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Mileage and point addicts, rejoice! There’s a great new site to add to your toolbox.

PointMaven launched recently, designed to help travelers find the best point-earning offers for hotel stays. It’s the sister site of MileMaven, which has a similar mission for airline frequent flyer miles.

(I’ve mentioned MileMaven before in passing, and I’ve had it in my Useful Tools pulldown menu at right for some time, but I just realized I had not ever given it the attention it deserves.)

Both sites effectively start their search with a similar question: Where are you going?

The service providers who get you there or take care of you at your destination are, perhaps ironically, of secondary importance in the phrasing of your search.

If you’re not handcuffed to a specific brand, either by corporate contract or a preponderance of loyalty points, and if you’re a member of multiple loyalty programs, then these sites are for you.

For PointMaven, enter a city or airport code, and a “map” of the different hotel chains’ point offers appears. Hovering over each box will bring up information about specific properties, promos, etc. Clicking through gives you details of the bonuses, and lets you book your room accordingly. (Some bonus offers require registration, or are targeted but a subset of the chain’s clientele.)

For MileMaven, enter the cities you are traveling between. A grid of airlines and their point offers appears. You may need to register for some offers, and some offers are targeted.

What the sites don’t do is give you the rates or fares up front. But that’s okay. It’s not their mission. Points first, prices later.

Your newspaper smells delicious, did you stay at an Omni?
Hotels’ “scent programs” and aromatherapy trends may have just jumped the shark. In a cross-promotional marketers’ fantasy come true, Omni Hotels have started slapping berry-scented stickers advertising Starbucks muffins on copies of USA Today. And the Wall Street Journal is considering adding scents to their advertising pages. Hopefully these odors won’t interfere with the whiff of lemongrass and green tea that’s being pumped into lobby spaces at the chain. What’s next, pay-per-view Smellovision?

Predict the next threat? A TSA-inspired contest
Bruce Schneier is running a contest to conceive of an absurd, fictional terrorist plot that would cause the TSA to start banning yet another product from airports. The more ludicrous the product, yet oddly plausible the threat, the better. Why? “The purpose of this contest is absurd humor, but I hope it also makes a point. Terrorism is a real threat, but we’re not any safer through security measures that require us to correctly guess what the terrorists are going to do next.” Partially-digested food, tooth-fillings, and zippers are front-runners in my book.

Enterprise Rent-a-Car buys Alamo and National
Enterprise is buying Vanguard Car Rental, the parent company of Alamo and National. The combined company would have over a million cars on its lots. Will rentals at Enterprise become more automated, like at Alamo/National? Will Alamo/National start doing the long walkarounds, hard-sells on CDWs, and secretly-negotiable rates?

Wi-fly
After the shutdown of Boeing’s Connexion satellite-based inflight internet service, other companies have been slow to start up service, which was promised nearly a year ago. Scott McCartney checks in with possible providers, and we’re still not there. But it’s coming “early next year.” And rest assured, Skype calls won’t go through. They’ll be blocked, so your fears of cellphone conversations can be kept at bay. Onboard wi-fi — which is already approved for service by both the FCC and FAA — will cost around $10 per day, and packages that link with existing services like T-Mobile HotSpot, Boingo, and iPass will be available. No word on which airlines will be the first to bite.

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Airlines do first class and coach. Rental car companies offer luxury and economy models. And hotels offer oceanview suites and dumpster-view doubles. But some resorts are cordoning off facilities for their highest-paying customers, like separate pools, separate restaurants, and separate services. A backlash is beginning.

The Wall Street Journal has an exposé on the increasingly two-class society at already high-end luxury hotels. Some folks are willing to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars on top of their expensive base rates, to have special treatment with already-luxurious resorts. But hotels aren’t keeping this subtle. Instead of keeping the two-class treatment quiet, it’s becoming more and more obvious. There are some who are growing resentful.

Example:

Jacob and Susan Rooksby got a peek at the subtle class distinctions during their January honeymoon at the Paradisus Playa Conchal in Costa Rica, where they paid $800 a night for a junior suite. […] Two days later, they stumbled on a quieter pool, where an attendant was circling with cold towels among the 14 or so guests. But as soon as the couple set down their towels, the attendant asked them to leave. “He said, ‘Oh. I’m sorry but this pool is only for Royal Service guests,’” says Mr. Rooksby, a 25-year- old law student at the University of Virginia. “You don’t expect, for that kind of money, to be treated like a second-class citizen.”

Higher-paying guests are identifiable by color-coded bracelets (eww!) or towels with a special stripe of color.

If you didn’t pay the big bucks to get the ultra-elite treatment up front, you might be invited to do so at check-in if you carry the proper air: “hotel staff will ask “refined” customers — for example, those who arrive on a private plane or who have an American Express black card — or those who look like they have been to the Caribbean if they want to upgrade at check-in.” Umm, would you know which stamps are in my passport, just by looking at me? I hope not! (And yes, I’ve been to the Caribbean.)

If paying $800 for a resort room doesn’t get you into the kool pool, then that’s not a hotel I’d really want to stay at.

So now some guests are just violating the rules, and hoping they don’t get caught. Some hotels worry that their fences around the exclusive pools are too short. Sounds like a lovely environment for a vacation.

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(Thanks, Dr. Vino!)

Upgraded: American Airlines’ fleet
American is boosting its delivery schedule of Boeing 737-800s, to replace the aging, gas-guzzling McDonnell Douglas MD-80s that make up half their fleet. The new planes will burn 25% less fuel.

Downgraded: Cash on Frontier Airlines
Frontier will no longer accept cash for onboard payments, beginning April 1. They join other airlines like ATA and Spirit in going cashless. Cash may be downgraded, but overall, and many will miss the choice of cash or plastic, but as an aficionado of credit cards (more miles! receipts!) this is fine with me.

Upgraded: European airline merger fever!
The open skies treaty’s passage on the European side of the Atlantic is sparking chatter of mergers and acquisitions. British Airways has expressed interest in bmi, Lufthansa is peeking around Iberia, bmi, and Alitalia, and Virgin Atlantic has supposedly been poking around the continent’s airlines as well. No trans-Atlantic mergers rumored quite yet.

Upgraded: Lufthansa lounges
Lufthansa is spending $130 million worldwide to upgrade its airport lounges, which are already pretty decent. U.S. airlines’ lounges, already a sad also-ran in the global lounge wars, will seem even more outdated and under-serviced.

Downgraded: Singapore Airlines’ frequent flyer program
It’s not just U.S.-based carriers who seem hell-bent on reducing benefits for their frequent flyers. The Global Traveller bemoans the latest changes in Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer program.

Upgraded: Luxury hotel brands’ geographic reach
Looking for a Ritz-Carlton or other high-end hotel? It’s getting easier. The luxe chains are spreading to second- and third-tier cities.

Upgraded: Regulation
Travel companies, from cruise ships to airlines, haven’t done a sufficiently good job of self-regulating, so here come the regulators! Beyond the PBOR, we’re seeing moves toward regulating the cruise industry as well as airlines. The pressure to re-regulate is snowballing.

Upgraded: Your stinky wardrobe
Brilliant! A charcoal garment bag that deodorizes your stinky clothes. (Via Dethroner)

Upgraded: Airport bathrooms
Coming soon to Raleigh-Durham Airport: Better bathrooms! Wider/longer stalls let you keep your stuff in sight. But this has me scratching my head: “Tilted mirrors will be placed above the urinals so men can keep an eye on computer cases even as they’re going about their business.” Won’t these mirrors provide others with a great show, too? I’ll settle for cleaner bathrooms, as a start.

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Reader Katie writes:

I have an persistent problem with my keycards for hotel rooms deactivating. The hotel chain does not matter -Starwood, Hyatt, Hilton-all the cards deactivate. My husband claims it because I store them in my wallet which I then put in my purse which also holds my blackberry. I say that although his theory for deactivation is possible, it is ridiculous that this happens. Where else would I supposed to store my room key except my wallet? So, my question(s) to you: do other people have this problem? Is the problem largely limited to women (or men) who carry purses which contain both their wallet and cellphone/blackberry? Can hotels fix this issue? And most importantly, is there anything I can do to prevent this-aluminum foil around the card or some other crazy hack?

This never would have happened with those hold-punched VingCards! (Ahh, memories!)

Your husband may be right, but it’s still not clear what the precise cause is, or why it happens so consistently.

Since the key card is really a magnetic strip attached to a piece of plastic, it can be affected by other things that have magnetic force. What kind of magnets are you carrying?!

I thought a cellphone would be a good bet, especially if it’s a flip phone, since those are often held shut with magnets. (I recall that my Motorola came with a warning to keep credit cards away from the phone for just that reason.) But if it’s a Blackberry or other non-flip-phone, then that’s not it.

Other cards, such as credit cards, are magnetic, too, but rarely exert enough of a charge to disable key cards, unless you are directly rubbing magnetic stripes together. Especially so consistently! (I always carry my keycards in my wallet, right next to the credit cards. Never had a problem.)

So to be honest, I’m stumped. As a solution, though, I’d consider a small static sleeve. My bank gave me a mylar sleeve for my ATM card years ago, and hotels often give the keycards in a paper pouch. Maybe that might help.

I’ll throw it open to readers: Do others have similar trouble? Any theories? Suggestions for how to prevent deactivation? Hit the comments!

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No allergy medication necessary?
Growing trend in hotel rooms: Hypoallergenic rooms. Sure, fine. Of course, it could be directly canceled out by all the scents that hotels are pumping into their public spaces. Can we maybe get some quietly-closing doors first, please? (Yes, I’m flogging that horse again.)

The key to in-room power
Some European and Asian hotels have the presumably eco-friendly but otherwise irritating habit of requiring a key card to be inserted into a power socket in order to release the flow of electricity. However, you don’t need to use your key card — any card will do. Leave your room and charge your laptop with impunity. (via Gridskipper)

Update: Some readers wrote in, asking for more details or photos. Click here to see an example of the card-locked power sockets at a Hong Kong hotel.

Breakin’ all the rules
The Airbus A380 may have been on its American tour this week, but the FAA has certified only 11 airports nationwide as capable of handling the mega-plane. The airports: Anchorage, Denver, Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Louisville (cargo only), New York-JFK, Memphis (cargo only), Miami, Ontario (California — cargo only), Orlando, and San Francisco. This means the A380 wouldn’t have been allowed to land at half the airports in the U.S. that it visited this past week. (Note that Chicago O’Hare and Washington Dulles aren’t on that list…)

Transit woes:
The ever-peripatetic Tyler Brûlé gets stuck at Miami Airport and misses his connecting international flight because he’s undergoing a lengthy TSA questioning. Even passengers who aren’t planning to actually enter the United States, and are only transiting, are treated as if they’re entering the country. Frustrating, but largely a function of airport design. Once you’re in the airport, you can easily leave the secure area and enter the country, after all. But the fact that this is the reality of transiting the U.S. makes American ports of entry less and less desirable. Bad for business!

Far stupider: I went through customs and immigration at LAX once on a domestic flight. It’s true! I traveled from Honolulu to Los Angeles, connecting to Newark. Why the passport control? I was flying Air New Zealand HNL-LAX. Domestic flight, but international airline. Idiotic. Almost missed my connection. (Luggage didn’t make it.)

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I’ve written a piece for the April 2007 issue of FastCompany on the expansion of boutique hotels (or “small luxury hotels,” as some prefer to be called) into mini-chains.

The article (or “charticle,” more accurately) covers the Gansevoort, Thompson, James, and Magnolia brands, each of which is expanding their model beyond their initial home base.

You’ll need a code from page 10 of the issue in order to access it online for the next few weeks. It’ll be freely available next month.

My contribution to the magazine last month, on changes and improvements to the experience of renting a car, is now accessible free to non-subscribers, by the way.

Upgraded: Poolside chairs
Honestly, this isn’t something I’ve ever struggled with, but at some resorts, pool chairs are at a premium. The result: Squatters. People actually get up crazy early to lay claim to their chairs. Now, hotels are fighting back against the “chair hogs.” Some have a waiting list. At others, you sacrifice your seat if you’re out of your seat for an hour. At the Peninsula Hotel in Bangkok, you only have a measly 15 minutes. That seems a bit aggressive. Better not actually swim!

Downgraded: Booze
This just breaks my heart: From October to January, the TSA at Miami Airport confiscated NINE TONS of liquids in containers exceeding 3 ounces. Primarily liquor and perfume. And that’s just at Miami Airport. So much booze, much of it purchased at duty free shops in the Caribbean, sitting in a storage locker, with no one to drink it. This is a national tragedy. I weep. Folks: If you’re arriving in the US and connecting to a domestic flight, you have to put your duty free liquor in the checked luggage. Or simply not buy it. Stupid, stupid, stupid, I know.

Upgraded: No frills hotels
If no-frills flying is your cup of tea, then why not bring the discount airline vibe to your lodging? From the folks who brought you EasyJet and EasyCruise, the EasyHotel concept is expanding. Perhaps we’ll see it go the other direction someday. Motel 6 Airlines, anyone? (Or would that be Air 6?)

Upgraded: Movies on planes
It wasn’t just my impression: Airlines really are putting more unedited movies into the rotation. But it’s not just on the individually-controlled in-seat TVs, it’s hitting the old-school projectors, too. The key snippet, with a quote from United: “Since September, United has loosened its restrictions on what types of movies can be shown on jets equipped with overhead screens, which all passengers can see. When the airline played ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ in the fall, an R movie with some ear-curling rants by Alan Arkin, ‘We got a tremendous amount of positive feedback,’ Kovick said.”

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Upgraded: Your odds of seeing the Airbus A380 in New York
Want to see the Airbus A380 up close and personal? Lufthansa is bringing the über-jumbo jet to New York (as mentioned previously here), and you can enter their contest to tour the plane. It’s still a long shot, but unless you’re a VIP, this is your only way in. Better hurry: The drawing is March 13, and the plane arrives in NYC March 19.

Upgraded: The civil discourse of travel blogging
The Sydney Morning Herald’s travel blog has a lively comments section, wherein the journalists take guff from their readers, but dish it right back. Barbs such as the French word for “shower” get thrown back and forth in the comments to this post. I have a hard time imagining such an exchange on an American newspaper’s official blog. Viva Australia! (Thanks to reader — and frequent, polite commenter! — S.A. for the tip.)

Upgraded: Surreptitious beverage transportation for ladies
You may recall the Beer Belly, the under-your-clothes beverage bladder that upgrades six-pack abs to a full case. It’s essentially a CamelBak undergarment, most certainly a violation of the TSA’s 3-ounce cutoff for liquids and gels, and your fast-track ticket to a cavity search. But until recently, it the liquid smuggling business was a man’s world. Now, in a celebration of gender equality, there’s a similar product for women, with the beverage storage slightly higher on the torso: The Wine Rack. (via Thrillist; thanks Dr. Vino!)

Downgraded: Blackjack in Vegas
Your odds of coming out ahead when playing the tables in Las Vegas have dropped. Several casinos are reducing the payouts on blackjack from 3:2 to 6:5. You need to check the fine print on the signs at each table. If you want to play single-deck blackjack with 3:2 payouts, you’ll have to head to the El Cortez or Four Queens hotels, though both of these less-than-desirable properties only feature two such tables each. (via Tim Leffel)

Upgraded: Qantas first and business qlass
The Global Traveller points to Qantas’ PR for their soon-to-be-revamped first and business class products. Highlights: pajamas in business class, and the claim that their lounges will be the best in the world.

Downgraded: Daylight savings time
The Wall Street Journal warns that the impending shift to daylight savings time will put international connections out of whack for the coming weeks, as some countries will adjust their clocks but others won’t. But frankly, this has almost always been the case. Europe and the United States always had a week or two’s discrepancy on both the autumn and spring sides. Yes, there will certainly be some connections that are out of whack with the normal schedule for the next few weeks, so if you fly a given route regularly, your typical connections may not be possible for the next few weeks. But the airlines’ timetables should reflect the reality of the new times when you buy the ticket, so just double-check your itineraries. I’ll still take my daylight savings time, thanks.

Upgraded: The number 13
Hotels are no longer enumerating their buildings’ floors incorrectly for the sake of superstition. The 13th floor is making a comeback. The statistics are tinged with irony: “A recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll suggests a large majority of Americans — 87% — would be comfortable with a 13th floor room assignment. But 13% say they’d be bothered by a 13th floor room assignment.”

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Great moments in border crossings: Switzerland accidentally invades Liechtenstein
Neutral? Not anymore! 170 Swiss soldiers wandered one mile into Liechtenstein territory when they got lost during military exercises. Getting lost isn’t limited to tourists anymore. Maybe they should have invested in the deluxe Swiss Army Knife with the compass.

Putting the “condom” back into “condominium”?
Hotels and restaurants in the Chinese province of Zhejiang are now required to make condoms available for sale (or for free) or face hefty fines. Sounds like they need to follow the lead of hotels that spice up their minibars with alternative offerings…

Converting public spaces to still-life photos: TouristRemover
There are times when you want to take a photo without the presence of human beings, and the TouristRemover application seems like a handy tool. But don’t overdo it! If you do this to all of your travel photos, you’ll be left with boring, sterile images that look like you’ve been touring the site of a neutron bomb explosion.

Coyote cleared for takeoff, runway 27 left
Two planes trying to land at Chicago O’Hare Airport had to abort because of coyotes on the runways. (Coyotes are perhaps one of the ten plagues that will strike airports. Are locusts next?) In fact, the FAA’s statistics show that, from 1990 to 2005, airplanes in the United States struck a total of 66,392 animals, mostly birds. More “exotic” species include 652 white-tailed deer, 198 coyotes, 14 alligators, 11 cats, and 3 moose.

Will travel for Guinness
Guinness is test-marketing a new beer: Guinness Red. If you’re in the UK, you’ll be able to try it locally. If you’re elsewhere, you’ll need to travel a bit if you want a taste. The list of pubs that will feature the new brew can be found here. (The site requires you to state an age and residency. If you’re not in the UK, lie. If you don’t say you live in the UK, you can’t read their site.) Reports from the field are welcomed here. Please let it be better than “New Coke.”

Behind that luggage scanner stands a human being doing
Gary Leff points to a great, in-depth piece in CondeNast Traveler, in which one of their writers, Barbara S. Peterson, applied for (and got) a job at the TSA. For two months, she worked at the agency, and her (LONG) report, is a great read.

Nicotine addicts, be warned. Your hotel options are decreasing again.

First Westin went 100% nonsmoking worldwide in the US, Canada, the Caribbean, Scotland, Australia, and Fiji. Then Marriott went smoke-free across all its brands in North America. Now, Comfort Suites, part of the Choice Hotels group, is going smoke-free as well.

Already 10% of the chain’s hotels are non-smoking. The remainder of the properties will ban smoking by the end of April.

Comfort Suites will still offer a designated smoking area somewhere on the property, so smokers won’t be as shut out as they might be at other hotel chains.

It’s interesting that Choice Hotels is opting to go non-smoking in this particular brand alone. (Econolodge might have been an even bigger surprise…) Comfort isn’t their top tier, and it’s not a newly launched brand like Cambria, where they’d be starting from scratch.

Update 2/21/07: Reader Alex writes in to correct a small but important error in the description of Westin’s smoke-free policy. It’s not worldwide: “Westin did not go smoke-free worldwide. I know this is true since I’m currently in the Westin Bangkok and enjoying a quick puff in the bar. (sorry )” Heh. You’re right, Alex. I’ve corrected the post above to reflect the policy, as stated on Westin’s website: No smoking at hotels in the US, Canada, the Caribbean, Scotland (not even all of the UK!), Australia, and Fiji.

Related:
- Marriott hotels to eliminate smoking in all its North American brands
- Smoking prohibitions: Hurdles and tradeoffs
- The captain has turned on the smoke-’em-if-you-got-’em sign…
- Smoking chimpanzee can’t kick cigarette habit (CBS News)
- Comfort Suites (aff)

Upgraded: Hotel lobbies
Luxury lockdown! “Why should they be leaving the hotel and hanging out at the nearby Starbucks?” So Starwood and others hope to tempt you to stay within the compound by creating “internet lobby lounges.”

Upgraded: Japanese wine; Downgraded?: JAL wine lists
JAL, aka Japan Air Lines, is bringing a Japanese wine to the sky. Aruga Branca Clareza 2005, made from the indigenous Japanese Koshu grape, will be available in business class. Interesting, to be sure, but has anyone ever had it? Is it any good? Reviews are pretty sparse.

Upgraded: Flying Squirrels
Paging Rocky and Bullwinkle! Stowaway squirrel causes emergency landing on an American Airlines 777 bound from Tokyo to Dallas.

Upgraded: Ease of booking a private jet
Paging Charles Dickens! It may be the worst of times for many coach travelers, but it’s never been easier to book a private jet. There have been discounted (but not cheap) private jet repositioning flights for some time, but aggregator SideStep is now offering a search function for private jets.

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