Uber and Starwood just last week announced a new partnership. Now you can earn one Starpoint for every dollar you spend on Uber rides. Sign up here: https://www.spgpromos.com/uber/ Greetings to everyone from Abu Dhabi! Hat tip to Kirsten for the heads up on this promotion.
Greetings and Happy New Year. The New Year has me flying to Calgary for work again. The current temperature there is a balmy five degrees Fahrenheit. Just a quick post today with a travel tip for the readers who travel internationally: Always have an extra customs declaration form in your bag. My flight today has…
This week I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about why I blog, inspired by some discussions I had with Point Princess during a trip to St. Maarten. (Some fun videos and pictures coming soon from that trip, by the way.) Just like everyone else, I have bad experiences with travel. If you read the blog,…
When you travel, baking becomes difficult. Visiting a branch bank to deposit checks is tedious. Finding an ATM that is “in-network” so you don’t have to pay a fee always seems impossible when you need cash. If you travel internationally, you’re slapped with currency conversion fees. In my experience, Charles Schwab Bank has the best…
What went on in the travel blogosphere this week… Lots of Drama and misinformation on SkyMiles cuts. At first, a few blogs announced that stopovers were gone from international award tickets. Fortunately, FrequentMiler did his homework before posting and discovered that the award stopovers are only partially broken. Substantial cuts to SkyMiles without notice seems to…
I still remember the long lines and paper forms from my first international trip in 1999. Today things look much different at the CBP. Here’s an overview of the ways CBP is making entry into the U.S. more efficient. Global Entry (and other trusted traveler programs) Global Entry is a CBP program that allows expedited clearance for…
This past year, if you’ve been following me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve probably seen me post something about an absolutely incredible airfare to some exotic place. Want to know how I find these incredible airfares? First, here are some of the deals I have scored just in the past year: $450 from Toronto to Hong…
This may win the award for coolest hostel ever… and I have a feeling that I might need to make a trip just to stay here. Jumbo Stay Hostel is a unique hostel built in a Boeing 747 jet. http://architizer.com/blog/spend-a-night-aboard-this-jumbo-jet-turned-hostel/ Thanks to Kirsten for the heads-up.
It’s been an interesting week in the travel blogosphere. We have Starwood hotels allegedly running brothels, and the found out that the option to add extra pages to U.S. passports will end in 2016. Delta continues to gut its frequent flyer benefits with abandon, axing round-the-world award tickets and reducing medallion upgrade benefits…. oh and apparently increasing…
For the average person looking for cheap airfares in the United States, Google Flights is probably the best tool to search for flights. Google Flights offers a combination of powerful search features and ease of use that make it my go-to site for searching for airfares. Here are the basics. Note: I searched for these flights on…
The Flying Consultant 