Snooze You Lose: JetBlue’s 25% Discount on Award Travel

With no published award-price charts to refer to, members of Delta’s SkyMiles program don’t know when award prices are higher or lower than normal. That’s because there is no baseline to use as a reference point; there is no normal. Or rather, normal is whatever Delta chooses to publish as the price for an award ticket on a particular flight.

Planning a road trip this summer? For the sake of safety and peace of mind, your own and others’, add this to the pre-departure to-do list: a review of your driving habits. After all, while there’s nothing you can do to change other drivers’ bad habits, you are at least in control of your own.

Need a pre- or post-flight nap, or just a little quiet time in the midst of the airport’s hustle and bustle?

It’s a fact of loyalty-program life: Airline and hotel programs periodically adjust their award prices. Of course, those adjustments amount to price hikes more often than not. And, all things being equal, higher award prices amount to an overall devaluation of the program.

That 10 percent AARP discount for Hyatt stays? Per Hyatt’s website: “Act now. Offer Expires January 31, 2016.”

Enter the United Airlines “Billion Mile Giveaway” sweepstakes by September 30, 2016, for a chance to win one of 100 grand prizes of 1 million United MileagePlus miles, plus $750 to cover taxes, each. Runner-up prizes include smaller numbers of miles. In total, 1 billion miles will be given away.

“Stop Clicking Around. Start Saving.” That’s the headline of Hilton’s new ad campaign, and the nub of its latest marketing push.

If you’re a member of the National Rifle Association, you may have gotten accustomed to enjoying member discounts from a number of prominent travel suppliers. If you check today, you’ll find that most of those NRA partner companies are no longer listed on the NRA website.

I’m not a fan of flash sales or flash promotions. I understand the motivation from the travel suppliers’ standpoint, but snooze-you-lose offers are manipulative and disrespectful.

I’m not a fan of flash sales. If a company discounts its product or otherwise adds value to a purchase, then it should allow sufficient time for the offer to be widely communicated, considered, and acted on. “Snooze you lose” has always struck me as disrespectful and a bit nasty.

Overall, Delta’s SkyMiles program has established itself as one of the industry’s least generous loyalty schemes. To play, you’ll pay. But with this limited-time award sale, you can at least pay less.

Vacations are good for you. They’re psychologically restorative. They broaden your outlook. They promote physical vitality and good health. And, lest we dismiss them as petty indulgences, they increase workplace productivity.