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United and Delta’s Revenue-Based Programs Are Bad News for Corporate Travel
I was in New York last year with a day to spare and decided to look for some new travel startups. One of them was Rocketrip, and I had a nice chat with its CEO, Daniel Ruch. The basic concept behind...
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Citi Prestige Makes Changes Official: Flight Points, Companion Pass Gone
Recently one of the regular cards in my wallet has been the Citi Thank You Prestige card. Even though it’s a premium card that comes with a high $400 annual fee, I’ve found the benefits to be worth the...
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Review: Andaz Maui at Wailea
Gary Leff and I agree that the Andaz Maui at Wailea is the best hotel on Maui. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it may be my new favorite hotel anywhere. I just got back earlier this month...
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Reports of the Demise of Delta’s Award Charts Are Greatly Exaggerated
From the desk of the Devil’s Advocate… Before we get rolling this week, I want to send a special shoutout to our friend (P)lucky for being such a good sport about my post last week mocking his love of...
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Hacking Award Seats to the Middle East, India and Africa – All 60 Routes
In the past four segments, we looked at how to become more efficient at searching for awards seats to Europe, Asia, Down Under and South America. Now we turn our attention to the last set of...
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How to Plan Your Itinerary
My guess is 99% of people plan their trip by doing a search from A to B. Not me. I like to know my options before I run my search so I can exclude bad connections or force especially good ones. Relying...
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Two Chances Left to Win a Free Stay at the Andaz Maui!
As a reminder, you have two (or three) chances left to win a free three-night stay at the Andaz Maui at Wailea, which opened about a year ago and is my new favorite hotel on Maui. Just follow...
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Award Nexus Makes Booking Award Flights Easy
I should preface this post by saying I do all the grunt work when I book awards. Why? I don’t do it often – maybe two or three international trips a year, and domestic flights are relatively easy. I...
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Who Won Three Nights at Andaz Maui?
Congratulations are due to Mark, who won three free nights at the Andaz Maui at Wailea. Readers were invited to enter by sharing their email address (for winner notification purposes only) and earn...
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AmEx Membership Rewards Points Are Totally Worthless
From the desk of the Devil’s Advocate… Conventional Wisdomers in the points and miles community universally sing the praises of the three major flexible miles currencies – Chase Ultimate Rewards,...
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Searching for Upgrades on American Airlines
I’m still slowly writing up some of the topics I discussed at the FTU Advanced in Chicago last month. Among them were using ExpertFlyer to search for (or at least estimate) upgrade availability on...
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Up to 25,000 Bonus Points with Marriott MegaBonus
Marriott’s fall MegaBonus promotion now has its registration page up, and it appears — to me, at least — to be offering a maximum of 25,000 points to all members. This promotion will run from September...
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Winning the hearts and minds of airline phone agents – A complete diagnostic...
This may be old hat for more seasoned readers, but I tried to compile all the conventional wisdom for booking awards with agents over the phone. Feel free to forward to friends or family members that...
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A Chance to Buy Unlimited Miles for 1.75 Cents?
Many people have known that Amazon Payments is an easy service to manufacture spend of $1,000 a month. You can send $1,000 to a friend with a credit card and no transaction fee. Just call it “goods and...
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We Interrupt This Series So My Readers Can Thrash Plucky
From the desk of the Devil’s Advocate… I hate breaking promises. I really do. But today I have to break two of them. Last week I promised that I would bring you the second part of my three-part series...
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DELANO Replaces THEhotel at Mandalay Bay, but Hyatt Partnership Intact
Like several other BoardingArea bloggers, I was searching for some extra nights around our upcoming conference in Las Vegas and was surprised to find THEhotel — a hotel within a hotel at Mandalay Bay —...
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Winning hearts and minds of airline phone agents – When things go wrong
On Wednesday, we looked at how to talk with agents for complicated award bookings, with a focus on making the conversation as quick and painless as possible. Today, we’ll look at (as many reasons I...
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25% More TrueBlue Points for Transferring Membership Rewards to JetBlue
Membership Rewards announced a transfer bonus today if you want to move points to the TrueBlue loyalty program operated by JetBlue. You can get 25% more points when you transfer to your TrueBlue...
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Some New Ideas for American Airlines’ Credit Cards
United747 posted on FlyerTalk some screenshots from a recent survey by American Airlines and Citi on their credit card benefits. I found it interesting because most airline-branded credit cards are not...
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Making Sense of Caesars’ Total Rewards Program
Many traditional hotel loyalty programs have been linking up with casino loyalty programs in recent years. This has provided them a foothold in Las Vegas, a city where mainstream brands have not had a...
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