Tagging Miles

Catching up on the Saverocity Observation Deck

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For some reason, 2018 has been super busy for me. But, even with that, I’m still able to catch up with Joe of As The Joe Flies and chat travel every couple of weeks on the Saverocity Observation Deck. We’ve had some really great episodes covering a true smorgasbord of topics with a bunch of awesome guests over the last few months. I figured as we’re getting to mid-year, that it’d be good to take a moment and highlight some of the podcasts we’ve done.

Catching up with the Saverocity Observation Deck – The Elite Status Conundrum

We caught up with Sam of Milenomics, who’s made an incredible resurgence over the past few months with the help of Robert Dywer. 

As long time readers would know, I’ve long been on the Elite Status Hamster Wheel. Well, this was a great conversation that is starting to sway me just a bit, it was so much fun that we ended up doing a second. Part one was primarily focused upon airline status:


Part two, I think was a bit more of a challenging decision on hotel status:

Catching up with the Saverocity Observation Deck – On Hyatt Globalist Status

Continuing on the discussion of Elite Status, we linked up with Freequent (best pronounced Freeeeeeee) Flyer (FQF) to talk Hyatt Globalist Status and Best Practices Earning Ultimate Rewards.

Catching up with the Saverocity Observation Deck – Focus on Travel, not Points

We had the chance to chat with Becky Pokora on Mexico, and also on her rather unique approach to travel. I say unique because “SightDoing” is a unique approach and I think its absolutely awesome. In full disclosure, I try to push myself on travel, but I’m nowhere near Becky’s level just yet.

We also had the chance to chat with Cynthia Drescher where we talked about cruising, and started our Destination Focus, including festivals in Germany, and Vivid Sydney (which ironically I’ll be experiencing in just a few short days!!)

Catching up with the Saverocity Observation Deck – Hawaii with not one, but 2 special guests!

Now this may be biased, but, we had a really fun podcast on Hawai’i with Tim Brooks, where I surrendered my seat to a woman who was far more seasoned with Hawaii travel than I am, in fact, this wahine spent part of her childhood in Hawai’i; Rose (my wife) was awesome to step in and share tips for Hawai’i travel that I wouldn’t even have guessed. Really appreciative of Rose to step in and prevent me from stumbling through based on my memories of L & L’s Drive in or Tex’s Malasadas.

Wrapping Up

I hope you’ll enjoy some of these excellent podcasts.

You can find all Saverocity Observation Deck podcast episodes on iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play! If you enjoy the podcast, it would be awesome if you left us a review and subscribed!

What is your favorite Saverocity Observation Deck Podcast episode?

 

 

 

 

Observation Deck: A Chat with Pizza in Motion

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Episode 60 of the Saverocity Observation Deck was a fun one for me, I had the chance to chat with Ed Pizzarello who writes Pizza in Motion. I hope you’ll enjoy this week’s observation deck podcast: a Chat with Pizza in Motion.

Joe provided some updates and some tips from his Chicago trip in the intro, then it was to Ed and I.

We covered a number of topics:

I shared some background on why I wanted to have the chance to sit down with Ed, other than fact that we’ve talked about doing this for a while. Referencing the Go Around Principle that I wrote a few weeks ago about one of the interviews from Tim Feriss’ Tools of Titans.

Ed travels a lot for business, so he’s legitimately a target for many of the airlines’ frequent flyer change like American’s Devaluation. Ed shared the evolution of his airline loyalty in light of these changes. Like many of us, he’d go out of his way with a connection in order to fly American Airlines, but not nearly as often, as his recent Airline Elite Status: Mid-Year Check indicates.

There’s also a tidbit on hidden city ticketing.

We talked about Ed’s experience with frequent traveler communities such as his time as a moderator for FlyerTalk‘s Omni forum and his involvement with the founding of Milepoint which became Inside Flyer. We also talked about how Ed got involved with the Freddie Awards, and really highlighted what the Freddie awards mean. 

We finished off the chat talking about Ed’s first trip to Australia, where he ranked the Bridge Climb as a bucket list item. As one who is ironically afraid of heights, this is one item that probably won’t make my bucket list!

Enjoy!

Observation Deck: 2017 Skytrax Airline Awards

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Episode 59 of the Saverocity Observation Deck brings what was at times a heated conversation about the 2017 Skytrax Airline Awards announced at Paris Air Show 2017. 

Joe Cheung celebrated his anniversary, which left Joe Cortez and I to truly dig in from an #avgeek perspective. 

But before we dug into the 2017 Skytrax awards, we learned about Joe’s adventure to Amsterdam, hosted by KLM, but oddly didn’t really cover his practices when he’s hosted, perhaps that’s for another day.  

The Skytrax awards cover a bunch, all 4 of the best cabins, the best low cost carrier, cleanliness, regional, and most. I think you’ll be surprised with some of our reactions. In fact, when Joe Cheung gave an advance listen, he was awfully inquisitive about a couple of mine, which makes me think I need to get flying! 

One award that I couldn’t just leave at my comments on the podcast, was the Skytrax Best Business Class award winner of Qatar Airways, I truly believe some of these awards were perception over reality.

This was a long episode at over 1 hour, 12 minutes, but we leave you with some humor at the end, the shawarma variety.

As always, if you enjoy this or any of our Saverocity Observation Deck podcasts, please subscribe via iTunes, and feel free to leave a review, they really do make our day!

What were your thoughts on the 2017 Skytrax Airline Awards?

Saverocity Observation Deck: Hosted Media Previews

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Joe Cheung discusses Hosted Media Previews with Leslie Harvey of Trips with Tykes on this episode of the Saverocity Observation Deck. 

A few highlights:

Leslie talks about how Trips with Tykes came about, and her style of travel hacking. She offers insight on flying Frontier as well–interestingly enough my folks flew Frontier a few years ago and found it to be nice too!

She also wrote an interesting post about hosted media trips that I found pretty interesting. Joe also shared his thoughts about Blogger Bias.

Apparently disclosure laws were updated in 2009 or so to account for Blogging and Social Media. Laws and guidelines continue to evolve as new methods come about. The FTC is the regulator.

I was also interested to learn that “Mom Bloggers” were a place where this got noticed early on. I know the resident Saverocity Mom Blogger was the person that opened my eyes to the “Mom Blogger” space.

Interestingly, Leslie mentions that some in the Travel / Miles and Points Blogging space also skirt some of these disclosure rules. I think Dia highlighted this one too (can you tell she’s my resource?)

I think its important to know also that some of these hosted media previews do require bloggers to pay–or at least Leslie and Joe have paid. I think that is important because, it shows that, as Leslie says: “they are willing to put their money where their mouth is.”

Overall, this is a space I know very little about. I haven’t figured out how to get “hosted” or “sponsored” myself, obviously Disney wouldn’t be the ideal scenario for me, but I haven’t even figured out how to do that for my 2-3 weekend rentals from National Rental Car per month… I may just not have it in me for this type of gig, but I definitely do see some value in it, if balanced properly.

What were your thoughts on Hosted Media Previews?

Saverocity Observation Deck: A New Game

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This podcast, the Saverocity Observation Deck team borrows the game “Get rid of it, Keep it, or more of it.”

We cover three core topics:

  • Travel Credit Card Benefits
  • Transferable Point Currency Partners
  • Airport Security Policies

There’s also a couple of fun tidbits here as well. For example, Joe Cortez shares his immense appreciation of Delta Air Lines. There’s also a short anecdote from a connection I made through London’s Heathrow Airport. 

As always, we sincerely appreciate any comments you want to share, either on the Observation Deck post, here, or via twitter to Joe Cheung, Joe Cortez, or myself. Finally, if you enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

Observation Deck: Frustrating Customers or Frustrating Customer Service?

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It seems like every week we see some new concerning experience reported through social media, whether its a passenger being dragged off a plane, or being removed because someone self upgraded themselves. At some point you have to ask yourself, which is worse: Frustrating customers or frustrating customer service? 

In this edition of the Saverocity Observation Deck, we tackled these very questions, including why the travel experience is changing.

We also cover what appear now to be unsubstantiated rumors of an expanded electronics ban.

Listen here or below: 

And if you enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes – you’ll probably even get a shoutout on the next podcast!

Saverocity Observation Deck 53 – Taxes for Travel Hackers and Resellers

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Its a few days after Tax Day in the United States, and while you may be still getting over it, it never hurts to consider next year. So to, this is the perfect time to talk Taxes for travel hackers and resellers. This podcast features the venerable Matt Hague and Joe Cheung. 

Matt has talked about taxes and accounting a lot over the past few years on Saverocity Finance, including a number of gems that I still reference months later. Here are a few of those posts for your reading pleasure:

You can listen to the podcast via SoundCloud below:

If you enjoy this podcast, or any of the others that the Saverocity crowd has done, you can subscribe via iTunes. We’d also appreciate it if you took a moment to leave a review on iTunes, as that helps others to find the podcast. 

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