Mike FriedmanEvery week, we like to wrap up some of the weeks’s most interesting or amusing stories in our famous (infamous?) TWIT (this week in travel) notes. This week in travel, we’ll talk about a mileage run to the wrong city, a cruel napkin and financial results from the lodging companies.
This Week In Travel
Just How Far Would You Go By Mistake?
Several years ago, I used to spend a lot of time on Flyertalk, the largest travel forum. It’s gotten way too contentious for me, but I still get weekly updates with links to their top stories.
This one, about an unintentional mileage runner, caught my attention. Apparently, an American Airlines representative took her eye off the ball when booking the OP and transposed letters in an airport code. His flight got turned into a 1,200 mile hop to a 7,900 mile journey.
Naturally, the thread generated more questions than answers, including:
- If he took the mystery flight and got the elite qualifying miles that came with it, would that be considered stealing?
- What were the cities involved, and why was his visa situation special?
- What class of service was he flying, anyway?
Sadly, we never got a resolution to the thread, as it went off-topic and the moderators shut it down. I’ve contacted them and they’ve promised to let me know if they ever re-open it.
Job Opening: Delta Napkin Writer
Really, Delta, there are such things as plain, white napkins.
Delta is, once again, making this week in travel news for its napkins, and it’s not in a good way. Granted, it’s not as bad as the creepy ones that encouraged you to hit on other passengers, but it still caused angst among several passengers. Apparently, even innocent ones are now causing trouble, as some passengers misread them as “The world is better without you in it.”
Okay, so this one really isn’t Delta’s fault, but remember the lesson that teaches us all: In the age of the internet, anything really can trend.
Earnings Season Ramps Up, And Man Is It Boring…
Hilton and Hyatt have both announced their quarterly earnings in the past week, and Marriott comes up next week. Sadly, things were pretty much as expected. RevPAR (Revenue per available room, whether or not that room has a body in it; Analysts use RevPAR as a proxy for business trends.) for both was up just over 1%, with international doing better than domestic.
For the mileage junkies in the crowd, Hilton stressed that it was pursuing partnerships with as many other companies as it could, emphasizing that it hoped that someday, it could devalue its points as well as the airlines have done. Hyatt went a different route, offering a free night to anyone who could say the name of its CEO, Mark Hoplamazian, five times fast without tripping over their own tongue.
