A new YOTEL hotel opening in Edinburgh – and not in the airport

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• Dominic says:

  11 Jul11 July 04:01

  I realise that Chinese infrastructure projects come at the cost of individual rights, but it hurts me how they built an airport in 6 years or so, and a third runway and terminal at Heathrow will take 30 years..

  • Riku says:

    11 Jul11 July 04:21

    China managed to build a high speed train network far quicker than HS2 is taking and when there was a fatal accident on their high speed train network they got the crashed coaches buried in record quick time too – not weighed down by the need for a detailed investigation .. although in their speed to bury the coaches they did almost bury a baby still alive in the wreckage.

    • John says:

      11 Jul11 July 05:31

      The UK also built a lot of railways very quickly when it was at the same stage of development, but we didn’t have the ability to travel around the world in 24 hours and communicate in 24 milliseconds back then.

      • Rob says:

        11 Jul11 July 08:56

        The UK built a huge motorway network not that long ago. You are looking at 10 years of planning to build a small bypass these days. Never quite sure how the motorways got done.

        (Remember the T5 process, which took 20? years from beginning to end despite adding no capacity to the airport and being built on brownfield land.)

        • Charlieface says:

          11 Jul11 July 09:49

          Nimbyism has a lot to answer for.

        • guesswho2000 says:

          11 Jul11 July 10:25

          As someone working in that field, planning, environmental considerations, heritage and stakeholder interference (NIMBYism) add a huge amount of time and cost on to road projects (and infrastructure in general, but road projects seem to be a particular draw).

        • sunguy says:

          11 Jul11 July 11:17

          When I worked at an semi-major international airport, it used to astound me how many complaints we got!

          The airport started life as a military airfield in WWII and has occupied the same land ever since, the town (villiage really) around the airport only exists because of the airport….so, why buy a house at the end of the runway and then complain about airport noise?

          But this is what airports and airlines are dealing with….I can semi see the point issues under approach routes, especially when they change, but dont buy a house next to an airport and wonder why you hear jet engines running!

      • Chrisasaurus says:

        11 Jul11 July 09:10

        Nor did we have the last 150 years of improvements in understanding and lessons learned

    • George says:

      11 Jul11 July 09:01

      Is this a true story?

  • pablo says:

    11 Jul11 July 10:38

    It’s the beauty of communism. No need for public consultations or land buyback. You just bulldoze everything and start building.

    • the_real_a says:

      11 Jul11 July 13:48

      The Chinese do generally offer generous compensation (relatively) in most situations on compulsory purchase.

      • Callum says:

        12 Jul12 July 00:03

        Do you have a source for that? No article I’ve read on this topic has ever listed the compensation as particularly “generous”, and I know many still haven’t received a single penny after being forced out to build the Three Gorges Dam.

        Given China tramples on human rights daily (to Crimes Against Humanity levels) and people being moved for these projects have no right to fight it or negotiate on compensation etc., I’m pretty skeptical of that claim!

  • CV3V says:

    11 Jul11 July 11:33

    and i bet a glass of wine will be less than £8. 😉

• Alan says:

  11 Jul11 July 04:08

  Rob

  Is it now possible to exchange M&M miles for shopping vouchers? I have 22,500 miles (gained via the recent.. ish Hilton 2,500 miles per night offer) and exchanged them a few weeks ago for some Amazon vouchers. However the transaction got cancelled re: the ongoing German court case.

  • BJ says:

    11 Jul11 July 05:59

    No (at least not a few days ago). Very annoying as LH still pushing this as top article on my app. Anybody tried hotels recently? We can get about 0 5p per mile back on that but I wouldn’t be surprised if they have also ditched that.

    • Rob says:

      11 Jul11 July 08:55

      The functionality was in the app yesterday – let me price up but I did not complete. I must admit that I was a little surprised to see it.

  • Mark LLL says:

    11 Jul11 July 06:55

    Just exchanged 12,900 expiring Miles and More for GBP35. Amazon dot UK vouchers via cadooz.

    Applied Friday night last week, received vouchers by email on Monday morning. My vouchers have expiry of 2029.

    • BJ says:

      11 Jul11 July 07:19

      Thanks, will try again .I had same experience as Peter, it took the order but no giftcard received.

      • Lady London says:

        12 Jul12 July 14:21

        Think it took just over 1 week before an email with the codes appeared.

  • Lady London says:

    12 Jul12 July 14:19

    I cashed miles&more out to Amazon about same number of weeks ago. Vouchers are now in my Amazon. If I was able to do it then why not everyone?

• Peter says:

  11 Jul11 July 04:12

  Not sure the shopping voucher route is still working following the Lufthansa legal dispute that you discussed last month.

  It lets you proceed and make a purchase, but even though it confirms the purchase on screen and by email from Cadooz (the scheme administrator), it never actually converts. I tried three or four times in June and I still have not received any vouchers.

  Used my miles for a hotel stay, which while not great value was better than losing them.

  • BJ says:

    11 Jul11 July 06:03

    Thanks Peter, good to know hotels still working. I think I’ll cash out on that, no idea if/when Marriott transfers will be back and without them scheme has no value to me.

• Bobbiet32 says:

  11 Jul11 July 05:07

  O/T. The 10000 point Hilton Honors redemption, Hampton by Hilton Newport, has left the portfolio as of 1st July. I believe there is now no more cat 2 redemption options in UK.
  My redemption reservation has been moved up the road to the 30000 point Doubletree by Hilton Bristol North at no additional cost and works with my plans so not too unhappy. Although I will now miss out on a free Hampton breakfast!

  • BJ says:

    11 Jul11 July 06:06

    Good result. Could you not do a Hilton status match, you would get God or diamond for the duration of the challenge?

    • Genghis says:

      11 Jul11 July 06:20

      Is God status what the guy in the YouTube “but I’m a diamond guest” vid thought he had? 🙂

      • BJ says:

        11 Jul11 July 07:24

        🙂 God status is only for those of us staying at Gof Resorts…

• BJ says:

  11 Jul11 July 06:13

  Anywhere along Queen Street is a good location for anybody n a budget tempted by Yotel. On edge of the centre. Handy to pop down to Stockbridge for a pint and a bite to eat.

  • Stu_N says:

    11 Jul11 July 07:06

    Looks like Erskine House at the Charlotte Square end. It used to be offices – PwC were in the building – so a total refurb has been done.

    • BJ says:

      11 Jul11 July 07:31

      Great company for the Kimpton then.

  • Chris says:

    11 Jul11 July 12:47

    “On the edge of the centre” is so disingenuous for anyone that doesn’t know the city. This location is about a 60 second walk from views of the castle and a 3 minute walk from the main shopping street

    • BJ says:

      11 Jul11 July 13:36

      I was going to say edge of inner city centre but thought that would be even more confusing 🙂 I think it will be edge of traffic free zone IIRC if that comes to pass.

  • the_real_a says:

    11 Jul11 July 13:50

    Im all for clean / cheap / budget small room hotels – i stay in enough of them around the world when on my own wallet – but Yotel is often eye waveringly expensive for what it offers. I`d be interested to know what the standard pricing turns out to be.

    • Lady London says:

      12 Jul12 July 14:24

      That’s exactly what I was going tonsay about Hotel. Often tried to use them but always really really overpriced.

• Alice says:

  11 Jul11 July 06:17

  Can we get the Beijing team to come over to Europe to sort out Berlin Brandenburg?

  • TGLoyalty says:

    11 Jul11 July 07:50

    BBC did an interesting article on the mess there a couple weeks ago.

    Sounds like a sh1tstorm of terrible decisions.

    • Oh! Matron! says:

      11 Jul11 July 08:21

      The BBC article is brilliant. I implore you to have a ganders

    • Anna says:

      11 Jul11 July 08:30

      There’s a similar “ghost” airport south of Madrid. Built with EU money and never used.

      • Rhys says:

        11 Jul11 July 08:42

        Not sure if I would call that similar given that Brandenburg is predicted to reach capacity as soon as it opens!

      • Chris says:

        11 Jul11 July 09:10

        That Spanish airport was the one (old, funny) Top Gear visited a few years after the Big Crash, wasn’t it?

      • Chrisasaurus says:

        11 Jul11 July 09:12

        Theres more than one of those in Spain…

      • Rui N. says:

        11 Jul11 July 10:07

        That one you are talking about (Ciudad Real, which is where Top Gear went) was actually a private-funded airport, with no EU money or public money (most of the money was lent by public banks though). And the idea was good, Ciudad Real was/is a fast growing Madrid suburb (becaus of high-speed rail) and if the crisis didn’t hit, it could probably have sustained a number of intra-EU flights.
        But like Chrisasaurus said, there are a couple of empty or almost-empty airports funded with public money in Spain.

        • Anna says:

          11 Jul11 July 12:28

          And one of them has a statue of a local government official who subsequently got sent to prison for fraud!

        • Alex Sm says:

          11 Jul11 July 19:48

          Cromwell was executed for treason but his statue still stands next to the UK parliament and major streets have his names…

• Lumma says:

  11 Jul11 July 08:24

  OTish – Does anyone know if having two Beijing airports affects the ability to use the 144 hour transit visa? Can you arrive at one airport and depart from the other?

  • John says:

    11 Jul11 July 09:24

    It would depend on the specific rules the government introduces or may have already introduced, check TIMATIC.

  • callum says:

    11 Jul11 July 09:31

    While I’ve not seen anything specific, I can’t imagine why that would be an issue. You can already arrive/leave from other ports outside Beijing on that scheme.

  • Ralph says:

    11 Jul11 July 09:33

    Obviously you need to check properly re visa. Beijing may only have the 72 hour visa ??
    I travel to China regularly so have a full visa, but under the 144 hour visa rule you can arrive / depart from the two Shanghai airports or cruise terminal. However, I understood this to be specific to Shanghai, Nanjing & Hangzhou. There is also, I think, a restriction that you must stay within the respective provinces of those cities. Your departure must be to a third country, not another Chinese city.

    • callum says:

      11 Jul11 July 09:42

      Beijing does fall under a 144hr visa waiver scheme and you aren’t restricted to Beijing – you can go to some surrounding provinces. Ditto with the others you mentioned – you aren’t restricted to one of them, you can go anywhere within those three provinces.

  • marcw says:

    11 Jul11 July 10:25

    You need to check the travel restrictions – in term of covered area. If the new airport is within that area, there shouldn’t be a problem to travel between airports with the 144 h transit visa

    • Ahopping says:

      11 Jul11 July 21:07

      There isn’t an issue – I flew into Beijing and out of Tianjin.

• Lee says:

  11 Jul11 July 08:40

  Got 21,000 miles and more points – I guess gift cards is the only real option there…..

  • Rob says:

    11 Jul11 July 08:49

    25k is a business class return to Europe.

    One way business class to the Middle East from the UK should be high 20s.

    • SteveD says:

      11 Jul11 July 10:45

      Rob, I think it’s 70k return now to Mid East (& C. Africa).

      But based on what you’ve written in the article, you (or someone in a similar position) might be a seller at, say, 0.35p?

      And if someone needed to top up their account, and/or were aiming for a specific sweet spot on the M&M chart, they might be a buyer at (0.35p + 0.9p) = 1.25p?
      Therein, an opportunity lies…

      • Rob says:

        11 Jul11 July 10:50

        There will be forced sellers at 0.27p, yes. So, arguably, if anyone else valued them at more than 1.17p then there would be a deal to be done. I suppose, now that hotel transfers etc have been closed down, there will be a few people who would pay a premium to top up their account.

    • Lee says:

      11 Jul11 July 11:46

      Can’t see me ever getting any more points, as do not fly with them.

      These were obtained by Hilton stays.

  • Lady London says:

    12 Jul12 July 14:27

    Transcontinental domestic US in J is about 17,000

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