We learn more about the Starwood SPG increases, register for the SPG Uber and Hilton HHonors Promo, learn how to book Aer Lingus flights with BA Avios, we barf together on Marriott going Delta again, travel to Himalaya, check out some female travel Blogs, and marvel at Miracle Mike who I can empathize with as I certainly feel like him!
TBB Blog Mission: To Entertain. Educate. Inspire. In That Order!
You can support TBB by applying for CREDIT CARDS, please consider doing your shopping with our AMAZON affiliate link and clicking/forwarding any of our Referral Links. Or click on the Amazon Banner on the right side, thank YOU!
List of USA 94 Starwood Hotels with SPG category increase March 10, 2015 – Loyalty Traveler Go ahead, book now if you were planning an award stay in one of these hotels!
Register for the Uber and SPG partnership HERE. Watch how Titans use this to sell their Chase and Amex SPG cards and not tell you how you can get 5x points per dollar with Discover this quarter. Why? Is it perhaps that Discover does not pay as high of a commission? Or just too busy hurrying up to pump those links to even think about how readers can benefit more before the pockets of these bloggers?
Register for the Hilton HHonors promo for Double Points starting March 1, 2015 HERE. Look at the super ridiculous non-participating hotel list HERE.
There was a giant outpouring of pumping for the few minor changes in the Amex Premier Rewards Gold card. Which always acts as a great excuse for plastic pumping bloggers to drop everything they were doing (mainly preparing more pumping posts) to pull up template #AmexPRG template, edit a few lines and bang go to #sellsellsell mode for the 9,459,345,567,696,696,969th time. Ohh, if you wanted the details here is the post by Doctor of Credit which also shows how to get the offer to give you 50,000 Amex Membership Rewards points. Check out the CARDMATCH feature for possibly even better offers #hint. Lets be clear here. The standard offer your favorite pumping blogger pushing their affiliate links is only 25,000 Amex Membership Rewards points. Which, if my math is right, it is HALF of what you could get elsewhere. The only difference? If you go with the lower offer the pumping bloggers get a fat commission and you get screwed. Funny it works that way. Oh, and don’t click on my link either then for crying out loud. Don’t be a stupid goat, or a llama if you prefer, THINK! Or just ask us!
How to Book Aer Lingus Flights with British Airways Avios – Frugalhack.me Well written comprehensive post how to do this. I dont’ know about you but calling British Airways is definitely nowhere near the top of the list of things I would rather do in my life…
Marriott Rewards March 19, 2015 hotel category changes are bad news – Loyalty Traveler If there is one hotel chain that I absolutely do not care about (other than Wyndam which I avoid on principle…like Delta) is Marriott. 25 pages of 43 hotels on each page going up in category, wow!
This is what it’s like to rip up a Himalayan moonscape on a downhill bike – Matador Network What a fun video! If you are into bikes. And Himalaya too!
35 Kick-Ass Female Travel Blogs to Follow in 2015 – Travel Junkette I do follow some of these. Any of these you think are worthy of adding to my equally ridiculously long list of blogs in Feedly?
21 Satellite Photos of Earth that Will Give you a Fresh Perspective – Twisted Sifter No.Words.To.Describe.The.Awesomness!
Meet Miracle Mike – World Famous Headless Rooster – Memolition Wow, thumbs up for Mike!
The Only Basic Financial Advice You’ll Ever Need – Pragmatic Capitalism This is a fantastic read on personal finance!
Isn’t this a cool picture or what?
Motivational posters for people who totally hate people – theCHIVE Some of these are hilarious!
By this time I am exhausted…I just want to show you a pic of the blog posts I found that I consider the most pumpy of the past few days…No energy to make comments on them as I am exhausted by taxes, llamas and stupid dresses.
Thank you for reading and supporting my blog by clicking my $$ links! Why have you abandoned me lately, what have I done? Throw me a bone, errr, I mean a credit card, be SECOND this month, yes you can! Troll likes this, trying to get him back in the trolling. It’s entertainment folks, primarily my own. Can’t keep going like this, it is more insane than two llamas running loose live on TV. Maybe posting every other day is my groove…we shall see. I certainly feel even more obligated to keep posting if I see you actually carving out time in our busy lives to use my links #respect. And when I see no one has used my links the day before when I check at Panera each morning I feel sad but I get over it eventually…Keep buzzing! Oh wait, keep buzzing my links LOL.
Last one…
TBB
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
Join over 3,434 TBB followers on Twitter @ FlyerTalkerinA2 and add TBB on Google+
Love the Financial Advice link. First? Thanks
Sure,I’ll be 2nd for the 8,634,833,178th time
Just imagine the reaction if the AMEX Platinum card announced new benefits. Thrd.
No thanks. I’ll use my imagination for something that gives me pleasure.
I looked at “How to Book Aer Lingus Flights with British Airways Avios”
How can the small town of Shannon (9000 inhabitants and only 120miles from Dublin) support five transatlantic flights and 1.4M passengers per year?
Is there a sheep shagging or potatoe festival that I’m not aware of?
What’s Shannon’s secret?
World’s Greatest Airport Duty Free
Yep, what he said and also the airport has historical significance as one of the primary points where transatlantic aircraft used to refuel in the old days and the “Shannon Stopover” was also something enforced in US->Ireland aviation regulation. The town of Shannon was planned and expected to grow wildly with the airport as an economic driver…but that didn’t really pan out as hoped. With modern aircraft able to fly directly from the US to Europe and the EU open skies agreement effectively negating the historical reasons, it is a bit surprising that Shannon is able to keep those flights. Maybe it is still attractive to airlines due to the US customs pre-clearance facility?
Fascinating stuff, thanks guys!
It’s white and gold.
No, blue and black…#insanity
I swear if it was the Amex Platinum pumping bloggers would stop having sex to run to their PC to insert template #AmexPlat right away. If they were not in their computer already pumping other cards like the Amex PRG lol. MMS will text ghost writer to do it.
The insanity of llamas and dresses. WTF! What is wrong with our world today?
Why Shannon sounds awfully similar to shagging?
VFTW has the best clickbait headlines, bar none: “Make $100″…who wouldn’t??
I find it is so sad that Canadian travel “experts” have suddenly become miles experts and are pumping US credit cards more and more.
FTG: Where a reader “request” turns into another dozen link pumping fest. Never fails.
TPG: Found time to blog and posted a few paragraphs telling readers that Delta needs to fix the award engine Diamond thingie. Deep!
MP: Has turned to an amazing pumping machine, wow! Still raves about Hyatts and does not tell readers how to get two free nights in them. Wow!
On an even sadder note, my links are on track for one of the worst months ever. And that bothers me…it shouldn’t as money making is definitely not one of the goals here…but it does. I should call my therapist again. #waiting
The cool picture is RAF flying the Mach Loop at Cad West in northern Wales.
Thank you very much, LOVE that pic!
At least at one time, Irish rules required TATL flights to land at Shannon. No practical reason I know of, other than to support Shannon economy.
I have learned so much about…Shannon!
Marriott – a terrible program getting terribler
Indeed!
Just spend $195 and use up a credit inquiry on a subpar sign-up offer.
Just read FTG pumping this offer big time. No mention at all how they could get double more Amex MR points. And at the end they pump the Chase CSP. Unbelievable! Remember, it is about responsibility to blog this way. #sick
OK, what’s up with recommending financial advice telling you to reduce your number of credit cards?
Yeah, that was one part I fundamentally disagreed with 🙂
R.I.P. Spock…………..Why couldn’t it of been SHATNER instead? Dude is not a nice guy in person.
Yeah, Spock appeared to be a really nice guy too. Had a message about perseverance which I totally agree with. And lots more
Here’s a scoop…
TPG’s director of business development Mr Adam Daniel Weiss left after less than a year. Only to be replaced by a ‘Chief Operating Officer’ whose primary role prior was running an event marketing firm.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamdanielweiss
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leighrowan
Can we say more seminars on the way? The TPG ‘Experience’. Or maybe TPG wants to move on…and Bankrate wants Mr. Rowan to become the new face…
And Ms. Kate has been promoted to Director of Marketing!
Wow fascinating moves and scoops!
Less than a year, I wonder what went down.
So many working there. And apparently not many know it is owned by Bankrate.
Love the fancy titles, full of Directors and Managing Editors 🙂
In her previous role, “Personal assistant to The Points Guy managing schedules, real estate and day to day tasks.” Managing. His. Real Estate.
Looks like only 2 or 3 of them are real employees. The rest are freelancers.
George, Jamie, thank you! I am honestly humbled – it’s great to get mentioned in the comments of a site that has much bigger fish to fry (and topics to cover!) than me/TPG. And George – mazel tov on all of the success and growth (and on the impressive soccer playing!)! I hope that someone finally clicks on your links this month, too!
Indeed, lots of exciting happenings at TPG, and a ton of growth. We’re expanding our wonderful team and growing the site into new spaces. Very exciting year ahead – stay tuned!
I welcome you to reach out to me personally (George, you know how to get a hold of me / us!) with any questions or input.
I also thank you in advance of refraining from making any personal attacks on us as human beings. Remember – we’re all human, here. It’s easy to be a troll and to hide behind keyboards, but when it all boils down, we’re all people, trying to do the best we can, to live good lives, and to be kind to one another.
Please, cover us, our work, and engage us thoughtfully – but don’t be a Sihama 🙂
Epharisto poli!
Leigh
@ Leigh:
Thanks for posting here, you are really brave!
My blog covers the Blog Buzz. TPG is the number one commercial blog in our dear hobby. And I do admire Brian for making it number one. There IS a skill to that no doubt!
But we also like to cover the actual content a lot here and I am not sure the site is worthy to be number one. But hey McDonalds has sold 59 billion burgers so far so there you go 🙂
I have always tried my best to refrain from making personal attacks. I reserved those for two bloggers. One in fact is a buddy of Brian and trolls my site non stop trying to shut me up. And I enjoy it 🙂
Among the blogs in the world famous TBB list and community(translation: tiny band of hopeless miles addicts who sometimes only occasionally get a little, cough, upset by the credit card assault our eyes suffer) TPG has the best content mainly due to being able to afford so many paid staff! But lets not kid ourselves that your site would not exist if it wasn’t for pumping plastic to the newbies. Hey, great market no doubt!
Regarding the word: Sihama. Just a word of caution about this word. It has VERY negative connotations, probably not the best word to use. A typical Greek may not take it as well as I did. Because I know you did not mean it. At least I hope you didn’t.
I do not censor comments, it goes against my principles. I am NOT responsible for my reader comments and have always highly encouraged constructive non personal attack posts. We leave those for Brian’s buddy lol.
Good luck in your new role. I hope you guys do not commercialize my hobby even more than you already have 🙂
I ‘ve been around this hobby almost as long as Brian is alive, just fyi. My true specialty is helping people with their money and terrorizing opposing goalies on the soccer court though 🙂
I should switch my blog to The Money Guy and make millions instead of getting people to let me handle their millions 😉
Best to you,
Cheers
Parakalo
George
” TPG has the best content mainly due to being able to afford so many paid staff”
What did I miss? I stopped reading TPG ~3 years ago…. a few months after Brian started the blog.
Regarding Leigh Rowan,
“I also thank you in advance of refraining from making any personal attacks on us as human beings…– but don’t be a Sihama :)”
We all have bills to pay, but don’t insult past and potential future customers. Always assume that most customer’s are civilized and intelligent. That’s marketing 101, especially for a small company. Best of luck “engaging” your clients/customers, deliver “value” and ROI, and always have “exciting” things happening, .