Wandering Aramean community

Wandering Aramean

Travel gets more expensive for NRA members

Travel gets more expensive for NRA members

China Southern's A380 landing at sunset in LAX
China Southern's A380 landing at sunset in LAX

Holding a NRA membership no longer delivers the travel savings it once did. In the past few days – pushed mostly by consumer backlash related to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida – several travel related companies pulled out of discount agreements with the group.

Rental Cars

On Thursday it was the Alamo/National/Enterprise group of rental car companies dropping the discount rate offered to NRA members:

Mildly amusing to me to see all three brands from the same company replying to the same initial tweet, but it gets the job done.

On Friday afternoon Hertz cut ties:

Avis Budget group is also cutting ties later in March.

Airlines

Delta announced on Saturday morning that the organization would no longer be eligible for discounted airfare through the carrier’s group travel program.

United followed suit shortly thereafter, removing the group’s discount for travel to the annual meeting.

That these both came out on a Saturday morning is all sorts of strange. Are they trying to bury the news? If so, why make the statement. If not, why wait until Saturday?

There’s also the part where not everyone is happy about the cuts, though it seems the numbers overall are notably skewed in one direction.

Hotels

Hotel brand Wyndham is getting credit online for acting similarly in conjunction with the latest events, though the company says it cut ties in late 2017.

Best Western hotels similarly claims to not have a corporate relationship with the group, though the NRA does list a corporate discount code on some publications.

The NRA does still maintain hotel discounts through a third party OTA HotelPlanner.com.

I’m not at all convinced that anyone is paying the $40 NRA membership fee to get travel discounts. I also don’t really believe that losing those discounts will skew the membership rolls nor affect the group’s policy decisions. But it certainly appears corporations are far less willing to carry that relationship any further.

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Seth Miller

Posted by

I'm Seth, also known as the Wandering Aramean. I was bit by the travel bug 30 years ago and there's no sign of a cure. I fly ~200,000 miles annually; these are my stories. You can connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

30 Comments

  2. Losing travel discounts may not cause any NRA members to leave the organization, but people unwilling to engage in reasonable conversation to reduce gun deaths shouldn’t be rewarded with discounts.

    1. The NRA is a political organization. Its partnerships with these companies were politically motivated. Of course this is a political response.

      Are you suggesting that makes it the wrong response?

    3. AA and DL had previously provided discounts for NRA members traveling to this year’s convention. So, I would expect that NRA members WERE using this discount for this purpose. No more.

    4. I have to agree. Im a NRA member, AAA, USAA, etc and I never use their codes because they all suck! So ya, these companies capitulating are losing more customers than gaining street cred. Weak sheep

      1. You’re saying that you never used the discount anyways but now you’ll stop buying tickets with the company because the discount you never used no longer exists? How does that make any sense??

    5. I cancelled my membership because the NRA didn’t speak up for the unethical constitutional violations by ATF of not allowing medical marijuana patients to purchase a gun. I didn’t mean to imply I took an issue with this

  6. Funny how everybody excoriates the NRA, Trump and Republicans over the Florida school murders. Meanwhile, most say nothing disparaging about the FBI and their complicity in not investigating stark warnings about the shooter, the fact that the school had video cameras linked to law enforcement that were on 16 minute delay (!), the armed Sheriff’s deputy who failed to enter the school for four minutes after he heard shots, etc. Oh, and what about the deafening silence surrounding the miserable little s**t who did the killing! Meanwhile, volunteer a plan that would successfully and legally remove over 300 million fire arms from the American public and I might be a little more empathetic.
    Hypocrites.

      1. I have no idea if he’s racist from that comment. Certainly ignorant, but unclear that he’s racist.

    5. If they did offer a discount, it wouldn’t be on aa.com. It’d be on NRA’s website. But I don’t think you can see what discounts an NRA member gets unless you were a member.

    10. Seth Miller Facetious: not to be taken seriously- treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor.
      Obviously well done because you saw fit to tell me an illegal action wasn’t necessary. Because, obviously you thought I was serious – and I was making humor with a serious issue. ????

  9. Only the Hertz discount was actually decent. They worked just like any corporate rate. Subject to mass variation in price, use at your leisure, but you may need to be verified, ymmv.

  11. Pingback: Delta hits a $40mm NRA speed bump in Georgia - Wandering Aramean

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