$99 One-Way Fares To Paris And 15% Off At Select Hyatt Hotels. The Best of the Rest For Friday, July 17, 2015
Don’t forget I’m giving away two months of your own free travel assistant to everyone.
The Best of the Rest is my effort to summarize all the travel/miles & points stories that interested me on a daily basis but didn’t have time to write about in length. On a daily basis, I try to keep track of roughly 100 different blogs (try being the operative word) that have interesting things for you and I to learn from. Some are passed along without comment, while I add my analysis to others. This is your shortcut to find out what’s going on in the travel world without having to read dozens of travel blogs to get all the best info.
As a side note, I’ve got some summer travel scheduled here and there, so the Best of the Rest (BOTR, as the cool kids would say) will take some breaks here or there for me to stop and smell the roses.
Here’s what I’m reading about today:
$99 one-way fares to Paris and Amsterdam are back on WOW Air. I missed the sale, but Deals We Like was nice enough to point it out. I’m determined to fly WOW to Iceland at some point.
One of my all-time favorite uses of Starpoints is bag, SPG Moments at the US Open tennis championship. I used a bunch of Starpoints to get my wife a once-in-a-lifetime tennis lesson with Andrew Agassi. It was awesome, and also came with seats to the men’s semifinals where we got rained on but thoroughly enjoyed.
A $5 per night hotel room tax in Georgia. Brian of the Gate details this one, and I have to shake my head a bit. On top of all the other taxes out there, an extra $5 on top of a $100 room night along with all the other taxes is high ($1000 a night not so much). It’s easy for state and local legislators to convince their constituents (and themselves) that these taxes will be paid by out-of-state residents so it doesn’t affect them.
Brian also has the scoop on the new train station at Helsinki airport, making it easier to get from the airport to downtown.
Join the discussion on how good/bad the most recent Delta changes are.
In other Delta news, they say they are canceling $4 billion in new plane orders because the pilots voted down a new contract. I still think they’re bluffing, at least to some degree. But, it will be interesting to see if they actually cancel the order. Airplane orders can be very fluid with Boeing and Airbus, with positions moving around on the calendar and from “options” to “firm”.
A complete list of oneworld Transatlantic routes, courtesy of Wandering Aramean. I find these very helpful when I’m trying to plan trips to Europe using miles. It can be very cheap to move around Europe given all the discount carriers, so getting to Europe is usually the key part of research, and it’s easy to forget all the possibilities.
The First Friday 3X dining bonus is going away as a Chase Sapphire benefit. This was especially valuable for those folks willing to load up on gift cards during First Friday.
15% discount on Hyatt stays in certain cities if you’re a member of their loyalty program.
A quick funny video on boarding gaffes by JetBlue.
Have you given your rights away to TSA yet?
Frontier’s middle seat gets better? Better enough, asks Heels First Travel?
Thanks for the post. I saved $10 on a reservation I had in San Diego in August.
I also agree with you on the Delta aircraft order. He’s only posturing right now. What’s driving me crazy about this story is the way it’s being reported. A google search shows that a significant number of the headlines state that the order was already canceled or abandoned, while Anderson only said the orders will be canceled.
Charlie, had a feeling you would weigh in on that one! No way they cancel the orders that quickly. Only thing I wonder is I think those are the used Embraers they’re buying from Boeing that Boeing got on a trade from someone else. I think they’re getting a sick deal on those, so don’t expect Anderson is going to want to give that up.