I have to admit, I’ve almost collected all the editions of the Lonely Planet Magazine and the Conde Nast Traveller since they launched their India editions. However, I don’t read them much. This past month was a reminder why. While I’m still to write a full review of my visit to the Hilton Shillim, if you read this post, you’d know I had a troubled stay there. I was one of the first guests to make a reservation there, back in February 2013, when they were only a month old after opening. I know new hotels have problems, and so I made a reservation for July, hoping all the issues would have gone away by then. That was a blind…
Jet Airways sale: 7,00,000 domestic seats on sale till August 9, 2013
Yesterday, early morning, I heard that Jet Airways fares were at least 15% lower than the usual, and I wanted to kick myself in the backside for booking some tickets a few days earlier for the exact date on which the travel was to start. I couldn’t cancel those tickets and rebook without a penalty, and that wasn’t a pretty sight. Anyhow, rant over, turns out later in the day, Jet Airways was loading those fares for a sale they have been holding since yesterday (3 August, 2013) to 9 August, 2013. For this duration, Jet Airways is offering 7,00,000 seats on sale, with at least a 7 day advance purchase, as per the following slabs: Note that this is…
SPG offering a chance to get VIP hospitality at Indian Grand Prix
I know a lot of readers share my love for Formula 1 as well. SPG has been associated with F1™ as a sponsor of the Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula 1 team, and every year they try and bring a sweepstakes to a new race. Last year it was the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. This year it is the Indian Grand Prix, being held near Delhi between October 25-27, 2013. The winning SPG member’s experience will include: VIP Hospitality for two Two business-class return tickets Two-night stay for two at a Starwood hotel in Delhi, with complimentary breakfast Transfers between the race circuit and your hotel A very sweet prize I say, with a lot of value ($10,000 as per SPG).…
SPG offering Instant Gold [targeted]
For all my travels, I am not to be seen at SPG properties too often. I did stay with them enough in 2011 to be Gold all of last year (2012), but I was back to being base level this year. But Starwood thinks I am on-track to getting Gold Status this year, so they sent in a mailer this AM, with a targeted upgrade to Instant Gold, all the way to February 2015. Here is the link to the promotion, as embedded in that email. But since it was targeted, there may be different outputs for you, or none at all. Frequent Flyer Bonuses reports that he got a promotion for a 1 night free on 1 stay. There…
Avianca LifeMiles offering a 100% bonus on buy miles promotion
Avianca, one of the latest airlines to join the Star Alliance, is offering a 100% bonus on buying miles for miles bought through August 30, 2013. They last offered a similar promotion in April. If you choose to buy miles through this promotion, you basically get to buy miles at 3 cents per mile, for up to 75,000 miles. What you get eventually is 2x of the miles @ 1.5 cents per mile. Why is this program turning out to be important, and mentioned on a India-focused frequent flyer blog? Hey, they have a reasonable award chart for flights in the premium cabins. An India to USA roundtrip in business class on Star Alliance costs 130,000 miles plus some taxes.…
Citibank PremierMiles launches 50% more miles promotion
Citibank’s PremierMiles travel credit card just launched a new promotion offering 50% more miles on all spends between August 1 and September 30, 2013. This means, for airline ticket bookings, you could earn 15 PremierMiles/ Rs. 100, and 6 PremierMiles/Rs. 100 for all other spends. Your bonus PremierMiles, which will be credited after the close of the campaign, are capped at 25,000 PremierMiles per card registered, which technically means, up to Rs. 12,50,000 in regular spend or Rs. 5,00,000 in Airline spend. The promotion requires registration before August 31, 2013, and you can use this link to register for the promotion. You could register any day between today and 31 August 2013, and will receive bonus PremierMiles for your entire…
Jet–Etihad deal gets back on course
Jet Airways might as well become the the first of the Indian carriers to get a foreign equity investment, with the Jet – Etihad deal moving in the forward direction today after being stalled for a while. For a quick recap, Jet Airways agreed to sell 24% stake in the airline, majority stake in loyalty program JetPrivilege and its London slots to Etihad for a price of roughly $600 million. This deal, obviously, was subject to regulatory scrutiny and approvals. However, it turns out that there were way too many clauses where Etihad was going to take over control, including the move to migrate revenue management to Abu Dhabi. Also, Etihad was getting veto powers, so they had a say…
Air India won’t charge for seat selection
While all the carriers in India jumped on the opportunity to charge for seat selection to shore up their revenues, Air India seems to be opting out of the game, at least for domestic sectors. When fare unbundling was announced in India, all the carriers rushed to charge for seat selection. Indigo went ahead and wanted to charge you for every seat, including the middle seat. Then, the regulator realised its mistake, and limited the seats on a plane, which could be charged as special seats to 25% of the cabin. As per the news, this is their logic: The aviation regulator has directed that airlines can offer only up to 25% of seats for pre-booking. So at most, we…
Lounge Bites: July 25, 2013
Some quick updates from the world of travel around me: Neil Mills is leaving Spicejet, and that makes him the second airline CEO to go away from an Indian airline in 3 months after Nikos Kardassis moved out from Jet Airways. Media seems to be linking this to the potential funding they will receive, perhaps from Kuwait Airways. Have you ever had to cancel someone else’s First Class reservations to get your own client on the plane? These travel agents used to cancel/modify reservations for other passengers and get their own passengers on their way. They’ve now been arrested. If you miss your connection, it may now be the airline’s problem. Jet Airways learnt the hard way. Not travel related,…
Going RTW: Flight EY101 (AUH-JFK), Etihad, Diamond First
Introduction & Trip Index <Etihad First Class Lounge, Abu Dhabi Holiday Inn, LaGuardia Airport> Like I earlier mentioned, by the time I went through the secondary check gates (for US-bound flights), and reached the gates, boarding was already underway and I queued through a bunch of economy passengers to get through to the jetbridge. However, this was a good time to say hello to the A340. Abu Dhabi (AUH) – New York (JFK) Thursday, May 9 2013 Depart: 10:13AM Arrive: 04:41PM Duration: 14hr28min Distance flown: 6897 miles Aircraft: Airbus A340-600 Seat: 3A (First) Meal Service: Lunch, Snacks Once on board, however, everything was okay. at the gate, the purser greeted me, and asked one of…
Finally, you can buy lounge access on a one-off basis
One of the largest set of queries I notice on my blog is that for accessing lounges in India. While I know it makes life easy, airlines & airline alliances offer it to their elite customers only, and credit cards as well extend it to their card holders who hold certain varieties of credit cards. Here is the list of MasterCard and Visa cards based lounge access in India. For those who did not have lounge access via any of the other modes, membership to the Priority Pass or similar programs were necessary. These usually come complimentary along with credit cards, however, users would have to pay a $27 fee per guest per use, unless they had the highest version…
