Weekend Blitz

We can all agree that Sir Richard Branson is a badass (his title is “Sir” after all!), but, apart from being a music industry mogul (Virgin Records), owner of numerous airlines (Virgin Atlantic, Virgin America) and even a promoter of suborbital travel (Virgin Galactic)–the man owns his own island! Yes, that’s right, Sir Branson owns Necker Island, a 74-acre private island in the British Virgin Islands.

Just Richard being Richard + short shorts

I first learned about this a few years ago while watching MTV Cribs, which came on right after Pimp My Ride, also known as how I spent my weekday [...]

Don’t miss out on Marriott Reward’s Fall 2014 promo “Marriott Rewards MegaBonus”:

My targeted offer

The Deal

You’ll have to login to your Marriott account and head to the MegaBonus page to see your personalized offer. Here are a few of the offers you may get, all running from September 15 to January 15, 2015:

Don’t miss out on Choice Hotels’ Choice Privileges Fall 2014 Promotion running from now through November 12:

The Deal

After every 2 stays between September 4 and November 12, 2014, at Choice Hotels (Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites, Quality Inn, Sleep Inn, Clarion, Cambria Hotel & Suites, Mainstay Suites, Suburban Extended Stay Hotel, Econo Lodge, Rodeway Inn and Ascend Hotel Collection), you will earn up to 8,000 points (which is enough for a free night at some of their properties).

Basically, this promotion will give you between 5,000 and 8,000 points for every 2 stays so that your account is “topped off” up to a [...]

Starwood is running a mini-promo during September 2014. Since this is more of an instant win game, no hotel stays are necessary; you just need to log in to website every day for a chance to win.

The Deal

Until September 30, 2014, you can enter 2x per day to win one of the following instant prizes:

Additionally, every time you play, you are given 1 entry to the grand prize:

While most of the touristy parts of Istanbul are on the European side, no trip to the ancient bi-continental city would be complete without popping over to Asia. Part of our journey was curiosity, part was for a “been there, done that” sense of accomplishment but, mostly, we went to sample a restaurant that we heard great things about, Çiya Sofrası.

Trying to figure out how to get there, we had a few options:  either a standard passenger ferry or a tourist boat. We didn’t necessarily have to take the full-on tourist-only tour of the Bosphorus and, after a bit of research, figured that our best bet was just to take the ferry that the locals take across the [...]

Note:  These are bookable now. Don’t miss out on Flying Blue’s summer promo, which allows you to book Air France/KLM awards for 25-50% less than normal in November & December 2014:

Award bookings on Air France/KLM routes have been reduced by 25-50% for travel between November 1 – December 31, 2014.

For those of us sitting in ‘Merica, we’ll be most interested in:

United updated its award chart effective February 3, 2014 with a number of bad changes. It essentially gutted the redemption amounts for business and first class partner awards (i.e. the cost of a First Class flight from the U.S. to Europe in Lufthansa First increased by 85,000 miles, from 135,000 to 220,000 miles). From that point of view, the economy award chart looked relatively unscathed albeit almost all of the changes were negative. Here’s a quick recap of the ECONOMY CLASS updates:

As I wrote about last year (How-to: Match Hyatt status to MGM M life status), Hyatt and MGM Resorts have teamed up to give reciprocal benefits to the members of each other’s award programs. At the time, I viewed this as a great promotion and was hoping to get some great value out of it.

Here’s how the statuses translate:

This meant that, with a simple registration, I was able to turn my Hyatt Diamond status (which I obtained very easily by doing a Hyatt Diamond Status Challenge) into M Life Platinum status instantly. If you’re [...]