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Sales, discounts, promo codes...call it what you want, there's a slew of price-offs for air tickets in India, as of now. Some are in response to sales by other airlines, but things have been happening thick and fast, and so it is really difficult to say which came first! Nonetheless, I thought I'd summarise some of these for the benefit of readers. As with any sales, the terms and conditions require a keen eye, so do consider yourself warned! Jet Airways Jet currently has a 25% discount for domestic flights, for bookings made till 3 August 2014, for travel between 6 January 2015 and 15 June 2015. The discount applies to both the base fare and fuel surcharge, but is valid only on booking class "O", for which there's usually only very limited inventory. Here are the T&Cs (you can see them online and book tickets here ): 25% discount is offered on flights within India* Valid for travel in Economy on flights operated by Jet Airways and JetKonnect Tickets must be p...

I was in meetings all day today, and I read AJ's piece on Live From a Lounge, about the JP program going south . My heart stopped. I immediately got down to doing some surreptitious checking of the mileage burn requirements from my perspective, and slowly, the heart rate started to inch back to normal. That's because despite AJ's take on it at the time (all of which was very well founded) I actually noticed quite a few positive changes to the redemption requirements. I then re-engaged in my meeting and forgot all about this, and even took a flight in the evening. On arrival, the first thing I saw was AJ's updated post, about JP being enhanced . And just now, as I settled in to do some more research and write about it, I received the email from Jet, that AJ's post referenced. So things are indeed afoot at JP. For some time now, I've held the view that it was only a question of time before the JP program was devalued. The earn and burn requirements have been consi...

The Global Hotel Alliance (GHA) is running a flash sale till end-July 2014 - that's three more days to go. The sale has rooms at a minimum discount of 20%, and most hotels are available until 31 December 2014 on the sale. However, only select hotels are participating. Specific to India, the sale includes only one hotel - the Ambience Kempinski, Delhi, which I stayed at and reviewed earlier this year. Rooms are available at a 35% discount, plus complimentary breakfast. Also, all rooms have complimentary internet, which is quite fast if I recall correctly. You can access the sale here (available immediately for Platinum or Black members, and a little later for others). Or you can use the promo code  GHAFLASH0714 . I can see base category rooms available in the region of Rs 5,000++ a night for most dates, and going as low as Rs 4,225++ a night for some dates in August, which is a steal! If you have a stay coming up in Delhi, this might be a good deal. Just be careful to buffer in so...

I know this is an India-oriented blog, but there's a smattering of users from Down Under, and so I thought I'd thank them a bit with a quick word about an Australia-only offer by Etihad, for a status match to Etihad Guest Gold, which reminds me a lot of the UAE-only status match offer they ran a few months back. If you want to try and take advantage of this offer, you need to act quickly, since this is valid only till 29 July 2014 . Here's the link to the offer , though you should know the following before you apply for this status match. To be eligible for the status match, you need to: Enroll into the Etihad Guest programme if you are not yet a member Send the following documents to guesttiermatch@etihad.ae :  Your Etihad Guest number A scanned copy of your existing Gold card from another loyalty programme and your most recent statement (This offer is not valid for members of Velocity Frequent Flyer and KrisFlyer.) Documents that prove that you have travelled in Busin...

There are a few ongoing points-related offers that I thought might be of interest to readers. If you're been reading this blog, you probably already know about the Hilton Triple Your Trip promotion for 3x miles on weekends (and 2x otherwise), and the Great Indian Travel Deal , but here are some more. There's also the SPG targeted offer for  up to 3 free stay certificates  in Cat 1-6 hotels after 4 paid stays, and  Marriott's Rewards Plus promotion  for social media interactions, which can help earn a few extra bonus points along the way for a next-to-nothing time investment. Note: The Marriott-MileagePlus offer below is not relevant from an India perspective, but sometimes it is good to know, and so I've included it here. IHG - 60% bonus points when you buy more than 10k points IHG is currently offering 60% bonus points when you buy 10,000 IHG Rewards Club points or more , online. You can purchase these points in 1000-point increments, till 18 August 2014 . The cost...

Jet Airways and Etihad have launched the India sale for the next 3 days, ie it runs from 25 July to 27 July 2014. The sale offers a minimum discount of 20%, going up to 50% on select routes, valid on both Economy and Business class (Premiere), for domestic as well as international travel. In addition, double miles are also on offer, for bookings on specific fare classes . As with any sales, note that the discounts are not system-wide, but are available on limited inventory of seats only. The additional promotion for double miles is available for all bookings on: For domestic travel: O, W and B classes (Economy) and P (Business).  For international flights to SAARC countries: W (Economy) and P (Business) For international flights to USA, Canada and South America: O, W (Economy) and P (Business) For international flights to Middle East, Africa, Europe: O (Economy) and P (Business) These are the lowest fare classes in economy and business, which explains the 2x miles. The travel shoul...

Hilton recently announced the Triple your Trip promotion for the August-October 2014 period. What they haven't publicly announced, however, is an India-focussed promotion called The Great India Travel Deal . That could be explained by the possible reasoning, that this promotion is run jointly by the Hilton India properties (or the Hilton Premium Club ), as opposed to by Hilton Worldwide. Nonetheless, some of the deals here are pretty good, and worth checking out. Some of the benefits under this promotion are: room rates discounted by 25-30% across all Hilton India properties kids under 12 (when with parents) stay and eat free (meals from a select Kids menu) a further 50% off on a second room for kids under 18. The offer is valid on bookings till 1 October 2014, and for stays until 6 October 2014. Pre-existing bookings won't be entitled to this offer, though. So if you've got an existing booking that's cancellable, it is worth considering cancelling that booking and re-...

It had to happen! Jet Airways is toeing the Etihad line more and more, each passing day. Etihad, as you are aware, has strategic investments in 7 or 8 airlines globally (and an operational partnership with Philippines Airlines ), and so it was only going to be a matter of time before we saw those investee airlines partnering amongst themselves in one way or another. And so, it is in the order of things that Alitalia - one of Etihad's largest investees - is the newest codeshare partner of Jet Airways. I suppose it is also only natural. With  Air India joining Star Alliance  earlier this month, I had predicted earlier that Jet Airways was set to lose a large number of its partners, who are Star Alliance members. You can read that post here . What that meant was that Jet would have had to start looking out for other airline / codeshare partners, and it seems like they've succeeded. This new codeshare arrangement could also well be an attempted claw-back by Jet, from India to...

Hilton's last promotion for the summer was the 2x rewards offer . Personally, I spent 3 months without a single stay at Hiltons, which is rather surprising to me! But I do have some upcoming plans, and that's why I think this next promotion for Q2/Q3, Triple Your Trip , is going to help accelerate my earnings a little bit! The Triple Your Trip promotion offers 3x points for weekend nights (counted as Friday, Saturday and Sunday), and 2x points for the other nights of the week, valid for stays between 1 August and 31 October 2014 . To clarify, for the weekends that means base points plus 2x bonus points, and for other nights, it is base points plus 1x bonus points. Registration is required, and  you can do that here .  There are some non-participating hotels, but that list is not yet updated (though LoyaltyLobby has put this list up ). Nonetheless, you should be able to locate them once they're put up, by going here . FAQs have been updated (earlier, they reflected last year...

SPG has just launched the Select Member Exclusive promotion that offers up to 3 stay certificates for category 1 to 6 hotels, on completing 4 qualifying SPG stays between 15 July and 15 October 2014. The promotion is not open to all, but is targeted. You may receive an email from SPG indicating your eligibility to enter this promo. However, you can also check here , where you need to enter your SPG number. The number of stay certificates you get will vary by member. And if you do end up with one or more stay certificates, you're best off using them at Category 6 properties  (which would normally require between 20,000 and 25,000 points a night for an award stay), unless using it at a lower category hotel has better personal value for you. Please do leave a comment to let me know what you were eligible for, since that will help me update this post with any variants of the promotion, and it will also be of help to other readers. This particular promotion seems to be targeted at SPG ...

If you haven't I can't blame you. I heard of both of these for the first time, last evening over drinks with a friend who works in the travel industry. So I decided to check them out. Warning: Before you proceed, I'd like to clarify that this entire post is a bit of a ramble...at least that's how I saw it when I read a preview. That said, I'm feeling a little under the weather right now, and I'm not really up to it (both mentally and physically) to refine the post. My apologies for the shoddiness and the ramble. Both Zav Airways and Air Carnival were recently given approval by the Ministry of Civil Aviation in India, to operate passenger aircraft services. I don't believe either of them are currently operational in their own little way (chartered services, for instance), no matter what their websites have to say on the matter. Let's look at Zav Airways first. Zav plans to fly exclusively in the North-East of India. Most airports in this region are small,...

A couple of months back, Marriott announced Marriott Rewards Plus, a promotion that offered Marriott Rewards points for social media interactions . You could earn points quite easily by: joining the promotion sharing or retweeting Marriott's posts to your Facebook or Twitter feeds each day checking into properties on Facebook or Foursquare every day you visit posting a photo each day to Instagram and tagging it with a property’s location using #LoveMarriottRewards, #RenHotels or #Autograph in your daily Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts liking and following select brands and properties in Facebook or Twitter You could earn a maximum of 2,000 points every 30 days till November 2014, making it a total of 12,000 points virtually free. But a lot of that has changed, suddenly and quite drastically. The biggest changes (easiest earning ops) are: no more 250 points for "liking" a Marriott property's Facebook page or following it on Twitter, sharing or re-tweeting content...

A few days back, Reader Ravikiran left a question on the blog. I have a euro trip coming up and Wanted to check with you reg the foreign transactions. How do you end up spending foreign currency? Credit cards, travelers cheques etc. Which one has the best value and benefits? If its credit cards, which one in India has the least foreign currency markup? Would love to know your thoughts. It's been quite a while since I saw, let alone used, travellers cheques, and I'm not really sure how many people use it any more. To me, it seemed like a great idea initially, but then I realised it was more of a pain - carrying pieces of paper to exchange for further pieces of paper! Of course, there's the security aspect of it (requiring identification to encash TCs) but we've all heard enough horror stories about them, haven't we? Personally speaking, I normally use a mix of credit cards and cash when I travel overseas. This, even more so when there are promotions running. I rece...

Hilton HHonors Gold is possibly the best mid-level elite tier around. Hilton has a rather large number of hotels globally (close to 3,900), which is far more than SPG (my other favourite hotel loyalty program). You can also read my take on the HHonors program from an Indian perspective . To be sure, Gold level is optimal - gets you most benefits without requiring too much to do... ...Except of course, 20 stays, 40 nights or 75,000 base points. If that does sound like much, particularly for infrequent travellers or for those who have little control over where they can stay, then let me tell you, it is quite steep. Fortunately, Hilton HHonors keeps coming up with a variety of promos to Gold level, such as: Complimentary Gold status for HP employees (you need a HP email address) Gold status for Visa Infinite card holders , where you've got to call Visa Infinite (the card number generator trick won't work here!) Immediate Silver and fast-track to Gold for GE employees (you need a...