In late February, Starwood announced their annual hotel category changes, which kicked in for bookings made as of March 10, 2015.
Every year Starwood adjusts which hotels belong to which categories, to better reflect the anticipated average daily rate and occupancy for the hotel.
While most hotel category changes across the industry the past few years have been a bloodbath, this year's Starwood changes were actually arguably positive, depending on where you like to redeem your points:
The post Rebook Starwood Stays At Select Hotels For Fewer Points appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
The Greek solution to mass scale tax evasion is to build a surveillance state, while outsourcing the actual surveillance to tourists. If you’re a tourist in Greece, there are so many things to do: visit the Acropolis, admire the architecture in Santorini and maybe try to catch some local tax cheats. No, really. The Financial […]
The post The Greek Government Wants Tourists to Get Wired and Inform on Tax Cheats appeared first on View from the Wing.
A couple of weeks ago I first wrote about the Discover it Miles Card, which is a brand new no annual fee product from Discover.
The card offers unlimited 1.5x Miles for every net dollar you spend on purchases, with a few options for redemption.
-- You can redeem for cash as an electronic deposit to your bank account or for a credit for travel purchases on your statement made within in last 180 days.
-- Travel purchases include airline tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals, travel agents, online travel sites and commuter transportation.
What makes this card especially interesting is that you earn double miles for the first year. After the first 12 consecutive billing periods that your new account is open, Discover will double all the miles you’ve earned and apply them to your account in the next billing cycle
The post Does The Discover it Miles Card Make Sense For You? appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
I receive compensation for many links on this blog. You don’t have to use these links, but I am grateful to you if you do. American Express, Citibank, Chase, and other banks are advertising partners of this site. I do not write about all credit cards that are available — instead focusing on miles, points, […]
The post The Best Credit Card Bonuses That Are Ending Soon appeared first on View from the Wing.
Qatar Airways offers global fare sales as often as JoS. A. Bank offers "the spectacular semi-weekly buy one get seven suits free" sale."
Qatar Airways' latest global fare sale is valid for bookings made through March 13, 2015, and for travel through July 10, 2015.
I've written in the past about how airlines publish some great premium cabin fares out of Colombo, Sri Lanka and Cairo, Egypt, though I think this Qatar Airways fare sale may just have the best value premium cabin tickets I've ever seen.
In particular, Qatar Airways has some amazing fares published out of Cairo, Egypt. Ordinarily Qatar Airways charges ~$2,000 for roundtrip business class between Cairo and the US, though now it's even cheaper.
The post The Best “Legitimate” Business Class Fare I’ve Ever Seen? appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
Over the weekend I suggested that Delta had backed off of their 21 day unannounced advance purchase requirement to obtain a domestic saver award. That was technically true, kind of. It so happens I picked the first destinations that came to mind to check and they happened to be among the handful of destinations where […]
The post Why the Value of SkyMiles is So Much Lower Than Other Currencies (and What Delta Can Do About It) appeared first on View from the Wing.
Yesterday I posted about the promotion that IHG Rewards Club is offering today for stays in Las Vegas. Through this flash sale, IHG Rewards Club is offering 50% off IHG Rewards Club redemptions at The Venetian and The Palazzo.
The basic details of the promotion are as follows:
-- Valid for 24 hours, starting at 12PM ET, Tuesday, March 10, 2015
-- Valid for stays between March 10 and December 28, 2015
While the sale was only supposed to go live at 12PM ET today, it started early.
The post IHG 50% Off Las Vegas Promotion Now Live appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
News and notes from around the interweb: Amtrak Supreme Court Case: We learn interesting things from the Supreme Court’s 9-0 decision in the Amtrak case. Despite being ostensibly a ‘for profit corporation’ it is in fact a government entity. Except in an emergency Amtrak has precedence over freight for use of tracks. Indeed, if a […]
The post How to Get Free Airport Wifi, Las Vegas Hotel Award Sale, Buy United Miles Less than 2 Cents Each appeared first on View from the Wing.
There's no arguing that American's single strongest international market is Latin America. While American is doing their best to catch up with the other legacies in Asia and Europe, they have a clear advantage in Latin America.
Heck, they fly to 10 destinations in Brazil. If I'm being perfectly honest, I can't even name 10 cities in Brazil.
While American seems to be able to make just about any route to Latin America work, I was a bit surprised when they announced they would launch new flights to Viracopos, Brazil, as of December 2014.
This included daily service between Miami and Viracopos, as well as 3x weekly service between New York and Viracopos. That Airport is about 50 miles from the Sao Paulo Airport, though admittedly with traffic there's quite a bit of distance between the two airports.
The post After Five Months, American Discontinues New York To Viracopos Route appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
There are countless Paul Bunyan figure's dotting the American landscape from the heyday of Route 66, but there are none quite like the smiling giant of Portland, Oregon which was custom built as a monument to Oregon's statehood.
Built in 1959, the statue deviates from the standard "muffler men" of the era which were generally molded fiberglass figures of the same type. The Bunyan that was erected in the Portland neighborhood of Kenton was a custom created figure made of concrete surrounding a metal frame. The 31-foot tall lumberman was created to mark the 100-year anniversary of Oregon's statehood as part of the Centennial Exposition and International Trade Fair. He holds a tall axe and is painted with a goofy grin plastered across his face. A far more permanent calling than any of the usual advertising giants that were created along Route 66.
This permanence shows through today as the figure continues to stand proudly on its street corner home. The figure has been refurbished a number of times over the years and still looks as bright and ready to live out some myths as it did in its conception. And judging by his slightly ridiculous expression, he is idiotically happy to do so.
IdeaWorks, best known for its fatally flawed annual award availability ‘study’, has a new report (.pdf) on non-travel rewards offered by loyalty programs. (HT: Today in the Sky) The study is sponsored by (and contains a full page ad for) Switchfly, a company that sells merchandise, experiential, and other non-travel rewards platforms to these programs. […]
The post The Craziest Things You Can Do With Your Miles — And Why You Don’t Want to Do Them appeared first on View from the Wing.
I’m a 33-year-old freelance journalist from Finland. I’ve been actively roaming the globe for almost 15 years, and have visited around 70 countries (so far). Currently, I’m spending the winter on the French island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean which suits me quite well. I have a bad beach addiction: over the past decade I’ve spent months every year on tropical beaches around the world. You could say I’m perpetually in search of the perfect beach. I’m also a New Yorker now (and surprisingly to many, New York actually has some pretty nice beaches, too!).
American has Flagship Lounges at select airports (including Chicago, London, Los Angeles, and New York), which are their international first class lounges. However, oneworld allows their Emerald members to use the Flagship Lounges, so they tend to get crowded.
Keep in mind that on most international American flights you’ll have a lot more Executive Platinum members than first class passengers (American doesn't even offer a first class product on much of their longhaul fleet)..
Interestingly American doesn’t have a Flagship Lounge in Dallas. It’s their biggest hub, so on one hand you’d think they would have one. But they don’t. And I’d guess the reason is because of how many Executive Platinum members there are.
The post The “Secret” American Admirals Club In Dallas — Have You Used It? appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
Despite his legacy of loud boozing and masculine myth-making the actual grave of famed author Ernest Hemingway is a flat, unadorned slab. However that has not stopped his fans from leaving booze and flowers to this day.
Hemingway was known for his passionate living, full of drinking, hunting, womanizing, and of course, writing. When he committed suicide in 1961, following in the tragic footsteps of his brother, sister, and father, all of whom also took their own lives, one might have expected his remains to return to his beloved cats in Key West, but instead they were simply lain to rest in a small Ketchum, Idaho plot.
In his final days, Hemingway was extremely ill and increasingly paranoid, rarely leaving his home near the woods of Ketchum. After his death, it seemed in line with his stoic persona that he be buried with little fanfare. His headstone is a long rectangle set into the grass bearing simply his name and the dates of his life.
Hemingway's fame is even greater today than it was during his life, bolstered by his blustery legend. Fans still make pilgrimage to his grave leaving behind coins, flowers, and half-drunk bottles of alcohol as tribute. There is no epitaph on the stone, but there are few people who would not already know of his enduring legacy.
