It seems booking are soft the rest of the year and United is trying to combat the rollover EQM at Delta with promo after promo.

United, American, and Continental have instituted Double Elite Qualifying miles til 12/15 and now United is offering discounts on 2010 flights for flying multiple times more in 2009. If you fly once more this year, you’ll get a 5% on a domestic flight in 2010, twice 10%, three times 20%, 4 times 30%, 5 times 40% and 6 times or more 50% off.

Here is the link to register.

The terms and conditions are listed on the same page.

Accor Hotels $60 or 40 Euro Voucher for 1st Birthday Celebration

Dmitry comes through with a voucher for us to use at the Accor chain worldwide. It is worth 40 Euros or about $60 and has no name on it so should be available to anyone.

I guess it is in the form of 2,000 points which can then be transferred to the voucher. I’m not sure and neither is Dmitry if it can be used for incidentals.

It is free and available at this link. Put it in your future travel folder for the day an Accor chain hotel is nearby.

On the Road for the Next Two Days

I made it back to Flint without incident and in fact caught an earlier flight that got me here at a reasonable time. I’ll be driving to Beckley West Virginia on day one and then on to Hilton Head day 2 arriving the night of the 17th.

In the meantime, Katy is with her daughter and son in law in Columbia SC and I’ll pick her up on the way through. It is better for the marriage as I think when I drive and Katy likes to jibber. It is better this way.

In the meantime……

Hyatt Faster Free Nights will be out with some nice twists on Wednesday.

And I have schedule changes on my five in a row Mileage Run MSP to GEG for February. The current routing is 4300 +- per round trip with a 7 hour overnight each night in MSP.

I’m seriously considering doing five longer itins due to the schedule change that will net me 5800 miles each trip + the 50% bonus for first class ticketing. It would mean 5 redeye flights and really non stop flying for 5 straight days. I’d never consider it if it weren’t First Class and if the tickets weren’t non refundable in the event I hit a weather snag or bump payday.

So what do you think?

Start at 9:30 AM and arrive back at the start at 8:30 AM the next morning to start all over again. The layovers are all over 1:30 at each stop with a 3 hour break each evening in San Francisco. It will net about 42,500 EQM for the grand total of $730?

The End of Bermuda Trip

We had rain our last morning but it fit in well with our rest and recuperate itinerary and was a welcome sight.

Katy informed me Bermuda was far superior in her mind to any Caribbean Island we have been to and I have to agree. It was quiet, clean, felt 100% safe and beautiful. Of course its location is not condusive to a January or February vacation but for spring and fall it can’t be beat, IF, you can afford it.

Our $99 room was bounced up with $7.80 taxes, $18 resort fee and a mandatory $20.40 room service fee. I refused to pay the room service fee, as they did not service our room on the last day and we had to request towels and more coffee. The fee was removed with a sincere apology.

The total bill came to over $600 for three days including meals wwhich was two mornings of breakfast and two evenings dinners. Get this the hot buffett breakfast was $29 and the cold buffett was $18. It was a nice spread but I really didn’t plan on paying for the silverware and plates at those prices.

Our cabbie back to the airport was named Neville. He was a wealth of information about the island and a true gentleman. The island exports nothing these days but did export some produce and potatoes before the value of the real estate got so high that farming is now non existent.

Neville informed us there is a movement to try and separate from the British Outside Territory status but he is all in favor of keeping things the way they are.

And for those of you looking for a higher paying job, the garbage collector earns $26 per hour on Bermuda.