The Weekly News Roundup is a collection of headlines from around the internet that caught the attention of the Tagging Miles team. Content on these blogs do not necessarily reflect the positions of Tagging Miles, and should not be considered endorsements. Have a great story we should read? Contact us now and let us know!

Do Now (if you haven’t already)

• From Free-quent Flyer Book – Register your Chase Freedom for Q1 2015 5x. Its good for Grocery Stores, Starbucks, and Movie Theaters up to $1,500.
• Sign up for the Marriott MegaBonus promotion for stays between February 1 and April 30 2015. Perhaps a bigger question: is Marriott starting to recognize that they need to reward stays as well as Nights?

Award Travel and General Airline New

• Via One Mile at a Time – Emirates will be accepting 2 class A380’s soon, losing First Class. In addition, Lucky notes that Emirates is going to add in a “Residence-like” product, potentially losing a dozen or so economy seats. Seems like two extremes to me.
• Tiffany has been doing some more regular writing for Lucky at One Mile at a Time. This week she’s written about where to search for award space. Its a great post for folks that haven’t redeemed a ton of miles for award travel. I tend to appreciate her point of view, as refreshing, and because she talks primarily about booking award travel – an area that is like solving the latest rubik’s cube.
• From Miles4More – American Express Membership Rewards transfer bonus to British Airways Avios is back!
• Wandering Aramean has visualized his Hotel Hustle data. I’m not sure I can agree with what the graphs say, but they are worth looking at. If anything, they prove that the best value for points are Hyatt and Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG). I just didn’t think SPG was all valuable for hotels.

Nonsequitars

• Its pretty big news that the US is “normalizing” relations with Cuba. Skift shows us that, while Cuba will be new to most Americans, it has been open to tourists for quite some time (just not directly from the US).
• While you may not be able to travel immediately to Cuba, India has finally started their Visa on Arrival program!
• Australian Business Traveller reviewed the latest American Express Centurion Lounge. Its in Sydney’s T1 International Terminal, and happens to be the first non-airline lounge in the airport.
• Doctor of Credit reports that Bluebirds are now eligible for AMEX Sync offers!
• Chasing the Points is always trying to automate stuff. Here’s how you can automate your telephone calls. He also figured out a way to automate changing your pin on prepaid cards.

Manufacturing Spend

• This was a pretty big week for manufactured spend, and not necessarily in a good way. We heard about Vanilla Reloads’ pending demise (we have a date – 1 April 2015), although FrequentMiler is more optimistic.
• In fact, Frequent Miler appears to be trying to balance between the Ghost of Christmas Past, and Ebenezer Scrooge with all the bad news of late.
• Doctor of Credit writes of the continuing saga of Old Blue Cash.
• Trying to look on the bright side, Doctor of Credit shares his experience buying Amazon gift cards – its even more interesting when you consider how many transactions you can get toward cards like the American Express Everyday card or bank debit cards.