During a period of maintenance to the Hilton Honors website I was able to secure prices that beat the Dynamic Pricing engine. Was this a case of luck, a new award pricing hack, or just bad technology? If you...
United Airlines’ Limited Global Services Challenge
Status challenges exist to steal business from competing airlines and hotel chains. United Airlines offers their Global Services with unpublished requirements and does not allow status matches to the exclusive tier, but it appears they now offer a challenge...
Terrible Panama City Airport Taxi Touts
We recently spent the better part of a week in Panama City, Panama. We loved it and we can’t wait to go back! That being said the one black eye of our trip was upon our arrival, transportation leaving...
Iceland’s Route Expansion Is Good For Everyone
Over the last few years trans-Atlantic routes have gotten cheaper thanks to discount carriers and the legacy airlines that compete with them. Norwegian has helped from not only Scandinavia but also England, Ireland, Italy and Spain to lower flight...
Flying in 2018: The Best of Times
Like Charles Dickens’ famous opening line, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” In a counter post to one previously published today, I can prove that flying in 2018 is the best it has...
Flying in 2018: It Was The Worst of Times
Like Charles Dickens’ famous opening line, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Flying in 2018 is the worst it has ever been, from poor customer service to Basic Economy, being nickel and damned...
The Worst Kind of Hotel Guest
We have all encountered them, we hope never to aspire to be them but when we encounter them we know instantly: they are the worst hotel guest ever. This one comes to you from The Confidante, a Hyatt property...
Review: The Confidante (Hyatt Unbound Collection)
While my wife and I have certainly been Hyatt loyalists over the years, we have started to drift away given some of the new changes to their loyalty program, World of Hyatt. Thus the Confidante in Miami is our...
World of Hyatt Program Enhancements Announced, On Par With Competitors
World of Hyatt has been going through changes over the last 18 months with the retirement of Hyatt’s Gold Passport and the rollout of World of Hyatt to the change in management of Hyatt loyalty itself. Some changes were...
Passing on Sofitel Because of Novotel
Hotel loyalty and its associated perks are a cornerstone to the life of any road warrior. Hotel chains can’t afford to offer full service hotels in saturated or smaller markets, but likewise, they also can’t afford to ignore the...
British Airways Terrible Bungling of a Diversion
A couple of years ago my family took a trip to Delhi, India and I wrote this review but thought I had lost it forever. After a recent discovery I decided to post the tale. To-date this is the...
Hyatt On The Bund’s Xindalu – Shanghai
One of three restaurants at Hyatt on the Bund is Xindalu, a Chinese kitchen. I asked Neil at check in where a good place to go for Xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) near the hotel. He stated the hotel restaurant. Usually...
When Dynamic Award Pricing Goes Wrong
Increasingly loyalty programs are shifting from a fixed-price redemption for their loyal members to dynamically priced awards. This can mean cheaper prices for shorter distance flights where airlines need to fill seats and costs are low, but it can...
Review: Park Hyatt Shanghai (Suite)
Considering that we do not yet know if, when and where we will go on vacation over the holidays this year I found myself looking back in the way-back machine and remembering our time at the Park Hyatt Shanghai....
EU261 Is No Longer Fair
On a recent mistake fare trip to Manchester our return flight experienced a substantial mechanical delay which resulted in our eligibility for compensation under the EU261/2014 regulation. While we certainly pursued the compensation and will continue to until it...
Review: Radisson Blu Edwardian Manchester – Suite
When we booked our mistake fare to Manchester we wanted to pick our hotel very carefully. After living in the city for several years, we didn’t have much opportunity to try out area hotels. The Radisson Blu Edwardian in...
Making $1500 Flying A Mistake Fare
We booked a mistake fare back to England to see friends and visit the Christmas Markets. Mistake fares always present outsized value for the product sold, but on this occasion we got all of our money back and profited...
Putting the ‘Mistake’ in Mistake Fare
I posted some time ago about the tremendous deal/mistake fare that was offered by Air Transat from several airports in Canada to several airports in Europe. I wasn’t sure at the time if this was just a great deal...
Review: Ritz-Carlton Shanghai Pudong – Suite
As part of my United 1K Challenge I headed to Shanghai for a quick status run. I wanted to stay in some new properties as I had previously stuck to Hyatt and hadn’t spread my wings beyond the brand....
Review: OneJet Airways Milwaukee to Omaha
This summer I had the chance to try out OneJet from Pittsburgh to Louisville. I loved the service but had a lot of questions about the business and reached out to the CEO. I noticed that they had just...
