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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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