On the Chinese Internet there are always a few people who are negative about M1NT. I guess that’s normal for a successful private club, people tend to get jealous if they cannot be part of it and the Internet is a good way to show that. Some go a bit too far though, such as a Shanghai expat named Simon Tung. This 31-year old tried to spread false rumors on Twitter (@simontung) this week about M1NT being a scam and about some of the founders being arrested. He claimed to have ‘multiple sources’ telling him this and in a later tweet also mentioned ‘industry insiders’. At exactly the same time someone also tried to put a similar comment on a blog post of mine (anonymous of course, but because of the timing I would not be surprised if Simon was behind this). Why does he do this? Does he want to have his 5 minutes of ‘fame’? Or was he just rejected for a M1NT party? I don’t know, but if anybody can get me in touch with him I’d like to ask him myself.

But even though some people may not like M1NT Shanghai, a lot more do love it: The club was just voted Club of the Year in this year’s City Weekend’s Readers Choice Awards! I actually voted for M1NT as well, and even won a Spa session with that (Thanks City Weekend, I didn’t even know there were prices when I filled out the questionnaire). M1NT not only won Club of the Year, but in total they managed to get 5 of this year’s Awards. Next to Club of the Year, M1NT was also voted Best New Club, and it has the Best Bartender, Best Nightlife Bathroom and Best Cocktails. Congrats to the team at M1NT!

Update (May 9, 2009): Simon Tung contacted me after reading this blog post and sent me links that did not prove his allegations about M1NT being a scam. Regrettabley he was also not willing to name his sources as they are his friends. I also talked to the management of M1NT, and it appears that one of M1NT’s founding shareholders in the club in London and HK was arrested. However, this has nothing to do with M1NT and the person has no operational involvement in M1NT. M1NT has hundreds of shareholders and then there is always the risk that one of them could get into trouble. I will not allow any further comments bashing M1NT or its management on this blog. M1NT is doing very well and with success comes envy. C’est la vie.

Note: Normally I allow (almost) all comments as long as they are not spam, but comment moderation will be in place for this post. I am not looking to start a pro & contra war about M1NT here, I have had that discussion already too often both here and on other blogs.

After two not particularly positive blog posts in a row about KLM, now a more favorable one.

First of all, KLM started following me on Twitter after I wrote about some of my negative experiences with their website. The fact that they have a Twitter account (www.twitter.com/klm) shows they are using Social Media, which is a good thing for any company. And that they follow me, means that they also check what people write about them on Twitter. I did not follow them yet, so it’s not just a follow back.

Second, when I just checked in for my flight back to China I noticed that I had an upgrade to a business class seat. It sometimes happens that when you check in online that you can change your seat to a business class seat (when you are an Elite member of their frequent flyer program), but to my surprise my reserved seat had already been changed by someone to a business class. Coincidence? Probably. But if not: Thanks a lot @klm!

This is already my third upgrade this year on intercontinental flights that are operated by the KLM or one of their partners (2 from Europe to Asia and 1 from China to the USA), so maybe their frequent flyer program that I was negative about in my last post still has some value. It does not mean, however, that I agree to the fact that you only get 25% of miles on non-full fare tickets. Reconsider this change KLM, it gives loyal customers a bad taste when they spend a lot of money on flight tickets but do not get the miles for it. Even when it’s very difficult to spend those miles under your current frequent flyer rules!

While writing this I am somewhere above Russia on a flight from Shanghai to Amsterdam. After writing my last post about the problems I had to book a ticket on the KLM site my assistant finally managed to get me a seat on today’s flight. The economy class is still reasonably full (probably 60-70%), but the business class is almost deserted. There you really see the impact of the financial crisis, these planes used to be packed – both economy and business class.

My original plan had been to only fly to Europe once this month, for a short 4-day trip at the end of the month for a visit to Spil Games and to do three speaking engagements (at a “China Tafel” dinner at the Industrieele Groote Club in Amsterdam, at the Mediapark Jaarcongres (a media conference) and at the Nationale Marketingdag (National Marketing Day)). But because my grandmother died a few days ago I decided to go back this week as well for two days to attend her funeral.

When I tried to book the tickets for my late-June trip to Holland a couple of weeks ago the price was over RMB 16,000, which I found way too expensive. I decide to wait and see if the price would come down and worst case I would use another (cheaper) airline, although I did not really want to waste time by transferring to a different plane (KLM is the only airline with direct flights from Shanghai to Amsterdam) on such a short trip. When I checked the price for the 2-day trip this week I also got a price quote of more than RMB 16,000, which I found way too expensive. Sure, I would pay it if I had to, but there had to be a cheaper solution.

And indeed I found one: I combined the two trips and booked a ticket Shanghai-Amsterdam-Shanghai, with the date for the first leg today and the return flight at the end of June after my speaking gigs. The other ticket I booked was Amsterdam-Shanghai-Amsterdam, with departure date in two day and a return flight in late June for my second trip. Amazingly the total of the 2 flights was less than the price of just 1 of the original flights! Sure, there are more restrictions, but I don’t care. The original ticket was only available without restrictions, even though I would have preferred a cheaper restricted ticket.

Also I only get 25% of my miles instead of 100%, but even that’s not a big deal. At several occasions I tried to change my miles for flights, but I never succeeded. I think I have over 500,000 miles in my account that are basically worthless. I have the feeling KLM is trying to phase out its Flying Blue rewards program, only for expensive full-fare tickets you still get full miles and you lose them if you do not fly enough. In case you speak Dutch, read this article in De Telegraaf as well, which states that KLM is chasing away its loyal customers (especially the comments show what KLM frequent flyers think about the airline!).

I learned one thing: if I should do another short trip to Holland this year and the price is again so high, I am going to book two tickets like I did now. Even if I would not use the second leg on both tickets, it would still be cheaper. The KLM likely won’t give me any miles if I don’t take the return flights, but if you only get 25% anyway you might as well go down to 0 miles. Does any of my readers know if this strategy could somehow backfire? I mean, KLM will not be happy with an extra no-show, but is there anything else they could do?