Starwood And Delta Air Lines Announce ‘Crossover Rewards,’ Joint Loyalty Program Benefits

by Grant Martin on

There’s news this morning of a new partnership called Crossover Rewards that’s forming between two juggernauts in the travel industry. Starting March 1, Delta Air Lines and Starwood will be sharing some benefits from their loyalty programs, meaning members of SkyMiles and Starwood Preferred Guest will soon be able to enjoy perks extended to their partner program without earning status on the other side.

Shared benefits vary by the level of elite status but will not include the entire spectrum of perks. Delta Platinum and Diamond members, for example, will be allowed a late checkout and free Wi-i, but will not get complimentary room upgrades. Similarly, SPG members will enjoy a free checked bag, priority boarding and priority seating, but will not get upgrades. In both programs, booked travel will earn points for each loyalty account.

The move aims to target loyalty members from a different market sector and hopefully entice them to bring loyalty to another program. Simply put, this is an easy way for each brand to target highly profitable and highly loyal customers at low risk, so it’s an easy partnership to forge.

This isn’t the first time that loyalty programs have teamed up for earnings. Hilton Hotels has been using a double dip program in HHonors for several years where loyal travelers can allocate a part of their earnings to an airline mileage account.

Unique to Crossover Rewards though is the elite benefits that are being shared. Under this program, even if the Delta Platinum has never set foot in the same city as an SPG property there are still benefits to be collected. It’s a great incentive to loyal travelers and a savvy move by Delta and SPG. Hopefully the other carriers and hotels catch on.

[Flickr photo via Ed Yourdon]

How to Find a Cheap Flight

by Grant Martin on

Another year has passed and the airline industry is still locked in its race to the bottom of quality and service. It now costs money to add anything special to your flight, from legroom to meals to Internet to in-flight television. Need to change your tickets? There’s a fee. Want to standby for an earlier flight? There’s a fee. On some carriers there’s even a fee to store your bags in an overhead bin, and others are removing bathrooms to make room for more paying passengers. Even Southwest Airlines, the king of no-hassle flying, recently announced that they’ll start charging fees for parts of their service.

No fee should surprise the frugal traveler at this point. The industry has adapted to à la carte pricing, which targets the casual and unwary traveler, and it’s up to the informed passenger to find the best priced and fee-free tickets. The good news is that these new fees have kept base fares low – it’s just a matter of finding the cheapest tickets. Here’s how you can get started in 2013. For 2012 tips, check out last year’s still very-relevant guide.

1. Cheat On Your Metacrawler
Oh, you use Kayak? Everyone does at this point, and though it’s hands down the best tool for quickly searching the widest spectrum of airline sites, it’s not the only authority. Sites like Momondo (based in Copenhagen) and Skyscanner (based in Edinburgh) often have access to different branches of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and can sometimes display completely different prices.

Here’s a recent example. A flight I recently booked between Munich and Berlin was coming up as $650 on Kayak via Airberlin.com. But Skyscanner pulled up availability on a site called Ebookers.co.uk for a cost of $560. Total savings by switching crawlers: $90.

2. Broaden Your Flexibility
The flexible tools on Kayak, Travelocity and Orbitz are great ways to find the cheapest availability, but if you want the best bang for your buck, check out the tools on ITA Software. The search tool, which is quietly owned by Google, has one of the most powerful engines for searching a huge range of tickets. You can select the number of days that you want to be gone, for example, and ITA will search for departures every day for a month. And that’s just in novice mode. In advanced mode, you can force connections in layover cities, call out specific carriers and integrate in a whole host of constraints geared towards finding the cheapest flight. Milepoint has an excellent thread on these commands.

The one drawback? ITA won’t actually book the flight for you. It’s not too hard to take its output and carry it over to Kayak or your local travel agent, but it adds an extra step that many don’t want to take.

3. Outsource Your Flight Searching
All of the searching in the world can help you find the perfect itinerary, but when the fares aren’t dropping, there’s always another solution: outsourcing. Flightfox is a service that allows you to fill in your ideal costs and constraints and then create a contest to identify the cheapest itinerary.

So you want to go to Paris from Chicago over the second weekend of February, right? But the cheapest fare on Kayak is $792. You can plug in your ideal price (say, $600) into FlightFox and then “experts” on the site dig through the myriad search engines to find you the best price. If someone finds an itinerary that matches your goals you can award them a fee from $24.

The best part about Flightfox, though, is that you can stipulate each requirement for your ticket. And that includes searches for mileage tickets. One of my recent requests was for a one-way ticket from Europe to New York City on a One World carrier departing on the 2nd of January for 20,000 miles. I had searched high and low on aa.com and over the phone, but a Flightfox user found a ticket from Madrid for me within two hours and my vacation was complete. For $24, that service was a godsend.

4. Stay Abreast With Sale Fares and Coupon Codes
One of the biggest misconceptions about airfares is that they’re constantly moving up, often with flashy headlines like “Spirit raises fares by $10!!!” If only it were that simple.

Airlines are absurdly competitive, and often, as soon as one carrier raises or lowers its price the others will follow suit to reduce that pricing advantage. It’s that competition that keeps costs from going through the roof.

One way that carriers have been working around that, though, is by using specialized fare sales and coupon codes. Just last week, Jetblue launched a weeklong flurry of fare sales up to 80% off when using a coupon code on their site. Virgin America and Southwest often do the same thing. By dangling those codes in front of passengers they convince consumers to use only their site when booking airfare – thus freeing you from the distraction of other competition out in the market.

It’s a good idea to keep up to speed with each airline and their respective fares when shopping for tickets. You can do that by browsing their respective websites, subscribing to their twitter feeds (a good list is here) and keeping up to date with newsletters from Travelzoo and Airfare Watchdog.

5. Manage your Mileage Program
There’s a tectonic shift moving loyalty programs around in the airline industry, and this year, budget travelers stand to lose precious ground. Delta Air Lines just announced that they’re changing the scope of their mileage program to factor in annual spend in addition to miles and segments flown. If you’re the budget traveler that scrapes together just enough miles for silver status or a mileage ticket on Delta, this is the year to consider other carriers. American and United are still regarded as the best airlines in the country in terms of mileage redemptions. Pick the one that best serves your home airport and give it a try.

6. Twitter Is Still King For Breaking Fares
Last year we pointed out that Twitter is the great aggregator of cheap breaking fares. Fact of the matter is, it takes time to put together blog posts and email newsletters and many brands are looking to gain clout in social media. To that end, they’ll often tweet fares before their email blast comes out, and those precious minutes can be the difference between a booked ticket and a missed deal. As suggested last year, make sure you follow and keep close track of @airfarewatchdog, @johnnyjet, @NYCAviation, @gadling, @globetrotscott and our very own @grantkmartin for any breaking airline news and fares.

Keep in mind, as well, that good deals don’t come up every day. Watching for airfare deals is like cultivating a Bonsai tree. It takes time, patience and a little bit of luck.

[Photo credit: Flickr user flyforfun]

Updated SeatGuru Brings New Features, Recommendations

by Chris Owen on

SeatGuru has been providing unbiased seat information to air travelers, removing some of the mystery when selecting an airline seat, for over ten years. Tapping a rich library of flier reviews and tips, SeatGuru has hundreds of airline seat maps covering nearly 100 airlines, enabling travelers to find the best seats before they fly. Now, SeatGuru has a new look, better layout and more content in addition to a new Guru Factor rating system.

The new easier-to-use site builds on that content and was designed with features to elevate the user experience including live flight shopping via TripAdvisor’s flight comparison engine, user provided photos.

Unique to SeatGuru, the new “Guru Factor” promises detailed seat comfort and onboard amenity information along with an overall recommendation of either “Love it,” “Like it,” or “Live with it” for your selected flight itinerary.

The Guru Factor considers the type of seat, seat pitch, width and recline, in-flight entertainment options, onboard amenities and TripAdvisor customer satisfaction ratings for airlines.”The new SeatGuru will give millions of flyers even more useful insight to help them plan and have the best flight experience possible,” said Bryan Saltzburg, general manager of TripAdvisor Flights and SeatGuru. “Access to our comprehensive seat and airline amenity information, new flight shopping functionality, purchase options, and trustworthy advice from fellow travelers will be infinitely valuable for those planning their next flight.”

SeatGuru’s re-launched site is up right now. Coming up, SeatGuru’s iPhone app will have the new seat map design, improved navigation and travelers can create a profile then submit comments and photos of their seat in real time.



[Photo credit- Flickr user ATIS547]

Aircraft Goes Missing In The Antarctic

by Kraig Becker on

A small aircraft carrying three crew members has gone missing in the Antarctic. The plane, which is operated by Kenn Borek Air, was flying from the South Pole to Terra Nova Bay when it went down, immediately setting off its emergency locator beacon. There is no word on the condition of the three men at this time.

The Twin Otter aircraft that the crew was flying is used to make routine supply runs and shuttle scientists, explorers and adventure tourists to various research stations and camps in Antarctica. The plane was on its way to an Italian base when it went down over a remote mountain range.

Poor weather in the area is preventing search and rescue teams from mounting any kind of operation at the moment. The region where the plane crashed is being hit with winds in excess of 100 miles per hour and heavy snow is expected to fall there as well. The locator beacon indicates that the aircraft is in a zone that is under New Zealand’s SAR jurisdiction, but Canadian, American and Italian teams are standing by to lend assistance once the weather improves.

Kenn Borek Air operates with a motto of “anytime, anywhere” and is known for flying explorers, adventurers and scientists to very remote corners of the globe. Their fleet of aircraft includes a number of Twin Otter planes, which are highly regarded for their versatility and reliability, even under the most challenging of circumstances. Kenn Borek pilots and crew are also very experienced professionals who are accustomed to dealing with bad weather in challenging environments.

The aircraft that went down is equipped with survival gear for extreme conditions and enough food and water to last at least five days. With a little luck, the crew managed to put the plane down safely and are now simply waiting for assistance.

[Photo Credit: Kenn Borek Air]

New Survey Reveals Travelers Think Grocery Stores Offer Better Loyalty Programs Than Hotels; Airlines

by McLean Robbins on

Loyalty has gone out the window, a new Deloitte survey finds. Only eight percent of survey respondents say that they always stay at the same hotel brand, while just 14% say they always fly the same airline.

“With heightened competition and eroding customer loyalty, hotels and airlines, now, more than ever, need to focus on enhancing and personalizing the consumer experience,” said Adam Weissenberg, vice chairman, Deloitte LLP and U.S. Travel, Hospitality and Leisure leader in a release.

Despite most hotel brands touting that loyalty and reward programs drive travel, these programs ranked low on the list of consumer influences – value and past experience were much higher priority items. That said, more than half of survey respondents (55%) ranked loyalty programs “high importance” for airlines and just under half (45%) ranked loyalty programs high importance for hotels.

Why? Perhaps it’s because travelers find that loyalty programs just don’t offer that much. Most consumers actually believe that grocery store loyalty programs offer more bang for their buck than their travel reward program of choice.

Deloitte researchers also suppose that travelers have become more pragmatic in light of the economy, seeking value for money, comfort and location when choosing a hotel, while on-time arrivals and departures, safety and value for money are the most important factors for choosing an airline. One thing is for sure – value rules. In this vein, half of survey respondents (49%) said that they have used flash sale sites, although most admit to booking directly (61% for hotel; 59% for air travel).

What does this mean for the consumer? Not much – yet. But it doesn’t bode well for the travel industry. Brands wanting to up their loyalty membership engagement should focus on those things that really matter to the traveler – experience and value – rather than perks that sound good on paper but offer no real benefit.

The web-based survey was commissioned by Deloitte and polled 4,000 hotel and airline customers, based on hotel stay and/or airline travel during the past 12 months.

[Image Credit: American Airlines]