airline. They had the insight that the person doing the booking exercised discretion in where to book the traveler, either total discretion or at least they’d influence the choices that were presented. And yet it’s always the traveler who earns the miles from flying.

It’s only in the most recent times that actually doing the booking has gotten really lucrative.

Credit Card Points are Rewarding

Buying travel and getting reimbursed for it is great, especially since so many credit card products bonus travel spend so you aren’t just earning one point per dollar.

Chase Sapphire Preferred earns two Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent on all travel (and it’s also great buying tickets from foreign airlines, since the card doesn’t charge foreign currency transaction fees). Those points transfer to United/Continental, Hyatt, British Airways, Marriott, Priority Club, Amtrak, Korean Airlines, and starting in January Southwest. (The 40,000 point signup bonus after $3000 in spend isn’t bad, either.)

The Ink Bold card is the small business equivalent of Chase Sapphire Preferred.

Meanwhile, the American Express ® Premier Rewards Gold Card earns 3 Membership Rewards points per dollar spent on airfare. And since there are often transfer bonuses as high as 50% for moving points to Delta and British Airways, that can be as much as 4.5 miles per dollar spent on air with this card.

The American Express Business Gold Rewards card is the small business equivalent of Premier Rewards Gold, and also earns triple Membership Rewards points on airfare.

Finally, if you’re willing to make your travel bookings on Travelocity (I much prefer the booking interface of Expedia, and the airfare search power of Orbitz), then it’s hard to go wrong with the Travelocity American Express which earns 10% back on Travelocity spending which can be used for future Travelocity travel bookings.

Cash Back and Mileage Portals are Rewarding

The Chase Ultimate Rewards Mall (which you have access to if you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Ink Bold credit card from Chase) currently offers two points per dollar spent at Travelocity and one point per dollar at Expedia or Priceline.

That means you actually earn a United or Hyatt point for every dollar of travel spend, two points if you go through Travelocity.

And of course points earned through the Ultimate Rewards Mall, just like points earned through spending, earn the Chase Sapphire Preferred 7% annual bonus on all points earned.

Alternatively, Big Crumbs offers a flat $3.20 back on each Expedia booking. Travelocity is a flat payout as well. And there’s percentage cash back offers for Marriott, InterContinental, Choice Hotels, and Best Western.

By the way, the Expedia and Travelocity offers work not only for airline and hotel but also car rentals as well.

Airline Small Business Programs are Rewarding

If I book through the American Airlines website I can get credit in their Business ExtrAA small business program. It’s not the most lucrative offering, but $1500 in airfare will generally earn 300 points and that’s enough for a couple of lounge passes. Ten times that amount of airfare spend is enough for 3000 points or an annual lounge membership. 2400 points will let you gift someone with Gold status in the AAdvantage program.

Delta has a similar program, SkyBonus.

United’s PerksPlus has a bit of a higher spending threshold to join, and the combined United-Continental looks like it’s going with the United model.

But with both American and Delta a solo traveler can actually rack up some points. I’ve not really invested in the Delta program but I’ve gotten a decent amount of value from Business ExtrAA over time, including being able to give friends Gold status and lounge passes.

The only downside to the program is that in order to add your Business ExtrAA account number you need to book travel through the American website which means giving up the shopping portal points.

Online Travel Agency Programs are Rewarding

If you buy through Expedia, you earn Expedia Rewards points. The program was just devalued a bit after less than a year, but it’s still free points for booking travel and more rewarding than the other online travel agencies.

I’m working towards 50,000 points, redeemable towards $1000 in hotel spend, and I’m about two-thirds of the way there.

Triple Dipping

You can’t generally use an airline small business program and a cash back portal or online travel agency program. But otherwise the programs are combinable. You can even triple dip.

• You buy travel with your credit card, earning three Membership Rewards points (with Amex Premier Rewards Gold or Business Gold Rewards) or two Chase Ultimate Rewards points (with Sapphire Preferred or Ink Bold).

• You click on Expedia or Travelocity through Big Crumbs or the Chase Ultimate Rewards Mall.

• If using Expedia, you also get Expedia Rewards points

If you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred card, you can go through the Ultimate Rewards mall to Expedia. You’ll earn 2 Ultimate Rewards point per dollar spent on the credit card, an additional point per dollar spent with Expedia for going through the shopping portal, and then earn Expedia Rewards points which can be redeemed for airfare or hotel.

Or on a cheap itinerary, perhaps a $100 airline ticket, going through the Big Crumbs shopping portal earns a flat $3.20 with Expedia. Plus you get Expedia Rewards points. And then using the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card you earn 3 Amex Membership Rewards points per dollar.

See, it’s the triple dipping that I really love.

Here’s what I’d really love feedback on. While the Ultimate Rewards Mall says you should pay with your Chase card there are plenty of examples where paying with any card will work to earn points. The How To Page gives five bullet points to ensure that you earn points, none of which say you’re required to use your Chase card. So I’m wondering if anyone has tried going through the Ultimate Rewards Mall to earn points with Travelocity or Expedia, and paying with a different credit card?

Once you have a Sapphire Preferred card you have access to the Ultimate Rewards Mall, which is often the most lucrative online shopping portal and in my experience about the most reliable for quickly posting points.

You could get Sapphire Preferred if you don’t already have it, and then actually pay for your Travelocity purchases with the Travelocity American Express for the 10% back in future travel.

Has anyone given that a shot?

A final note, links in this post will earn me a referral credit. You don’t have to use my links in signing up for things of course. But the links I provide are to the best-available offers that I know, and I certainly appreciate it as well.

Via Live from a Lounge, Jet Airways JetPrivilege new signups using a promo link receive a 2000 point enrollment bonus.

The Indian carrier isn’t part of an alliance (though with Star walking away from Air India and Kingfisher going to oneworld, no doubt they’re in talks). They do, however, partner with about two dozen airlines including Delta, American, and United.

From January 9 to April 8, Starwood Preferred Guest is running its first quarter promo, “Better By the Night” — double points on two-night stays and triple points on stays of three nights or longer. Registration required.

It’s not as lucrative as Starwood’s summer 2011 free resort night offer, but it’s more valuable than it seemed to me at first blush for longer stays. Mommy Points, to whom a hit tip is due for pointing out the promo, notes how the promos stack. (And also points out that the non-participating properties list is shorter than in recent times for recent promos.)

• Two points per dollar normally
  
• Plus one point per dollar for Gold and Platinum members
  
• Plus two points per dollar for two night stays and four points per dollar for three night stays and longer
  
• Plus two points per dollar paying with a Starwood American Express card.

Last week I offered a detailed analysis of why the card has held a key place in my wallet for ten years.

A Starwood Gold member putting a three night stay on a Starwood Amex would receive a whopping nine points per dollar. Starwood points are among the very most valuable currencies, it’s order of magnitude reasonable to think of that as an 18% rebate.

As always, if you use my link for the Starwood American Express card I do receive referral credit for it, you don’t need to use my link of course but I do appreciate it.

Regardless, you should register for the promotion, it makes Starwood properties attractive for longer stays during the promo period and even if you aren’t a Starwood regular sometimes you just wind up in one of their properties and it’s easier to have registered from the get go than having to remember to do so later.

The free Hilton HHonors Gold status offer that I posted Friday evening required you to have a Visa Infinite card, and the way the website verifies this is by having you enter the first six digits of the credit card.

Which was a great opportunity to learn about Bank Identification Numbers on Wikipedia.

Of course, just knowing the first six digits of any Visa Infinite card from a qualifying region of the world worked to unlock the website and take advantage of the offer.

Apparently this is a popular way to verify that you have a credit card, since now Live from a Lounge brings us an offer of free Kingfisher elite status for Mastercard holders:

To register, you should have an eligible MasterCard (Platinum, World, Titanium Credit Cards or a Premium Debit Card), and you have to plonk the first 6 digits on the Kingfisher website here, to get your upgraded. Titanium and Platinum tiers get Kingfisher KingClub Red tier, but World MasterCard users get KingClub Silver.

Why would you want status with Kingfisher? The airline is set to join oneworld in about six weeks. So King Club silver should be the bottom tier (Ruby) elite status within oneworld. That’ll get you priority boarding and free checked bags with American, for instance.

You’ve likely seen the story by now that the TSA in Las Vegas considers cupcake frosting to be a gel. (Which rather reminds me of a certain frequent flyer’s experience at London Gatwick, being told that a box of pasta is a liquid since you have to add water to cook it.)

In light of the TSA’s War on Cupcakes(tm), and since I’m a huge fan of mixing marketing with public resistance to the TSA, I’m very tempted to buy this to wear during January travels.

Thanks to roadwarrior365 on Milepoint, the Hilton Austin Airport is pricing all rooms including suites at $20 plus tax for dates from mid-January through mid-February.

Bookable at Hilton.com and elsewhere. Suites are going quickly, it remains to be seen of course whether or not the rate will be honored.

Two years ago I offered frequent flyer wishes for the New Year, and some of them came true while two remain on my wish list going forward.

Here’s what I’d love to see from major U.S. airline frequent flyer programs, little things that would make a great difference in terms of value derived by members, from the perspective of someone who is inspired by the aspirational nature of the programs and value leveraging miles for premium cabin award experiences.

American Airlines. I love their domestic award availability, and I love several of their partners. I’ve had such great luck with Cathay Pacific first class award space that I’ve gotten lazy and fly too much Cathay First, not doing the hard work to get more interesting and varied products. But I wish the website were more functional — more partner award availability (they’ve just rolled out Alaska Airlines as their first) and the ability to process confirmed (mileage, electronic systemwide) upgrades online. And I’d love it if they loosened up what are some of the most byzantine award routing rules in the industry. United just imposes a rule that you can’t fly more than 15% beyond the published “maximum permitted mileage” between any two cities. American on the other hand requires that the overwater carrier have a published routing between your starting and ending cities. IF they don’t, you can’t fly the carrier on your route. And they don’t allow you to connect in a region other than your starting and ending regions, with specific exceptions e.g. from North America you can travel to India or Africa via Europe and to “Asia 2″ (eg Hong Kong and South) via “Asia 1″ (eg Tokyo) but not the other way around. So you cannot connect in the Middle East on the way to Africa, even though such a connection is totally logical, you cannot connect in Hong Kong to India even though from the West Coast the travel time may be shorter. Only Delta has routing rules which can be as Draconian, though with Delta it’s likely programming errors.

United Airlines. Really, no changes. The partners are great, the award availability is great, the award routing rules are great, and they’re even expected to adopt the Continental Airlines website which is pretty darned functional for booking awards. I don’t expect them to bring back Starnet blocking (intentionally preventing members from booking otherwise-available award seats on partners when they don’t want to pay for those seats), though the fact that they’ve done it in the past always means that the specter looms in the background and represents the greatest threat to the value of miles, bigger even than an award chart devaluation. I don’t like the new upgrade priority where ‘paid for upgrades” trump status, a non-status member spending miles is ahead of a 100,000 mile flyer waiting for their complimentary domestic upgrade. But that’s the Continental method and in almost all things with this integration, the Continental method rules.

Delta. Website, website, website. The thing just doesn’t work. Reservations return errors, and half the time available award seats don’t come up but starting a search over will bring up those seats. This is especially frustrating because Delta will only allow award holds on the website and the website really doesn’t work. There’s also only a very limited number of partners available online, which means you frequently have to call – which forestalls the ability to place an award on hold. And the agents on the phone are frequently so darned bad. They don’t know who Delta’s partners are (“Air France is the only member of Skyteam” or “We don’t partner with Vietnam Airlines anymore.”) and with so many partners using different award booking classes, Delta’s agents frequently don’t know how to search for award space and incorrectly say that seats aren’t available. As bad as Skyteam availability can be compared to Star or oneworld (and especially Delta availability in particular) the biggest challenge booking awards is the tools available for doing so. As a stopgap measure it would help a great deal if telephone agents were allowed to hold award seats.

US Airways. I’d love one-way awards but mostly I just wish their IT systems wouldn’t have such a hard time with some partner awards, in particular Lufthansa transatlantic first class space and All Nippon intra-Asia flights (especially those operated by Air Japan). If those problems would get fixed then US Airways miles would truly be among some of the very best out there, especially coupled with US Airways’ generous routing rules and outstanding domestic first class award availability, useful for getting to and from international gateway cities.

Alaska Airlines. I wish they would finally introduce the ability to combine partners on a single award. They have some great partners but the biggest challenge in finding award space is that since they don’t offer one-way awards with partners you need to find space on the same partner in both directions. I also with they would bring back award holds, which they took away in early 2010 without announcement or comment.

I woke up to several emails saying that something strange was going on with the blog, and indeed all of yesterday’s content was gone — the two posts I made and the associated comments.

I went to Google Reader and recovered the posts and re-posted, thanks to the RSS feed.  But with tremendous apologies, I don’t have the comments. 

Since it’s Christmas Day I don’t really have access to tech support to figure out what happened.  Those who left comments yesterday, I am truly sorry!

Earlier in the week I saw that Southwest is offering double tier points (registration required) and I wasn’t going to post on it, since even though it’s useful for some getting A-List status really doesn’t excite me much and I was pretty distracted when It came across my screen. The offer matches American’s double elite qualifying miles, and like that offer runs through DecemberJanuary 31st.

But it seemed worthwhile mentioning when I saw Online Travel Review point out yesterday that Southwest is also offering double points on all flights into or out of Newark, LaGuardia, Boston, Manchester, Providence, and Orlando for travel booked by December 30th and flown between January 4 and February 15th. Registration required.

The ability to get double tier points and double credits flying specific routes during the month of January is a bit more valuable, not my cup of tea but useful for Southwest flyers for sure! And after all, even Lucky flies Southwest now and then.

The end of most debit card rewards programs, and the recent imposition of monthly fees on mileage-earning checking accounts at BankDirect, are the result of the Durbin Amendment.

NerdWallet runs an interesting piece on the effects of the amendment, pointing out its winners and losers (some of which may be surprising, but others will be familiar to those who pay attention to the points game and how it has been changing as a result of this legislation). NerdWallet interviews law professor Todd Zywicki, who blogs at Volokh.com where I first found reference to the article.

The law was supposed to help small retailers by providing them relief from debit card interchange fees, but the unintended consequence has been higher prices as consumers shift towards credit instead of debit.

The law was supposed to help credit unions, which were generally exempt, but it’s pushed unprofitable checking accounts to them which has raised their costs.

And it was supposed to help poor consumers who lacked access to rewards cards, who supposedly saw higher prices from interchange fees without receiving rewards in return. But by raising the cost of financial products, those customers are less profitable for banks are they’re now seeing fees for checking accounts without minimum balances or other financial business with their institutions — so they either see higher costs or get pushed out of the banking system.

I’ve never been much of a fan of debit cards because as someone who pays off my credit cards in full each month I’d rather track my checking account balance with a single payment each month rather than recording each individual transaction (I actually do balance my checkbook!) but mostly because of the greater consumer protections afforded to credit cards. If there’s fraudulent activity on my credit card, I notify the company and charges are suspended while they’re investigated. If the money is already gone from a checking account due to debit card fraud any re-instatement in funds is more or less at the beneficence of the bank. I don’t like being in that position.

So I rather figured that the law wouldn’t impact me directly, except that it has — a free business checking I had now has a minimum balance to avoid fees. A secondary personal checking account that used to avoid fees with $50 direct deposit now requires a $100 direct deposit. And my BankDIrect checking account which has profitably been earning me American Airlines miles since July 2003 will now cost me $144 per year regardless of account balance.

NerdWallet offers this conclusion about the winners and losers of the Durbin Amendment:

Which brings us to the winners in the interchange fee battle: alternative financial services providers like Walmart, Western Union and Green Dot. Banks (and credit unions) face the cost of holding customers’ money, but Walmart, et al can charge for a la carte services like check cashing and money orders without keeping a single deposit. Unfortunately, these services are often a poor deal for consumers: though the fees are generally well-disclosed and upfront, avoiding the financial system is more costly than remaining within it. For example, the popular prepaid Walmart MoneyCard can easily cost more than $10 a month, while its check cashing services run at $3 per, adding up to well over Bank of America’s MyAccess checking account. We’ve written extensively on the disadvantages of being unbanked; we fear that higher checking fees will swell the ranks of Americans outside the financial system. In trying to pick favorites, the Durbin Amendment may have only exacerbated their misfortunes.

RyanAir’s CEO Michael O’Leary speaks to the EU Innovation Convention. It’s a fascinating talk, offering a window into how they think about their competitors and also about European governments.

I think of RyanAir much like Spirit. I think it’s great they exist. I have no problem with their combination of low fares and customer-unfriendly policies, but they also don’t really affect me because I have no intention of flying them. I love it when low fare carriers compete against the major ones whose elite status I enjoy, I benefit from my status and lower fares.

I don’t think all of Michael O’Leary’s claims ring true, like that it’s all that convenient to fly to Charleroi Airport rather than Brussels (well, maybe if you don’t value your time and want to take a bus into the city). But it’s certainly an entertaining listen and he seems far more right than wrong on most things.

(HT: Heather C.)

Priority Club has a series of bonus point offers for the first quarter of 2012, earn a certain number of points for a certain number of nights between January 1 and March 31. You have to select the offer you’ll register for, you can only have one of these and cannot change after you’ve registered.

Offers via Priority Club Insider:

• Register: -Stay 3 nights earn 5,000
• Register: -Stay 7 nights earn 10,000
• Register: -Stay 15 nights earn 15,000

Hilton HHonors is giving away instant free Gold status through May 2013 to Visa Infinite cardholders.

The way they verify that you’re eligible, i.e. that you have a Visa infinite card, is by asking you to enter the first six digits of your card. Those six digits are ‘issuer identification numbers’ that say what kind of a card it is.

Great in theory, you have to know the first six digits of a Visa Infinite card to take advantage of the promotion. But that information is even available on Wikipedia, the very first result found in a Google search.

Which means that anyone can effectively take advantage of the promotion. As a Hilton Diamond member already I haven’t actually tested this out, I’m interested in it as a purely academic matter. But apparently entering the first listing in Wikipedia, for Masterbank of Russia, unlocks the page. (If I bothered looking at the code on the page I might find other ways to unlock it as well.)

Then again, they might not be trying all that hard to exclude ‘ineligible’ members considering that this past summer they gave away Hilton Gold to anyone with a Visa Signature card though that was for three months only and this is for a full year. Though in that case, existing Gold and Diamond elites got 5000 bonus points as a ‘consolation prize’ as well.

Though the benefits do vary slightly by brand and property, roughly speaking Gold status gets a (generally quite modest) upgrade, continental breakfast, free internet, and discounts on multi-night award stays.