American and British Airways are once again offering bonus miles on roundtrip itineraries from the United States and Canada to Europe.  Registration with the respective programs (AAdvantage and Executive Club) is required.

• Each “full fare” roundtrip itinerary earns 20k miles.
• The fifth roundtrip itinerary earns an additional 100k miles.

The promotion is restricted to trips booked on or after March 18th for travel between March 18th through May 31st.  “Full fare” is defined by:

• American Airlines-operated: F, A, J, R, D, I, Y, B, H
• British Airways-operated: F, A, J, R, C, D, I, W, E, T, Y, B, H
• Iberia-operated: J, C, D, R, I, Y
• OpenSkies-operated: W, E, T, Z, A, Y, B, H

I analyzed a similar promotion last fall with a focus on comparing the value proposition between Club World awards and Club World tickets obtained by upgrading with Avios.

One Mile at a Time notes that Alitalia is giving away 2k miles for signing up for their rewards program (by March 30th, an additional 2k for flying with Alitalia, and an additional 2k for having any activity in the account within 3 months.

Dropping in 1k membership rewards points yields 5k Alitalia miles.  It’s not quite a business class roundtrip to North Asia (90k), but it’s a start.

Today’s the last day to book SPG awards under the old categories.  While many hotels have stayed put, for others, tomorrow has already come and SPG.com is showing their new rates.

The good:

The bad:

There have been a number of hotel program updates in the past few weeks, nearly universally for the worse.

Starwood announced its annual category changes on MilePoint and FlyerTalk, effective March 5.  Amongst hotels that stood out for me, the Westin Ka’anapali Ocean Resort Villas moved up from a category 6 (20-25k/nt) to a category 7 (30-35k/nt).  For other Hawaii properties, the St. Regis Princeville moves up to a category 7 (from 6) and the Moana Surfrider and Westin Princville move up from category 5 (12-16k/nt) to category 6.

Hilton’s seen a major devaluation as the number of categories and the points required have gone up.