Lufthansa Miles & More members to earn miles when shopping at Bangalore airport duty free

In a first for India, Miles & More, the frequent flier programme of the Lufthansa group has tied up with Nuance duty free shop at Bengaluru International Airport to offer its members earning of frequent flier miles while shopping.

Miles & More cardholders can earn 2 award miles for every US$1 (approx Rs. 44) spent at Nuance's duty free shops both at the arrival and departure areas of the airport.

Lufthansa has stolen a march over all its competitors. This is the first time that an airline frequent flier programme has tied up for duty-free shopping in India.

The FFP programme also has Matrix Cellular, The Leela Group of Hotels, Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces, Oberoi Hotels & Resorts, Trident Hotels, Deutsche Bank, Indiatimesshopping.com, Woodland retail, The Economist, TripAvisor.in as some of its partners in India.

The programme boasts 600,000 members in India and about 19 million world-wide.

For more details visit the Miles & More website.

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Travel advisory: Bangkok airport duty free scam

The BBC reports

"Now new allegations have been made that a number of passengers are being detained every month in the duty free area on suspicion of shoplifting, and then held by the police until they pay large sums of money to buy their freedom."

and goes on to describe how the scam works on its website, and includes a story of how two British visitors were allegedly victimized, a story first reported by The Times newspaper back on June 28th.

This is not a new scam. Back in April, an Indian traveller was detained in Bangkok in very similar circumstances for allegedly stealing a box of cigarettes from a duty-free shop at Bangkok International Airport. While in jail, his relatives requested help from the Indian Embassy but were told the embassy was unable to assist. He had to pay almost $1,000 to secure his release.

Apparently the scam now called ZigZag, has being victimising many Asians regularly, and letters and phone calls to the Thai authorities are routinely ignored. Now that the scam has hit a few western travellers, the pot has boiled over.

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