Frequent Miler on the Air - How to slash hotel prices and fly luxury for less | Ep 36

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

This week, Greg and Nick discussed: -Reader feedback that makes Greg re-evaluate his CSR valuation -Why SeatSpy is exciting and our hopes for it long-term -The ethics of using HotelSlash: Will they help us get a deal, earn rewards, and support them at the same time? -How Turkish Miles & Smiles is making Citi great again -The aim of Frequent Miler Insiders

Hey, Nick. Hello. How are you doing for the show? I sure am. How's it going? How are you today? Where are you today? I'm doing good. I'm in California. I'm at the, where am I? I'm at the Carmel Valley Ranch. It's an unbound collection hyatt. Unbound? Yeah, unbound. I don't know what that means. Totally unbound. Unbound? upgrade. The, the base room is a junior suite, but we're in a, we're in a big suite with a separate,

completely separate, you know, living room and sort of a dining nook and, and a big deck and bedroom and everything. So it's very nice, very beautiful around here. We just went for a little hike and you know, after woken, after having woken up this morning in Michigan, where there was snow everywhere to then get here in time to actually have lunch in California in the sunshine and then go for a walk was great. Yeah, that sounds nice because it has been blustery and cold here in upstate New York today. Just snow flying everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Woke up to a bunch of it on the ground today.

But so you mentioned it's an unbound collection. Have you stayed at an unbound collection hotel before? I have not, which means that I'm about to get a free night certificate from Hyatt because Hyatt has that thing where once you visit five different brands, I think it's five, right? Every five brands you do, you get a free night certificate. So I've done four since I introduced that perk. And so, yeah, I should be getting another one soon. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great perk to have. It's a one-time only deal, but one time, each of the first few times you hit five. So I think there's like 15 different brands. So you

do five brands, you get a free night, another five brands, you get a free night and the final five brands, you get a free night if you happen to catch all the various Hyatt brands. So that is pretty exciting. Yeah. And I completed my first five actually just at the end of last year also. So I have one of those category one to four free night certificates. The thing to keep in mind is they're only valid for about six months. So you do want to make sure that you put that to use soon afterwards, but it can be a great incentive to book a property that is in one of those brands you haven't been to before, because, you know, it's a nice little pickup, whatever, you know, it's costing you in points, you're at least picking up a free night.

Hey, I wasn't trying for it. It's nice to get it just, you know, free basically. So do you know, so the credit card free nights, this is, we talked about this before that before that if you wait till it expires and then call, then they'll give you some points. That's an unofficial policy. It's not official, so you can't bet on it, but it seems like that happens to everybody. Do you know if that's true of these? I don't. No, I don't. I haven't heard anybody talk about it. I mean, it's got such a short expiration policy. You'd think that there are people who didn't get it booked in time, didn't use it up in time. So somebody probably has tried that. But no, I haven't.

I haven't heard anything. Yeah, so we'll have to look into some data points on that. Curious now. Me too, me too. But I'll be doing a mini review of this place soon. So wait for that. So far, so good. But we just checked in a few hours ago. Well, we'll look forward to reading a mini review of this place soon. So, you know, wait for that. So far, so good. But we just checked in a few hours ago. Well, we'll look forward to reading the mini review.

So, so you checked into a new place. You mentioned that they do charge a lot of money for those paying cash and presumably used points or more came during low season, I think you said. So it was probably a pretty good deal this week. Steven Pepper actually wrote a post about getting a good deal on a hotel through something that I think was our idea, right? Just a few weeks ago. That's right. It definitely was our idea and no one else had thought of it. No, clearly nobody had.

How they came up with this that quickly, though, is amazing. Why don't you explain to those who are, who are listening, hoping it's a good story, but you're going to be disappointed. It's not that good. Well, it's not that good of a story that came out on the podcast, but I just whispered. Probably did. So we talked a few weeks ago about how, um, auto slash is a great tool for booking car rentals because you can, you know, type in your information about where you're going to go. They'll search for a good price and then you can put in your confirmation information and the price you're paying and they'll continue to search for a better price. And frequently they save me a lot of money over what I would have paid if I had just booked it on my own.

So I've been using that for years. You've been using it. Most people have and we have no financial relationship with auto slash, right? So there's no sponsorship deal here or anything. It's just, it's been a good deal. So we talked about how we're kind of surprised that nobody does that for hotels because basically auto slash just keeps searching all the various discount codes to see if it can find you a better deal than what you've already booked because prices, you know, they fluctuate and they certainly fluctuate in the hotel market. They change all the time. So we said that we were kind of surprised that there's nobody that's developed a tool to just keep searching for a better price and help

you rebook your hotel. And, you know, lo and behold, somebody must've heard us and gotten on the development really quickly because sure enough, now we have- Well, not just someone, it's the same people. It is auto slash, but now for hotels. And so I've already submitted one reservation to them. Have you tried it? I mean, all I've gotten is a confirmation so far that they're checking. I haven't gotten any cheaper rates yet, but I'm sure that'll come. Well, we'll see.

So when you submitted your request for the cheaper rates, did you have to pick the different kinds of rates that you're eligible for, like AAA or corporate? Well, no, I mean, I literally just emailed my confirmation email. That's all I did. Yeah. And so then, you know, Stephen in his post, he had he had an email address to email to. So that's all I did. The website for Hotel Slash says it's only for those who have been invited in. I have I had not to the beta

test i had not been invited to the beta test but i just figured it'll probably work and it appears to be the case so far huh yeah since i got a confirmation saying we're now checking yeah nice we'll see what happens but i actually so i actually have a story from today about auto slash. Okay. Maybe you can tell me what I did wrong. Is this confession time again? No, we'll see. No, I mean, I think it's turned out good, except for the auto slash guys.

And let me explain. I had booked the rental car for this trip. We're going to be out here a total of eight, no, seven days. And when I had searched myself, you know, National was available for, let's say, $270 for the week. And then there were cheaper ones for maybe $240. But I figured, well, I like National getting the executive club and all that stuff. So I booked National. Then I put it into AutoSlash to watch it. And it came back with a rate of about $170 for the whole week with Hertz. And so I thought, that's great. And the way it works, when you click through, it goes to Priceline, but you don't have to do a prepaid rate. It took me to a postpaid rate, but it's still booking through Priceline. It still lets you

put in your Hertz number. And so I thought that since I was putting in my Hertz number, that I would still get all the elite benefits. But then this morning, it occurred to me to pull up the Hertz app and just check on things, and the reservation wasn't in there. And so I spent most of the flight to California trying to get my number attached to that reservation. I ended up not being able to. And so I went through Priceline. No, I know. Priceline gave me a Hertz confirmation number in their receipt. So if I wasn't logged into Hertz, I could pull up the reservation. If I was logged in, I couldn't. So I had to log out, pull it up. And then I, then I tried to, you know, modify reservation and, and then log in and get my number on there. And it, it kept each time I would log in, it would like lose my reservation. But it turned out there was one secret path that let me, I'm not sure I can describe it. I'm not sure I can replicate this. But there was one particular combination where it let me sort of rebook it. And there was a checkbox saying, keep the same rate. Because when I tried to use the same discount codes that were used originally,

it was pulling up higher rates, probably because it's right before the actual rental. So anyway, so there was that checkbox that let me use the original rates. And if I logged in at the right place in the process, then I kept those rates. If I logged in too late or too early, then it went away. It was really bizarre, but I finally got a new reservation. And so I was good. And I got to pick from the, what is it, President's Club or something? I forget what that's called. It's President's Circle.

That's it. Yeah. So I got to pick from some really nice cars. what is it president's club or something i forget what that's called maybe president circle that's it yeah so got to pick from some really nice cars so we're driving an acura suv which is very nice very nice yeah nice nice stuff that's well that's a big win and and i'm very disappointed that you weren't taking screenshots to be able to tell us how you did it because i ran into the same problem actually uh this past year or same exact situation where I booked with National because I wanted to pick my car. And then the rate that came back from auto slash was so good with Hertz that I had to rebook it with Hertz. And yeah, I had a heck of a time trying to get my number attached to it. And I tweeted and, and sent messages with the Twitter team, and they couldn't do it either. And it turned into a big rigmarole. So, so I didn't, I had at least one where I wasn't able to get it attached at all. And then I had another where somebody at the counter was able to eventually get it attached. But I had a lot of trouble with that with Hertz specifically. With National, it's always been pretty easy. I just pop in my number during the Priceline process and it works.

I thought I had done it before and didn't have problems. So I think I did in Europe with Hertz though and didn't have a problem. But anyway, was this was a mess uh hopefully the auto slash guys listen to our podcast and and we'll reach out to us to let us know how to do this better because i i think that they probably didn't get a commission on this because i it was sort of more of a rebooking than a modification but not 100 sure of that and i i want them to. I'd rather them get the commission than me go through a portal and get the 4% or whatever the current rate is because they're doing a real service. They deserve to get paid out of it. I'm just like you, not willing to give up the elite benefits, elite benefits. I don't actually care about earning Hertz points because I, I've had a lot of trouble using them and they do expire anyway. So yeah, that's my story.

So you brought up an interesting piece and I'm going to come back to the, the fact that we'd like them to earn the commission on something like that. Cause I feel the same way, but let's come back to that in a second. One thing I do want to note for listeners out there or viewers is that I will say the auto slash team is very responsive on Twitter and via email because I did have I booked a lot of cars through auto slash last year. I shouldn't say a lot, but plenty of cars through auto slash last year. And I did run into a couple of snafus here and there. And they were very responsive via email

and Twitter, right on top of it, fixing things. So they are good about that. So I would definitely suggest if you run into an issue like that to send them a direct message on Twitter or send them an email. Okay. I don't know why I didn't think to reach out to them.

I reached out to Priceline and to Hertz, and they were both useless. I don't know if it would have helped you in this situation, but I had a situation, for instance, where I wasn't able to get the rates that were in the email to show up when I was clicking through. And again, they were very responsive and very quick. So that's something I wanted to bring up. Just a little tip there.

And then, so coming back to what you said a minute ago, I totally agree with what you said in that they're providing an awesome service. I've saved a lot of money. I mean, last year I had a couple of reservations where the difference was massive. So I saved a lot of money. So I'm happy for them to get their piece of the pie, so to speak. Right. But when we come to this new hotel slash thing, then it starts to get a little difficult because, I mean, the way that they're making money is obviously they're working like a shopping portal, except they're not giving you your cut, so speak of the shopping portal end of things so they're getting some sort of a commission when you click through so with this hotel slash thing i have to imagine what they're going to do is send you a link where you can click through and book via price line or whatever their preferred provider is and uh and so you'll end up booking

through a third party where you would not normally get elite benefits or points hotel program right that would be a real problem if that's the way they do it i'm they i'm hoping that they'll have affiliate relationships with the major brands so that marriott hyatt ihg hilton if they could get affiliate relationship with them they should be able to send us directly to those websites with the codes input and the way we go. But, you know, who knows? For some reason, they're not doing that with the car rental companies. Right, right. Yeah.

And I think that's an interesting point because my first reaction would be, well, yeah, I mean, they must do it that way or they would want to do it that way because you look at shopping portal rates and they're typically much higher for hotel chains like ihg or marriott than they are for rental car companies uh or than they are for expedia or price line or whatever else so you would think that they would potentially earn a larger chunk by sending the traffic that way but you think the same thing would be true with the rental car companies although you know what you what? Sometimes if you look at the portal rates for things like Priceline, it does say hotels commission at 5%, whereas other, you know, airfares like nothing and, you know, whatever. So, maybe they're getting a decent amount. I don't know. So, what do you think about this, though, in terms of an ethical dilemma? If it is a situation where you have to book through Priceline in order for Hotel Slash to get their credit for it, are you going to book through Priceline or are you just going to take advantage of the service or are you going to take advantage of the service to find a better price and book on your own or just not use the service so that you're saying, is it ethical to use the service and then go around their links to book it, right? Yeah. the codes, but it's, it is possible to figure out what they are and then go around them to,

to book it. So, you know, assuming that we could figure out what the codes are and go around them and book it, is it ethical? Yeah. Um, it's tough. I mean, it's definitely not, that wouldn't make me feel good about doing it. Same time, you know, the whole reason it's exciting to find a marriott or hyatt that's that's cheap instead of a uh non-chain thing is because it helps us get to our elite status goals right and right maybe earns us some points as well. So I would actually rather, I don't, I would rather they had an easy way to like contribute to Hotel Slash. So you could say, I just used it and you, you know, write a review and then donate five bucks or 10 bucks or whatever it is, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would be happy to do that too. I brought it up because I

think it's an interesting ethical dilemma because obviously most of us in this game do want to earn our hotel points and elite status credits. And I think probably it's fairly universal that most of us don't care all that much about rental car points. We do like to have the elite benefits of picking your car and that sort of thing when we can get them. But at the same time, if the rental car is cheap enough, then probably we're okay with giving up some of those things. But when it comes to the hotel elite status and hotel points and hotel benefits like free breakfast, I think most of us aren't willing to give up those things. So I would love to see a way, like you said, to be able to contribute to Hotel Slash because I'd love to be able to use the service and not feel bad I'm being unethical by going around them and booking it on my own, but be able to take advantage of what they've built. So I hope that they either come up with a way to let you book directly with the hotel chains or come up with a way to be able to be supportive of hotel slash while booking

it on your own, because either of those would be great solutions. If the only solution is booking via Priceline, I'm going to be kind of disappointed because I think it's an awesome idea and a great service that we need. But I don't want to lose it. Hopefully, I'll know really soon how it works. Hopefully. It is a Marriott property that I put into Hotel Slash. And it was actually, here was the situation.

The prepaid rate was about 2020 less than the refundable rate. And I thought, you know, I just hate to be locked in, even though I'm pretty sure I'm going to be using it. So I was just like, I'll just pay the extra $20. But Hotel Slash gives us a way to watch it and see if they can come up with a better price or maybe the price will drop. And then, you know, then I can have my hotel cake and eat it too. Right. Well, and prices fluctuate a lot. I wrote this week actually, specifically about the Marriott escapes rates that come out periodically. They used to call them something else and SPG had their own version of them. But the short story is that every now

and then they release a list of properties that are up to 25% off. And I always kind of figure they just jack up the rates and then say that they're 25% off, even though they're not. But in this case, I happen to have been checking every single day, multiple times a day, the Marriott prices in New York City. And sure enough, I was able to see that it was a real discount on most of the properties that I couldn't remember anyway for my searches. I was able to see a decent amount of savings. So they weren't- Yeah, I saw that post. I was really impressed, not only that it was real savings, but that you had as many numbers of what the day before cost. That's how many times I've been looking at it. I think I said at least three times, but

really it was probably a few more than that. So I've been curious. I've been watching it because I have an upcoming stay. And so I've been curious to see what the prices are. And actually I committed to where I was going to stay, but I wanted to know. So when I write about why I chose the place I chose, I wanted to know what my best option would have been. And I wanted to be honest about it. And the truth is that I probably would have continued checking rates. And at this point, rates have dropped enough that I probably would have booked a cheaper place than where I'm going to stay. So I thought that was an important piece of the conversation about what I'm going to write about next week when I've completed this

day. So that's part of the reason I've been watching the rate so closely. But yeah, so that was, I thought, an interesting piece from Marriott. Now, here's a question for you with Hotel Slash, and this is going to be another interesting ethical dilemma. I don't know where they're going to find their better prices because I don't know how the inner workings are yet. But let's say that the better price that they find is available via Priceline or Orbitz or something like that and not available direct. That sets you up into a situation where there's potential for a best rate guarantee claim. If it's a publicly displayed rate versus one where you have to log into, you know, whatever the website is. But, yeah, that's a good point. And that makes it even harder to book through hotel. And it all the more makes you want to donate something to them for the service.

Because, wow, would that be valuable, right? If you could then start collecting on best rate guarantees, that would be great. It would be. And I think it's interesting that this is all coming up now because I hadn't considered all of these variables when a couple of weeks ago we were saying, man, auto slash is great.

Somebody ought to do that for hotels. I'm surprised they haven't done hotel slash. Now that I'm seeing some of the complexity behind it, I kind of see why they hadn't done it yet. It's a little difficult to do maybe that's it yeah uh you know you know what else is is different i i realize that this is very different with uh auto slash and yeah with auto slash they'll show you any cars that are the same like, like full size or small, whatever, that you picked from that same location. In this case, I think they're only watching for that exact hotel.

I don't think they're going to tell me there's a hotel across the street that's cheaper because that's going to be true almost all the time. Right. Right. So there's a lot more complexity involved there, I guess. Well, or because they're limiting to just the one hotel. Yeah, that's true. all the time right right so there's a lot more complexity involved there i guess well or maybe because they're limiting to just the one hotel yeah yeah that's right or maybe that's their way of solving that complexity right right yeah i mean on the flip side it gave them more opportunities for revenue the other way around because there were more rental companies for them to compare against so yeah yeah a lot of uh a lot of behind the scenes stuff there speaking of behind the scenes stuff yeah let's back up to okay where we should have been at the beginning

here because i jumped us right into this topic and then you missed your favorite part of the show didn't you i missed my favorite part we need to back up let's move right into feedback reader feedback it is reader feedback today and i'm saying it's not it's not listener feedback it's not watcher feedback today is reader feedback okay so on monday i published a post comparing sapphire reserve to the sapphire preferred and in that post, I linked to the spreadsheet, the ultra premium credit card comparison worksheet or something like that, where you put in how much you value all the different perks and everything of each card so you can decide which ones do you want to keep long term. Are they worth the annual fee? And I did a screenshot of my current valuations of the Sapphire Reserve and showed why it's a keeper for me. Okay. That's all background. All right.

So now WR2 said, I wonder what that stands for too. Anyway. I was running it through my mind. WR2 says, I just can't wrap my head around your valuation of the 1.5 cents per point benefit. Redeeming at 1.5 cents per point really worth three hundred dollars. All right. Anyway, what he's what he's trying to say or she's trying to say is that. First of all, I think there's two important points in that. One is that, that you can get better than 1.5 cents per point value. So why did I give such a high value? Why did I value so highly the fact that the Sapphire reserve gives you the ability to redeem points at 1.5 when

booking paid travel through chase? Okay. That's one part of it what you know why would i give it a lot when it's uh when you could do better than 1.5 right the other part is that the the numbers i came up with i compared to getting 1.25 with the sapphire I said, because I get an extra 0.25 cents and I'm probably going to spend this many points, I'm going to be about $400 better off at the end of the year. So I'm not going to pay $400 to be $400 better off, but I'll pay $300 to be $400 better off. So I gave it a $300 valuation and WRT is saying, I don't buy it basically. And there's another paragraph here. He says, or she says, I get your math of how you got to 300, but if you didn't have the

CSR, Sapphire Reserve, are you still going to redeem through the travel portal at 1.25 cents per point? Probably not. Instead, you're likely going to transfer to travel partners much more often. So therefore, you can't credit that entire 0.25 cents per point difference to the valuation of that benefit. You aren't losing $300 in benefits if you wouldn't otherwise book at 1.25 cents per point. So that is that's the gotcha for me. So I don't I don't know the answer to this. So, so first of all, it's, let me, you're sort of going back to the first bullet, which is, you gonna redeem it i think at better than 1.5

so i feel like i'm better off redeeming at 1.5 than then um letting them just sit there forever waiting for them to devalue or you know word charts to become less competitive which inevitably will happen all kinds of possibilities right so so that part's easy. But I realized later that WR2 is not really arguing against that too strongly. What WR2 is saying is using the 1.25 is the wrong comparison. And the more I thought about it, the more I think WR2, you're right. I think you're right that if my alternative, if I had the Sapphire preferred and not the reserve, I don't think I would redeem at 1.25. I think I would be, you know, looking for more transfer opportunities, like maybe choosing to use, you know, maybe, for example, maybe I would book more flights with United where I could spend a little bit less with LifeMiles, just because I have so many of these points and I've got to use them up, something along those lines. So, I agree. Comparing 1.5 to 1.25 is not right. The problem is I don't know what right is. I can't sort of

wrap my head around how much value am I getting from this perk, the 1.5 perk. I don't know. Glad that WR2 put you in that dilemma because I've kind of been arguing for the last couple of months that I think that the 1.5 cent valuation is overblown. I think that that really only makes sense. It's really only worth one and a half cents a piece if you're booking paid flights. If you're booking hotels, generally speaking, you could have gone through a portal, used a AAA code, whatever else, and reduced the price. You're not really getting one and a half full cents in value unless you're booking some independent property with none of those other options. And so with flights, you are.

But of course, then you're not always getting access to all of the flights. So it depends on whether or not the flights you were going to book are there. If they are, then yeah, great. You're getting one and a half cents each. But I feel like it's a more narrow number of options that are truly worth one and a half cents each through the travel portal. Yeah, I buy that. But the truth is that between my wife and I, we do have enough paid flights that it's really not an issue. I can spend and I do spend a lot of points that way. So I do think I'm getting the full 1.5. You, yes. The average person, the average person, I don't, I don't know if they are, uh, or at least

I don't, I think that they have to think about whether or not they are. That's, I guess, I guess my point there. And I, I totally agree that obviously if you only have the ability to get 1.25 cents, you would say, you know what, that's too low. I can do too much better by transferring to partners. Uh, so I think actually like my city points. I could get 1.25 a city, but I don't do it. I wait for the transfer opportunities. And then when there is an opportunity to transfer and book something worthwhile, I always turn to my city points and do it right away. I mean, and on the flip side, you also, maybe not the flip side, but additionally, you also have to think if you're going to hang on to points for the ability to use them at 1.25 cents and you've got this massive pile of points where you don't feel like you're going to burn through it anytime soon, then at what point are you silly to not just cash them out at one cent each and put them in some sort of an investment that could potentially out-earn that extra quarter of a cent in a couple of years if you're going to sit on those points for years and years and years where they're not earning any interest not earning any okay so

but now you're are now you're you're i know arguing that i should be doing the 1.25 because only if you're booking travel okay go ahead so if i if i if i use it what when i'm when i'm gonna pay for a flight anyway uh right? Yeah, right. I could take the cash that I'm not booking the flight with, stick it into a high interest account and say, this now is going to earn interest forevermore where it wouldn't have if it sat in my city thank you account. Or then you could say the same thing about the ultimate rewards, right? That is what I've been saying. It's not earning any interest sitting there. It's likely to devalue. So by essentially cashing out by using it for flights, I think that's the right move. I just have trouble figuring out what's the right dollar figure to ascribe to that.

Yeah, I think it's a really good point because I don't think that there's a clear answer to that at all. That was an excellent point to have made because it's just not easy to come up with what you would ascribe to that. And I think that for most people, I think that I would agree with WR2 that you're going to do much better with transfer partners than you are booking paid travel at one and a half cents each. It's kind of one of those, like we said, floor value valuations. And if you are manufacturing a lot of spend or earning a lot of points somehow, and so you've got this massive pile of points, then I do think it makes more sense to use them at that one and a half cents each, then hang on to them for years and years and years and let them continue to collect dust and not earn

anything more with them and wait for them to devalue. So I definitely think using them is better than not using them because you never know when Chase could take that away too, right? They don't have to offer one and a half cents each forever. What if, what if I did this? What if I said, I think I'm going to spend about, I'm going to make them a number of $10,000 in travel that I'm going to book at 1.5. So what if I estimate the amount of interest that'll be earned on that money sitting in the bank over the next, let's say 10 years or something like that, and just say, you know, over the next 10 years, that money will be worth X. So that's, that's how much I value this benefit. Does that make sense? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. There's no clear

answer there. I guess that's where this whole award thing gets a little bit murky, especially when you start to collect a lot, a lot of points, then it does get a little murky as to how much of those points actually worth. And, and that's a point that we've made before, you know, points are worth a lot more to you when you don't have a lot of them. Or when you're, you know, approaching some sort of a goal, like we talked about the companion pass before and how Southwest points are worth a lot more before you are in the companion pass. And they are after you have the companion pass, because obviously, they're building towards that goal. And then once you get it, you've already got that value. And so the more points you get, they aren't necessarily adding much to your bottom

line. So it's the same kind of thing here. You know, if you're, if you don't have enough to book all of the awards that you want to book forever and ever, well then, you know, I would totally agree that holding onto them for the right transfer opportunities makes more sense. But in Greg's spot, yeah, you should, you should be spending them, I guess. Should be. And so, yeah, I mean, I think it's also somewhat of a liability to consider how long you're going to be hanging on to those points, how long you have hung on to them

and how long you're going to continue to hold on to them waiting for the right opportunity. All right. I don't know. No clear answer. We're not going to answer this. It was great.

Great feedback. One to think about. Good food for thought. So speaking of food for thought here, let's get your thoughts on something a little bit different. And that is a post you wrote this week that I found intriguing, but I wasn't sure what to do with it. So you wrote a post about SeatSpy, which looks like a really cool, interesting tool. And I want you to tell us a little bit about how it works and then tell me why I would ever use it. So can you explain it?

And then explain to me why it's useful? Sure. So Seatspy, what it does right now, and I'm stressing the right now because they say they're going to add additional airlines, but right now, it's for searching for award space on British Airways operated flights and on Virgin Atlantic operated flights. And I'm stressing also the operated flights part. It does not work on code shares. So if just because Virgin Atlantic sticks its name on a Delta flight does not mean you can search for a word space with this tool on that Delta flight just because it's a Go-Jar. You can't. So anyway, so for all Virgin Atlantic and British Airways routes, with Seatspy, what it lets you do is pick a route, pick whether you want to look for British Airways or Virgin Atlantic, and boom, like faster than you can blink, it shows you a full year of award availability. So it'll show you every single

day, like let's say you said you're looking for two people or four people, whatever, every single day, which days have that availability, and then you can go hover your mouse over that particular day and it'll show you how many seats are available in each cabin. And that's downright magical. I mean, that's amazing. It's incredible. so it's so nice how it does like things like if you, if you choose to look at all, all four cabin classes, like economy,

premium business, and first on British airways at once, it does this neat little circle where each part of the circle is like filled in or not, according to whether there's award space. So you could still see on that full year calendar which which days have first and business and so on separately. Yeah, it's really, really brilliant. We've never seen anything like that.

Other airlines typically like a week at a time or with a few tools, maybe a month or two months at a time. And even then, they're not usually totally reliable. You know, United will show you two months at a time, but they'll show you days that it looks like there isn't business class availability when there really is. You have to click on each individual day still. So even though they have the calendar function, it doesn't necessarily work well. And Air France has the calendar, but it won't work for Delta flights and things like that. So, so like a year is amazing to be able to see that much availability. And so quickly.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Not even a couple of seconds right away. It's, it's incredible. So, and so you asked why, why is it, why would I want to do it?

Right. Well, that's the thing. Cause it's cool, but yeah, but it's the British airways and Virgin Atlantic, they connect in London and anybody who's ever searched for an award knows that when you're connecting through London, especially in Virgin

Atlantic or British Airways, you're going to pay a ton in surcharges and fees. You're talking like what? Five, six, eight, $900 a person, right? Yeah. I was seeing anywhere from $500 to over $1,000 a person, depending on what you're trying to do. And so, yeah, it's not the best deal in miles and points to use really to fly on either airline in many cases. But there are absolutely cases where it makes sense. So there are situations where flying Virgin Atlantic, that France even has reasonable prices. With British Airways, there are cases where Cathay Pacific has reasonable prices. Now, by reasonable, you might argue with me about that. But here's the thing. A lot of people, when they're looking to book travel and they want to fly in comfort, are looking at spending thousands of dollars. And so if you're, if yes, if you're coming from the point of view of, you know, I've got miles and so I know I can fly for free for, you know, that this argument's not going to work for you. But, but if you're, if you're looking at saying, well, business class trip to, you class trip to Europe round trip is like $4,000 at the dates I want to go. Or I could book it this way and pay, I don't know, let me just say $1,000 round trip in cash and a reasonable number of miles.

I don't know what they'd be. let's say 100,000 round trip. Okay. Then it might sound pretty good to you, but you're right compared to compared to some other programs where you can where you can book that you can book other airlines round trip in business class for a lot less, the usefulness might not be great. But you know what? British Airways has a ton of award space in the premium cabins available, especially business class. Yeah, but you don't want to pay those fuel surcharges. Of course they do.

Who's looking at that? Only that person that's like, oh, I was going to spend $4,000. Instead, I'll spend a thousand and like $2,000 worth of miles and feel like I came out ahead. I mean, I'm sure that there are some people, but I look at it and I'm like, see, spy, why did you bother building it for like the two worst airlines? The other thing you could do is look for the airports where you can fly out of them and there are no fuel surcharges or they're capped. And so like Hong Kong, for example, this wouldn't be the time of, you know, given the coronavirus, you wouldn't be looking at right now probably. But in general, you know, you could look, fly some other airline to get to Hong Kong and then you could fly back on British Airways or Virgin Atlantic and not pay fuel surcharges, I think. I know Virgin Atlantic, you don't. So I think it's true for both of them.

So that's an example of where it would be really useful. Other places like that that cap fuel surcharges at a reasonable amount or don't allow them. So I was being a little bit facetious because I know that there are some places you could originate and save on the fuel surcharges. Business class suites, right? Mm-hmm. This makes it so easy to find award space on those routes. And I mean, I wish I had something like this for, I would love to try ANA's new cat, new business and first. Those look amazing. They do. But it's so hard to find award space.

And if there was a, if Seatspy did ANA, I'd be all over that, you know? Right, right. That's my point. I mean, I think that this tool looks really awesome and really promising. And I hope that they're able to do it for other airlines because that would be incredible.

I don't know how they're doing it right now because I think if it were easy to do that, everybody would be, you know, other people would have done it. So I don't imagine that it's easy to do. I don't know how they're getting their data, where they're getting it from in order to populate it like that.

But I hope that they're able to replicate that with other airlines. That would be great. And, you know, I joke about it. Virgin Atlantic looks cool. And there's definitely a part of me that would love to fly Virgin Atlantic across the pond sometime just because it looks really cool. I'm just not willing to pay the ridiculous fuel surcharges for it. However, I probably would be willing to pay for it if I were originating in a place where the fuel surcharges for it. However, I probably would be willing to pay for it if I were originating in a place where the fuel surcharges were lower. So something that I would consider that way and being able to search that quickly. I mean, we've talked about Juicy Miles quite a bit this past year. And the thing about Juicy Miles doesn't save me time because I'm able to search a bunch of

different things at once. But you can only search a couple of days at a time. Being able to search an entire year of availability would save me a ton of time on award searches. So it would be amazing. And, you know, and at least for now, SeatSpy is free. So... Right. So you're getting your money's worth for sure. Can't argue with that.

Yeah. Can't argue there at all. No, no. So that much is interesting. So, okay. All right. I can see where there are some potential uses for SeatSpy. I just hope SeatSpy, if you're listening, build that for other airlines. Build it for other programs. Like, let's find space on somebody that doesn't charge a bazillion dollars. They must be London-based or something, right? Must be.

I'm sure they are. Yeah, I would think so anyway. But yeah, no, I mean, I know people who just love flying British Airways and they'll be willing to pay those fuel surcharges, I think. You know, I haven't ever flown British Airways, so I'm only going off of reviews I've read. But I feel like I've often read that their first class is like the best business class in the sky, right? I've seen that somewhere before. Maybe Lucky says that, yeah. I think Gary left. It could be Gary. Yeah, yeah. Maybe both. I've seen that somewhere. Maybe Lucky says that. Yeah. I think Gary Laff. It could be Gary. Maybe both. I don't know. So I don't know. I have no comparison there because I haven't flown them because I refuse to pay their fuel surcharges. But speaking of fuel surcharges, though, I also wrote this week

about Turkish Miles and Smiles, which is a great opportunity potentially to fly to Europe. So if you're looking to fly to Europe and you don't want to pay $1,000 a person in fuel surcharges, then you might want to take a look at Turkish miles and smiles, which I think is very quickly making city thank you points look more and more valuable. Now I hate to value transferable currency based on one transfer partner, but man, Turkish miles and smiles is looking like the best transfer partner that city has, I think right now. And I think city's got some decent ones. But what I wrote about this week was that you can use 45,000 Turkish miles to fly one way in business class to Europe from the United States. And if you do that, you're not going to want to do it on

the Lufthansa owned airlines. Otherwise, you're going to run into the same kinds of fuel surcharges that we were just talking about avoiding. So you will get hit with high $675 fuel surcharges if you want to fly Lufthansa or if you want to fly Swiss or Austrian, any of those, any of the Lufthansa-owned airlines are going to charge you an arm and a leg. But you can fly on lots of other Star Alliance carriers. For example, you can fly on United for 45,000 miles and $5.60 one way to London or to Paris or to Brussels or all of the many other places that United flies in Europe.

Yeah, that's so awesome. That's pretty crazy. And I think you pointed out you could fly to the Middle East for just a few thousand miles more or something like that? Yeah, it's 49,000 to fly to the Middle the middle east so only 4 000 miles more to get there or i was like today at flying to india 52 500 miles one way in business class all the way to india you could fly the direct from new york to delhi for 52 500 miles yeah now let me ask you do they have good first class pricing too or is it just is business the sweet spot here?

You know, I haven't even bothered to look at the first class pricing because when we're talking about flying to Europe, the only Star Alliance carriers that have a first class cabin are Lufthansa and Swiss. So, Swiss doesn't offer any first class availability to partners. So, it's just Lufthansa. And so, you're talking about paying $675 or whatever more, maybe even, I don't know, excited and look it up for first class and fuel surcharges. And I'm not willing to pay that much.

So I didn't even look at it. I couldn't tell you what it is. But the business class pricing is really, really competitive. And the thing is, you can build in some nice stops. If you want to fly Turkish, at least in part, then you can build in a stopover in Istanbul and you can get a free Istanbul tour from Turkish Airlines. So you can get a free tour of food, culture, architecture, that kind of thing. If you fly Turkish, are you paying fuel surcharges? Yeah.

So you are paying some fuel surcharges if you fly Turkish. And so if you fly just Turkish, you're looking at about $170 to $200 in fuel surcharges. If you mix that together with another carrier, you may pay even perhaps a little bit more. I think the highest I saw was around 240, 250, as long as you stay away from the Lufthansa owned airlines. But for example, I looked at flying lot Polish from Warsaw to Istanbul with like a long 20 hour layover with a free Istanbul tour, and then back to the United States from there. And I think it was 200 euros one way. So, I don't know, 220 bucks, 225 bucks, something like that in US dollars. So, that's not too bad. It's moderate. Obviously, it's not as low as $5.60, but it's fairly moderate. And actually

looking at the direct flights, for example, from Warsaw to New York on lot Polish, it was about 100 euros in surcharges, which you're going to pay taxes, no matter where you leave from in Europe, you're going to pay something in taxes. It's not as cheap as it is flying from the United States when an airline has no fuel surcharges. So you're going to pay something 50, 60, $80, no matter where you originate from in Europe. So, you know, 100 is certainly not unreasonable, I don't think, for a lot Polish there. And so you got a number of different airline options. So there'll be United, SAS, a lot Polish, Turkish, to fly in business class for 45k or continue on to the Middle East for 49 or India for 52.5. I pulled up an itinerary today where you could fly United to London and then continue on and air India to India from there and have a nice 10-hour full-day stopover

in London or layover anyway in London. And I think the taxes were only $73 one way. So that's certainly nice, $52,500 one way and $73. That's kind of beats that, you know, whole British airways. Yeah. That's really, really good. No.

Um, ANA has similar pricing to Europe. I think they do. What's the advantage of Turkish over? You can book one way. So, so ANA, you can book round trip for 88,000 points.

So it's 44 K each way basically, but you have to book round trip. And the nice thing is, previously I would have said that that's perhaps a better option, especially if you can find the round trip availability. Nice thing about Turkish now is that now you can mix carriers.

Before, you could only fly one carrier in each direction. So you had to fly all Turkish or all United or all whatever in one direction. Now you can mix. So you can fly United to Portugal and then fly tap air Portugal to Athens or something like that. So when did that change? It was a few months ago. I wrote about it when it happened. I wrote a post about it. I can't tell you exactly when it was, but yeah, it had kind of slipped my mind too before I started taking a look into this. And then I was like, oh, that's right. You can mix partners now

on a single award. And that makes it much easier to find availability because you can mix and match. So and if you mix and match with a carrier that has fuel surcharges, for instance, if you fly to Europe on, let's say, a lot Polish or on United and then you connect to a Lufthansa or Swiss flight, it's actually not that bad. I think it was like about one hundred dollars or so one way. OK, yeah. And fuel surcharges if you're just connecting to a flight within Europe. So that's not too bad to stay in business class the whole way and get your bags and all the rest of that. So it opens up quite a few opportunities.

You got a great coverage of Europe for not that many miles now. Yeah. No, that's awesome. And so that city is the only transferable points currency that'll give you turkish uh okay marriott bonvoy also city and marriott bonvoy marriott i you know obviously yeah on top of everyone's mind because you're not going to earn those from a credit card these days but if you stay at marriott it's a lot for business you might have a lot of marriott right and but that's problematic because it takes a while for the transfer.

That's true. You might not be able to put your flights on hold long enough to get your points from Marriott, right? Good point. Whereas you can from Citi. That's absolutely true. Yeah. Because Turkish, of course, if you're new to Turkish Miles and Smiles, we'd written last year about an incredible sweet spot for domestic flights with Turkish Miles and Smiles flying and United anywhere in anywhere in the U S for 7,500 miles one way. But the key with Turkish is you're going to want to make sure you put the award on hold before you transfer the points over, make sure you can get it on hold.

And you can do that by sending an email to one of the ticket offices or potentially by calling Turkish miles and smiles. I haven't tried myself this past week, but about a week ago, we had a reader report in our frequent miler insiders group that they were able, or maybe it was actually via email that they were able to successfully book a domestic United flight over the phone with Turkish miles and smiles, which was notable because for a while, the phone agents were saying they couldn't book star alliance awards over the phone. So it seems like that capability may have come back. So you may be able to call and put it on hold over the phone, which is seems like that capability may have come back. So you may be able to call and put it on hold over the phone, which is preferable because that's much faster than email.

Sure. So it's interesting that, so normally the sweet spots for airlines are in regions far away from where their home base is. But that's not the case with this travel between Europe and North America. That's got to be one of their most popular international routes or, you know, trans-oceanic routes. Right. You would think. So having such great pricing is notable. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So that's really cool. It is. And the nice thing is you can mix and match then. So you asked about ANA as a possibility. And if you have Amex membership rewards points, ANA is certainly a possibility to consider. On the flip side, I mentioned that one of the advantages of Turkish Miles and Smiles is you can book one way.

So you could book a 45K award to Europe, and then you get yourself home from Europe in a different way. I also wrote a quick deal post this week about how Tap Air Portugal continues to have great pricing out of some of the Scandinavian airports and also out of Dublin for business class flights to the US. You could fly one way from, for example, Oslo for like 638 bucks in business class, flatbed business class. Nice. Between Lisbon and New York. So-

Have you flown them? I have. I flew them, yeah, a couple of years ago. And you liked them? You know, I didn't love them, but I liked them as much as flying Swiss or Iberia. I mean, it wasn't my favorite airline experience ever, but it's a comfortable flatbed seat. It was as nice as most of the other carriers that I've flown to Europe. I think Singapore Airlines is probably the only airline, if we're talking flying to Europe, maybe Singapore, maybe Emirates, I guess, that have a better experience than flying

Tap Air Portugal. But even that might be a stretch for Emirates. Only if you're flying the A380 is it better, I would presume. But you get a nice flatbed seat on Tap Air Portugal. The ground game isn't so great in Lisbon. Their customer service isn't amazing. Is that right? Okay. But the in-flight experience was fine. Food was good.

Yeah. Portuguese wine. Flight attendants were decently warm and friendly. So I would definitely do it again, especially at $638. And I wrote about how you could do it with $42,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points. If you're like Greg and you've got a mountain of Ultimate Rewards points and you want to start using them for paid flights, this is a good opportunity because you can pay $42,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points. If you're like Greg and you've got a mountain of Ultimate Rewards points and you want to start using them for paid flights, this is a good opportunity because you can pay 42K one way and credit your flight to Turkish Miles and Smiles and end up with

7,500 Turkish miles for that flight. Oh, nice. Can you also build in a stopover in Lisbon? Is that where? You can. And that's what I did. I built in a stopover of a few days in lisbon is that where you can and that's what i did i built a built in a stop over of a few days in lisbon and now when i was looking that up just the other day originating in oslo for some reason it was adding a couple hundred bucks but originating out of dublin it was adding like four dollars to build in a stop over four or five days i might have a use for that coming up so where all do they fly in the u. They fly to Boston, New York, Miami, and beyond that, I'm honestly not sure. I know they fly to those, but I'm in East Coast and Washington DC. Maybe Chicago. I'm honestly not sure off the top of my head. I'm an East Coast

guy. So I'm usually looking for the East Coast cities. So I haven't looked at all their routes to the US, but it's worth looking. We often see the cheap pricing. The cheapest of the cheap pricing is to Boston and New York, sometimes also to Washington. I don't usually see quite as good pricing to Miami, which is you fly into JFK, there's no onward Star Alliance carrier to get to Detroit. But if you fly into Newark, then I assume, can you build in a uh united leg i haven't tried to see how that'll price out i don't know you'd have to give it a shot maybe it doesn't matter i just need to get somewhere where i can get a positioning flight home that's what i figure probably a positioning flight okay i would think i'm not sure but i don't think it prices out the same if you're going to add anything in united. But again, it's always worth playing with the tools and seeing what you can

find with that because you never know. But if you're looking at paying between 40 and 50,000 miles one way for a paid business class flight where you're earning a decent number of miles, if you credit those to Aeroplan or to Avianca Life Miles, you get 200% mileage flown. So you're looking at 10,000 miles earned in those programs or 7,500, if you credit to Turkish miles and smiles, I highlighted that because of course, that's enough miles for a one way trip anywhere in the United States. So you can fly to Hawaii later on. So for 40 or 50,000 miles, getting business class from Europe back to the United States, plus a free one way in the US later on. I mean, that's, that's a pretty terrific deal. It sure is.

So that, that makes sense. I think with, to be able to pair those two together. If you can get to Northern Europe, then I think that's a deal worth looking at. I think that it continues to highlight the value of city thank you points, which are, I think, more valuable than most people give them credit for, especially for Turkish miles and smiles. Now, they may blow up their award chart tomorrow and make me seem like I don't know what I'm talking about anymore. But at the moment, it's pretty good. And there are other values, too. 67.5 to Asia, to much of Asia. There are a bunch of great values.

And if you want to fly Europe to Australia, 52,500 one way from Europe to Australia with Turkish miles and smiles. That's crazy. Some incredible deals. What would it be from the U.S. to Australia? Is that not a good deal? It isn't. It isn't. I can't remember what it was off the top of my head, but I remember that wasn't a particularly compelling deal. Also, if you're an economy class flyer, by the way, all the way to India, 34,000 miles in economy class, that's pretty terrific. And in the Middle East, it's

32,000 one way in economy class. So, I mean, you can fly a decently long distance in economy. Europe is the same 30K that most programs offer. So not really a big deal if you're looking to fly to Europe in economy class. But if you're looking to fly other places, they're worth looking at for that also. Right, right. Now, if you're looking to spend 30K to get to Europe, look at spending, I think it was 32K with Virgin Atlantic miles to fly air France premium economy. No, I think it was 22k one way. Was it 22k?

22k. Maybe it's 22k and off peak and then 32k something like that. Yep, you're right. You're right. That's really nice. Yeah, yeah. And so you can pair those things together and put yourself together a decent little trip for not a lot of miles and points. And that's really what it's all about, right?

Oh, absolutely. So, no, that's great. I love that post. And so, yeah, I haven't personally used Turkish yet, even though it just hasn't come up as something I've needed, even though you've been writing about this. That's amazing to me. You know, I'm surprised that I haven't used them for anything Europe yet. I kind of

figured that I would and I just haven't. Mostly because I've been hanging out of the points because they're pretty valuable within the United States for me too, because I fly out of a small airport. And so cash prices are often high. And so being able to use the points for domestic flights has been a terrific deal. And I've booked them for plenty of other family members too. And readers have sometimes asked about that, about booking for other people. I haven't booked for other people via the online tool. They do seem to have a system like Singapore. Singapore requires you to name nominees before you book flights for them. Turkish has the same kind of thing where you have to put in the passenger's information into your profile before you book a ticket for them. But over the

phone or via email, I just had to give the passenger information and I was able to book for family members too. So it works very easily to book other folks. So, and with United offering a decent amount of safer space on domestic itineraries, that's worked out pretty well for me so far. Oh, cool. Well, I'm, I'm looking forward to you digging into their first class WordPress and see if there's any gems there too. I will take a look there. So that's that for Turkish Miles and Smiles. I think that brings us to this week's reader question.

Reader question time. My favorite part. Or maybe it's a part I dislike because I'm always on the spot. We'll see what the question is. Well, so, you know, this one, this one's an interesting one. It almost requires a tiny bit of background so in uh this this week's question comes from our frequent miler insiders so we have a facebook group for those that aren't familiar called the frequent miler insiders facebook group for people to connect and ask questions and answer questions we hop in there now and then too to help facilitate discussion and answer things whenever we can

but it's a great tool for readers to connect with each other. And originally, we kind of built this because we get a lot of questions, and we didn't necessarily always have time to respond to every question. And this gave a great place for people to ask and help each other and share data points and information. Yeah, it's really worked well that way, too. Most of the time. Yeah, most of the time. And we have three key rules in our group. Be nice, don't advertise, no referrals. Pretty simple. We built this to be a nice, welcoming place, and we don't want people to spam it with advertising and referrals. So those are our basic rules. And so there was a discussion this week where I felt like somebody had responded in a way that wasn't as polite as I might have

liked. And so I let them know that we need to be nice and welcoming, and we want to foster that environment. And in response, he asked a question. He made a point, asked a question that I thought was a good question. So Ben says, this is frequent, right? And I'm paraphrasing here. I'm truncating it down some because there's some conversation back and forth. I'm trying to make it easier for the question. So it says, this is frequent miler insiders, right? When a new user finds this group and immediately asks an answerable can i get a refund type question they're neither frequent nor milers nor insiders i've left or

muted other facebook groups when it was clear they were more travel 101 and gravitated to this group because the members were speaking my language and so he continues on to kind of compare it imagine if you joined a group of competitive runners and every week more and more people who'd never even done a lap around a track started showing up and slowing your group way down. Would you not feel a bit frustrated? So his point was that basic beginner type questions were frustrating him because he felt like he's at a more advanced level.

And so he had gone on to say, maybe we could benefit from a sticky post at the top that tells anyone considering about joining. The discussion is focused on this miles and points stuff. And here are some links to more information for true noobs and our mission statement could be included there that we'd like to foster a welcoming environment. So his point overall was that he felt like Frequent Miler Insiders was more aimed at being an advanced miles and points discussion group. And he thought the the more beginner type questions should be kind of pushed aside somehow into a noob area so to speak uh because he felt frustrated that that drags discussion down what do you think what are your what are your perspectives about that well it's

interesting i mean first of all it even though it's called insiders i mean, it never really was meant to be an advanced group. I mean, as you said, we set it up as a way, we were getting more questions through email and reader comments than we could answer. We had the time to answer. And so it was like, a lot of these could be answered by other people. Let's set up a forum so people could come together and help each other answer each other's questions. And that's absolutely happened. It's absolutely also been the case that, yes, there are a lot of questions that come up. They're not just newbie. I don't think this person's totally arguing against newbie questions as much as questions that don't really have to do with miles and points, right? And that's the gist of it. I think it was a combination because the

particular question where this drew out of was about concerns about trying to cancel a hotel, a non-refundable hotel reservation in light of coronavirus and wondering basically what the options were. And so, you know, some people responded right away to say, well, just call and ask, which seems like an obvious solution on the one hand. Yeah, I mean, call and ask and find out what they say first. On the flip side, there are some folks who said, well, let's collect some data points here. And some people share their experiences with canceling non-refundable hotel reservations in light of the outbreak. And so, I can see both sides of it because I can see the side that says, you you know this is a

question you could answer it on your own you could have googled this or looked it up or called the travel agency and then there's the other side of me that says but i like to collect some ammunition before i call to know what's even possible before i make a phone call so that i'm not demanding something that i know is impossible or that if i know something is possible i can stay firm and push until i get it so So I see both sides of that. But I thought it was an interesting point that he made in that he was saying that he felt like it's tiring if he's seeing the same types of questions over and over again. So I can understand that perspective. But at the same time, I feel like we said, kind of like I said, and you repeated that we had built this whole group.

The whole idea was to be able to let people ask and answer each other's questions and help and share data points like this. So it's an interesting balance. Yeah. So, you know, I definitely I don't want to do anything that would make people feel like they can't ask questions like that. I think, you know, if someone thinks that it's the right place to ask a question like that, I'm not going to say no to that. And I don't want them to feel bad about it because it's true. It's not technically a miles and points question, but it's something that we all travel a lot. We are, you know, a lot of us in this group are going to be running into those kind of issues and are probably interested in the answer to a lot of people in our group. So I actually thought I actually thought that particular question a sticky saying for more general types of travel questions.

Maybe you should consider going over here, you know, that that that probably wouldn't hurt to do that, especially if we had a good suggestion for where that somewhere else is. I don't know off the top of my head. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a, it's a potentially good suggestion and I think we should try it. I think that having some sort of a sticky with basic noob information is a good idea because that would be a good resource for people who are new.

On the flip side, I think that my impression is that not a lot of people read the sticky stuff. I know, I was going to say that next, yeah. So I get the impression that that doesn't really often get read anyway because we only have a couple of things there. And it's apparent sometimes people haven't read those. So I don't necessarily know that that would solve this problem. I don't think it would. I don't think it would. And so I'm inclined. Sorry to not do anything about it. You know, I think it's going fine. What about you? I mean, would you change anything? I don't think I would. You know, I definitely wanted to give the question the proper consideration and thought

in terms of what we should do, because obviously I want everybody to be happy with the group. I mean, we built a group and have the group and maintain the group and spend some time moderating the group because we'd like it to be a resource that people enjoy. So I want people to enjoy it. On the one hand, I feel like when you see something that isn't relevant to you, you know, doing this is much faster than doing this. So, you know, and for those who didn't see the gestures that you're listening, I think scrolling past it, you know, is a lot faster than responding to it.

So I feel like it's fairly easy to ignore those things. At the same time, I don't want people to feel like they have to leave because the material isn't relevant to it. So I feel like it's fairly easy to ignore those things. And at the same time, I don't want people to feel like they have to leave because the material isn't relevant to them. So I want people to be able to share information freely and to be able to enjoy it. So I think that it's important to foster that welcoming environment. Because like Greg said, I mean, the key was, the reason we did this is because obviously, you know, we produce content for the website each day. So there's the time that's spent writing content. But then there's also time that's spent doing a lot of the behind the scenes stuff, maintaining resources, updating things throughout the week, that sort of thing. And then there's the stuff that nobody really cares about or sees that goes on behind the scenes of running a website in general, the stuff that I don't even know that Greg does during the day. Sometimes he'll email me about something. I'll be like, Oh, wow, he's working on that. I had no idea he was even looking at that today. You know, there's just all sorts of things. Greg was actually doing work.

That's a new thing going on. I thought he was just relaxing today. And that's the thing, you know, because I can imagine that sitting on the outside that oftentimes for people that are on the outside, it doesn't, you know, see a lot of those things, which is fine. I mean, that's cool. That's great. We were doing what we enjoy. But the fact of the matter is, there's only so many hours in the day. So, you know, when people were emailing with those types of questions, they weren't always able to get the same quality response that they can get from 13,000 other people in the group that might be able to chime in and say, Oh, well, I canceled a non-refundable reservation last week, or there was recently a waiver for hotels to this country. So maybe wait it out a few days, maybe that country will be included too. So I think it's really valuable having that kind of resource and having the number of people we do, I think enhances it by giving more and more people the ability to share those types of things. So. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, probably the right answer for this particular person is to try to find other groups that are very dedicated, advanced groups, maybe, you know, and, you know, hate to have this person leave ours.

I don't think they need to, because as you said, you can scroll past things that you're not interested in. But if you're, if you're really looking for the hardcore stuff, you know, there's only going to be so much of that in our group, I think, because of the way it's focused. And it makes some people feel like they have the right to be like, didn't you read the sticky? You should read the sticky. It's covered in the sticky. And I don't want to foster that, obviously. That's the total opposite of what we're looking to foster. So it's a difficult balance in trying to strike that or difficult to strike the balance there in the right way.

Because there's a lot of great discussion, a lot of great data points. We've found stuff that we've written about quite a number of times, very popular posts that have been inspired by frequent miler insiders. In fact, the post that I wrote today about Avianca Fairlock was inspired by the same person who asked this question. So, you know, there's oftentimes interesting, relevant discussion. And with the volume of people we have, there's frequently going to be topics that are new to all of us. I mean, I'm always learning new things. So I know a lot about a lot of different things, but I don't know everything about everything. So there are

always new things to learn from folks who have more experience. So I enjoy that about Frequent Weiler Insiders. I enjoy the variety, even when it's a question that I'm not particularly interested in. I'm always glad for the people. There are a lot of people out there who do a great job of answering stuff and sharing what they know. And I really appreciate that. That's an awesome contribution. Oh, me too. It's awesome how much time people put in to helping others. It's great to see it. And a lot of people really do know a lot of stuff. And so, they're really being helpful with some great answers out there. So, thank you to those. Thank you. Exactly.

Those of you who are participating frequently, and there are a lot of you out there that are participating frequently in the group, and we do appreciate it. So thank you guys very much for all that you do to help each other and for all the great information you share with us, too. So I definitely want to give a shout out to the folks in Frequent Wilder Insiders. It's been a lot of fun. Absolutely. Absolutely.

All right. All right. Another show is done, huh? Goodbye song, I think. The goodnight song. In this case, we've got to say goodbye. Depends on what time of day you're listening, I guess. But yeah, we have to say goodbye. Unfortunately, Greg has to enjoy his sunshine and

hikes in the woods. The sun's starting to go down. Oh, well. Unfortunately, I'm looking at more cold weather here. So the goodbye song, though, ladies and gentlemen, here he goes. Go to thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe if you would like to find out more about what we've been talking about. If you want to learn about this Facebook group and our Twitter and the blog and see what's going on, frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. You can get on the email list and find out more information about all the cool stuff that we've been talking about today.

That's right. So thanks, everyone. Thank you, Nick. See you next time. Thanks, Greg. See you next time. In person, I think. In person. Live in DC. See you soon. Bye, everyone.