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Travel Services
Renews Agreement with Starwood Hotels

 

Travel Services is pleased to announce that we have renewed our agreement with Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. in which you can realize a 15% savings off the lowest available unrestricted room rate for hotel reservations with Starwood.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts has 9 Lifestyle Brands which include:
Sheraton, Westin, W Hotels, Le Meridien, St.Regis, The Luxury Collection, Four Points by Sheraton, Aloft & Element Hotels.

The discount with Starwood Hotels is only for Faculty & Staff of Penn State or students traveling on official business. Faculty & Staff can also use this discount for personal travel. The hotel may require ID at check-in for verification of employment.

To access the discount, you must be a member of Starwood Preferred Guest. If you are already a member of the Starwood Preferred Guest Program you will need to go into your SPG Account and update your profile by adding the Corporate Discount number (374590) for Penn State to your contact profile. If you are not a member, you can enroll at www.starwoodhotels.com.

Penn State's Starwood rates can be accessed through the Travel Services link on our homepage at www.travel.psu.edu and click on the hotel button on the left side of the screen. They can also be accessed via Travel onLion. If you are booking through Starwood's homepage or their 800-625-4988 reservation number, you must reference the corporate discount number to insure you are getting the discounted rate. Booking through the Travel Services sources adds the corporate rate automatically.

Please contact Travel Services at 814-865-0395 or mlf2@psu.edu if you should have questions.

TRAVEL NEWS
Travel onLion Updates

Travel Services has been working with Concur to fine tune our online booking tool, Travel onLion, in an effort to optimize the pricing search for our users. Although we have travelers with varying preferences for searching, we can only accommodate one style of search as a default and outline the various options for altering that search. Thus, we have set the default parameters to provide the most options to the traveler and allow the traveler to tighten the search criteria if they are looking for specific flights or options.

Travel onLion is set to return the best pricing with the widest range of returns to accommodate the majority of travelers who are looking for the lowest possible fares without prejudice to carrier, number of connections or time of day. Should a user have specific criteria, they can make some simple changes to the search criteria to narrow the options that will be returned to them.

Users may select a specific carrier at the bottom of the search criteria screen, choose search either by price or by schedule, narrow the window of time from the default +/- 8 hrs. to as little as 3 hours or as open as 23 hours, and utilize the dropdown Sort box in the upper right corner above the flights that are returned to sort various ways, including least number of stops. Any or all of these adjustments to the search criteria will change the response the users receive.

If you should have any questions or need assistance to determine how you can get the best results when searching, please do not hesitate to contact Travel Services at
814-865-0395.

United Airlines and Continental Airlines Upcoming Merger

As you may know, United Airlines and Continental Airlines have been in a lengthy process of merging the two carriers which will combine to be United Airlines. United has targeted 03 March 2012 as the date for merging both reservation systems into one. This merger will have a global impact on all reservation systems.

Key information for you the traveler is as follows:
  • There will be one carrier code – UA
  • The sale of tickets on Continental will stop
  • Any tickets already issued on Continental "CO" will change to read United "UA"
  • United's Frequent Travel Numbers will change to an 8 character alphanumeric account number. However, United will accept Mileage Plus numbers 8 or 11 digits until the last day of March 2012. Only one Mileage Plus number per person will be permitted.
We recommend that on 03 March beginning at 1:00 A.M. ET for a period of about four hours, travelers not attempt to make reservations on United Airlines while the systems merger is taking place.

If you encounter problems with existing reservations or in booking new reservations, please do not hesitate to contact Travel Services at 814-865-0395.

First Class
First Class Completes Travel Professional Certificate Program

Travel Services worked with the Human Resource Development Center to offer the Travel Professional Certificate Program. The certificate program covers a wide variety of travel topics over six sessions. Some of the discussion topics include transient hotels, airlines, and car rental. It also features behind-the-scenes tours of the University Park Airport and Penn State Hospitality Services.
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