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Virgin Holidays’ The Departure Beach in Barbados is just what it sounds like: a Virgin Atlantic lounge on the beach. You won’t have to spend your last day in Barbados sequestered in an airport — this departure lounge bills itself as “the world’s first departure beach.” The concept might catch on with airlines that serve leisure markets like the Barbados, a frequent vacation destination from Britain. Virgin Atlantic flies from is capital Bridgetown to London Heathrow (LHR), London Gatwick (LGW) and Manchester (MAN)It also isn’t like other lounges in that it’s open to people with a Virgin Holidays booking who pay to access, and to guests at some hotels, rather than to passengers with elite status....

This past week, TPG reader Clement tweeted me to ask:@thepointsguy– “What are your thoughts on Starwood’s Make a Green Choice program, where you can earn $5 or 500 points every night you decline housekeeping? Do you do it?“Starwood offers the Make A Green Choice Program in order to help the environment. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.Starwood offers a program called Make a Green Choice where you can earn either vouchers or Starpoints for declining housekeeping....

I posted a couple of weeks ago that I was “out of miles and points”. Of course I’m not really out of miles and points, but some of the accounts that I like to see with relatively healthy balances are looking pretty sickly after doing lots of award bookings before the Hyatt and United award charts change(d). I have been super busy the last few months, and had gotten a bit lazy on some of the ways to earn miles and points, and it was time to get off my lazy tail and work a little harder at this hobby....

Hotel promotions have been pretty tame (and lame) this summer, with Hyatt only sending out targeted offers to certain members. I honestly didn’t remember getting an email from Hyatt, but just went through and saw that I had the following email sent to me on June 27, 2013:“Pack your bags and head to any Hyatt hotel worldwide by September 30, 2013. You are registered to earn 3,000 bonus points for each of your next three eligible stays – up to 9,000 bonus points....

Sign up for our daily newsletterEmail addressSign upI would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. See privacy policy.Gogo is offering 15% off your first month when you purchase an AA/US Traveler Pass for $39.95. The pass offers unlimited internet on all equipped American Airlines and US Airways flights.The AA/US Traveler Pass offers unlimited inflight WiFi on all equipped American and Us Airways flights....

Endless checklists.Last-minute work crunches.Fears of crashing over a mountain range.Ain’t flying a wild ride?Even the most seasoned, grizzled travelers have established routines they rely on before they click their seatbelt into place, but sometimes that’s not enough to calm down the monkey mind ranting that it’s not exactly normal to ascend 30,000 feet into the air. Whether your brain swings into hyper-efficiency mode or disaster-prone agitation, here are some questions your inner monologue might be asking each time you board....

I absolutely hate getting on the phone- especially when it comes to airlines. I’m one of those annoying people who will ignore your call and then text you back to see what you want. Perhaps its my Gen Y techie background, but I just feel like I’m wasting my life away when picking up the phone- even the ringing in the beginning makes me feel uncomfortably impatient!So I was sad to hear that Aeroplan....

Sign up for our daily newsletterEmail addressSign upI would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. See privacy policy.Just a scant few weeks after announcing its inaugural route between Brussels South Charleroi (CRL) and Hong Kong (HKG), new airline Air Belgium has had to backtrack. The inaugural flight to Hong Kong, which was supposed to take place on April 30, will now be pushed back to June 3 because Russia has not yet approved the route, which will pass through Russian airspace....

Update 8/21 3:52pm ET: The Gulfstream Aerospace GLF-4 aircraft landed safely at New York’s Stewart Airport (SWF). There were no smoke or sparks upon landing, and there were seemingly no injuries on board.Update 8/21 2:35pm ET: The aircraft is now reportedly being diverted to New York’s Stewart Airport (SWF), though the aircraft is still burning fuel over Connecticut.According to Twitter account @CivMilAir, the aircraft is registered as N101CV. The Federal Aviation Administration’s website details that N101CV was built in 1993....

Sign up for our daily newsletterEmail addressSign upI would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. See privacy policy.April and May are a great time to visit Asia (especially Japan during the cherry blossoms) and AA and JAL are running joint reduced mileage award promotions. For those with AAdvantage miles, from April 6, 2012 to May 31, 2012 you can fly to Asia on American or Oneworld partner JAL in coach roundtrip for 40,000 miles....

Etihad Airways announced today that the cabin electronics ban has been lifted on all US-bound flights departing from Abu Dhabi (AUH) airport. Effective immediately, passengers may begin bringing laptops and other portable electronic devices on board with them when departing on flights from the United Arab Emirates capital.The change is a result of recent rules put in place by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which earlier this week announced a set of enhanced security measures that airports could implement in order to avoid being covered by the ban....

Denver International Airport announced Wednesday that Edelweiss Airlines will begin flying from DEN to Zurich (ZRH), Switzerland. The new flights will be twice a week (Mondays and Fridays), using a 315-seat Airbus A330-300. Edelweiss is just the latest of several recent international service additions in Denver — let’s look at which other airlines are growing.Edelweiss Airbus A330. Image courtesy of AeroIcarus via Flickr.Edelweiss will begin its Denver flights on June 4, 2018....

Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here – Marriott Rewards Premier Credit CardIf you’ve been looking at traveling to Paris, not only is summer a good time to go, but Marriott is offering travelers a promotion at 14 of its properties in Paris for travel this summer. If you stay three nights or more at one of the included properties, you’ll get 25% off at four-star hotels or 20% off at five-star hotels — although I didn’t find any discounts that came close to those figures....

Sign up for our daily newsletterEmail addressSign upI would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. See privacy policy.The Delta SkyBonus program is running a promotion in which members can earn double points on flights on a select route. Following Delta’s launch of a new, daily nonstop flight between Atlanta (ATL) and Seoul (ICN), the carrier is now offering double SkyBonus points when business travelers fly with Delta on that route....

Now through November 30, the hotel booking site Rocketmiles is offering 3,000 bonus miles to users who make their first mobile booking.Rocketmiles is a hotel search engine and booking app you can sign up for here that works with a few premium hotel partners in several US cities to offer customers who book rooms bonus miles with Air France/KLM, Alaska, American Airlines, Delta, Etihad, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue, United, US Airways and Virgin America....

Sign up for our daily newsletterEmail addressSign upI would like to subscribe to The Points Guy newsletters and special email promotions. The Points Guy will not share or sell your email. See privacy policy.In honor of International Women’s Day, which is on March 8, Emirates recently operated a flight with an all-female crew from Dubai to San Francisco. From cockpit crew to cabin crew, check-in staff to the ground operators — more than 75 women were brought together on flight EK255 on Monday....

Yup, it’s that time of year again — your unused upgrade certificates, drink vouchers, lounge passes and other airline perks issued in 2017 will soon expire.Ideally, you’d be able to put these to use yourself, or share them with family members or friends, but all too often frequent flyers finish out the year with unused credits left in their accounts. Rather than simply letting them go “poof” when the clock strikes midnight when they’re scheduled to expire, you might as well share them with a TPG reader, and make someone else’s day....

Last week, I headed to Europe for the 2017 Star Alliance MegaDo, which kicked off on Wednesday in Vienna and ended Friday night in Mallorca. Since we’ve already reviewed many of the top business and first-class products flying between the US and Europe, this was a good opportunity to think outside the box. I landed on reviews of two of the continent’s most infamous carriers: Alitalia and Air Berlin.At the moment, the claim to fame for both of these global airlines is their current financial situations — Alitalia and Air Berlin are both bankrupt....

Customer satisfaction firm J.D. Power ranks a lot of things based on how much customers like them, and on Thursday it released its 12th annual list of top US airports. (Spoiler right away: New York LGA, dead last in its category, continues to be loathed by the people who use it. For the winner, read on.)Based on a survey of 34,695 passengers, the 2017 North America Airport Satisfaction Study seeks to “measures overall traveler satisfaction” based on six factors:terminal facilitiesairport accessibilitysecurity checkbaggage claimcheck-in/baggage checkfood, beverage and retailBroken into categories based on size, the top-ranking airports of this year’s J....

Just days after Alaska Airlines inked an agreement with Neste to spearhead renewable fuel use across the airline industry, in comes JetBlue with a delivery flight that Mother Earth herself is smiling on. The airline received its newest, shiniest A321 from Airbus’ US A320 family production facility in Mobile, Alabama on Wednesday. That delivery flight was JetBlue’s first-ever flight powered by renewable jet fuel, with Thursday’s ferry flight slated to be number two....