TravelBloggerBuzz

An eclectic journey through the Travel Miles/Points blogosphere

More on AA Devaluation & Marriott Starwood Merger, Hilton Promos, China From Above

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We have more fun on the AA Devaluation & Marriott Starwood Merger & all the corporate BS it will unleash upon us, more Hilton Promos, Fly over China & more!

 

TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order!

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The ever evolving TBB blog. After finally finishing the Hong Kong trip report after almost a year (wow!) I am going to try harder to limit these Buzz posts to no more than ten items per post. Priority on top would always be the miles/points related news you need to know and then I will fill it in later at night with enough items I am bookmarking all along to complete the ten items per post. I need to get a handle on the time spent on TBB as the plastic days are numbered…Thanks for understanding.

You can earn 2,500 Hilton HHonors points at any stay of two nights or more through December 31, 2015. It stacks with the regular double/triple points promotion.

Loyalty Traveler continues covering the AADisadvantage devaluation better than most bloggers. He has a devastating table showing the EQM and RDM changes to AAdvantage and Oneworld airlines effective January 1, 2016. Is loyalty dead? Vote with your dollars away from these companies, be a free agent like me!

Lazy Traveler gets it “American has SKYMILED AAdvantage: Now What?”

Lets now switch to the other hammer that fell last week Not to keep pounding but you need to read this post at The Gate paraphrasing the Marriott CEO announcement to what he really meant, it is hilarious! A few excerpts for your entertainment below:

This will be particularly true for our loyalty programs. The top priority for us as we come together is to line our pockets with as much of your money as possible and ignore the concerns and preferences of our pesky guests, who do not deserve our attention at all and have been getting away with murder all of these years.

To state the obvious, devaluing points or member benefits is the way to increase our wealth while getting rid of those who leach off of our program so that we can attract real business customers who can afford high room rates without some stupid loyalty program to give them incentives.

We plan to destroy whatever is left of our loyalty programs that values us instead of our guests by concentrating on keeping the worst aspects of both of them and eliminating whatever was positive about them; and then we plan on deceiving our guests by telling them about all of the enhancements that they are about to enjoy as we blatantly lie through our teeth.

MileCards shows how to have a shot in finding these elusive Cathay Pacific First Class awards. Good luck, you will need it. Reminder: This one-way award goes from 67,500 to 110,000 AA miles on March 22, 2016. It blows, BIG TIME. Seek revenge, get an Arrival card with my links, go crazy MSing it and then book like a cool cat any flight you want and get reimbursed, you heard it here first 🙂  #winning

The 7 New Wonders of the World by AFAR. Dominated by Petra and Machu Picchu.

This is the trippiest BMX video ever. Amazing skills and film making, wow!

Faulty Assumptions. Another great personal finance blog post by A Wealth of Common Sense.

China From Above. There are some incredible images here, wow!

Boats set out from a port as the seasonal fishing ban ends in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, on September 16, 2015
Boats set out from a port as the seasonal fishing ban ends in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, on September 16, 2015. Photo credit: Reuters

 

And I leave you with this…

https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/shirk-chicken-8.jpg
No BS style, I like it! Found here

 

BREAKING NEWS: My wife found me business class award space to Narita so I booked me a ticket with my fast devaluing AA miles Detroit to Dallas/Fort Worth to Narita. 50k AA miles and $5.16 taxes/fees. I have three nights in Narita and then I am off to Hong Kong in Cathay Pacific Business Class. I have about 22 hours in HKG so I will need a hotel and then leave the next evening to Kuala Lumpur on Malaysia Airlines business class for 30k AA miles and $42.70 in taxes/fees. Bless the nice AA phone agent who stuck with me, he was awesome. Be kind to them, they are just working there and really do try their best.

 

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TBB
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com

 

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Comments

  2. projectx says

    Silver.

    Love the rant by The Gate. That whole Marriott CEO video was the biggest pile of turds I’ve seen in a while.

    • TravelBloggerBuzz says

      I am starting to rethink this….How do you combine 30 different brands?? I think they may leave SPG going separate for a little while and it will take time to “fold” it into Marriott…I think the first brands that go are the Sheraton, Four Points by Sheraton and W.

      #tobecontinued

  6. snoptro says

    More breaking: OMAAT reporting live in First Apartment to JFK. TPG reporting live in The Residence from JFK. George, your turn to one-up. Royal Palace class from Pluto perhaps? The humanity!

    • TravelBloggerBuzz says

      And MMS killed another deal and was called a f***ing moron by a reader.

      Why do so many people read and click these bloggers is beyond me!

      In the meantime, FTG says newbies should get the Arrival card. Wow, can you believe it???

      • Old Man Ingy says

        Of course it is a good card for newbies. NO annual fee first year and 40,000 points for a cheap spend. Meet the spend and put it in the sock drawer just like all the rest of us.

        That makes more sense to me than saying your site is AD FREE right next to your ads for Amazon, RoboForm and creditcards.com

        • JamaicanReefer says

          Are you trying to teach a newbie to dump the card before the annual fee or are you trying to say it is easy to spend $3k for a newbie? Or are you trying to say to newbie it is ok to pay the annual fee because if they spend x thousand it will even itself out. Hell you are a comedian. A link to Amazon and an Ad on Amazon are two different things. Same thing like a good and bad card for a newbie.

          • TravelBloggerBuzz says

            What? Thought he was trying to sell some more plastic.

            Here is the difference…

            Bloggers, who have not totally sold out, blog and try to add to readers’ lives (by either entertainment, education, inspiration, etc.) and their content is NOT materially affected by what pays them (unless they involve a word about a body part lol).

            The pumpers think 24/7 how to sell more product and what they blog about is directly affected and altered by what plastic products are on sale and what quotas are needed to be met. In fact, the worst just exist to pump their gullible readers (who are intentionally kept in the dark Delta mgt style) and they are all listed at the TBB Blogs to Ignore which exists as a PSA to improve humanity and world understanding.

            I say tomorrow they pump the CSP again 🙂

            And on and on it goes

  7. ABC says

    How do you tell your family members that you will be have to travel all alone on CX?
    I only see one award seat in 1st class.

  8. bluecat says

    Anyone get a kick out of The Points Guy’s post about how he and 5 other bloggers “predicted” the AA devaluation? He basically did a post that analyzed how close each prediction was to actual, and then crowned himself *winner*. #Winning!

    I was the only poster there for a while with my comment “Totally narcissistic post” which he eventually took down. #VivaCensorship!

  9. Andrew says

    TheCashGuy flying residence and OneMilePerDollar flying apartment LOL
    Are they gonna hang out together?

    • TravelBloggerBuzz says

      I doubt they will hang out together but I am sure their staff will be making up some blog posts how to fly for free lying flat drinking Krug and eating caviar…you know the drill, get the CSP and every other card!

  10. Andrew says

    BTW, that fishing chinese picture is simply amazing.
    Pretending they are “protecting” fish (that’s what the ban is for, right), but can you imagine
    one single fish surviving this???

  12. TBBBreakingNews says

    So there is a Black Friday sale out already by Delta. They advertise RT awards in selected cities for just 20k Skydrachmas…so I just spent half an hour trying to make something work and the best I could do was 27.5k lol. Typical criminal operation. I would have booked but would rather not have a 6 am flight on a Sunday #ludicrous

    But some may work for you!

    https://www.delta.com/content/www/en_US/shop/deals-and-offers/north-america/pre-black-friday.html

    • TravelBloggerBuzz says

      Citicards being switched to World Elite status counting as a different product and can be had again. There is a FT and Reddit thread. Don’t worry about it. It’s been out for a while and only one blogger would post stuff like that to generate clicks. Consider it done.

  16. TravelBloggerBuzz says

    Reader question, please comment!

    >>>>>>>isn’t the best combo is to get Premier first, then get CitiGold (for the TYP bonus), and then Prestige (for lower fees) to optimize the cost-benefit?

    • snoptro says

      No one answered? Well, I think it makes little difference what order you follow. What does make a difference is getting Prestige’s $250 airline credit before end of 2015, and then 2016. So don’t miss that window.

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