I know I’ve been missing in action the past ten days or so. A few things have been happening and I am fully geared up to make it up to you! First and foremost, I had a little burglary in my home a few days back. Yes, right in my home, not on the road, not in a different city. The only things gone were my wallet, my BlackBerry (a fairly new one!) and a portable hard drive. I spent almost a full day with the cops, who did not do much but give me a missing items report to help me get a new SIM card. So, it took a few days of calling the banks to get myself…
Getting a free stay out of an IHG stay!
With my personal travel patterns, I don’t have much in way of loyalty to a particular hotel chain these days. Yet, I try and concentrate my stays between the IHG hotels, Starwood and Hilton HHonors due to applicable status benefits there, and also because I have reasonably large balances in these programs. Just this past weekend, I was in Vienna for about 36 hours, and I found a reasonably priced Holiday Inn property which was walking distance from the city centre. I decided to throw in the towel to participate in the IHG Big Win promotion, and this sounded like a good deal to participate and get some inroad into cracking my personal promotion. However, there was also more possible.…
2,500 JPMiles for enrolment with JetPrivilege
Jet Airways is offering all new members who sign up using their recent link, a sign-up bonus of 2,500 JetPrivilege miles. JetPrivilege does bring up this promotion from time to time. Points usually post instantaneously or within a few hours. While the duration of the promotion is unspecified, only new members should enrol using this link, because existing accounts won’t get any bonus miles to enrol again, and opening a new account is useless for you since you’re allowed only one JP account under the terms of the program. Mileage credits are usually instantaneous, or within a few hours. So, if you intend to be crediting miles to JetPrivilege for flights on Jet Airways or other partner carriers, this may…
Uber launches in Bangalore, try it out with Uber Credits
Uber, the SF-based super-premium car aggregator, recently launched in India, with their first Indian outpost being Bangalore. They’ve been testing their service since the past month or so, and now rolled out in the city. At the heart of the Uber experience is your smartphone, which you can flick out, and order for a car in the neighborhood using the Uber app (available for iPhones and Android), and the car will turn up at your door within a few minutes. In Bangalore, they’ve started with the Original Uber, which means a Mercedes E220 or an Audi A6 or another similar car. The pricing during the test phase was a base fare of Rs. 150 and Rs. 20 per kilometer, which…
My botched up experience applying for the SBI AI Card
After launching a good product, it seems like SBI Cards is running their SBI Air India card just the same way like ICICI Bank did with the Jet ICICI Cards last year. I placed a request for an appointment for the card in the first couple of days it launched. I never heard back from the SBI Card team for an appointment till the first 10 days or so. And then, I started getting all sorts of calls, emails and messages on my own post, with SBI Cards asking me for information. I replied to them on email, on FlyerTalk as well. No one bothered to respond. And then, I messaged a friend who worked for their company. I was…
Blogging really is a thankless job!
No, its not my job actually. I have a full time position like I’ve talked about before, and I write this blog for the love of miles & points, and to help readers in a relatively new market to the game, like India, realise the potential of travel with loyalty benefits, and tips and tricks of the game. Now, from time to time I have giveaways when an arrangement is made with various companies, and I really want all of you to have fun out there with these promos. I’ve had one reader in the past who did not receive something I promised, and I am trying to source the same thing again to be able to send it to…
An attempt with trying to book 0 JPmiles tickets
A couple of days back, I was in ticket booking mode, with a mix of work and play tickets being booked up. Now, while I usually book up tickets on revenue rates only, to make sure I am closer to requalification for the year, this one time I wanted to look up some reward tickets as well. And to my surprise, this is what turned up: Not bad at all, I thought. It said 0 JP Miles all over. I was already making a mental map of the places I could be visiting with this! So I tried a few random segments and it was all turning up like this, and I was convinced there was a system glitch somewhere.…
PointsHound giving away 1,000 Miles via referral through October 4
Earlier this week I wrote about PointsHound. They are a third party hotel booking website, which give you miles to book your hotel rooms with them. My earlier post talks about their tie-up with Jet Airways, and how you could earn more miles. Now, there is a new promotion valid till October 4 as well, where the referrer and referee both get 1000 miles for making a hotel reservation with PointsHound. Now, this is over and above the other miles you’d earn using the website for your reservation. My link is here. You could also post yours in the comments section. For me, PointsHound became really useful now because it has JetPrivilege on the list, which is my preferred mileage…
Earn JPMiles to book hotels with PointsHound + special promotion
PointsHound is a 11 month old website now, which offers mileage currency to book hotel rooms via their website. There is a tier system in place, where if you book 1-5 nights, you get a certain no. of miles, for being a Level 1 member. Once you move up to Level 2, you get the ability to earn a higher no. of miles per night, and if you go right up to level 3 (20+ nights booked), you get into the highest tier where you get the most number of miles per night. Most of the times, you’d have to give up the ability to earn status/elite benefits in your hotel program when booking via a 3rd Party. However, PointsHound…
Get your ITC Hotel stays at 10% discounts
ITC Hotels vouchers, which can be redeemed against stay/food at participating properties are available for 10% off on GiftCardsIndia.in. Using these vouchers is totally akin to using cash, and the opportunity here is to save 10% on your booked rate by acquiring these vouchers for the stays. Like you can see, the Rs. 5000 vouchers are available for Rs. 4,500 and so on, and the vouchers are valid for 6 months from the date of issue. The only extra is Rs. 50 for shipping the vouchers. Also, since this is usable as cash, the full benefits of SPG will apply as well at properties which participate in the Starwood program. Here is the list of participating properties: Agra : ITC…
Review: Pause Lounge, Bangalore Airport (Domestic)
One of my many gripes with Bangalore’s Airport in Devanahalli, apart from the distance, has been the lack of a lounge for the longest time for Jet Airways elites. Hey, they used to give you food coupons to eat in the Food Court, not appreciating that the lounge was not about the food but about the environment. This got fixed last year when Kingfisher evacuated from Bangalore Airport, and this place was made the Pause Lounge, accessible via select credit cards and for 9W elites & Business class travellers. I haven’t been able to sample this lounge for my few trips to Bangalore all this year, so this was my first time when I actually built in time into my…
