Registration is finally available. From October 1 through January 31, 2010, Hyatt is offering your choice of 1 free night after every two stays (the traditional ‘faster free nights’ offer) or 3,000 bonus Hyatt every stay, starting with your second stay. The free nights are generally more valuable, provided you can use them during the October 15 through March 31 redemption period. I’m sorely tempted to pick up several Dulles airport area Hyatt place stays in the $60 range (frequently pricing for weekends) in order to redeem at Park Hyatts in major cities around the world. But if you don’t have a good clear use for the redemptions, it’s nice that this time they’ve decided to offer a backup choice of banking points. In addition to this bonus offer, Hyatt is offering double stay credits…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for September 2009.
Hacking the Priority Club Website to See Your Full Points History
The Priority Club website only gives you an option to see your account history back 6 months. But it turns out the data is all there, the website just doesn’t give you an option to query for it. A Flyertalk member posted a link that will allow you to go back farther. I can see my redemption history back to 2004, and my earning activity back at least to 2008. Here’s the link: https://secure.ichotelsgroup.com/h/d/pc/1/en/tpaccount?secure=true&secure=true&transaction=4000 Note that you’ll be asked to sign into your account, of course.
30,000 British Airways Miles for Credit Card Signup
Chase has a new offer, which is the best one I’ve seen for a co-branded British Airways credit card: 20,000 bonus miles after first purchase and 10,000 more bonus miles after $750 in spend. The card also offers $50 off British Airways ticket purchases, and it comes with a $75 annual fee (not waived – but still worth it for the 30,000 miles in my opinion).
Cheap Short-haul Award Tickets — As Low as 2400 Points Each Way!
Starwood points transfer 1:2 into LAN. Such generous transfer ratios used to be common, e.g. with Qantas (and the Qantas award chart used to be more generous to boot) so folks would transfer their Starwood points to Qantas and redeem for flights on the Concorde. Starwood transfer ratios have eroded in these few exceptionally generous cases over the years, but the 1:2 ratio with LAN remains. And Starwood doubles their transfer bonus as well, so 20,000 Starwood points yields 50,000 points in LAN. This used to be an exceptional value for constructing oneworld business class round the world awards. But then LAN introduced their new award chart, where they charge for each flight segment separately, and I wrote it off. It’s not longer good for connecting flights, to be sure, so no more oneworld round…
100 Free Priority Club Points
Go to this link and enter any one of the following five codes: 3JCXVN JNXL3V VN3JLX VJNC3L LCNX3V You’ll also need to enter your Priority Club number and PIN. 100 free points are yours easily. (Straight from Frugal Travel Guy.)
New Links for American Airlines Credit Card 30,000 Miles Signup Bonuses
Old links are dead, but new links are available. The offer is no fee the first year and 30,000 mile bonus after $750 in spend. Mastercard, American Express, and Business Mastercard Visa (Thanks to this Flyertalk thread.) Of course these cards are churnable. Different folks have different experiences with how many cards you can get at one time, and how often you can get the cards. It varies more or less from one card every 60 days to some folks simultaneously applying for several and getting perhaps four at a time. (Frugal Travel Guy says to open up multiple applications in different browser windows at the same time, and hit submit pretty much simultaneously on each.) Grab the card, meet the minimum spend (Presidential coins, anyone?), watch your bonus post. After six months or so…
Marriott New Member Signup Bonus — Stay Twice By November 15 and Earn a Free Night
Marriott isn’t quite as generous as some of their competitors, Hyatt’s Faster Free Nights makes a similar offer to everyone, but they’re currently offering new members the opportunity to earn a free night for staying twice by November 15 and this is on top of the usual points accrual of course. (Via Loyalty Traveler Blog.)
If Air Travel Worked Like Health Care
An excellent, amusing Jonathan Rauch article from National Journal. The goal of the piece was to illustrate the crazy inefficiencies of health care delivery. For me, it just managed to make air travel seem sane. (HT: Marginal Revolution)
Friday Open Thread
What’s on your mind? Please hit the comments!
Extra Surcharges for 3 Days of Upcoming Holiday Travel
Rick Seaney reprots that American and United have added $10 fuel surcharges for travel on the Sunday after Thanksgiving and January 2 and 3. A ‘busy holiday travel day surcharge’ to be sure. But why use the fuel surcharge mechanism, as opposed to raising fares for travel on those days or limiting availability in lower fare buckets? I’ve written in the past (e.g. here) that fuel surcharges aren’t any different from price increases, but they do serve specific functions — usually as a means of bumping price on existing discount contracts or publicly signaling price intentions to competitors Here I assume given the limited duration of these are in effect it was viewed as a quick and dirty way to accomplish the job, albeit with a fairly blunt instrument.
