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Earlier this year, the Government of India had announced their  plans to introduce visa-on-arrival and electronic travel authorisation (ETA)  for citizens (passport holders) of specific countries. Following from this announcement, the ETA facility has now been announced. While it is called a visa-on-arrival facility, it isn't exactly that (at least not in the way it is in, say, Thailand, where you can get on to a plane, and actually obtain your visa on arrival). What India has introduced is more of an ETA facility, that's  touted  as a visa-on-arrival.  How it works Essentially, you need to an application and payment, and receives the ETA - all of this is done online and prior to arrival into India. You can then carry a copy (print out) of the ETA, and enter India by showing the ETA at the immigration counter. Keep the following in mind: Application for ETA should be made no sooner than 30 days and no later than 5 days before arrival into India.  ETA is val...

Jet Airways today launched a contest called OnCloud9W , an obvious pun on the expression "on cloud 9" and their callsign, 9W. The general idea is to get creative, as Jet Airways puts it, by tweeting them about what gets you on cloud 9W. Obviously, I don't nee to explain the prizes. So, here's what you need to do: Tweet what gets you on cloud nine(w) to  @jetairways  with the hashtag #OnCloud9W . The contest runs from 0900 hrs (IST) to 2359 hrs (IST) on 26 November 2014 , and there's no limit on the number of entries you can have. The full T&Cs can be found here , though the key ones are below: The age limit is 18 years and above and the Contest is open for Indian nationalities permanently residing in India. The Contest is not open for employees, distributors, agents, vendors and suppliers of Jet Airways & Google or for the relatives of such employees, distributors, agents, vendors and suppliers of Jet Airways & Google . The way I see it, there's a...

IHG offers PointBreaks, where reward nights are available at only 5,000 IHG Rewards Club points per night, as opposed to the normal redemption price of usually 15,000 points or more. Late last week, IHG released a preview its PointBreaks list for bookings and stays from 24 November 2014 to 28 February 2015 (subject to availability), which will be available for 5,000 points, at 150 hotels worldwide. Booking start tomorrow, ie 24 November 2014. This time around, there are three Indian hotels that have made it to the PointBreaks list , being: Holiday Inn Amritsar Ranjit Avenue Holiday Inn Cochin , and Crowne Plaza Cochin . For comparison purposes, I checked prices for a night during the period between Christmas and New Year's Eve 2014. The HI Amritsar retails a standard room for around Rs 4,000++, and the HI Cochin starts at Rs 4,700++, while the Crowne Plaza Cochin starts at Rs 5,700++. That, and feedback from a friend that's stayed at both the Cochin hotels above, suggests that ...

Only earlier this week I'd summarised all the bonus JP miles opportunities for hotel bookings and stays . JP is carrying on in that same vein with an offer to earn JP miles for stays with SPG hotels. The icing on this particular cake is a 2x JP miles earning for stays until 31 December 2014. This offer requires you to have an SPG account (you can create one for free on www.spg.com ), and you'll need to register for this offer here . However, note that you must select JP Miles instead of Starpoints as your preferred earning currency . I haven't mentioned this before, but Jet Privilege and SPG have an ongoing partnership for transfer of SPG points to JP miles on a 1:1 ratio, along with a bonus 5,000 JP miles for every 20,000 SPG points transferred to JP. On the whole, this strikes me as a poor deal, but YMMV, particularly if your interest is more in JP miles than SPG Starpoints. You can read more about SPG's Airline Direct Deposit (ADD) program here . I'm not sure of ...

You may recall that UberX was launched some time in September 2014 . Now its time for UberGo, Uber's even lower cost transport option, and it is now in your city.  I've loved Uber ever since they launched , and they've been my go-to transport providers - particularly for weekends out. After they streamlined their airport pickup/drop costs and made them on par with other rides, I've taken a special liking to them! UberGo will use vehicles like Tata Indica Vista and Maruti Suzuki Swift, as opposed to UberX (which uses Toyota Etios, Ford Fiesta and Maruti Swift DZire ) or the flagship Uber service (Toyota Innova and other high-end cars), so their costs will also be lower, at: uberGO Base Fare start with this fare Rs 40 Per Kilometre distance covered Rs 13 Per Minute time taken in minutes Rs 1 Minimum Fare Rs 80 This makes UberGo the cheapest Uber service, and likely cheaper than most other Radio Taxi services in India, and is cheap enough to be used as a daily commute (I...

Here's a great promotion from IHG for its India-based members. Register today and from now until 30 April 2015, and get one free night after every third night spent at any IHG hotel in India and Nepal. This seems to be a great way to rack up some free nights for an overseas trip you might be planning (or haven't yet, but will after this offer!) next year. As with all promotions, there are terms and conditions here, the main ones being: You must be an IHG Rewards Club member based in India or Nepal need to register for this promotion, which you can do here . If you've already commenced a stay, make sure you register before checking out. Qualifying stays will need to be at InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express.  There's a cap of 3 Free Nights, which basically means if you're mattress running any part of this offer, make sure you don't exceed 9 nights' paid stay in India. The free nights can be clubbed for redemption, however, you...

The vacation season is upon us, and there's tons of promotions out there for hotel stays. As I wrote earlier this week , Jet Airways has built a large bunch of non-airline partners over the years, where spends earn you JP miles. However, with the vacations just around the corner, I thought it might be useful to summarise the list of hotel partnerships that you might be interested in, which will also earn you JP miles (but not necessarily points in the the hotel's loyalty program). RocketMiles Rocket Miles is a hotel rates aggregating and booking engine that also allows you to earn miles in your choice of airline program. I've written about Rocket before , but have never booked with them. Jet Airways is one of their newest partners, and you can earn bonus JP miles for booking your room using Rocket Miles and selecting JP as your earnings partner. If you aren't yet registered with Rocket, you could use my referral link and earn a further 1,000 miles in the program of yo...

A few months back, I wrote about Etihad's plans to start services to Kolkata in February 2015. However there's reliable information now that the AUH-CCU service won't be the only expansion of capacity to India. Apparently, Etihad's traffic to India has grown by over 50% in the last one year ... clear signs that their acquisition of Jet is working for them. They carried over 600,000 passengers in just 6 months - the first half of 2014. Given this demand, Etihad will be launching a third daily service each to DEL and BOM, from AUH.  The new AUH-BOM service will be an A320 flight, starting 15 February 2015.  The new AUH-BOM service will also be an A320 flight, starting 1 May 2015.  I also believe Etihad will be launching direct flights from Abu Dhabi to Goa, Lucknow and Pune in the next 12 months, though I'm not sure if these will be daily flights. All of these new services that Etihad's introducing are because of the enlarged capacities it has been allowed under ...

In early September, SPG came out with their fall promotion titled "More For You", that offered 2x or 3x points for stays . I was rummaging through the promotions that were on offer, to see what I'd registered for and what I hadn't, when I came across this little gem. SPG is offering 500 Starpoints just to update your "My Stay Preferences" on their program's page. Apparently, all you have to do is login to your SPG account on spg.com and update your stay preferences, which helps SPG improve the how it personalises each stay. You need to login to your SPG account, then click on your name on the top right of the screen. Then this pops up: Select "My Profile", and scroll down to My Stay Preferences, and click on Edit . You should have this: 500 points doesn't sound like much, but 500 is 500, right? 

Jet Privilege isn't the best airline miles currency around, but at least it trumps Air India's Flying Returns in many ways. Plus, JP keeps doing a lot with its non-airline partners and has been able to consistently offer miles for various non-flying activities. For instance, they've recently started offering cruises as part of their vacation packages, for which you could earn 5 JP miles per Rs 100 spent . Similarly, there was another recent offer (and I believe it is still open) for a free 3k JP miles (plus a further shot at 20k more) just to sign up for a free Scripbox account . So it comes as no surprise that they've come up with one more offer. JP's tied up with Vidal Healthcare to offer up to 2,000 JP miles for getting a health check up done . The offer's valid till 30 November 2014 . Sadly, the miles here aren't free, but at least the health check can have its own benefits. If you've got a health check coming up (I don't) and if you don't ca...

Jet Escapes - the vacation package arm of Jet Airways - has now tied up with Royal Caribbean International to offer cruise packages that will also earn some JP miles along the way. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm peddling JP stuff (I am not!), but this stuff is interesting. Jet Escapes has a rather good list of travel packages they've put together, and each of them generally earns 5 JP miles per Rs 100 spent on the package. That makes it a useful additional benefit to have.  In addition, booking a package takes out of the equation the price fluctuations (flights and hotels) and  the time & effort spent on planning/coordinating the trip out of the equation.  And it is often cheaper, if you're indifferent to some aspects (like which hotel chain you're staying with).  If you're interested, the package prices and departure dates are as below. A few years back, I did book a package with Jet Escapes, simply because I didn't have the time to plan out the...

Hilton HHonors points are currently being sold in the  market at around 100k points for $4.50, and those could well be yours. I don't mean that you can buy them at that price (well, you could if you were inclined). What I mean, is that those points that are being sold could be yours! And that means your HHonors account has been hacked and you don't have those points any more. HHonors recently introduced a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) authentication for member accounts. But notwithstanding that, some hacker forums have now started selling HHonors points online, through the route of compromising user accounts and selling the account credentials online. Threads like these on Milepoint and Flyertalk are actively discussing this. In particular, see this post by FT user myapologies , which I quote below (spelling and grammar errors from the original post by Imperfectluck - the hacker/seller of points): ----------------------...

Starting 15 January 2015, all Marriott Rewards members will be entitled to free wifi. This is super stuff, because currently, only Marriott Rewards Platinum and Gold members get free wifi , although some brands and some specific hotels do offer free wifi even now, to all members, and sometimes to all guests irrespective of membership or status. In addition, Platinum and Gold members will get free enhanced Wi-Fi where available. This premium service is perfect for downloading large files faster or streaming movies, according to Marriott . There will, however, be some non-participating hotels and brands . From an Indian point of view, there are no excluded brands or properties , which is great. I’ve said before that Marriott Rewards is possibly the best loyalty program in India , and this new entitlement for free wifi to all members only enhances that reputation.