- Spirit Airlines Dramatically Drops Price Of Checked Bags And Carry-ons Purchased At Gate by Le Chic Geek. This is only on the fees charged at the gate and not at ticket purchase/airport.
- Hotel Des Indes is leaving the SPG program for Leading Hotels of the World (dutch warning). I suspect a lot of hotels will be leaving the SPG as soon as their contract is up, especially if it’s up in the near future as a result of the poorly implemented Marriott merger and the massive data breach.
- Lyft To Get A Lift From IPO? by PYMNTS. Looks like Airbnb, Uber & Lyft will all go the IPO route in 2019. Uber seems massively overvalued to me if it goes anywhere near 120 billion.
- Mastercard, Visa Propose Cutting Fees for European Merchants by WSJ.
Deals expiring at the end of today or starting today (view the full deal calendar here):
- [Targeted] American Express SPG Luxury Card 125,000 Point Bonus
- [Targeted] AmEx Offer: AT&T, Spend $200/$150 & Receive $200/$50 Statement Credit
- [CA, AZ & CO] $300 FirstBank Checking Bonus – Direct Deposit Optional
- Sears: $10 Off $10+ In Store – Text FROSTY TO 73277
- Kmart: $5 Off $5+ In Store – Text JINGLE to 56278
Deals expiring at end of tomorrow:
Do you have a post on how hotels joining networks like SPG/Marriott works? I didn’t realize it was based on contracts. Are these the ones they lump into ‘luxury’ or ‘design hotels’ collections? Just interested in this space.
No we don’t sorry
It wasn’t a Marriott data breach – it was an SPG data breach. It actually didn’t effect legacy Marriott customers, only legacy SPG customers. It didn’t effect Marriott customers that joined after the merger; just legacy SPG customers. Yes, Marriott inherited it and didn’t catch it, but it was an SPG breach. Call it what it is. Of course, in the eyes of the SPG fangirls, everything is the fault of the Marriott devil.
I didn’t call it a Marriott breach. Regardless I can see both Marriott & SPG properties leaving due to the poorly managed merger and the fact this breached occurred. It’s likely done massive brand damage and it really doesn’t matter if your property was legacy SPG or Marriott in this case.
Hard to say what Uber is worth without seeing some financials. No one thinks about their international presence and how they own stakes in their “competitors” in those markets. Sure you can argue the reported US losses don’t look great but Google rolling out Waymo One shows that driverless taxi’s aren’t far away. If drivers keep 80% of the fare, then there are huge gains from replacing them.
Even as a computer programmer I’m not chomping at the bit to get in a driverless taxi… especially if I’m not getting a share of the huge gains from replacing drivers.
As someone who Ubers at least semi-regularly, I’m really looking forward to it. I don’t see how it can be worse than the human drivers.