Best Strategies for Hotel and Airline Loyalty Programs

by Chris Owen on

Working loyalty programs for airlines, cruise lines, hotels or rental car agencies can be tricky business. Core benefits of one program are often overshadowed by promotional offers from another. Navigating our way around them in an organized manner to get the most benefit, then keeping track of what we earn can take a lot of time that few are willing to invest. Those who do not travel all that much often find themselves belonging to a bunch of programs with little value racked up on any of them. Still, the benefits of being a member can be worth our time, even for an occasional traveler, armed with the right strategy.

“To make sure you get more benefits, either in free flights or elite traveler perks, consolidate your miles into as few airlines as possible,” recommends iFly. “The more miles that you can build on one card, by using that airline or its partners, the faster you get your rewards.”

That strategy works for hotel chains as well and focusing on programs that offer more can help. Third-party web sites like FindTheBest rank airlines, hotels and others for us, consolidating benefits, perk thresholds and more to easily see which programs are a good fit for an individual’s travel profile.

“At FindTheBest, we present you with the facts – stripped of any marketing influence – so that you can make quick and informed decisions. We present the facts in easy-to-use tables with smart filters, so that you can decide what is best,”says FindTheBest on its web site.

Once points start coming in, another helpful website, AwardWallet, can make keeping track of them easy. AwardWallet is a free service that helps us manage reward balances, supporting over 400 loyalty programs. AwardWallet is also used by businesses to manage their corporate reward balances.

Loyalty pays off, but as new offers come along, getting in on them can be to our advantage as well. Another site, BoardingArea, features the latest offers for airlines, hotels and more.

Occasional travelers can also benefit from being a part of a loyalty program at work. Hotels are going after businesses with bonus programs that give top-tier benefits, normally reserved for heavy users to occasional travelers signed on under the company program.

Best Western, for example, has a new Business Advantage program where members get an across-the-board 10 percent discount off the hotel’s lowest rate, automatic elite-level membership benefits and a 10 percent bonus of all the points earned. When these programs initially roll out, expect extra value too.

A special bonus offer through April 8 gives Best Western Business Advantage participants who stay with the chain just one night during its Spring Promotion a free membership to Trip It Pro (normally $49), a personal program that helps business travelers keep track of their trips and their rewards.

Frequent traveler programs are a hot topic and relationships with hotel loyalty programs run deep, often causing members to lie, cheat or pose as someone else to get ahead said a survey Gadling reported on earlier this month.

In a survey by Starwood Preferred Guest respondents said they would try subterfuge to get upgrades and were not above telling little white lies to get a better hotel room or a hotel/airline travel upgrade,” Starwood said in TravelAgent. Nearly half of respondents claimed they would pretend it was their honeymoon to get an upgrade. 25 percent would pretend they had a family emergency and 20 percent would pretend to be someone important.

All they really had to do was have a strategy for their loyalty program participation that included joining the right program, keeping track of awards and taking advantage of other offers that may come along.



Flickr photo by Larry Johnson

We complained, they listened, legroom is on the way

by Chris Owen on

Airline passengers have complained about a variety of things over the years but some nagging topics rise to the top and just won’t go away, prompting airlines to do something about them. Eventually. Common to surveys of airline passengers and no big news to many frequent flyers, a great percentage of travelers said that limited legroom was one of their biggest gripes about air travel. When asked what airlines should offer to make the in-flight experience better, a high number lobbied for more legroom and requested roomier seats.

Delta Air Lines is in the process of making a $2 billion investment in its product and customer experience. In progress right now, Delta is renovating its Boeing 747-400 aircraft fleet to include full flat-bed seats in the Business Elite cabin and new “slim line” seats offering more personal space and individual in-seat entertainment throughout the Economy cabin.

“Our best customers want a full flat-bed seat with direct aisle access and the new Business Elite configuration our 747s provide,” Glen Hauenstein, Delta executive vice president told Travel News Daily.

Each 747 will have 48 Business Elite full flat-bed seats on the upper and lower deck of the aircraft with direct aisle access for every seat, a 110-volt universal power outlet, USB port and a personal LED reading lamp. Each seat also comes with a 15.4 inch wide screen video monitor with access to more than 1,000 entertainment options including more than 300 films, 88 hours of television programming, HBO and Showtime, 27 video games and more than 5,000 digital music tracks.

“The days of having to step over a sleeping customer in the seat next to you are over,” said Hauenstein. “These upgrades will make the 747 the premier aircraft in our international fleet and customers will immediately notice the improved experience.”

To date, more than one-third of Delta’s wide body international fleet have been upgraded and the airline’s entire wide body international fleet of more than 140 aircraft will be flying with full flat-bed seats in Business Elite by 2014.
Delta’s transition in Economy to a slim line seat provides customers with up to two inches of additional knee clearance. All seats feature a headrest with adjustable wings, height and tilt, USB power and a nine-inch touchscreen featuring personal on-demand entertainment, the same as BusinessElite.

Installing full flat-bed seats on Delta’s widebody international aircraft is a major component of the $2 billion investment Delta is making in its product and customer experience.

Customers also will see Delta’s investment in its more than 50 Delta Sky Clubs throughout the system, power poles at dozens of airports, mobile apps which include features such as baggage tracking and WiFi on more than 800 aircraft.




Flickr photo by Kentaro Iemoto@Tokyo

American workers protest, say company is blaming labor AgAAin

by Chris Owen on

Just a couple weeks ago, American Airlines revealed its restructuring plan, proposing to lay off 13,000 employees, terminating pensions and shutting down its Alliance base in Dallas-Fort Worth. Worried about losing their jobs, American employees are protesting.

“I understand it somewhat,” 24-year mechanic Greg Cooke, one of 300 American workers protesting at DFW this week told Star-Telegram. “But I don’t want to have to move again just to put another four years in before I retire. I’m tired of them taking and asking off of the backs of the employees.”

Protesters including pilots and members of other unions, showing their support, marched in front the DFW terminal holding signs saying “Blaming Labor AgAAin.”

Workers believe the airline needs to pay its pensions and called for an end to the “corporate greed” of executive bonuses in previous years.

American, meeting now with union leaders, said that the restructuring process is difficult but necessary and will affect all employee groups, union and nonunion alike.

“We are meeting with representatives from each union to negotiate the changes needed to make us successful, and are focused on reaching consensual agreements in the next few weeks,” spokesman Bruce Hicks said. “Our goal is to exit as a growing, profitable company that preserves tens of thousands of jobs.”


Flickr photo by wbaiv

Airport Carbon Accreditation program grows in Europe

by Chris Owen on

Europe’s Airport Carbon Accreditation program is now boasting fifty-five major European airports as members and making a significant dent in carbon emissions. The voluntary program has a four-level rating system that assesses and recognizes the efforts of airports to manage and reduce their carbon emissions to achieve carbon neutral operations for all emissions over which the airport has control.

“It is clearly helping to move European aviation onto a more sustainable footing,” European Union Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas told the Associated Press. “Genuine progress on greening transport … can only occur when the regulator’s work is complemented by citizens and businesses taking action of their own.”

Airports are changing airport vehicles to electric or hybrid power, installing solar panels to generate the airport’s own electricity, and involving the entire airport operation. Airlines, air traffic control, ground handlers, baggage handlers, catering companies, refueling trucks, passenger shuttle transport, airport maintenance services, emergency services, police, border control and retailers are all held accountable and encouraged to make a positive impact.

Aircraft engines are probably what we think of as major contributors to the carbon emission tally. At participating airports, specific taxiing techniques are used to reduce fuel burn. Apparently, common taxiing routes are not always the most fuel efficient, especially if the aircraft has to overcome steep taxiway elevations, sits still waiting for cross traffic to clear and/or many sharp turns.

Like some cruise ships, ground power is provided to parked aircraft. Instead of having them leave their engines running, aircraft plug in to land power, further reducing emissions and possibly making for more breathable cabin air quality too.

The 55 major European airports participating in the Airport Carbon Accreditation program account for over half of all passenger traffic from Europe’s 400 plus aviation facilities. That’s up from 43 accredited airports last year who achieved a reduction of 729,689 tons of greenhouse gases, equivalent to removing around 180,000 cars from the roads.

Participating airports include London’s Gatwick and Heathrow; Frankfurt; Munich; Amsterdam; Brussels; Zurich; Geneva; and others.




Flickr photo by Christoph Mendt

American Airlines to cut jobs, work remaining force harder

by Chris Owen on

Update: 3:33PM EST: American expects to lay off “400 pilots, 2,300 flight attendants, 1,400 management and support staff positions and 8,800 ground workers and mechanics.” source

American Airlines parent company AMR is expected to lay out the company’s plan for moving forward from bankruptcy today and the news is not good. American Airlines may cut between 10,000 and 15,000 jobs across the company, outsourcing aircraft maintenance in a bid to keep flying.

“The surprise is going to be big and it’s going to be bloody and it’s going to be nasty,” Vicki Bryan, a bond analyst at Gimme Credit LLC in New York, told Business Week adding 10,000 jobs “is not unreasonable.” The airline will have to cut as much as $2 billion to gain competitive labor costs, more than the $800 million AMR estimated, she said.

Reporting a $904 million loss in December, American employs about 74,000 full- and part-time workers plus 14,000 at regional carrier American Eagle.

In December, Gadling noted the bankruptcy made American “among the last of the legacy carriers to finally concede to ultra-competitive pricing and sky high oil prices. It’s a sad day for stockholders, but like many of the fallen giants they’ll pick themselves up, dust off and continue to operate — albeit a little bit leaner.”

In addition to job cuts, American probably will want employees to work more hours and pay more for healthcare, while compensation stays the same or increases slightly,William Swelbar, an aviation research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told Business Week.
“It’s clear we have to be a more nimble, flexible and efficient airline in order to compete successfully and be consistently profitable,” said Bruce Hicks, an AMR spokesman. “Before discussing publicly any of our proposed changes, we will first meet with the leaders of the unions.”

Union representatives have called a 4 p.m. news conference to discuss AMR’s plans.



[flickr image via ellenm1]