Qantas announced their first non-stop flight from Australia to the UK, with flights between Perth and London starting in 2018. And Sydney, after years of haggling, approved a new airport in the suburbs to supplement Kingsford International, which has been operating at capacity, giving new choices to travelers to down under!
When Marriott acquired Starwood, many die-hard Starwood fans were worried about what would happen to the many more upscale hotels and their beloved rewards program. Marriott addressed the rewards program issue on the day the acquisition became official – and allowed to link the programs and exchange points immediately. They are now addressing the management
United launched it’s new Polaris Business Class in June this year, with new pod-like seats, new Polaris lounges and new inflight amenities (read all the details here). On December 1, they opened the first Polaris lounge in Chicago’s O’Hare airport and started offering the in-flight amenities and food as PolarisFirst and PolarisBusiness class, replacing the
airberlin recently renounced a major restructuring of its business after years of financial losses, including the wet-lease of planes to competitor Lufthansa, the focus on business-travel to North America, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Italy and changes to the leisure business. Now, the changes for the leisure travel arm have been announced: airberlin is selling its
Wyndham Rewards has been named the best hotel rewards program by US News & Travel, but has not found the same love from frequent travelers and experts – mostly due to the lack of high-end hotels for redemption of reward points for dream trips. Now, Wyndham is addressing that problem by adding more than 17,000
United Airlines just introduced a no-frills “Basic Economy” fare – and it’s not something to look forward to. The fare class is stripped of of what few perks are left in Economy class on American carriers and it’s not even sure that you’ll actually going to pay less for it. It continues the race to
I recently gave an overview of the Best Western Experience and covered the launch of Best Western’s SureStay “white label brand”. I was much more excited about their announcement to launch two boutique brands for the mid-scale market – and even more so when I found out that they will be coming quickly to Asia as
Allegiant Air, a low-cost carrier in the US, has a history of questionable safety policies and frequent safety incidents, yet the FAA has not taken any action and the carrier maintains an ok 5-out-of 7 safety rating. Yet the Tampa Bay Times published did in-depth research of air safety incidents in the US and came
Last week, I reviewed the Experience you can expect at Best Western hotels and I mentioned that Best Western was working hard to move their brands into the midscale and upscale segments and has kicked out more than 1,200 properties that do not meet their brand standards. They have also embarked on a redesign of
China was the country with the most international departures world wide at over 84 Million, making Chinese travelers an ever-growing presence, especially in Asia. Now, that the Philippine government under President Duterte is making a “pivot” towards China, what will that mean for travel to the Philippines? The Department of Tourism is looking to grow
Over the last few days, I attended TBEX, the Travel Blogger Exchange, at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC), a conference of travel bloggers and travel industry representatives – and it was a great success, for the Philippines as the host of the events, TBEX as the organizer and for the many attendees!
StarAlliance is the largest airline alliance in the world, serving more than 1,300 airports in over 190 countries – and they just added another airline: Juneyao Airline, based in Shanghai, China. Find out how much that will help you when flying to Asia!