News in brief:
Chinese threaten to disrupt the Starwood / Marriott merger, frequent flyer community celebrates
There was potentially good news for anyone concerned about consolidation in the hotel loyalty space yesterday.
A Chinese-led consortium has submitted an all-cash offer for Starwood, the St Regis / Le Meridien / Sheraton / Westin / W / aloft etc hotel group. At $76 cash per share, it is a substantial increase on the Marriott bid which currently stands at $63. Because Marriott is mainly paying for Starwood with shares, there is also downside risk attached to that $63 price.
When the Marriott deal was first announced, I wrote about why I felt it wouldn’t work. From a purely selfish point of view, removing Starwood Preferred Guest from the scene would have removed an aggressive player in the loyalty market – one which did a good job of keeping the bigger players on their toes. HFP readers, in general, will be better off if Starwood remains independent.
You can read more about the approach on the Wall Street Journal website here.
Expedia launches 72-hour sale
Expedia is launching another 72-hour sale today. These are not exactly rare events but, if you are in the market for a hotel booking today, it won’t do you any harm to take a look.
British Airways drop Baku
British Airways announced yesterday that it is dropping flights to Baku from 29th April. They are ‘no longer commercially viable’ according to the airline.
About Head for Points
I had to google where Baku was!
To save you the trouble 😛 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/azerbaijan/articles/Baku-Azerbaijan-Dubai-of-the-Caucasus/
The Dubai of the Caucasus? Is that just how Birmingham is the Venice of the North?
I grew up in Basingstoke, which is nicknamed, without any apparent irony, “The Dallas of Hampshire”.
I thought it was Amazingstoke?
Would imagine the unprecedented 18month drop in oil prices has cut a lot of OpCo’s & Service companies travel budgets….
I ended up there coming back from Afghanistan xmas 2006 for an unscheduled stop. Turkey would not let the RAF plane in to its airspace because we had voted to not allow them in to the EU! Let’s say the hotel in Baku was surprised and very rich after the unplanned stop.
Why would you need to show off your ignorance? Sounds pathetic…
Baku is, or at least was, doing its best to be the next big thing, bidding to and winning the right to host various sporting and cultural events (if you can call Eurovision ‘cultural’…). A bit like Qatar. Not sure if the fall in oil prices has affected its financial clout.
Azerbaijan also has a nice line in repressive despotism.
Washington Post article:
http://tinyurl.com/gnyc52z
Or alternatively, you could believe the extensive hype emanating from western PR and lobbying firms about the forward looking and progressive Azerbaijan… paid for by the government of said country.
Indeed – so it’s pretty much like the Middle-Eastern countries! :))
Baku being dropped should hardly be a surprise. A friend operated it a couple of months ago & the load was 23 with only 2 in Club.
OT: just got some qualifying points posted from a stay last week for IHG. I bought a points package as part of my Accelerate – didn’t realise that the points package points are qualifying! Still learning about this scheme every day. Good to know if you need qualifying points to get status. Got upgraded to suites in all 3 hotels last week as Spire!
Yes, apart from converting Virgin miles, the only other short cut to Spire is buying the bonus point packages.
I spent a week in Azerbaijian (Baku) in Dec 2014 – really liked the place (human rights etc aside). Lovely old town, and very un-post Soviet. I guess now that AZAL (national airline) has finally caught up in the hardware department (operating 787s to LHR) BA were finding it hard, plus the cost of oil not helping. Hopefully the Azeri visas will become easier to obtain soon, boosting tourist numbers. QR has some very cheap o/w flights back to London. BA always seemed very expensive on the GYD route. I guess it’s come full circle! I flew BD TBS-GYD-LHR many years ago, and the J cabin was very light even back then.
OT: I’ve just received a supplementary Amex Gold card for a family member but it won’t let me register it to my account. Is it possible to do this so I can see it alongside my cards or does my family member need to set up their own Amex login to view it online?
They need to set up their own online account. This will allow them to see their own transactions only and has the added advantage of being able to register the card for any Amex offers that come along
Great, thanks for the quick reply.
As the main cardholder, you of course will be able to see the transactions of your family member.
OT but another 20% off virgin east coast advance tickets deal has appeared on the Virgin Red app last night.
OT but some ITA Matrix help please. If researching an ex-EU booking, how can I easily find flights where the final ex-LON sector on the return is from a different LON airport? So in my case, the long haul lands at LGW but I want to search for flights (that I might miss due to heavy traffic…) from LHR or LCY to Europe. TIA
Your best bet is the FT BA TP run thread but I think most of us now try to play the game and fly the complete itinerary – personally I prefer the extra TP and it’s only one flight extra anyway if picking AMS, BRU, etc. thanks to direct flights back to EDI.
Use the Multi-city option, specify your legs individually and for the last leg, instead of putting the departure airport as “LON”, list just the airports you want, e.g. “LHR, LCY”
Just compared the Expedia sale to some very recent hotel bookings I’ve made. All 4 are more expensive on the Expedia “sale” than on hotels.com where I also had the use of a 10% discount code they emailed me.
Would you mind sharing that code ? Looking at booking with hotels.com tonight
Thanks
Unless you know that you won’t book 10 nights through hotels.com, there isn’t much point in using their 10% off codes, since you don’t collect rewards nights and so the 10% discount is nullified.
On Starwood/Marriott/China – it was on the FT front page yesterday!