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Episode Description:
As a reminder you can watch this show as well at: https://www.youtube.com/@20minutetravel
This week Southwest continued on its path towards huge changes with the announcement of a shakeup on their board. 6 members will leave and the chairman will retire as they move to make more money and change their model. Will this change the Southwest culture forever?
In other travel news some very popular benefits with Capital One and American Express are being changed, removed or downgraded. Specifically we are seeing changes with Priority Pass restaurants and Uber credits. Do you use these popular benefits? Other topics discussed include: hotel room oddities, strange room service, Carlsbad Caverns, the Concorde and supersonic jets, Hyatt's Guest of Honor double dipping and the MGM/Marriott transfers are a bit strange.
Episode Guide:
- 0:00 Standing up on an airplane
- 1:19 Cheetohs destroying Carlsbad Caverns
- 2:39 Why Carlsbad Caverns and New Mexico are underrated
- 3:51 Huge shakeup at Southwest - 6 board members leaving
- 6:18 Hotel room oddities - Strange things left behind
- 7:33 Room service craziness - Caviar hot dog?
- 8:30 Venture X Business losing Priority Pass restaurants
- 10:24 Why AAdvantage business accounts are surprisingly valuable
- 12:03 Marriott/MGM Rewards transfers are live…with a quirk
- 12:53 Hyatt Globalist double dipping in 2024
- 14:40 Changes coming to American Express Uber credits
- 16:22 Quick RebateKey payment update
- 17:00 A closer look at the Concorde and its Droop Snoot
- 18:39 The future of Supersonic travel and why its coming back
About the Show:
We love to travel and love to laugh! 20 Minute Travel is designed to get you all of the info you need to supercharge your travel by utilizing credit cards, travel rewards and other tricks to pay pennies on the dollar.
Shawn Coomer is the founder of Miles to Memories and has traveled all over the world with his family utilizing miles & points. He has been writing and podcasting about miles, points and travel since 2013 and has earned and spent millions of points & miles across dozens of programs.
Mark Ostermann is the former Managing Editor of Miles to Memories and is the Managing Editor at Travel on Points. He has been writing about his travel experiences since 2017 and loves to dive into the weeds so you don't have to. He also enjoys a good beer and a laugh or fifty.
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So Mark, you get on an airplane, you fly for hours, and then immediately you get to the gate and everybody stands up and the really rude people try to get off the plane. This meme talks all about that, but I don't quite agree with it. I do think it's funny how people, you know, stand up and then the person that stands up just kind of stands in the middle and blocks it like, okay, I could get up and get my bag and like get your bag and sit down if you want to move things along and let somebody else get their bag standing there isn't going to help. But the worst is definitely the people that are from the back of the plane. They try to run up the aisle all the way to the front of the plane. Yeah, it gets to be fun trying to block them or trying to stop their progress. And then they get so frustrated to when they get stopped halfway up like they were actually going to get to the front. But I do think some people stand up. I like to stand up. I'm tall and at the end of the flight, I want to stand up. I'd rather stand there for five or 10 minutes before the gate opens and we get off then sit there in my chair. So I'll take that space in the aisle and don't stand up. I don't care. I know I had to block the people once in a spirit flight, we're in the big front seat and they just kept going by kept going by my wife and daughter were on one side of me and my son on the other and I just stood in the middle and put my arms out and stood there and heard the huffing and puffing and I'm like, hey, if you want to get off early, just pay the 50 bucks for the seat up here. Otherwise, calm down. So I don't even know how to introduce this next story. It is a Cheeto bag in cave equals bad. Carl's Bad Caverns National Park. This is an incredible place. I've been there and these caves are absolutely incredible. The main cave there you hike like I'm over a mile down into it. What's really cool is they have an elevator there mark that goes from the visitor center down into the cave for people who are handicapped, which is really cool. The rest of us have to hike in the way you would want to anyway, but it is just a really neat place and apparently people leaving food and in this case, a Cheetos bag, all of the insects and critters, they break it apart and they put it on the walls of the cave and it ruins it. Yeah, it was kind of a bizarre story and you wouldn't think about it. You're like, Oh, what's it matter? Like, it's a little bit of food for whatever's living down here, but it kind of changes the whole ecosystem. But I just love the visuals of this thing. Like you're walking a winding path down to the cave. It looks really cool inside of it like out of this world, almost like you're in space. So I definitely want to check it out sometime. They're talking about how they had to spend time getting all the crumbs up and every bit of little like microorganism they could to clean it out. And then they talk about usually they have to worry about like fine lint coming off of people's clothing and cleaning that up. Like this is kind of crazy. Yeah, it's so funny that the cave critters don't want to all of our processed food garbage. It's not good for them. It's not good for us either. But you're right, this is an incredible way to go down. Like I said, you hike this mile. I think it's a mile and a quarter long path. But at certain points, it winds down into the cave. It's a really neat place and one that should be preserved in the middle of New Mexico. So if you're ever out there, everybody should check it out. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I think New Mexico is kind of an underrated state in the union of places to go and things to see Santa Fe and everything. And it's kind of overlooked, but it has a lot of beautiful, they have different caves. I think there's like a cave thing in Santa Fe that you can go to that people used to live in and everything and just walk around like a little city inside of it, which looks amazing too. White Sands National Park is just amazing. The dunes there, they never get hot. So it's just cold white sand that you can walk in for miles and miles. Absolutely great. And then of course you can go to the McDonald's in Roswell, New Mexico. It's all alien themed. But of course you can see the alien museum too. You can go to the Breaking Bad House and throw a pizza on the roof and get yelled at now. I've been there with the owners outside. They hate everybody. Yeah, I would too. I mean, that in the home alone house, I wouldn't want to own either of them. But there's also like the four corners, four states on the corner, which New Mexico is a part of. I definitely want to go check that out sometime. I know that's like a hike out the middle of nowhere though. So onto Southwest and we've seen all of their changes in the last few months, I guess, where they talked about doing red eyes and they're going to change their seating policy. And a lot of that is because they're not making as much money as other airlines since COVID. And it's so funny because in the industry, they were the darling forever. They were making profits while we saw all of the other airlines either merge or go into bankruptcy. But now they're getting a lot of pressure from Wall Street and they're changing up their board. Chairman Gary Kelly is going to retire next year. And then six directors are going to leave the board. And a lot of this has to do with Elliot investment management who has a 10% stake and they're trying to get their own board members. But basically just a big shake up and a reminder is Southwest is in a huge transition here as they do move to that new model and they try to make more money. Yeah, it's kind of bizarre when you think like 50 years they made money. Everybody else was losing money and then pandemic hit and they've been struggling, you know, losing money most years since and 2022 that summer hiccup where they didn't get anybody anywhere for like four days. And that's without, you know, having to pay like an EU 261 or anything like that, like they really compensated people some, but they didn't have to pay like $1,200 for two people flying that were stranded for a couple days. That probably set them back big time. And you're just seeing this like, you know, Southwest isn't going to be what people fell in love with. It's not going to be the same anymore. It's going to be more like the other big three. And some people will like that and many people will hate that. You're right. This is the death of the Southwest culture, that culture that was unique and people loved it. And some people didn't like it. But the people who loved it really did. And it does seem like this Wall Street pressure sort of ruins all of that most of the time. So I would expect you're going to see more efficiencies and we're already seeing that by them adding red-eye flights. But there are some good things like those of us who didn't like the seating policy, that's going away. So maybe this does end up being good. But yeah, anytime big corporate investors come in, change the culture and especially the six board members, this is going to be a huge fundamental change for the airline. Hopefully they do update their systems. Maybe that's one thing we can push for. So they're not back there with a piece of paper and a pencil right now, it routes and everything. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Culture is a big problem with the airlines and we see that in the other ones, how they're not as friendly and not as customer service oriented. And you have to assume Southwest is going to go that way. And it's going to be all about the almighty dollar. And that's sad to see. But you know, if you're struggling and not making money, your investors are going to push for it. So Expedia released a report of hotel room oddities, specifically things left behind in hotel rooms around the world. And some of the expensive things like Rolex is and then some other stuff like dentures, I guess, is pretty common. Yeah, like 10%. I think reported dentures being left behind and somebody somebody left like a cast and stuff. So it's just like, have you ever seen it found anything in your safe? Like you always hear the stories of $30,000 in cash and and a watch left behind and stuff. But I've never found anything really in the safe. I've never been lucky enough to find anything other than a little bit of garbage here or there that didn't get cleaned up. Our friend was here at Rio recently. And they had the where the refrigerator used to be that they had taken out in that area. They found like full takeout from the people from before. But that's about as exciting as I've ever seen. I don't know. I want to save full of money for sure. I did remember I found a box of condoms underneath the mattress in LA on the way to Hawaii. And then another time checking for Beck mode, I lifted up the mattress. I found a full bottle, like a huge like Sam's Club, like 1500 capsule bottle of ibuprofen. I don't know why those things would be stuck under the mattress, but that's where where they were. It was it was pretty crazy. But yeah, I like and then room service is like the next thing that they have a stuff and a bathtub full of Evian so their child can bathe in pure water. How much do you think that costs? If it's in Vegas, it's got thousands. It's got to be calmed, right? I don't know. Yeah. Evian water, specifically Evian, not Fiji water, not something different. Burt toast was another one, which is interesting. A caviar hot dog. I could see that. Could you see like somebody bring it? I think there's one that they brought in like a fish or something and asked them to make it for like cook it up for them. Maybe a lot of places do that. You catch the you catch the fish and they cook it for you. Yeah, I mean, not for seasons. Hey, any hotel will do anything for the right price. That's the question. You know, that's the answer there. People figure that out all the time, but we'll put a link. You guys can check out some of this crazy stuff and let us know what your craziest room service order has been, I guess, but the craziest thing that you've ever heard of left in a hotel room as well. But let's move on to some credit card news and some very sad news. And I guess this is so niche because how many people in the world are caring about priority pass restaurants, but a lot of people in this hobby sort of do. And I know people who use them a lot more than I did, but a suite of credit cards had the priority pass restaurant benefit where you could go to certain restaurants and certain airports and get a credit. The Sapphire Reserve, the Ritz Carlton card, those sort of lost the benefit a few months ago. And now the Venture X business. It's somewhat overvalued where people didn't use it as much as they thought. They just liked having access to it. Should they need it? But then they think back like, oh, I only went to one restaurant last year or maybe two, you know, unless you are based out of like a PDX where you have, you know, three or four different restaurant option type things. But yeah, they when they switched over to Visa, the Venture X business lost it for anybody new signing up. But anybody that had the old mastercard version still had it for a few more months, and it seems like over the last couple of weeks, people have gone in with their prior to pass card, and they were denied that it wasn't working or wouldn't swipe or scan or whatever. So it seems like they finally, you know, closed that loophole too. So priority pass sells memberships that you can buy. But does anybody ever buy a membership from priority pass? You have to think 99% of their customers come from Chase Capital One, American Express, these big banks, and none of them have the restaurant benefits. So what is the point of the restaurant benefit anymore? Yeah, you have to wonder if they're just going to eliminate it completely or what the game planning is here with this. And you know, these small priority pass lounges, these smaller lounges, what would they do if they weren't priority pass? Like, how would you gain access to them and stuff? So it is kind of interesting that what if one day all the credit card companies are like, you know what, like we have enough of our own Centurion lounges or Sapphire Lounge, we don't need you anymore. Like you're fine. Get out of here. I say, do it. Get rid of priority pass. I hate them. No. So on to American Airlines. And one of the, I guess more confusing things for people is their business advantage accounts versus the regular advantage accounts, especially if you get the business credit card. But you actually wrote an article trying to open people's minds as to why the advantage business account is actually better. And it has advantages that a regular account doesn't. Yeah, this started, you know, earlier this year, I think maybe late last year, where if you signed up for a new city business American Airlines card, you would automatically get enrolled to it. And then your miles, like if you got your signup bonus or anything you earn throughout the month, people were like, where did my miles go? It used to just go to your personal account. And now they had this business advantage account and they were initially linked and they were getting deposited there. So, you know, there's an article written about finding that and how to attract those down. And people were just moving them to their own account. But the cool thing is you can set up any employees of your, you know, company and a lot of our spouses work in our small businesses and stuff like that. And then you can transfer those points to them to their advantage account for free. So, this is a way to do free transfers to anybody that you call an employer of your business. And that's kind of crazy. So, I keep them in the business account now in case, you know, my wife's just short of the next award or something like that, I can do it. Or if she gets targeted for one of these status matches from Hyatt and she has better status when we're flying together, I'll transfer to those and she'll book it. I agree. And it's something I think probably people are overlooking and not thinking about and just trying to get them out of the business account because they don't want to have this extra account. But it gives you that much more power. And as you said, we all have a lot of employees. So, good stuff there. Good article. People can read about it and you talk about how the transfers, how long they take everything else in that article as well. So, moving on, Marriott and MGM points transfers are now live. The strange thing is that 10 Marriott points equals eight MGM points or 10 MGM points equals eight Marriott points. Tell me how that makes sense. Yeah, they can't be one and the other, you know, like you think it just be one way, one is more valuable than the other, but it depends on which way you're transferring it, which is weird. I would do 10 Marriott points to eight MGM points that basically turns them into a worth of penny apiece or 0.8 cents a piece because the MGM ones are worth a penny when you transfer them over, which is about what you're averaging, maybe a little bit higher than what you average with Marriott. So, that makes sense going the other way, turning 10 MGM into Marriott, unless you needed them for a stay or the cash cost was really high for that hotel. Probably doesn't make sense, but it's still good to have options out there. Another thing you wrote about this week was a reminder of high globalist status and how the guest of honor perk is sort of working this year. So, they revamped it last year, made a big deal, they changed it so you could book it online. It works on cash and point stays. Previously, it was point stays and it's a certificate that goes into your account and previously you had to just call and use it. Well, there's sort of an overlap between the old program and the new one and because they had to honor terms of the old program, what you ended up getting was five certificates this year where you could transform to other people. They could do everything that like in the new program, but if you run out of those, you could still use the benefit the old way unlimited by calling in on award stays and giving it that way. And so this year is the best of both worlds. Yeah, I don't know if I forgot about this or if I never caught it or whatever, but I wrote it up and everybody said, Hey, this has been known for a while. So whatever I'm old, you know, it is what it is. But I think it's still a good reminder to people because I think a lot of people also forgot about it or didn't know about it. And that's what I saw on a lot of the comments was, Oh, I didn't realize this. I was worried, you know, trying to save them to use them for certain things where you get the elite night credit when you book those for people. So use up those five and then you still have access on award stays. So there's no point in like hoarding them. There's still a couple months left in the year. So definitely burn those get your elite nights, give you know, friends and family some status for them. It works on cash stays if you have those awards. So don't hold on to them, make sure you use them. And then you can still book throughout the end of the year, the normal way, the old way. So you're good. You're good to go both ways. Yeah, for sure. It's always a good reminder. This was like I said, announced because the terms, the new terms kind of conflicted with the old ones and people had already qualified. So they basically said, we're going to do the new thing and the old thing for a limited time. Always good stuff. Not good stuff is uber and American Express and apparently things are changing in that game. The way it works now is if you have an American Express Platinum card or another card that has uber credit, you could load multiple cards up to your uber account and then you'll just get all your credit combined at the first of the month. Well, that might be changing because the terms of change saying basically you're going to have to use your American Express card to pay in the future. We hope this doesn't mean it's going to be like a credit back on your statement, but it does sound like this isn't going to be quite as easy as it's been. Yeah, I think that's the big thing is if you only have one of these cards, if you only have one Amex Platinum or Amex Gold, it's not a big deal. You can just, you know, charge it to the Amex card. They're hoping that you set it up that way and then forget and use your MX card for all overcharges. But it was nice when it just all went into one commingled fund and it would get merged up with any gift card balance you had in there and it worked just like a gift card and you could pay any overage with any credit card you had on your account. So we don't know if it's just going to be still added to that fund, but you have to check out with an Amex credit card. So anything that goes above the credit and they're still mingled together, anything that goes above it goes on that Amex card or if it's going to be a straight statement credit, where you have to charge the full thing on your Amex card and then they knock 10, 15 or the $20 in December off. That's the way I'm thinking it's going to be because that's how they have everything else set up. And that's the way it kind of reads, but I'm hoping not. Yeah, it'll be a huge loss, a huge negative change for these cards and the value of that credit, I think, if they change it in that way. But we'll see how it goes. But we know the terms have changed and we'll see how they implemented. Again, these things don't change for no reason. So it's not going to be good. It's not going to work the way it does now. But let's hold our breath. And you also had a quick update on rebate key from the last show. Yeah, I wanted to just say that I had somebody reach out that switched their payment from check to PayPal and they were paid like four or five days later in full for everything that they were old owed. So it does seem like it's something to do with banking or some type of issue with cutting the check. So if you want to switch to PayPal to get paid, that should be a good way to do it. You do have to potentially deal with a 1099 from PayPal if it's over the $600. We're still not sure how that's going to all play out with everything or if that got punted for another year or whatever it is. But I would take the money and worry about that later with my accountant. Now for some cool S, the condor. And I wish this is one of the things I wish I could go back and fly a little bit before my era. But you're talking about going mock to across the Atlantic, all kinds of cool stuff and some of the cool liveries of this and just the fact that you were on this plane doing it. It's just a piece of history. And I know several people have flown on it and absolutely loved it. But what a lot of people don't know is that the very sharp nose that was needed in order to achieve those speeds sort of blocked the pilot's ability to view the runways and things is landing. So the nose would actually drop out of the way. It was called a droop snoot. Did you know that? Yeah, no, I never heard that before. It's a cool name. But this is one thing that fascinated me. I'm not as much into airplanes and all that stuff like you are. But I've always been fascinated by this plane. And it's kind of interesting, you know, it could fly from London to New York and like three, three and a half hours, which is insane. And that'd be kind of cool. You could go for like, you know, one night and not miss so much time. And you know, but the seating was not great. Like it was kind of looked like a regional jet because they had to pack the people in kind of tight. It didn't look all that comfortable. But I guess, you know, that's what you give up. Would you rather spend six, seven hours in the air and be in a live flat or would you rather three and a half hours and and just being like a normal seat? Yeah, it's interesting because it was sold as all business class, but not business class in the way that we think of it today. Although I did think they have a little bit more space than traditional economy. But yeah, they had about a hundred seats. What I think is the most interesting. I think it burned like four times the fuel of a 747, which is a gas guzzler. And this is the reason that we don't really have supersonic flight anymore. There's a whole range of new planes that are supposedly coming. So one of the more interesting things I learned about the aviation industry is most planes fly around 550 miles an hour. It's not because they can't fly faster or we haven't progressed technology over all these years of jet engines. It's that the economy of it, the cost of fuel, everything else, how long people are willing to go. You know, people are willing to spend seven hours to go to Europe instead of three. And that's the economics of all of it. So it's not that we can't go faster. It's just that it's cost too much money. I do wonder, like, was this a bit ahead of its time? And I know September 11th kind of killed it off a little bit. You know, people weren't flying as much. And the tickets were expensive. They're like seven to $10,000 round trip back then, which is probably around $20,000 now. But with how we see people spending money on things that you wouldn't think that people would spend money on, would this be super successful now for people that worked, you know, in New York and had to go to business in London or just get to Europe quickly for business? I feel like they could sell those seats, you know, to a lot of corporations in this day and age for the 15 to $20,000. A lot of people that fly private might not do that because this would save them time. And, you know, the saying time is money. I think that this could needs to make a comeback. Like I said, there's a bunch of planes in development. So I do think we will see this. And even airlines like United have said that they're going to bring this type of product. What's interesting, though, is you can't really fly over the United States because of the sonic boom. That's why they had to fly over the oceans, basically. So limited on the amount of routes you can do, but I am looking forward to a future where we can fly this fast and I'll be one of the first on one of those airplanes. Yes, spend that money. United, we could book it with miles. How great would it be to book it for like a hundred thousand miles? That'd be insane or a million miles. Let's be realistic, Mark, not a hundred thousand in 10, 15 years, two million, three, five, 10 million miles, whatever it ends up costing. Let's do it. But let us know what you guys think about anything we talked about today, the Concord, a rebate key, the Uber credits changing, priority pass restaurants, so much bad stuff happening, but life is good. So hit us up in the comments. We do a new show every Wednesday. So subscribe, share it with your friends, thumbs up, everything like that. And we'll talk to you guys next week. Have a good week, everybody. Thanks for watching. Enjoy your flight.
