I think you folks at FlyerTalk have done a great job, as evidenced (lawyers like to use that word, ) by the fact that the board is drawing a lot of traffic.
Perhaps a couple of additional forums might be useful, such as:

"Other Car Rental Programs"
"Affinity Card Deals"

For example, I am going to New Mexico tomorrow, and shopped around and got the best deal on a minivan (essential when traveling with the kids, I believe) from Thrifty. $150 cheaper than anyone else's rate for a week, and getting bonus TWA miles on it.
I think a lot of us (like Rudi's friend) do occasionally sign up for an extra affinity card just to get a sign-up bonus (points, companion ticket, etc.), and then cancel it right away. A general affinity card forum would be a good place to keep track of this without having to check all the forums all the time.

Thanks. Keep up the great work. You can see by the number of my posts that I enjoy the place.

Thanks for the fantastic site! I think you are doing a smashing job. But as this forum is for suggestions I will submit mine:

- Combine all of the little used forums into one category "other programs." I notice that there are 43 forums which have fewer than 10 posts total. This certainly slows things down for those without fast connections.

- Now that you have discontinued Passages, please add the successors: AsiaMiles and KrisFlyer.

Thanks again.

------------------
Cheers,
HKF

Seemingly done! Thanks!

In addition to the individual car rental program topics, I think there needs to be a way to post general current information about car rental deals.

For example, I'm planning on traveling to Aruba in a few weeks. I would find it useful if there were a place to find the best current coupons/deals on car rentals in the Carribean. I do not know of any good sites which consolidate all of the best deals across companies. Currently, I'm going to every rental company's site, every airline and hotel's offers, AAA, Amex, etc.


I know a thread could be set up in every destination's travel and dining board, but I think it would be better to have a single 'Current Rental Deals' topic in car rentals.

The establishment of new forums falls well within the scope of the TalkBoard's role in representing members. This Board is elected by members to reppresent them. You might post this as an idea in the TalkBoard Topics forum (Community) and I'm sure one of the members of the board can address it for you there.

Actually not a bad idea, but they may feel it falls within other established forums. They will certainly have your answer.

As for you - thanks for your continued support of FlyerTalk.

actually ... if one of the admins would move this thread over to TB topics, we'll give it some further discussion.

Looks like it's done .

I'm wondering where those things would be posted right now...in Miles Buzz?

My initial thought is that I've seen lots of airline deals that have been good enough to buy, even though my plans didn't include travel to the particular destination.

And I've even seen hotel deals good enough to book, even if I wasn't otherwise going to be in the city in question. See, for example, this one and this one.

But I haven't ever come across a car rental deal sufficiently worthwhile that I would travel just to use it. So I wonder how often I'd stop into a forum if it posited "Avis mid-size vehicle in DSM, only $14/day!" or "Thrifty regularly drops their price on cars in MSN three days in advance." In fact, I would think that those things would be of most interest to folks either in those cities already to traveling to those cities.

Perhaps a different question might be how to jump-start some of the city travel/dining or even airport forums so that they become must-reads before traveling someplace new (or old)?

Right now a particularly good car rental deal might be posted in the city it belongs to... or the car rental forum itself... or even TravelBuzz if sufficiently lucrative (unless it's about how to earn miles on rentals in which case MilesBuzz would seem the place).

I guess I have a hard time picturing what this new forum idea would look like. Care to paint a picture?

Thanks!

My assumption when coming up with the idea is that people are less loyal to their car program than they are to either hotels or airlines. People generally don't ask, 'What's the best rate on a hotel in New York next month?'. They ask, 'What's the best Starwood rate in New York?'. and they post it on the Starwood forum. For cars, I think it's different. As long as I'm dealing with a reputable company (and can get miles), I don't care who I rent from. Also, while the specific city threads could handle some of this, a lot of the deals are regional if not continental.

What I think might work is a board with at least two topics, one for requests and one for deals. A third possible topic would involve strategy discussions and ongoing offers like x% off Hertz for AAA members with code xyz.

The request thread might be something like:
Need weekly car deal/best rate in New York 12/15-12/22, compact.

The other thread could contain both responses and random deals people find.

Avis
12/1/2004-12/23/2004
Northeastern US
Mid-sized
$198/week
code xyzabc
<link to offer terms and conditions>
must use Amex


I'm mostly curious if other people think this is something that would be useful. I don't know if the request section is something people would use all the time, but it is something that would be useful occasionally. I also know people who read these boards are generous and assume information would be posted freely.