I’ve been out of action for about 3 days now, chilling out in a pool at the Park Hyatt Goa, not drinking beer, but having some good wine and Long Island Iced Teas. Anyhow, time to be back in action. Before I left, I put out an announcement for the Delhi meetup which I am hoping to organise this Friday. I was told there is a technology issue in RSVP’ing. So, I’ve fixed that up, and you can RSVP here. Also, I am inviting suggestions for the place to organise this. I’m out of touch with the places to go in Delhi, and Q’BA at Connaught Place comes to mind. Any other suggestions? Update: I’ve firmed up Q’BA and blocked…
Delhi NCR Reader Meetup August 22, 2014
I’ve not been up to too many reader meet-ups in the past few months. However, it is time to get them re-started. I think Delhi might be a good place to start. I’ll be in Delhi next week, and I’d like to have some AvGeekish or not, travel and points and miles company to chat up with over drinks/dinner on the evening of August 22, 2014. Thank God It’s Friday. The venue is not decided yet, but I’m planning to keep it to Central Delhi or South Delhi, to make sure people can make it. And we start about 7:30-8:00 PM onwards. Pay for your own food and drinks, and we get you awesome company. To get me a fair…
I finally get my first Best Rate Guarantee claim. Yay!
With the penetration of the Internet, one of the enabling factors for the various travel providers such as hotels is their ability to cut out the middle-men, i.e., the travel agents. The only way the can afford to do this, or they claim to do this, is by promising that they are putting out the best available rates on their websites, and no one else is going to be lower. The hotel business does have a lot more commissions as compared to the airline business, which works on wafer thin margins for the agents now. Hence, the ability to discount for a travel agency is much more, and they do it all the time. What do I stand to lose,…
A great gesture from Park Hyatt Goa
We all live in an ever changing world, right? Plans change all the time, but usually for business travellers. Once upon a time I did not make it to NYC in time because I had a flat tire on my plane. I had to spend a few days after trying to convince the hotel about the fact they should not charge for no show in that case. A few days ago, I was tossing and turning, trying to talk myself out of a Hyatt Diamond Trial. And I signed up anyways. Like a lot of my readers or followers on Twitter may have known, I’m back at the Park Hyatt Goa Resort and Spa later this week. These guys are…
A few more days to book Marriott 3-for-2 in India
A few months back, I had posted about a very good promotion offered by Marriott in India, where you could get 1 free night for every 2 paid nights at a Marriott hotel in India. The free night could be used in the same trip, or you could come back to the same hotel later and use the voucher separately (however, on a 2 night stay). At a later point of time, I discovered that the promotion is not just valid via Expedia, but also on directly booking with Marriott on their website. You need to use the Code SPJ to be able to get this offer. Here are the rate rules: Booking window 1st April to 31st August, 2014…
Your Citibank PremierMiles International Spends bonuses have posted
Citibank PremierMiles Credit Card was offering a 2x bonus on International Spends during the period May 1, 2014 to June 30, 2014. Here, for all your spends in International Currencies during this period, you got double the miles. So, for buying air tickets outside of India, you got 20 miles per INR 100 instead of 10 miles per INR 100, and regular spend got 8 miles per INR 100 instead of 4. I did take part in this promotion, and made good use of it over my travels in these months, however I recently converted my Citibank PremierMiles to Prestige, and hence left a lot of these miles on the table. I think I left about 6000 miles behind, but…
Jet Airways going full service again
A few hours after Vistara, the new full service airline from Tata/Singapore Airlines showed its first look, Jet Airways made an announcement, which sort of made their life come full circle. A few years ago (7!), Jet Airways bought out Air Sahara, and rebranded them to run them as JetLite. Then, during the economic recession a few years back, they figured people did not want to pay the fares of a full-service carrier, so they used the same planes to offer JetKonnect, an all-economy offering which did not serve food. Then, some years later they took away the JetLite branding and called all their non-full service operations JetKonnect. Complicated much? Yes. This has created a brand manager’s nightmare with so…
Tata SIA unveils its brand identity: Vistara
Last week, I discussed about the newest full-service carrier in India revealing its identity today. Just about an hour back, they confirmed what we discussed last week in this post. Today, at Hotel Taj Mansingh in Delhi, the new airline which will launch within the year came up with its new identity. Here is the logo, which is in the shape of a 8-pointed star, which is actually a maths symbol, called Yantra. The airline livery was also unveiled today, will have the purple as its brand colours with golden edges to go along. Here is the tweet which showcased the livery. Welcome to the world of limitless possibilities. Say hello to #Vistara pic.twitter.com/1w4VlR9Qhi — Vistara (@airvistara) August 11, 2014…
Flight Review: AI191 Mumbai–Newark, Air India, First Class
A friend and regular reader of the blog, Parag Mehta, recently took a First Class flight on Air India recently to travel between Mumbai and Newark, and I requested him for a Guest Post for the blog, since long haul Air India is not on my radar in the coming days. He came back flying Etihad First Class, booked on 9W miles, but try getting two trip reports from a busy investment professional You can read my review of EY F here. Over to you, Parag! I was planning a trip to New York for the longest time, and when the time came I looked at my pile of miles, and decided to try Air India and Etihad for the…
Vistara: Is this the Tata-SIA airline brand name?
Tata – SIA has been very guarded about the name of their airline, which will be known on Monday, August 11, 2014. The branding exercise is work in progress, and the airline executives like to say they have many options, and Vistara is just one of them. However, Tata’s PR is maybe trying to follow an Apple style leak based philosophy, where they may be spreading the word out at the last minute. Anyhow, when I put out the information about the brand launch yesterday, a reader Arpit Jain tweeted back with the name, and it seems like there is already a domain registered with the brand name as well: @LiveFromALounge @RNTata2000 So this seems to be the Airline’s domain…
Tata – Singapore Airlines Joint Venture to announce brand name on August 11, 2014
Tata/Singapore Airlines seems to be making good progress in getting the airline off the ground by the end of this year. They are right now working on fixing up the identity of the airline, and just yesterday, did announce that they will outsource ground handling to Air India. Via Mint: Tata-SIA Airlines Ltd, the joint venture (JV) between Tata Sons Ltd and Singapore Airlines Ltd, is pursuing an outsourcing model for its operations in India and has tied up with state-owned Air India Ltd to execute parts of the strategy before its expected takeoff in October. Air India will manage ground-handling and engineering services for Tata-SIA, said two executives at the national airline who spoke on condition of anonymity. The…
