Budget Travel tips

For the twelfth consecutive year, JetBlue tops the list of best airlines in North America. It ranks first among low-cost carriers in J.D. Power’s annual ranking of North American airline satisfaction. Alaska Airlines is ranked highest among traditional airlines for the ninth straight year. Southwest, which is grouped in the low-cost category, had the second-highest score overall.

Segmented pricing and extra-cost amenity bundles are all the current rage among airline marketers. To compete with the likes of Spirit and Frontier, the full-service carriers are expanding their pricing schemes to include their own bare fares—super-low fares for no-frills transportation. And for those willing to pay extra to upgrade their coach-class trips, there are amenity packages such as United’s Premier Access, which give travelers priority check in and boarding, and expedited security clearing, and the carrier’s Travel Options packages, which add extra perks to Economy Plus seating.

Enter the Visit St. Pete Clearwater “Get Amped Getaway” sweepstakes by September 8, 2016, for a chance to win the grand prize: a five-day trip for four people to St. Pete, Florida, including four nights at the Loews Don CeSar Resort, a $250 resort credit, first-class air, $500 gift card, and private car hire.

Millennials are changing the travel industry. The frugal and tech-savvy generation that so many people bemoan has prompted big hotel companies to launch affordable, hostel-like lodgings and install voice-activated assistance in rooms. It’s backed a booming peer-to-peer industry. It’s demanded that low-cost accommodations and budget airlines no longer be a seedy alternative.

Consumer Reports is in the business of rating and ranking everything, from refrigerators to running shoes. In a shift from its normal product-review routine, where the publication’s in-house experts do the testing and comparisons, Consumer Reports turned to its readers for a review of U.S. airlines.

The recent history of travel is in no small part the story of online travel. And that story has yet to be better told than by Skift’s “The Definitive Oral History of On line Travel,” a collection of interviews with the key people associated with the startups of such iconic companies as Expedia, TripAdvisor, Kayak, Priceline, and the like.

We are currently traveling in a relatively golden era of airfares. Fares have been on the cheaper side for a while, thanks to low fuel prices and a healthy supply of available seats.

When it comes to making elite status in its Rapid Rewards program a must-have status for high-frequency flyers, Southwest is at a considerable competitive disadvantage. With no first-class seats or airport lounges, there’s just not much that Southwest can offer super-loyalists in exchange for their business.

The merger of Alaska Airlines and Virgin America has left many travelers bemoaning the impending disappearance of Virgin, one of the industry’s best-loved airlines, as it’s folded into Alaska.

The two biggest expenses when planning a trip are airfare and accommodations. What if you could skip one of those? While you’re unlikely to finagle a free flight without elite or airline-employee status, there are a surprising number of ways to score free lodging if you’re flexible.

Let’s be honest: We’d all fly first class if we could.

It’s become an industry-wide marketing trend recently for airlines to serve branded coffee and promote the association. Boast the roast.

As of yesterday, American was the only one of the Big Three legacy airlines that hadn’t revealed details of its basic economy fares, the cheap coach fares with few perks and plenty of restrictions that have made Spirit, Frontier, and other ultra-low-cost carriers the darlings of the most price-sensitive customers, and of Wall Street.

In yet another sign that the mainstream travel industry is slowly recognizing (if not wholeheartedly embracing) the sharing economy, Delta this week began awarding frequent-flyer miles for Airbnb stays.

IHG Rewards, the loyalty program of the InterContinental Hotels Group, today released its latest list of PointBreaks hotels that are available for booking for just 5,000 IHG Rewards points per night.

AccorHotels is the latest hotel chain to make a concerted effort to curry favor with Millennial travelers. By 2020, the company will roll out 50 new hotels under a new brand named JO&JOE, described as follows:

One of last week’s biggest travel stories was Norwegian Air’s plans to sell New York-Edinburgh tickets for $69 each way. That stunningly low price will, to be sure, be an introductory fare, to promote the launch of the new service, available for a limited time. And in any case, the $69 flights won’t be available until sometime after the airline begins receiving its new B737MAX long-distance planes in April.

Tired of slow inflight Wi-Fi, or worse, no Wi-Fi at all? Southwest has you covered. Or will have you covered, when its newly announced upgrade program is in place.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer has looked into United’s Basic Economy fares, set to launch early next year, and he doesn’t like what he sees. He’s particularly outraged that the new ultra-low-priced fares will restrict customers to a single small carry-on, leaving the overhead bins for the exclusive use of those paying higher fares.

When an airline knows its core customers are anything but frequent flyers, is there any point in hosting a loyalty program? Probably not. Which explains why Allegiant, the low-cost leisure-focused carrier based in Las Vegas, never rolled out a full-fledged frequent-flyer scheme. There’s just no return-on-investment when your customers are by definition infrequent flyers.

Award-price adjustments are a fact of life for participants in hotel loyalty programs. And the annual announcements of such changes are rarely good news. Inevitably, it seems, more award prices increase than decrease, resulting in a net devaluation of program members’ points.