Advice

Category Archives for Advice.

The Novice Perspective: Choosing credit cards to fuel the travel passion

Shipra is my fiancée and the first of contributors at the blog. She has worked with one of the largest airline conglomerates in the world, and is now based in Mumbai. Shipra has lived, worked and travelled across 4 continents. We travel often enough, together and separately. These are her perspectives, as she gets used to the world of business and leisure travel and our hobby! The Novice Perspective: Initiating my Fiancée to Points & Miles The Novice Perspective: Getting used to Airport Lounges The Novice Perspective: Benefiting from hotel loyalty programs The Novice Perspective: Maximising hotel promotions is a fun game! If some asked me this question a year ago, “When choosing a credit card, how would you decide…

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5 reasons why it is a good time to be earning airline miles in India right now

I often get asked about how to score a mileage ticket, but I don’t get asked as often about how to earn the miles. People think miles are earned only by flying, something that has changed over the years. Miles can be earned with so many activities, and every activity counts towards your goal for that reward ticket. So stay with me for a moment and let me build my argument. As someone who has been travelling for a lot of years (maybe not as long as some of you who have been flying since I was in my diapers!), I’ve noticed a genuine shift in the way airlines have moved from rewarding loyalty to withdrawing all the perks to…

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My oops moment: booked a wrong ticket!

Just a couple of days back, I was watching a rerun on Up In the Air, and there is a part where George Clooney a.k.a. Ryan Bingham says I do not do anything till it does not affect my mileage balance And I think just the next morning I felt inspired to take on some more on my plate. I got a call requesting me to book a ticket for someone’s international travel, since they knew I could get them a good deal within a short amount of research, and this one was willing to let me book it on my credit card. WOW! The next thing I know is a time crunch, and between meetings and all of a…

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Gone fishing!

Not! BoardingArea, my blog network and host, is going t be down for scheduled maintenance today (10 PM Mountain Time on Thursday, 20 June 2013) and come back up within the next 36 hours or so. We’re doing some exciting changes at the back-end, and due to this, I won’t be able to post anything for you for this timeframe, or you to be able to comment on the blog. If there is something you want to know, you could tweet me at @livefromalounge, or mail me at aj@livefromalounge.com. In the meanwhile, I am very excited to meet some of you in July, so if you’re in Mumbai or will be in Mumbai, do sign-up for the meetup here. I’ll…

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Getting around the annoying convenience fee on Indian airlines

I know I know, all of you are very very annoyed by the new transaction/convenience fees that have been out there from various airlines for a while now. Even though the Supreme Court of India recently ruled that airlines could not charge a separate transaction fee over and above the displayed fares, they have renamed it CONvenience fee and continue to charge this fee, even those who announce proudly, like Indigo and SpiceJet. Declaration Actual Travel Agents and online travel agents have been, on similar lines, popping up a booking fee right before payment is made, which makes you believe through the booking process that you are booking tickets with a x value, but it turns up to have a Rs.…

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