Choice fails in its billion-dollar attempt to rob us of Vacasa joy, Frontier refuses to refund a man who missed his flight because he stopped breathing, and are the Eurobugs as bad as all of them say? All that and more in this week’s Saturday Selection, our weekly roundup of interesting tidbits from around the web (links to each article are embedded in the titles).
Choice tries (and fails) to take over Wyndham
Anyone who reads Frequent Miler knows we’re big Wyndham Rewards fans… and not just because of their industry-leading, spooky South American hotels. No, the reason is that using Wyndham points to book Vacasa vacation rentals is one of the best points and miles deals today (especially when combined with the 8x bonus categories on the Wyndham Earner Business card). So you can imagine our horror when we learned that Choice Hotels attempted a hostile takeover of Wyndham this week, making three cash and stock offers that represented a 20% premium to Wyndham’s current stock value. All of us on the FM team saw Vacasa’s death flash before our eyes, but fortunately Wyndham stood firm and declined the offers. Unfortunately, rumor has it that an applicant isn’t necessarily unwelcome and that Wyndham may simply be waiting for a better offer. Gather your Hawaii beach vacation rentals while you still have time.
Frontier denies refund to man who stopped breathing at gate
It takes a lot of time to get a refund from Frontier.
Frontier isn’t just known as the airline where you have to pay for seats, luggage, snacks, drinks and airfare. No, the most unpopular airline in the USA is also said to be grumpy when it comes to refunds. How many whiners? Well, a local television station in Phoenix reported a situation where a woman was waiting at the gate with her father to board the flight and her father suddenly passed out and appeared to be not breathing. Emergency services were called and the man ended up spending three days in a local hospital before returning home. The gate agent gave her an incident number and assured her that it would already be in the system when she requested her refund. However, when she did just that, Frontier refused to do anything of the sort, saying the flight was “not canceled” and that the woman and her unconscious father “didn’t show up.” Frontier eventually relented after the TV network contacted and asked for an explanation, but it gives us another valuable data point in the oft-asked question: “What the hell do I have to do to get a refund from Frontier?”
Are bed bugs really taking over Paris?
Will Smith fights bed bugs during a recent trip to Paris
Everyone who travels, and probably even those who don’t travel, has some basic fear of bed bugs. I think it’s primarily because of the idea: while you’re sleeping, these little prehistoric beasts emerge from their daytime hiding place to eat you like little scary Draculas while you sleep. As far as I know, I fell victim to it at least once, in a dirty airport hotel in Wichita, Kansas. Those 12-15 itchy bumps on my lower legs scared me way more than the hundreds of mosquito bites I’ve had over the years. There is currently a hysterical panic in Paris about a “bed bug infestation”. A quick search on YouTube leads to videos of small creatures in hotels, on chairs… even on the subway. But are they really as bad, or perhaps even as unusually bad, as all the reporting seems to suggest? Loyalty Lobby publishes an interesting article from Scientific American in which some “bug experts” practically say, “Not really.” Their general point is that bed bug infestations may have been unusually low during the COVID pandemic and people are really just now starting to notice them again. For example, a few months ago, seven hotels on the Las Vegas Strip were reported for bed bug infestations, suggesting that Paris isn’t the only place where the animals have a certain “joie de vivre.”
MGM is leaving World of Hyatt…bye cheap globalist
These waving flags say goodbye to the mattress races of the globalists
Earlier this month, MGM ended its long-standing partnership with World of Hyatt in favor of a new affair with Marriott set to begin later this month, in late 2023 and early 2024. We have already paid out something for the end of this partnership, which gave us MGM/Hyatt status and waived resort fees at MGM properties. Probably the biggest hole in some Hyatt fans’ lives will be the dirt-cheap mattress excursions that allow Sunday-Thursday stays at the Excalibur. Combining nightly rates under $20, free stays, and mobile check-in, enterprising people were able to book elite nights in 4- to 5-night chunks for just a few dollars a night. What made things even better was that you never had to set foot inside the Excalibur, extending your life expectancy by several hours. Unfortunately, all good things come to an end…and so does one of the cheapest ways to achieve Hyatt Globalist status.
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