Keeping it super short:

• Rooms: base rooms are huge, equivalent to a junior suite, has a full living room and balcony. Very new feeling.
• Breakfast: very good quality (insanely pricy w/o Globalist or GoH though). Somewhat confusing, I think they switch up the menu by day of the week, sometimes you have the buffet, other days is a la carte only, you can combine them though. Options mainly skew Mexican, like Birria Eggs Benedict, Chilaquiles, Tres Leches French Toast, etc. all very tasty.
• Service: surprisingly excellent by US standards, proactive, friendly staff. For example, after the meal they offer to get you additional coffee, bring you an extra cup of ice to go with.
• Facilities: Spa is free for Globalist, otherwise $50 to $80 per person. Outdoor jacuzzi, cold plunge, steam room, sauna, snacks, etc. Gym is a bit small for the size of hotel, has some strength training machines, but not the full suite. Has a pool, water slides, etc. very family friendly
• Price: generally very well priced by US standards $200s to $300s/night is very reasonable.

I personally have no interest in going back to Palm Springs area, but if you do want to go, it's a great US hotel.

Partner business/first will still be the fastest way to earn status I think given that you no longer get class of service bonus multipliers on Alaska metal by distance flown.

This means a 5k mile flight will be significantly better off flown on BA than Alaska in business class for status point earn. Kind of a confusing move, but it is what it is.

Was at SFO the other day, and this is probably one of the better breakfast spreads I've seen in a long time.

• High quality berry mix, not the cheap, shriveled up produce. The blueberries were plump.
• Fresh watermelon, and not the nasty filler green melon that's always too unripe
• Crepe bar w/ sweet & savory accoutrements, creme fraiche, smoked salmon, capers, and whipped cream

Add the barista coffee to the mix, and there's not much more you could ask for.

Goes to show you having a few quality items to choose from goes a lot further than trying to do too much.

It really comes down to the loyalty program improvements, which ultimately comes from United's stronger network. I personally don't care too much about the supposed "product improvements". The old odd row Polaris seats are as good or possibly better than Elevated interiors. Starlink is nice, but all the airlines are starting to have them. On the food and service, United still lags the real premium carriers of the world like EVA, Qatar, JAL, etc. The Polaris bedding is uniquely top tier though, so I will give them that.

What really matters for me, and I imagine for many others, isn't getting 5 star luxury service. We want to maximize the value of our dollars spent and our schedules.

United's strength is that it has the strongest longhaul network of any US airline, and it's not even close. Because of that it's not reliant on partner availability to offer award flights, they can simply provide award inventory on its own metal. This is something Delta or AA cannot replicate due to how much smaller their networks are. AA might have amazing partner pricing, but it's pointless when partners are increasingly withholding inventory. Across the board, almost all partner availability is drying up on every program whether it's Aeroplan, Flying Blue, Atmos, etc.

I've found that United simply offers that much better availability for longhaul awards and upgrades to so many more destinations.

You do need to have to have the United status or the credit card to get access. But United clearly understands the incentive structures, on how to reward your loyal flyers. And believe it or not, with all the changes and discounts, United has actually made their pricing cheaper than it was a few years ago. Traditionally, US to Europe TATL flights were 88k United miles, now with all the discounts stacked up, you can get it for 72k miles, almost 20% less, and that's something I haven't heard much about. The same goes for Asia, where it was 100k, now down to 90k

To me, this is a structural advantage that is hard to beat or replicate. You can spend your way up on Delta or AA and become a top tier elite, but you're never going to get the same level of consistent availability and access to a whole network of destinations like you will on United. At any given point, United can get me to Australia, Asia, Europe, South America, etc. either nonstop or with one-stop.

Quite frankly, I don't even think United has the best longhaul product from many of the competitive stations like NYC or LA, but being able to fly to where I need, when I want, at the price I want outweights any incremental differences in the product.

All that being said, this is the world of today, United can just as easily pull the plug on this, reduce availability, jack up prices, slap on "carrier-imposed charges", and there's nothing we can do about it. We should want continual healthy competition, so that United has to keep putting its best foot forward in winning customers over.

I remember reading about this with JFK airport, choosing Virgin Atlantic for T4 instead of Delta was significantly cheaper.

Source: https://www.aeroroutes.com/eng/260831-dlns27inc

Context:

• Alaska originally scheduled SEA to FCO to be in May 23, 2026
• Delta then announced SEA to FCO on May 6, 2026 to match Alaska
• So Alaska, moved up their service to start on April 28, 2026 and bumped up frequencies from 4x to 7x weekly
• Next summer, Alaska will be resuming it on March 22, 2027, expanding the season significantly.
• So now, Delta will also be starting their season earlier by a month on April 12, 2027

Seattle and Honolulu will be gateways to Australia, so seems to me this implies SEA to Australia is indeed happening.

I'm 80% on SYD because that's the bigger destination, there's a 20% it could be BNE because of all the Queensland government subsidies and it's closer.

https://www.alaskaair.com/content/partners/airlines/jetstar?lid=airline-partners:partners-jetstar

Alaska does run one of the more consistently on-time operations out there.

For context, I typically stay at international Hyatts, and so I've read that the experience is generally poorer in Asia. I was recently down in LA/SF, and stayed at a few different hotels, including Dream Hollywood and Grand Hyatt San Francisco.

Dream Hollywood

• Location: It's in Hollywood as the name says, I think the location is reasonable if you want to visit various places on Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard. LA is massive, there's no real amazing location, it really depends on where you want to go. It is close enough to the Hollywood/Vine station. The area

has a good amount of

• homeless encampments though.
• Room/Product: I used a SUA to confirm into the Platinum Suite ahead of my stay. The room itself isn't particularly nice or large as a suite

(you can see from the pictures)

• . It doesn't even have a minifridge, you have to request one. Overall, just very average feeling

.

• Breakfast: I think Dream Hollywood has a decent breakfast spread for an American hotel, the food quality was good, avocados were ripe, lots of selection from standard American fare, chilaquiles, avo toast, yogurts, Cali burritos. Coffee could've been better though. The main bottleneck here is the service. It gets incredibly busy during the weekends, and they simply do not have enough staff to manage the tables. It can be 15 to 20 minutes to get your order in.
• Gym/Facilities: there's a small gym on the 2nd floor, it's better than most basement gyms with only cardio, but lacks a lot of the more useful strength training machines. Fwiw, there's an Equinox and some other larger gyms a few blocks away if you want something better. There is also the rooftop pool, and the rooftop bar is actually surprisingly popular with non-guests.
• Service: I think most staff were trying

their best

• , they seemed to be constantly packed and like I mentioned with breakfast, there simply isn't enough staff to handle the volume. The front desk phone line puts you on hold over half the time. Housekeeping coordination wasn't great either, there were days where we'd turn on the service light at 10am, come back 5 hours later and still the room wasn't cleaned.
• Overall: I find this hotel to be somewhat generic

and forgettable

• , with only the breakfast quality being a standout. I'd give this a 6.5 to 7/10, I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, but if you want to stay at a Hyatt in Hollywood, it's passable.

Grand Hyatt San Francisco

• Location: The GH is right by Union Square and its station, so it tends to be a little cleaner/nicer during the day, but SF has a lot of variance in that area, so even a few blocks over can be quite dystopian. But SF has great walkability, I find GH SF to be a better hub location, especially compared to the other chains like Hilton Union Square or Marriott Marquis in SF.
• Room/product: I got "upgraded" a higher floor "club access room", which is branded as a Bay View room (which I'll get into later), which is just the same as the base room with a better view, so nice enough. While the hard product itself isn't anything to write home about, for SF, which has a lot of dated hotels, I found it to be on the nicer end. The design language matches GH SFO to a T.
• Breakfast: The GH has a rather basic breakfast buffet, but gets the job done, you can order an eggs benedict and other egg dishes. You can also get a to-go box in the morning as well. The

$40 something

• pricetag on this is insane for what you get, if you're not a Globalist, so this is a skip if you're not a Globalist or GOH.
• Gym/Facilities: it has a reasonable gym floor, I find that GH's in general tend to have larger gyms. I wouldn't say this is the most spacious one I've seen, but it at least had a bigger mix of strength training equipment. There is also a floor for the "club lounge", which has been out of service for quite some time, but can be a decent spot to do some work. Instead they give you drink vouchers to use at their bar, so you can get a free wine/beer or some appetizers, I was pretty happy with that.
• Service: this was actually quite solid imo for a US hotel. The staff was quite proactive and professional. If you called the desk on the phone line, they were great at greeting you by your last name and asking if you needed anything else.
• Overall: I'd give this a solid 8/10, I wouldn't say this is an amazing, must stay hotel, but if you're in SF, this tends to be a cheaper option, especially compared to Hyatt Regency SOMA. And on average, is better than the other chain options in SF from Marriott or Hilton.

This guy isn't my favorite reviewer, but it seems like given the United and Alaska hard product are basically the same Alaska did a better job with the service according to him.

https://youtu.be/hIDWXX\_QIEM?is=7BYQC0-pWfyyeNUc