Here is an extremely belated post for those who see I haven’t posted in months.  I wanted to give a quick update and catch everyone up why we’re going on a temporary hiatus for Premium Travel Insider.

First, a brief explanation of absence.  Early in COVID, my family suffered a loss.  It was not COVID related, but COVID certainly made the process harder and more difficult.  This removed my desire to research airlines or interact on any of the social media platforms (see: Twitter) I’m usually active on. 

Second, this is a tiny minnow of a site in a sea of blue whales and great white sharks like The Points Guy, OMAAT, Live and Let’s Fly, etc.  I make no money off of this site, and do it for fun.  I do not work directly in the aviation industry, and am mostly a consumer of it for both business and pleasure.  Conducting research on airlines and lounges – particularly ones with tons of reviews like Singapore Airlines business class – is a non-trivial amount of my time. 

With COVID flipping over the dining room table that is the airline industry, then lighting everything on fire, it’s difficult to justify investing my time in the blog when it’s not clear what airlines or lounges will survive, and what the premium travel experience will even be like post COVID.  Like many #avgeeks, I’m sitting on a pile of points and fantasizing about when I’ll get to use them, but I’m also wondering – when will those premium experiences like ANA and Lufthansa actually BE premium experiences again?  United scaled back their Polaris offering, for example. 

All this to say, it’s tough to invest time researching and rating products that may not actually be the same products when COVID is over, with normalcy months away or years away. For now, I’m going to pause on any heavy research on airlines.  I’ll probably do a little bit more research on flagship lounges and things like that, and complete my lounge experiment.  I will, however, return my amazing wittiness to my twitter account for those of you who graciously choose to follow me.

See you on the internets.

-PTI. 

Photo by Pandu Agus Wismoyo on Unsplash