Monday, December 25, 2023

Reviewing Our Itineraries for Fun and Profit

 

Here’s how a simple routine enables us to save on our travel budget.

Once we’ve made a hotel reservation at the lowest rate we can find, Kathy returns to the hotel’s website (yes, we always book directly rather than through third parties) several times before our departure to see if prices have dropped.

At this point in late-December 2023 we’ve already booked our hotels through May 2024 for upcoming stays in Cyprus, Florida, Ecuador, Mexico, Budapest, Australia, some airport hotels, and several European cities for our March trip with grandson Jace. Naturally, we've booked flights and rail travel in Europe as well.

Sometimes we find the rates have risen dramatically, making us feel wise for having booked when we did. Sometimes they remain the same. Sometimes it’s as simple as changing to a non-cancellable rate close enough to the stay that we don’t feel we’re tempting fate. The best is when they’ve dropped in price, occasionally dramatically.

Just yesterday, for example, we saved more than USD $400 by spotting a much cheaper rate at the hotel in Larnaca, Cyprus, where we’re staying for five nights in early January.  We also saved a bit on a few individual nights at other destinations. That was well worth the 30 minutes or so Kathy spent at her computer!

We also check our booked airfares, train travel, and rental car reservations. Alaska, like most other airlines, has eliminated change fees. Long gone are the days of having to stay over Saturday night to snag an “excursion fare.” Our Alaska status allows us to cancel flights outright and to receive either a refund or a credit applied to our Alaska account’s “wallet.” It’s also worth checking for changes in flight times (or even flight cancellations!).  We’ve learned through experience that airlines don’t always warn customers of changes or cancellations. 

Another reason to book flights early is that you’re almost guaranteed a schedule change. When the time change is “significant” according to the airline’s own rules, this gives us the opportunity to change to any flight we want within 24 hours of the original flight. We’ve often booked a cheaper flight and managed to change to a more desirable one as a result.

Finally, when we’re juggling a lot of different itineraries, we sometimes find we’ve closed one off without booking every hotel or train or tour. We try to add a reminder to our calendar for priorities, e.g. booking Eiffel Tower tickets as soon as they open for sale on the date we want, but it’s easy to miss and it’s useful for us to see if there are any gaps to fill.

In short, we’ve found it always worth our time to review our trip itineraries, and learned to our delight that it can also be profitable. It's fun when it is. Occasionally, however, we've had to deal with some unintended consequences after making a change. This is one of those times.

We had booked our March Condor flights to and from Europe with Jace on miles (we flyer geeks refer to them as "points" ). We noticed recently that the cash price for Condor's SEA-FRA Business Class had dropped to the point that it was cost-effective for the two of us to cancel our award flights and pay cash, while leaving Jace's flight on points. That would take us over the MVP Gold 100K finish line for 2025.

It's now possible to book Condor flights, an Alaska partner, on the Alaska website. We couldn't make this change ourselves and enlisted the assistance of an Alaska phone agent on our elite line. We'll call him Ernie. 

Ernie was friendly, competent, and couldn't have been more helpful. Unfortunately, he made a little mistake when booking the changes. On the outbound flight, he forgot to separate Jace's flight from ours when cancelling our outbound award flights and cancelled all three.  Ernie was extremely apologetic over the fact that, while we now have two paid seats in Business, the best he could snag for Jace was a seat back in Premium Economy. 

As a consequence, Brian will trade seats with Jace and sit a little further back in the plane, while Kathy and Jace sit together in Business Class for the overnight flight from Seattle to Frankfurt. We're now checking daily to see if an award Business Class seat opens up. Ernie did manage to book the return flight successfully and we're all seated in Business Class.

Would we complain to Alaska? Of course not. Ernie was trying to help us, and he made a simple human error. He called us back to apologize. If we'd completely lost a seat on the plane for Jace, that would have been different. This isn't the end of the world. We're still all departing and arriving at the same time on the same plane. And if we get lucky, a Business Class award seat may open up between now and March.

 

 

Tuesday, December 12, 2023

Oh, the Places We've Gone


 “You're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So... get on your way!”
Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go! 

We've completed our travels for this year, so we'll revisit a post we used to update annually, in which we documented for our own amusement the number of countries we've visited. For example, here's what we wrote back in December 2017.

We once ran into a couple on a cruise who were strangely proud of having visited 130 "countries" and realized we never wanted to be "those people." It's more common (and a more difficult question) to be asked about our favorite region, country, or city. Still, people do ask us "How Many?" from time to time.

For sovereign countries we base our list on this website, which lists 195 sovereign states in the world. As of December 2023, we've visited 81 of them:

Antigua
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Bahamas
Barbados
Belgium
Belize
Brazil
Cambodia
Canada
Cape Verde
Chile
China
Colombia
Costa Rica
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominica 
Dominican Republic
Egypt
Estonia
Fiji
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Guatemala
Holy See (Vatican City)
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia (February 2023)
Ireland
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Korea (North) - DMZ tour only
Korea (South)
Lesotho
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Malaysia
Maldives
Malta
Mexico
Monaco
Montenegro (November 2023)
Morocco
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Panama

Peru
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Russia
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Senegal (plane refueling at Dakar - did not formally enter)
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka (Ceylon)
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey

United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Vietnam
Zimbabwe 
 
Based on the Travelers' Century Club, which currently lists a generous total of 330 countries and territories, we've visited a total of 109 as of December 2023. We got credit for two countries with Indonesia, because we landed at Jakarta on the island of Java, and flew onward to the island of Bali. Wanna count 'em all?

Pacific Ocean (6/40)
Australia
Fiji Islands
French Polynesia (Tahiti,Tuamotu, Austral, Gambier)
Hawaiian Islands
New Zealand
Tasmania

North America (4/6)
Alaska
Canada
Mexico
U.S. (continental)

Central America (5/7)
Belize (British Honduras)
Costa Rica
Guatemala
Honduras
Panama
 
South America (6/14)
Argentina
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Peru
Uruguay
 
Caribbean (16/31)
Antigua & Deps. (Barbuda, Redonda)
Bahamas
Barbados
Cayman Islands
Dominica (January 2023)
Dominican Republic
Jamaica
Leeward Islands, French (St. Martin)
Puerto Rico
St. Barts
St. Kitts
St. Lucia
St. Maarten (formerly Netherlands Antilles)
Turks and Caicos Islands
Virgin Islands, U.S. (St. Croix, St. John, St. Thomas)
Virgin Islands, British (Tortola, etc.)
 
Atlantic Ocean (6/14)
Azores Islands
Bermuda
Canary Islands
Cape Verde Islands
Iceland
Madeira
 
Europe and Mediterranean (40/68)
Austria
Belgium
Balearic Islands (Mallorca, Minorca)
Corsica
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
England
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Gibraltar
Greece
Greek Aegean Islands (Patmos)
Greek Ionian Islands (Corfu, etc.)
Hungary
Ireland (Eire)
Ireland, Northern (Ulster)
Italy
Liechtenstein 
Luxembourg
Malta
Monaco
Montenegro (November 2023)
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Russia
Sicily

Scotland
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey in Europe (Istanbul)
Vatican City
Wales
 
Antarctica (0/7)
None

Africa (7/55)
Egypt in Africa
Lesotho
Morocco
Senegal (plane refueling at Dakar)
South Africa
Swaziland
Zimbabwe
 
Middle East (2/21)
Qatar 
United Arab Emirates
 
Indian Ocean (1/15)
The Maldives 
 
 
Asia (16/52) 
Cambodia 
China, People's Rep. 
Hong Kong 
India 
Indonesia (Java) February 2023
Japan 
Korea, North (DMZ tour only) 
Korea, South 
Lesser Sunda Islands (Bali, Timor, Indonesia) February 2023
Malaysia 
Singapore 
Sri Lanka (Ceylon)  
Taiwan 
Thailand 
Turkey in Asia 
Vietnam
 
As we've often written, who's counting? Well, we are, but only once a year or less. The US and Canadian immigration officers who check our passports as part of our Nexus and Global Entry renewal interviews appear both impressed and amused by our list.

Our travels in 2023 (along with an IHG credit card and reciprocal status between United Airlines and Marriott Hotels) have enabled us to re-qualify for Alaska Airlines MVP Gold 100K for 2024. We're also "Lifetime" Gold on United Airlines after flying a million miles on UA. 
 
Our ongoing hotel status includes Hilton Diamond (approaching "lifetime" status), Marriott Gold, and IHG Platinum, so we have the basic tools to travel in some style.

Besides, we get jet lag even when we stay home, so why not travel?

Wednesday, December 6, 2023

Alaska Buys Hawaiian: What's in It for Us?

We've already been asked what we think about Alaska's proposed purchase of Hawaiian. The Alaska Forum in FlyerTalk has a thread going that's already gathered well over 300 comments:

Alaska Nears Deal to Acquire Hawaiian Airlines

Hawaiian is an airline with a non-contiguous (50th) state name, loyal customer base, and a generally good reputation. Alaska is an airline with a  non-contiguous (49th) state name, loyal customer base, and a generally good reputation. We've never flown HA ourselves, but we have a vaguely positive impression of it, based on what we've read over the years.

HA has fallen on recent hard times, with the Covid-era restrictions apparently being a significant factor in its financial problems.

Gary Leff claims the proposed deal is neutral to good for customers, but a bad idea for Alaska, which is offering to buy Hawaiian's shares at a huge bonus.

The Cranky Flier, on the other hand, argues non-crankily that the purchase is a good deal for both airlines

It's also worth reading Alaska's statement

The agreed-upon purchase plan apparently is to combine operations as feasible, while maintaining separate branding as Alaska and Hawaiian respectively. 

We'll leave it to others with more knowledge to argue the relative merits of the transaction. In trying to figure whether it's good or bad for us, we see that Alaska says it intends to combine the mileage programs of the two airlines. 

We are fly-on-our-own-dime travelers who moved from United after they merged with Continental and changed or removed a number of previously promised "lifetime" benefits, while moving to a "spend" requirement to earn status.

We therefore read with particular interest one line in the HawaiianMiles mileage program: "Earn miles on how far you fly, not how much you spend..." That's been a keystone of the AS program, much to our benefit.

Combining programs with Alaska would remove the major drawbacks in Hawaiian's program that are highlighted in the US News & World Report's 8th-place rating (Alaska ranks in 1st place): 

  •  Basic membership does not offer many advantages
  • Elite status cannot be earned by booking flights with partner airlines

  • Elite membership benefits are only available on Hawaiian Airlines flights

Oddly enough to us, this poll makes no mention of the lack of a spend requirement for either program. 

We're hoping we can count on the combined mileage programs to maintain this key feature shared by both programs. That's because we earn our miles the old-fashioned way by BIS (Butt in Seat) flying. We've been burned before, so this is a hope rather than a prediction.

Time will tell.