Make sure you get compensated

Gooooooooood morning from lovely Nanjing, China!

I’m excited to share some fun travel tricks with y’all today, so let’s finish off the week strong, shall we?

Here we go:

• 💸 Make sure you get compensated

• ✈️ Frontier Annual Pass presale

• 💳 Current Transfer Bonuses

💸 Make sure you get compensated

The world of travel is a magical place.

But sometimes, things don’t go according to plan… from simple mishaps and downgrades to major delays and cancellations, it’s important to know when you’re entitled to compensation from an airline or hotel.

Thankfully, laws exist in various regions that help you navigate this world.

For example, in the EU and Europe, there is a law that will award you CASH compensation in the event of an airline delay or cancellation.

But sometimes, your travel experiences aren’t subject to those laws… and what about hotel problems?

The nice thing about flying better airlines and staying in chain hotels is that oftentimes, they will provide compensation when things go wrong, despite not being required to do so.

For example, last month, I flew on Cathay Pacific in business class from China to Indonesia. It was…. Delightful.

Unfortunately, I did have a tiny issue…

Despite selecting my seats ahead of time (I always go for the window, which is a bit more private), they changed my seats for no reason and put me in a non-window seat for the longer 5-hour segment.

Not a huge deal… but they did deny me the product I selected and paid for. So I submitted a claim online about it.

To my surprise, they responded with this:

Yup. They gave me 18,000 Cathay Asia Miles for this, which is not what I was expecting at all.

To give you an idea of how much that’s worth, that’s enough miles for a short round-trip between Hong Kong and other Asian cities…

This is a good example of how you should always provide feedback to the airline when you are asked to or when something goes wrong.

And this rings true for chain hotels, too.

For example, earlier this year, I had a 2-night stay at the Hyatt Regency in Baku, Azerbaijan - a Category 1 hotel that cost me 5,000 points per night.

At first, I really liked this hotel.

When I arrived at my room, I received one of the best welcome gifts I’ve ever seen…

I mean, look… 👇

Unfortunately, it got worse from there… there was loud renovation work going on in the room next to mine; the ceiling was literally dripping water, and the breakfast staff arrived late, so I had to miss breakfast before my morning flight as a result on checkout day.

So when I received an email survey about my stay, I filled it out and provided honest feedback.

To my surprise, they refunded me all 10,000 points for my stay… and then gave me ANOTHER 10,000 points.

Again, I was NOT expecting something like this.

At the end of the day, I mainly care about providing feedback so hotels and airline can improve their services and products to benefit future guests…

… but I’m also not complaining about getting miles and points when their products and services are abysmal. 🤷🏼‍♂️

So here’s the bottom line:

Sometimes, travel experiences are not what we expect and not what they’re supposed to be.

When things go wrong (and when they don’t), always provide feedback.

If the company cares about you as a customer, they’ll often try to make it right by way of compensating you.

✈️ Frontier Annual Pass presale

Alright, time for a drastic subject change.

Frontier just dropped some potentially exciting news…

In the past, we’ve told you about Frontier’s “Go Wild” all-you-can-fly passes. For some, they’re a great deal. For others, not so much.

This new one, however, fits into the first category…

At some point in the near future, Frontier will begin selling its annual “Go Wild” pass for 2025/2026 for just $299.

To be clear, this pass is not yet available to buy. But you should be in the loop about this deal for the following reasons:

1. They will only sell 5,000 passes at this price; then it increases to $499

2. Ten lucky ducks who sign up for the pre-sale will win one of these passes for FREE

All you need to do is register your info on this page and wait to hear more.

If this sounds appealing to you, I’d hop on the sale as soon as it goes live, as I suspect they will sell out relatively quickly…

So. Should you do it?

Let’s take a closer look at the fine print first:

• You can use the pass to book an unlimited number of flights between May 1, 2025, and April 30th, 2026.

• The pass is valid for both domestic and international destinations.

• For domestic flights, you can only book your flight one day before departure.

• For international flights, you can book ten days ahead of departure.

• You have to pay an “airfare” of $0.01 per flight, along with the normal taxes and fees.

• There are some blackout dates (see the full list here)

So obviously, the two big drawbacks are that you can’t book far ahead of time, and you are still on the hook for taxes and fees… womp womp.

Still, the $299 is so cheap that it could still be a killer deal. 🔪

For example, flights from Atlanta to Punta Cana are selling for more than $600 next April (not even during blackout dates).

If you’re okay with planning a spontaneous Caribbean getaway ten days in advance, a single one-way flight like this would pay for the entire year of your pass…

But even shorter domestic hops like this one (which saves you over $100) could very quickly recoup your investment.

So here’s the bottom line:

Even if this doesn’t sound interesting to you, just sign up for the waitlist for this pass. If you’re one of the lucky winners of a FREE pass, it might become interesting to you very quickly…

That’s all for today, folks!!! I hope you had a good week - I know I did!

There’s been so much good travel content the past two weeks, so I hope we can keep it up in the weeks to come as we finish the year.

Have a lovely weekend,

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