The best way to book North American AA flights, a $100 US resort fee and One Key aborts worldwide launch (Saturday Selection)

A new US property with a $100+ resort fee, a great award chart for North American AA flights and One Key is so bad that Expedia won’t launch it outside of the US and UK. 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).

The absolute bestest award chart for North American AA flights

This week, Qatar Airways put yet another nail in the coffin of what used to be one of the better uses of Avios: booking domestic American Airlines (and more recently Alaska Airlines) flights. It’s not exactly the final nail, as it’s still possible to get marvelous pricing leftover from the near-Pleistocene Age using Finnair Avios. However, actually booking those flights through Finnair can feel like a bygone era as well. It’s not possible online and most Finnair phone reps seem befuddled as to how such a thing might occur – although chat reps seem to have a slightly better success rate. All this has resulted in Avios having a whimsical tapestry of North American award charts that are increasingly convoluted. Qatar, Finnair and British Airways each have different pricing, and that’s without adding in other oneworld partners like Alaska and Qantas. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone made one, combined award chart that showed each program’s price so you could see at a glance who’s best? Well, wish no more. Dan’s Deals has done a great service to the the points and miles universe by creating the authoritative “How to Book North American AA and Alaska” award chart. It’s something that everyone should have bookmarked.

Is the Alaska/Hawaiian merger on thin ice?

At the end of last year, Alaska Airlines announced that it planned to acquire Hawaiian Airlines, a move that had some of us dreaming about what how a Pacific-Oceania route map and some fresh, widebody 787s might spruce up what ’til now has been a very domestic Alaska program. The airlines expected the merger to take between 12-18 months, depending on the feds, who haven’t been a big fan of either the JetBlue/Spirit merger or American’s attempted alliance with JetBlue. Most of us thought that this would sail through relatively easily, so much so that Greg and I both featured it prominently in our 2024 predictions: “There’s really no risk of market dominance here and the two airlines when combined will still be small compared to the big four. The Biden administration has bigger fish to fry this year and Alaska/Hawaiian won’t be in the pan.” Sounds convincing, doesn’t it? I thought so. I still think it looks positive overall, but last week the Department of Justice requested an extension to its review of the deal…not once, but twice. Beat of Hawai’i talks through the implications and whether or not it’s actually indicative of trouble in paradise.

One Key is too painful for the rest of the world

I often say that one of the things that a life of travelling has taught me is that we North Americans often pay more for less when compared to our European and Asian brethren. This includes food, drinks, service, lodging…my wife and I have spent quite a bit of time in Europe over the past 18 months and we’re constantly amazed at the value we’re getting every time we go out for a meal or check into a hotel. Evidently, that applies to rewards programs as well. One Key is the much-despised loyalty scheme that now covers Expedia, Hotels.com and the vacation rental program VRBO. It took what were two, relatively solid individual programs (especially Hotels.com) and consolidated them into one, big, yucky mess with a fraction of the value…the ‘ole Bonvoy treatment, if you know what I mean. However, after rolling out the program to little fanfare in the US and the UK, the Expedia Group has decided that it made a mistake and that the program won’t be extended to the rest of the world. Now, if only we could rid it from our own shores.

US resort fees hit the triple digit threshold

I have a lot of words to describe the proliferation of add-on hotel fees and none of them are very nice. Resort fees used to be limited to, well, resorts. The stated reason was to support all of the magnificent accoutrements that these behemoth properties lather on their guests like sunscreen. Free WiFi! Pool towels! Refillable water stations! Who wouldn’t pay more for such over-the-top luxury? But that wasn’t the real reason that these extraneous fees started attaching themselves like barnacles to the hulls of the world’s lodging. Hotels had become more and more reliant on heavily-commissioned business through online travel agencies like Expedia and Hotels.com. Taxes and fees weren’t part of the commissionable rates, so these fees allowed for the creation of a sort of black market, “tax-free” zone. Instead of raising the nightly rate, add a fee and keep all the cheddar in your cellar. Now, not only do we have resort fees, we also get facility fees, destination fees, and amenity fees…even urban fees. As these additional charges have spread to more and more properties, they’ve also continued to rise in price; $40+ is relatively common now. However, there’s a Ben Franklin-sized glass ceiling that’s just been shattered: triple digits. The newly-opened Regent Santa Monica, an IHG property, has implemented a resort fee that, including tax, comes out to $107.33 per night…and it turns out that it’s actually the second US property to do it. Dave Grossman tells the sordid story here.

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