Milepoint is now InsideFlyer.

Milepoint is now InsideFlyer.

“Our intention was never to launch a website, our intention was to build a global brand for frequent flyers.”

We’ve got news to share with you. Today we are announcing a change to our name—a change that makes you a part of the first global brand for road warriors / frequent flyers and other travelers seeking a friendly but informative experience online. The InsideFlyer name is now a globally connected resource with local content/language websites in the U.S., Norway, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands with Germany and the U.K. coming soon.

We’ve known for a long time that when travelers “go online,” they are likely to do several things—participate in discussions in forums, read news from blogs, use tools to check their loyalty programs balances, view their pending travel itineraries, use the services of companies that cater products and services to these same travelers and increasingly all these activities are integrated socially. That’s where we come in. InsideFlyer represents content + community + technology + social in a single destination in your browser.

We’ve just released our Beta edition to get you comfortable with the things we have planned. We’ve added new content, new benefits, a new interface and the promise of much more to come.

We’ll be tuning up our launch and adding many new features in the days and weeks to come.

One of the most popular new benefits is the Travel Manager which if you choose to opt in, will track your loyalty accounts for you, automate your travel itineraries and allow you to connect with your fellow flyers and friends. These benefits are all FREE with your InsideFlyer membership. As a Milepoint member and now InsideFlyer member, we invite you to join this new service.

GLOBALLY CONNECTED.

We’re Just Getting Started

Once beyond our beta period, we’ll launch our sponsored forums which will connect you with experts in the area (LoungeBuddy staff answering questions and advice on airport lounges around the globe; information and questions being answered by the leading expert on manufactured spending, the Frequent Miler blog). Other items include a search tool that will provide you with results culled from not only our forums but the blogs we also feature—more content, better results. We’ll be adding in forum tools that allow you to bookmark threads similar to bookmarking items in your browser and the ability to customize the current forum tree. Only want to see five different forums? You’ll see only five. We’ll also be adding “related threads” to the forums to give you ideas on other threads should the thread you are reading not contain the information you are looking for.

More Content In One Place

In addition to our forums, we have integrated blogs to match your interests. And we made it easier to see what’s in the forums from our front page by displaying two “latest posts” rather than a single “latest posts”. For those simply browsing the forum tree—that’s a 100% increase in viewable content. No longer will you have to decide to visit a forum based upon a single topic. As well, look for our partnership with The Flight Deal featured on the front page. Now you have access to great deals without leaving InsideFlyer.

A Dynamic Dashboard

Imagine with one dashboard >> easy access to the latest news from blogs, most popular threads in forums and your loyalty score. We’ve introduced a dynamic sidebar that you use to customize your experience. With an easy click on a side tab you instantly personalize your page. In the forums but still interested in what information might be posted in the blogs—easy. In the forums but want to see what threads are trending—easy. Anywhere on the website and interested in what your loyalty balances are or what your travel looks like in the coming weeks—easy. Yes, every page on InsideFlyer is about you.

Travel Manager

Travel made easy. It’s early, but one of the most popular new benefits is our Travel Manager which if you choose to opt in, will track your loyalty accounts for you, automate your travel itineraries and allow you to connect with your fellow flyers and friends. The best part? All these services are FREE with membership at InsideFlyer. In a world of takeaways, we’ve added more value to your free membership. Now you know how many miles and points you have without ever leaving a good discussion or reading a good article.

Sponsored Forums

In a first of its kind, we’ll be introducing sponsored forums which connects you to topic experts. Who knows more about airport lounges than LoungeBuddy? Their staff will help answer questions about lounges that they track and you’ll have a chance to add your own lounge reviews and as well read the reviews of LoungeBuddy app users. A perfect marriage of content and community. And who knows more about Manufactured Spending than the blog Frequent Miler? In a unique partnership, Frequent Miler will contribute content, participate in discussions and provide expert opinion and advice on the topic. And to answer your next question? Yes, we have more ideas connecting you with experts.

Premium Partners

The internet is a large place—too large say some. But we’re going to make it smaller by integrating selected premium partners services and information for you. If you’ve been on a delayed or cancelled flight or been denied boarding within the last three years, AirHelp will help you with information and a service that could get you your money back and you never have to leave us to find them. Same with Roomer. This service specializes in helping travelers find options for hotel rooms and reservations they can’t use. One of the coolest apps we’ve ever seen will soon make its appearance. You’ll enjoy using Hotel Hustle which will help you identify hotel locations and award redemption opportunities in cities you may be visiting. Instantly saves you a lot of time researching these things. More? There’s also FLYR which will help you predict and lock in airfares before you buy. Yes, there’s more and all will be integrated into InsideFlyer so you never have to spend time searching the rest of the Internet.

InsideExtras

The answer is YES. The question: will you be returning any Premium Membership offers? But we’d like to bring to your attention to another new benefit on InsideFlyer called InsideExtras. These are special very limited time offers exclusive to InsideFlyer members. Our first one features the ability to purchase LifeMiles with a 150% bonus plus have access to an award sale on Star Alliance partners with discounts on awards of up to 50%. This is the richest offer ever for these miles, even better than what LifeMiles offers its members directly. You must act fast, you have only until Thursday October 8 to register for this exclusive offer.

As many of you know, I founded the Freddie Awards to give voice to the frequent flyer. I founded FlyerTalk to provide a place for my fellow flyers to discuss the topic of travel among themselves and I founded BoardingArea to make it much easier to find advice and content by expert bloggers. Today I’m very proud to be a part of the founding team that is launching and will grow the first global footprint for the road warrior / frequent flyer. During this initial beta period, all mistakes and glitches are mine alone but with your help, feedback and interest in being part of a community that actually invests in its members—the future looks bright.

Cheers,

Randy Petersen

co-founder


CONTENT + COMMUNITY + TECHNOLOGY + SOCIAL

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Comments

  1. Allison says

    This clearly took A LOT of time and effort, and I would like to say thank you for that. I am excited for the promotions, and I can’t wait to become a more active member in the forums.

    • Randy Petersen says

      Thanks, obviously like others we are encouraged with positive feedback. It starts with a clear vision of what’s over the horizon and I recall that no one understood what FlyerTalk was all about when i founded that and the same was true for BoardingArea. As for work—I can easily say that in all my years, this project took more effort than anything I’ve ever done—in fact, if i were to measure the effort, it was likely 100 times that of either FlyerTalk or BoardingArea. Technology can be a beast to tame. Again, thank you and we really do have a lot ahead for our members.

  2. NYCUA1K says

    Congrats on a monumental undertaking that reveals a firm grasp of the frequent flyer’s needs and has masterfully used the internet technology to try fulfill them. At the concept level this is a real tour de force that is likely to set a new trend in content delivery to the frequent traveler community — and even beyond — across the globe.

    I have just spent some time getting familiar with the Travel Manager and have been amazed by its intelligent underlying engine! It’s sort of like AwardWallet but more intelligent and on steroids…and this is just the beta! Can’t wait to see all that’s in store for it, so please keep the goodies coming!

  3. anileze says

    I concur with NYCUA1K, this is not a minor upgrade. This is a complete overhaul, a major rethink of the site and forum.

    • Randy Petersen says

      In about five minutes—seven minutes if things go terribly wrong.
      Now, there’s more to this, so bear with me. We also made a decision that the ad free environment that existing Gold members have will carry over to the content side which we believe is the right thing to do for you even though the content (blog) side did not exist before. Having said that, the content block is being worked on along with many other things so won’t happen today, unlike my statement that the forums will return to their glory for you in the very near. And if you have a moment, let me clarify something else. The privilege does not include any ‘sponsors’, just our general advertisers. There may be a limited number of these ‘sponsors’ that you will see but they are very minimal and discrete. Here’s an example: we simply ran out of time because we were able to secure the LifeMiles promo for our members at the eleventh hour. We really prefer not to have that “notice” on our front page but because of the interest in such a thing (thousands of members already have registered) we did not want to miss passing along something that was exclusive to us. Anyway, in the future, you may see our “InsideExtras” program appear as what we call a flyout and will be on your screen but disappear. It is designed to get a message to you of these sporadic and unexpected offers for our members. We are not categorizing those as “advertising”. Again, got this covered and we’ve decided to actually extend the coverage you have enjoyed into other new areas of content we have brought on for your reading and discussion benefit.

      • Gold Member says

        Thanks, Randy. Appreciate the quick reply and the good news (IMO) that ads will also disappear on the content side.

  4. Mark says

    Hi Randy,

    CONGRATULATIONS!!! This is looking GREAT!!!

    Looking forward to hearing about the news South of the Equator 😉

    Best regards,

    Mark

  5. Aptraveler says

    Great job Randy with this amazing overhaul! I look forward to re-engage with the former “Milepoint” community in this awesome and concise new site!

  6. Blue Skye says

    Congrats on the new site. It looks great. I’m really enjoying the new layout, and exploring all the sections.

  7. DeltaGoldLass says

    Congratulations on This new and dynamic site ! I’m embarrassed to say I was unaware of the transition away from MP till moments ago and was panicked fearing loss of everything ahhhh I should
    Have known better ! I would love you to resume the paid membership please keep me alerted for this opportunity ??✈️ In the meantime all the best of the best ! Please ease Freddie’s again?

  8. Jostein Eirik Gjermstad says

    I’m looking forward to see the news also from this site.
    Today I have both the site for Norway and Denmark

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