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Although we haven’t covered it much in the past, Starwood Hotels & Resorts releases a list of flash deals every Wednesday, called “SPG Hot Escapes.” They offer discounts of 20-50% off of typical rates for a few hundred select properties worldwide. The flash sale lasts for about 3 days and allows you to book the properties for the next 6 weeks:
The Deal
SPG Hot Escapes for the week of June 18, 2014 allow you to book selected Starwood properties for 20-50% off. Some of the highlights include:
U.S. Only, lots of New York properties for ~$150/night:
Worldwide, great deals in Thailand (thanks to the military coup): [...]
Turkish Airlines, a Star Alliance member, just launched a new route from Istanbul Atatürk Airport (IST) to Bordeaux–Mérignac Airport (BOD).
The new route is scheduled to be flown 4x per week: Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Why do you care? Because this route opens up more possibilities for booking Star Alliance awards, namely United Mileage Plus awards. And, as with most new routes, the award availability is excellent with 2+ economy seats still open on nearly every single flight going 9 months out:
Visiting Bordeaux? Here are some related posts:
SNCF Train: Paris CDG to Bordeaux Walking Tour of Bordeaux, [...]The American Express Platinum card is one of the best cards out there. While it carriers a very hefty annual fee ($450) for both the Personal and Business versions, it has some of the best benefits and travel-related services that are very value-add. Here’s a quick list of what the $450 a year will get you:
Global Entry Fee Credit ($100 one-time value) Upgrade to Starwood Preferred Guest Gold (typically requires 10 stays or 25 nights per year) $200 Airline Fee Credit Annually ($200 value, but did it really need saying?–covers incidental charges for the airline of your choice) Access to airport lounges Free Priority PassTM Select membership (~$399 value, offers [...]Bereketzade Mh., Galata Kulesi, Beyoğlu, Turkey 18.5 TL (~$8.90 US) Hours: 9am to 8pm everyday
After lunch at another outdoor cafe (…because Charleston has exactly 0 fun outdoor streetside cafes), we walked over the Golden Horn to the more modern side of Istanbul. Trying to get our tourism on, we headed to a must-see site: the Galata Tower.
View of the Galata Tower from across the water
In the context of Istanbul, the Galata Tower is brand spanking new at 650+ years old. This is especially evident in the context of the Hagia Sofia, built in 537, whereas the Galata Tower was completed in [...]
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By lucky
In February Delta announced that their SkyMiles program would be going fully revenue based on the earnings side. Well, United just announced that MileagePlus will be going revenue based in 2015 as well, and [...]
After exploring Paris in the snow, and getting all engaged up, it was time to bid adieu to Paris and hop our short commuter flight from Paris-CDG to Italy’s famed town of Florence-FLR (but be careful, I’ve heard at least half the flights actually land in Firenze, not Florence…yikes!).
CHECK-INAfter having a bit of bad weather, all of the public transit and flights were finally back up and running smoothly. We took the RER from the city out to Charles de Gaulle-Roissy airport. Somewhat annoyingly, they don’t announce the gate or terminal you’ll be leaving from until just a few hours before departure, so we ended up having to wait for a bit in the [...]
As I wrote about back in April (Deal Blitz: Starwood “Hear the Music” 2014 Promo – $50 Ticketmaster Cash for Every 2 Nights), Starwood was running a promo that gave you a $50 Ticketmaster e-voucher for every 2 paid nights at a Starwood property between between April 3 and May 31, 2014. The only catch was that you had to make the bookings using a SPG mobile app.
This was a pretty phenomenal promotion because it was based on paid nights, not paid stays during a 2-month period. Anyway, I’m happy to report that the promotion ended just about a week ago and the e-certificates have started to email!
While I’m glad I got at least 4 of [...]
