A couple of weeks ago, I started up a giveaway of free AwardWallet accounts. Like I wrote in that post: I then discovered AwardWallet after this, which is quite the king of the miles & points tracking websites for me. Some of the top reasons for using it: It allows me to track the mileage balance of my entire family using one single login, in one single place. Not to forget, it keeps me abreast with the expiry details of the award miles/points as well, helping me use them rather than lose them. All you have to do, is to enter your username and password the first time. They support 562 different loyalty programs out there, including air, hotel, car…
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Get the free Hilton Gold status for your stays in Hilton across India
The Hilton HHonors Gold status is one step below the Hilton HHonors Diamond status, but has most of the same benefits as the Diamond status. Here is a quick recap of Hilton Gold benefits: The key benefits are really the space available upgrades which can be good at some hotels, (I was upgraded to a Junior Suite in Washington DC once), and the complimentary breakfast, which is again hit and miss (some hotels offer a full breakfast as well, some would only do bread and juice – as in, real continental breakfast) Hilton has been offering a free upgrade to Hilton Gold for people who have a Visa Infinite credit card, residing within Asia Pacific, Middle East, Africa or Central…
Review: Flight 9W227 (BRU-BOM), Jet Airways, Premiere (A333)
Introduction Check-in: Clipper Lounge, Terminal 2, Mumbai Airborne: Flight 9W228 (BOM-BRU), Jet Airways, Premiere (A332) Hotel Manhattan, Rotterdam Hotel Sheraton Brussels Airport, Brussels Check-in: Jet Airways Lounge, Brussels Airborne: Flight 9W227 (BRU-BOM), Jet Airways, Premiere (A333) As I arrived at my gate, the familiar long boarding queues were visible. Airlines from India, in any part of the world, do not follow a systematic boarding procedure and this means everyone is crowding out the gate to get on the flight first. Once I could find my way through the crowd on the plane, I turned left and took my first steps onto the new business class cabin of Jet Airways to head towards seat 1K. Like I’ve mentioned earlier, Jet Airways…
FlyingBlue promo reminder: 30K miles biz Mumbai/Europe or 55K miles Mumbai/USA (or back!)
Last month, I had posted about the promo awards that the Flying Blue program of Air France/KLM, where you could potentially get a one-way ticket in business-class cabins to Europe for 30K miles (instead of the normal 60K), and to the USA for 55K miles (30K Mumbai – Europe, 25K Europe – USA –> two separate awards). These promotional awards, are bookable only for the months of March and April 2013. Availability looked swell even at this point of time, with even up to 6 seats available on some dates in the business cabin. So, there you go with about 3 more weeks to make use of this wonderful opportunity. It might not be the best business class in…
Yatra.com promocode for Rs. 1300 off x4 for Citi credit cards in India
Apart from the collaboration with Citibank PremierMiles to offer 10 PremierMiles/Rs. 100 for travel reservations made via Yatra.com, Yatra also has another promotion ongoing for Citibank credit card holders, for cards issued in India. For the month of April 2013, the first 500 travel reservations made everyday on Yatra.com and paid for with a Citibank credit card (issued in India), can use promotion code CITIYAT and take Rs. 1300 off their reservation. If you are not one of the first 500, you still get Rs. 250 off for one-way flight bookings, Rs. 500 off for return flights and Rs. 500 off on hotel reservations. And not just once, this code is valid four times per card, which means if you…
Yatra.com is now a PremierMiles 10PM earn partner
In its bid to continue to be the best travel credit card in India, Citibank is priming up the PremierMiles credit card again. After adding GoIbibo.com as an earn and burn partner last week, Yatra.com is the next to come on board. As per a new notification on Yatra.com, all flight, hotel and holiday bookings made with your Citibank PremierMiles credit card on their website will earn 10 PremierMiles/Rs. 100 spent, in line with the regular PremierMiles earning rate available on directly booking with the airlines itself. To start with, the promotion is valid till August 31, 2013. Also, it looks like Citibank is putting in more efforts in this card. There should be a hotel tie-up in place soon…
Lufthansa ties up with Axis Bank for Miles & More co-branded card
Lufthansa had a partnership with IndusInd Bank for the Miles & More co-branded credit card, something they got as a legacy of IndusInd inheriting Deutsche Bank’s credit card portfolio in India. However, this partnership is coming to an end on 30th June 2013, as per a new notice put out on IndusInd website. Like I mentioned above, the new partnership for the LH Miles & More credit card is materialising with Axis Bank. As an outcome of this, if you don’t switch to the new credit cards, your earlier earned miles on the IndusInd M&M cards start expiring. Axis is bringing out their M&M card in two variants, the M&M World Select & the M&M World card. The Select variant…
Amex releases a rather small list of partners for their Jet co-branded CC
American Express’ recently launched co-branded credit card with Jet Airways, has a few new benefits from the Platinum tier of American Express, such as the Platinum Concierge service and access to the American Express Platinum Lounge in Mumbai and Delhi Airports. However, one benefit of the Amex Platinum card which was not offered initially is the about 300 long list of 10x partners. These are places where you could get a nice boatload of MR points. This used to be a feature of their Kingfisher First Platinum Credit Card which was recently withdrawn. Now, however, a very very small list (PDF) has just popped up on the American Express website for upto 20 JP Miles/ Rs. 100 spent. I really…
I seem to have found the root cause of Air India’s frequent flyer mess
Yesterday, I wrote about how disappointed I was with the Air India frequent flyer program. It did not stop there. I went about doing some digging into the whole affair. Air India has outsourced the entire management of their frequent flyer program to a South African loyalty management company called LoyaltyPlus, to the extent that the program is hosted on external servers and not Air India’s own. Now, I assume here that a loyalty solutions company helps draw up a program and run the program and would be very involved with the on-going affairs at Flying Returns. So, I decided to have a look at their roster of clients, and it turned out that I could not find one top-notch…
A Grand Giveaway of free AwardWallet Accounts
Literally! A frequent question asked always is how to keep track of your multiple accounts which one has over multiple frequent flyer and loyalty programs. There are tonnes of options out there, but I usually go with AwardWallet, which is perhaps one of the best products out there. I first flirted with MileageManager for a year, paying the $15 fee, but updates were not as dynamic as I expected and not all the programs I worked with or was a part of, were included. I then discovered AwardWallet after this, which is quite the king of the miles & points tracking websites for me. Some of the top reasons for using it: It allows me to track the mileage balance…
Is Air India Flying Returns the most miser frequent flying program?
Last year, I spent some time investigating the Air India frequent flyer program “Flying Returns”. At that point of time, I kind of started to appreciate the program a bit, because they finally had some structure to it, and they have much better availability over other Indian airlines. Earlier, the tier hurdles were not clear and no one had a clue as to who got their top tier and who did not. Seemed like in the process of getting ready for Star Alliance membership, they came up with a process because they needed to. However, this post on FlyerTalk seems to have raised a few valid pointers about how the program still sucks, and in my own personal experience, that…
