Cheap Star Alliance Gold, first class for the price of business and the Paris Olympics kill hotel demand (Saturday Selection)

A possible path to cheap Star Alliance Gold, how to book Qatar First Class at the business class price and the Olympics are cratering the demand for hotels in Paris. All that and more in this week’s Saturday Selection, our weekly round-up of interesting tidbits from around the interwebs (links to the original articles are embedded in the titles).

Will easy ITA status match be a backdoor to Star Alliance Gold?

Status matching is a deep, intuitive art that some folks liken to alchemy. It’s where you use your elite status in some sort of travel program to convince another travel program that you should be a hoity-toity member of their in-group as well. Of the folks that I know, Nick Reyes is the “sensai of free play” when it comes to status matching, having somehow used a combination of casino and cruise-line status to spend much of the last two years cruising around the world with for almost free with his family. This week, Ben over at One Mile at a Time wrote about another new matching opportunity with the airline-formerly-known-as-Italia, ITA. The company is running a promotion where you can match status with 19 different airlines to ITA and then that resulting ITA status is good for ~18 months. But why would someone living in the US want ITA status, you might ask? Because the higher ITA status tiers also get you SkyTeam Elite Plus status with some ok benefits when you’re flying other SkyTeam partners (like Delta or Air France). However, the real tasty bit is that Lufthansa is currently in the process of purchasing ITA, so ITA elite status might end up being converted to Lufthansa Miles & More Senator status and then, Star Alliance Gold. This is when things could get exciting, as you would get things like priority airport check-in, security, immigration and boarding; complimentary standby; increased baggage allowance and airport lounge access (including a companion) when flying Star Alliance’s myriad partners. That’s a big train of “ifs,” for sure, but since there’s no cost to participate, it might be worthwhile bet to make for many US-based Star Alliance customers.

Greg the Frequent Miler appears on “All the Hacks” podcast

Does it seem like Greg the Frequent Miler has a guilty look on his face, sitting in that nice comfy chair beneath the glare of the studio lights? I thought so too. That shady look might be because that picture was not taken in Frequent Miler on the Air‘s Ann Arbor headquarters, but rather in San Francisco where Greg was moonlighting on “All the Hacks” with host Chris Hutchins. Greg had a couple of hours to kill in San Francisco at the beginning of our recent “Flying by the Seat of our Points” travel challenge, so he visited Chris and spent a couple of hours chatting about “Shortcuts to Elite Status.” It’s a great episode that’s worth checking out.

Are you worried that Nick, Greg’s normal podcasting partner in crime, might have been a little jealous seeing Greg pontificating on a points and miles on another show? Don’t be. Nick was Chris’ guest on All the Hacks last month.

Where you can book Qatar first class for the price of business class

Experiencing international business class for the first time can be revelatory. The first time that I got to turn left (into the business cabin) after boarding a plane was years ago on a Qatar Airways flight from Dallas to Doha. This was before Qatar debuted their broadly-hailed Qsuites business class seat; it was a boring old 2-2-2 cabin with very little privacy between seats. But I thought I was in heaven. My 6’3″ frame had never had so much room, been able to recline or, *gasp* lie down on a flight. Making that sort of blingy experience within the reach of the average Tim is part of the (significant) magic of points and miles and is one of things we love helping people accomplish at Frequent Miler. Well, Qatar itsn’t just Qsuites, it also has a first class cabin on certain flights with wider seats, caviar service and top-shelf champagne – not to mention access to one of the blingiest airport lounge experiences in the world in Doha’s Al Safwa First Class lounge. For folks flying past Doha, this can be an incredible deal, as Qatar will allow you to fly first class on the second leg of a two-leg trip for the same price as flying business class the whole way. Thrifty Traveler had a great post last week that broke down all the Qatar routes where it’s possible to indulge your champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

The Olympics has killed the demand for…luxury hotels?

Hosting the Olympics is conventionally thought to bring a massive economic boom for cities that do it (although whether or not it pays for itself is up for debate). Visitors are expected to come from all over the world to fill a region’s hotels, restaurants and bars all the while throwing money left and right in cavalier fashion. Or, so Paris thought, anyway. In preparation for the traveling hoards, Parisian hotels and restaurants hiked their prices and museums raised admission rates, all expecting to be rolling in Euros by summer’s end. That’s not quite what’s happened however, as prospective visitors, leery of the prices and sardine-like crowding, evidently have been saying a hearty “au contraire.” Hotel occupancy in the city in June was 25% below 2023 and now some hotels are having to slash prices and offer “Olympic Specials” during the games themselves. Flights have dropped in price and award availability has become surprisingly open. The 2024 Olympics are widely-expected to cost more than $8 billion, but thus far residents aren’t feeling much joie de vivre, despite the astronomical price tag.

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