For a limited time, InterContinental Hotels Group properties will reimburse some guests’ checked baggage fees. So a hotel chain — including InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Holiday Inn Club Vacations, Staybridge Suites, and Candlewood Suites — is indirectly subsidizing airlines. Interesting.

Beginning Aug. 16, when travellers book two consecutive weekend nights at any one of the 4,500 IHG hotels worldwide for stays between Sept. 1 and Dec. 30, 2010, their checked bag is free. Travellers can participate each and every weekend they stay with an IHG hotel during the “Check It Free” promotion period, when they pay for their hotel stay using their Visa® Card.
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Download a rebate form via www.ihg.com/freebag and submit it with copies of your hotel receipt and baggage fee receipt for the same trip postmarked by Jan. 31, 2011.

Rebates are in the form of a prepaid Visa card, which carries monthly fees if you don’t exhaust it within six months.

The rebate has quite a few moving parts: 1) weekends only, 2) 2 night minimum, 3) Q4 only, 4) pay with Visa. Break any one of those rules, and say bye-bye to the rebate. Plus: 5) expiring-balance on the rebate itself.

Given those restrictions, this is potentially useful for weekend getaways. But for weekend getaways, won’t a carry-on suffice?…

So this ends up being great PR for IHG, but not necessarily something that will benefit the masses. That said, if you can map this out in advance, and you can make this work: Go for it!

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Downgraded: The image of the pilot
The recent hearings surrounding the Colgan Air crash in Buffalo have focused on lack of training and cross-country commutes. But they have also brought attention to the low pay that starting pilots receive at the commuter airlines. Salaries for first officers at regional airlines can be terrible: $25,000 a year for starters, and only $33,000 on average after three years. See also this graphic, listing the average salaries by category.

Upgraded, but not quite enough: Kayak’s search engine
A month ago, I reviewed the airfare aggregators or metasearch sites. I gave TripAdvisor’s new engine the win, largely because of its ability to estimate ancillary fees like luggage fees. Now, Kayak is adding a baggage fee estimator as well, as pictured below. But it’s not quite to the level of TripAdvisor’s engine, which takes into account factors like elite status, and allows for a more granular approach to fees than simply asking about number of bags.

Downgraded: Nicknames and Abbreviations
TSA is rolling out the first phase of its “Secure Flight” policy, which means your plane tickets will have to match your identification more precisely than in the past. “During this phase of the Secure Flight program, passengers are encouraged to book their reservations using their name as it appears on the government-issued ID they will use while traveling.” And that means that, at some point (though not today), you won’t be able to use a middle initial on your ticket if your ID uses your full middle name. Which will piss off thousands of passengers while doing absolutely nothing for security. Asinine.

Downgraded: Hotel searches for Columbus, Georgia
If you’re staying in the town of Columbus, Georgia, you won’t find much in the way of hotels if you search the major online travel agencies. Why the boycott? Expedia was ordered to pay occupancy taxes to the city on the basis of the displayed room rate (the one paid by customers booking on the site). Previously, they had been paying the occupancy tax on the basis of the wholesale rates which they had negotiated with the hotel. So, now the major sites are simply not listing hotels in Columbus, GA at all. I’m no lawyer, but I can see the agencies’ point here: It makes sense to me that local taxes should be based on the rate paid locally — in this case, at the wholesale rate. I’m sure Columbus hoteliers are thrilled…

Downgraded: InterContinental brands
InterContinental is downgrading their properties’ service requirements. Gary Leff has the rundown, which, depending on the brand in question, includes delaying the purchase of new beds, cutting restaurant hours, cotton towels, and overnight front desk service.

Upgraded: Hotel executives’ waste of shareholder funds
Hotel corporation annual meetings rarely reach the level of sublime self-indulgence, but InterContinental has raised the bar:

[InterContinental Hotels Group] Americas’ President Steve Porter kicked off [IHG's national meeting] with the gusto of a rock star, directing a choir singing Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” A band, including CEO Cosslett on guitar, provided the thunderous chords while drummers drilled the song into the rafters of the Dallas Convention Center.

“Today we are at a crossroads,” Porter said. “Our relevance is at risk.”

Clearly, true. For real relevance, Porter would have conducted the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and London Symphony Orchestra in a complete performance of the Who’s “Tommy,” while discussing the prospects for expansion of the Hotel Indigo brand.

Upgraded: Airport health care
Why visit a doctor — or heck, a supermarket — when you can get your flu shots at the airport? Now injecting at gate C17!

Downgraded: New England fall foliage
One year’s weather or global warming? Either way, fall foliage in the northeast U.S. isn’t looking so great.

Upgraded: Eos adds more all-business flights
Eos Airlines, which currently flies from JFK to London-Stansted is expanding. New routes will include Newark to Stansted in the spring, and JFK to Paris in the fall.

Upgraded: Skybus adds flights from Greensboro
Late last month, I posted about Skybus’ plans to expand to a new hub — or “focus city,” if you must use the proper nomenclature. Signs were pointing toward Greensboro, NC or Portsmouth, NH. Greensboro it is. Up to 11 flights a day coming soon.

Upgraded: A380 cinema verité
Video of the interior of the new Singapore Airbus A380. It’s pure, unadulterated Singapore Airlines and Airbus PR video. But it’s actually often rather unflattering, if you ask me, at least in coach. (Legroom looks good, but those colors are drab!) For those seeking some first class airline porn, voila.

(Thanks to reader Chris!)

SEE CORRECTION BELOW

A prevailing (and irritating) trend in loyalty programs is the shortening of your points’ lifespan. If your balance is stagnant, then you’re increasingly at risk of losing your account entirely.

For example, United and US Airways recently revised their rules to make points on stagnant accounts expire after 18 months. Delta does the same after 2 years. Air Canada is the worst, with activity required at least once every twelve months, and, in a slap in the face to loyal customers, expiring your points after 7 years, even if you’re an active account holder.

Sure, you can keep your balance alive by having any kind of activity — including redemption — on your account. Credit a withering account with a car rental, an online purchase through an airline mall, etc.

Even better: Fill out a silly survey and get some points to restart the clock, without parting with any of your money.

That’s just what you can do with Delta, breathing new life into your stale account: The “Insider Opinion” survey asks one single question (the questions rotate periodically) and rewards you with a quick and easy 250 points. CORRECTION: These points will NOT restart the clock on your Delta miles, after all. As Gary correctly caught and noted in comments, they are coded as a bonus, and thus don’t count toward expiration calculation. Mea culpa. Expiration rules are here.

Bonus:
InterContinental Hotels’ Priority Club (which includes the Holiday Inn hotels, too) doesn’t have an expiration date on their points (yet), but have a free-point survey anyway: it’s a fairly short (4 screens?) survey for 250 easy points: click here.

Got free surveys for other programs or alternate ways to restart your point clock? Post ‘em in comments.

Related:
- United cuts the lifespan of frequent flyer miles
- Air Canada joins race to the bottom on frequent flyer miles

Say goodbye to the in-room $4 Twix bar and the $7 mini-bottle of Absolut during your next hotel stay. USA Today reports that minibars are being removed from luxury hotels across the United States. The reason: people aren’t using them, and the labor costs of checking the minibar contents every day are outweighing the profits.

But don’t say goodbye to the soft sounds of the refrigerator’s compressor just yet. In place of the minibar, hotels are installing small, empty refrigerators.

Some people may miss the old minibars. Members of InterContinental Hotels’ Royal Ambassador program receive complimentary beverages from the minibar, and they may be worried that their elite status is being diluted. (My wife and I also enjoyed one memorable complimentary minibar during our honeymoon in Barbados: We were upgraded — of course — to The House, where the bottle of Bollinger waiting in the fridge was particularly nice…)

But the rebirth of the minibar as a simple refrigerator is good news for most travelers, who now have room to store items of their own choosing. While it’s nice to eat out, restaurant food can become tiresome during longer travels, especially at breakfast. Being able to have a simple bowl of cereal, with the milk of my choice, in my hotel room in the morning is hardly glamorous, but it makes travel more comfortable. Having a fridge in the room is a big plus in my book.

Alternatively, some hotels are spicing their ‘bars up a bit:

Some hotels including the Thompson in New York and James in Arizona are stocking their minibars with Intimacy Kits which, in case you need to ask, contain condoms, cinnamon mints, scented cloths, and even personal lubricants and feather ticklers.

Sassy! But I hope they don’t keep these things too cold…

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