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Hilton announced their first promotion for 2016. Called "Double your HHonors", this promotion is valid for stays between 1 January and 30 April 2016, and offers a choice of double HHonors points or double airline miles. This is not very different from the promotion they offered last year. Members can choose either double HHonors base points or double airline miles for stays at qualifying hotels between January 1 and April 30, 2015. Registration is necessary, here . There are no property exclusions, ie, all Hilton properties are participating in this promotion, which is fantastic! Remember, that a choice once made cannot be changed during the promotion period, so be careful with your choice. Also if you're the kind that's interested in the fine print, see some FAQs here . Points & points v/s Points & miles HHonors members at the base level earn 10 points per eligible $ of spend at the base level. On top of that, members get 5 bonus points per eligible $ spent,

A few weeks back, both Hilton and Hyatt were offering status matches that went relatively unpublished. Because I'd applied in the early stages of the offer, I succeeded in being upgraded to Hilton HHonors Diamond as well as Hyatt Diamond , both being the topmost tier levels in the respective programs. While the Hyatt status matches have diluted or completely stopped in the last few days, Hilton's offer is valid for applications made till 11 January 2016. What's more, you can now apply online for a status match. All you need to do is head to the landing page , and provide the following information: Of course, you'll need to be a HHonors member first, but if you aren't one yet, you can sign up here . The status match, if granted, will be valid till March 2017. This is a great way to start the new year, and hope for some good stays and points earning opportunities in 2016. In any case, HHonors benefits at even the Gold level are quite good (which includes breakfast at

I’d stayed at the Renaissance Mumbai in early 2014, and as I recall, that stay wasn’t exactly spectacular. Also, for reasons of logistics, wasn’t able to try out the executive lounge that I was otherwise allowed to use. So when an opportunity presented itself a few weeks back at the Renaissance Mumbai – for a rate that included a mini-suite plus a complimentary bottle of sparkling wine, for an extra cost of only Rs 500 on the normal room rate – I booked it right away. While I’ll be reviewing the hotel room separately, this post deals only with the executive lounge, which is worth a visit any time. I arrived at the hotel in the evening, say 7 pm, but for some reason, my room wasn’t ready yet. There was also a lot of folks at check-in, due to a convention that was taking place at the same time. So the duty manager suggested that I head to the executive lounge to check in and have a couple of drinks, in which time the room would be ready and my bags sent there, which sounded reasonable. 

There was enough media speculation a couple of months back about Jet Airways having issues with continuing its scissors hub operations in Brussels. The add-on to this was a potential move to another European hub, possibly Amsterdam . Jet Airways has now pretty much confirmed this, with its announcement to start daily non-stop scheduled services from India to Amsterdam starting 27 March 2016 . The Brussels-based network of Jet will come to an end on 26 March 2016, although the currently published flight schedules go up to June 2016 in some cases (probably an error that'll be rectified soon). Jet will operate Airbus A333 services on BOM-AMS, DEL-AMS and AMS-YYZ as follows, each of these configured with 34 business class and 259 economy class seats. No first class. 9W 232 Mumbai Amsterdam 02:25 08:15 A330-300 Daily 9W 231 Amsterdam Mumbai 11:20 23:55 A330-300 Daily 9W 234 Delhi Amsterdam 02:35 08:00 A330-300 Daily 9W 234

Citibank Premier Miles is offering a 10% bonus on transfer of Citi PMs to the Asia Miles program, which can be used for redemptions on Cathay Pacific and partner airlines. This offer is valid for transfers made till 31 December 2015, which means you've only got a handful of days left to make use of this offer. The current normal transfer rate is 2 Citi PMs for 1 Asia Mile, after the 50% devaluation of Citi PMs that was announced almost exactly a year ago. Which means, that under this offer, conversions will earn 1.1 Asia Miles for every 2 Citi PMs transferred. You will need to call Citibank to request them for the transfer , by providing your Citi PM credit card number as well as your Asia Miles account number. Points should normally post within 5 working days, but make sure you request before 31 December 2015. This offer is only slightly different from the 25% bonus on conversion to the Etihad Guest program from, among others, Citi PM. After the devaluation, that I've referre

“Accelerate” seems to be the promotion name for all IHG bonus points promotions. Not that it matters. What’s more relevant is what the promotion means for you. Anyway, IHG has just announced the Accelerate promotion for Q1 of 2016  , valid for stays between 1 January and 30 April 2016. This is similar to certain previous IHG promotions such as this and this .  This time too, “goals” are customised for individual members based on their elite tier status, stay patterns, etc. Here are the detailed  T&Cs  for this promotion. The base offer for new and recent members seems to be either the one below, or something on similar lines: As you can see, there isn’t much incentive to stay beyond 3 nights, with at least one of them in January. If you are looking at between 4 and 15 nights with IHG, each night earns only 1000 bonus points, in increments of 3000 bonus points, which isn’t a great deal to be honest. If you’ve got this as your offer, you could earn a decent number of points by stayi

Starwood has announced its promotion for the first quarter of 2016, called “Take two”.  In this promotion, SPG members earn 2x Starpoints (that's base points plus 1x bonus) on all stays of 2 or more nights, across all SPG properties worldwide. In addition, stays at specific properties earn an additional 250 Starpoints per night. This promotion is valid on stays between 11 January 2016 and 30 April 2016. As with all SPG promotions, registration is required . Bonus point earnings You earn Starpoints at a normal rate of 2 Starpoints per eligible US$ of spend, plus a 50% bonus (1 Starpoint per $) for SPG Gold and Platinum members. So under this promotion, base level SPG members will earn 4 Starpoints per $ on stays of 2 or more nights, while Gold/Platinum members will earn 6 Starpoints per $ of spend. This excludes the 250 Starpoints per night for stays at select participating properties that are listed here – stays at these hotels earn 250 bonus points even on one-night stays. India

A couple of weeks back, Jet Airways announced a JP promotion for bonus miles and bonus flight counts . The bonus flight count part of the offer varied, but in general, you were (and still are till 22 December 2015) eligible to earn double flight count for each segment you travel (there's a cap on how many bonus flight counts you can earn). Today, there's another offer for earning flight counts, this time on redemption bookings! Put simply, you earn flight counts even on award tickets, for redemptions made before 25 December 2015 and travel till 10 February 2016 . All you have to do is register at this link: http://social.jetprivilege.com/tier_point_promotion/index.php?jpnumber=123456789 Just replace 123456789 in the above text with your 9-digit JP number, and copy paste the text into your browser's address bar. You should get this screen: Input your JP number in the space provided, and click on Register Now. Your registration for this promotion should be confirmed. Here ar

Seems like Christmas may have come a tad early this year! Here's your chance to cash in on two fantastic opportunities to get Hyatt Diamond level membership. Or Hilton HHonors Diamond level. Or why not both? Following Starwood's acquisition by Marriott that was announced a few weeks back, and SPG members' general disenchantment with that due to the expectation that a lot of SPG benefits would no longer be available , Hyatt and Hilton seem to have gotten into the act to "recruit" more elite members into their ranks. Hyatt Diamond Membership To be honest, I've not written much about Hyatt on this blog, because I don't get to stay much at Hyatt properties. Having said that, this opportunity for Hyatt Diamond Membership could change that.  It all started with this tweet from Hyatt Concierge on 20 November 2015: Looking for a new loyalty program? DM us and let’s talk. pic.twitter.com/U2GOP7nTrH — Hyatt Concierge (@HyattConcierge) November 19, 2015 A lot of fol

I write this not just as a travel blogger, but as someone who's had Chennai as their home all their life, and is now witnessing one of the worst natural disasters ever to hit this city. For those who aren't in the know, Chennai (MAA) has been facing some really rough weather these last few days and weeks. After last week's cyclones (yes, in the plural), Chennai was hit rather hard yesterday. All in, these are the worst ever rains in over a century . Knee-deep water is the new normal right now. I've been out on the streets and doing a little bit for folks around my home area, which is why I couldn't write about this over the last few days. Things were so bad, that in a residential area near where I live (and nowhere near the beach), we had 10 Navy divers positioned with speedboats, ready to evacuate people if required. Folks and organisations (including corporates) in the city have been absolutely fantastic and magnanimous, throwing open their homes, offices and othe