In the spring, Etihad announced 15 new destinations, from Atlanta to Algiers to Krabi, and encouraged Etihad Guest members to fly to all of them. The first three members to do so would receive 5, 3 and 1 million miles respectively.

The terms have been adjusted twice since then, but without a guarantee of really winning in spite of the efforts put into making the 15 destinations, the stakes were still too high for many.

But not for everyone. Etihad has now announced the three lucky winners.

The small catch – and where it starts to smell like outright fraud – is that the flights to Algiers, one of the 15 destinations, were never actually launched due to a political spat between Algiers and Abu Dhabi…

Subscriptions are gaining more and more popularity in the industry, as part of customer loyalty programs or independently.

Ryanair also introduced Ryanair Prime in the spring, and frequent flyers quickly calculated whether the annual fee was worth it for them compared to the savings offered. Of course, you should only commit to something like this if you are sure that you will ultimately come out on top.

But apparently, such a mindset was precisely what threw a wrench in Ryanair’s plans, which is why the program has already been discontinued. In absolute honesty, Ryanair explained in the original wording: “To date, we have signed up over 55,000 Prime members, generating over €4.4m in subscription fees. However, our Prime members have received over €6m in fare discounts, so this trial has cost more money than it generates.”

No comment necessary, right?

Starting from the 2026 qualification period, Hilton is simplifying the status attainment in its Hilton Honors program.

The thresholds for Gold and Diamond status are being lowered without cutting back on the benefits. At the same time, a new top tier, Diamond Reserve, is being introduced, where Hilton is introducing guaranteed benefits for the first time, which have long been standard in other hotel programs, such as confirmed upgrades or late check-outs.

It is also worth noting that as part of this change, rollover nights will be discontinued, meaning that additional nights above the required threshold for achieving or maintaining a status can no longer be credited to the following year.

Global Hotel Alliance has surpassed the mark of 50 participating brands – and with Rotana, there have been 51 since this month

To celebrate and encourage members to discover as many brands as possible, GHA Discovery has launched a promotion running until May 31. If you book stays of at least two nights at different brands by February 28, you will earn bonus points starting with the second brand, which can accumulate to 875 bonus points for ten different brands, worth 875 USD.

Since the alliance is more about luxury hotels, you should expect an average price of 200 USD per night, so total expenses of at least 4,000 USD for the highest bonus, whereby the 875 USD (in addition to the regular points) still look quite a good deal.

A nice side effect of the GHA Discovery program is that you can achieve elite status with the number of different brands – and you can reach the top Titanium status with just three of them!

Even almost four years after the Russian invasion, the will to resist in Ukraine remains unbroken, even though many things in everyday life – such as air travel and frequent flyer programs – no longer function as they used to.

But a new initiative from the Ukrainian state railways, which maintains a reliability under the current difficult conditions that is not found everywhere in Europe, also shows that the loyalty spirit still exists.

In four off-peak months in 2026, every Ukrainian can travel 3,000 kilometres free of charge on selected trains within Ukraine under the UZ-3000 project.

Surely, no one is envious that Ukrainians can easily get free rides, but there is a risk that they will be disappointed when they are flooded by Wizz Air, Ryanair & Co after the Russians leave, who have much in their offer, but no customer loyalty programs with free flights!

We still wish all Ukrainians to experience this disappointment in the New Year!