Fun fact: Tuesday is the most productive day of the week, and today is no exception. We’ve rolled out the latest round of enhancements to the OMAAT community.
Here’s what changed today:
In this post:
Paid subscriptions
Let’s rip this band-aid off, shall we? After reviewing feedback from y’all, we’ve launched a paid membership model. Both Ben and I thought it was important to design a program that allowed readers to unlock loyalty benefits without paying a membership fee. Now that the community-based membership is in full swing, we’re adding a layer for those who want a more streamlined site experience (and for some yet-to-be-named mystery perks), but don’t necessarily want to engage with the comments section.
As of today, you can buy membership points in blocks to top up your community points. We’ve designed the subscription model so you can choose a plan that best fits how you use OMAAT. There are no recurring charges or monthly fees. You can simply top up your account at any time during the year to enjoy benefits for the remaining months at your current status. Prices are prorated in quarterly chunks to reflect that this is not an annual membership. If you’ve already hit Diamond status, we left the option in to contribute to the blog in the profile settings. If you’re channeling Smaug, you will be granted more OMAAT points for each contribution, but we did intentionally deprioritize the button placement in the experience.
For example, if you’re currently a Gold member with 3,000 points, you can buy a Gold package of 2,500 points in September for $50, which will promote you to Platinum status through February 2027. For readers who are self-described lurkers and not posters, you can purchase directly into the Diamond tier.
For those really looking to optimize, you can join the daily newsletter list and add OMAAT as a preferred source in Google for a combined 2,500 points, unlocking Gold status before opting to top off your account.
Updated member profiles
New membership page
- An activity log highlights the points you’ve earned this year
- Your most liked comment of the year will show up on the left pane.
- Ability to buy OMAAT Membership points
Updated notification settings
- Track posts you follow and unsubscribe from email alerts
- Earn 1,000 OMAAT Membership Points – Make OMAAT a preferred source in Google
- Earn 1,500 OMAAT Membership Points – Stay subscribed to the OMAAT mailing list
- Change your email preferences
Improved Community Features
Follow comments from the blog
Interested in a comment thread? You can opt in to get email alerts as new comments come in. Just a note, if you follow comments on a post, email alerts will drop you into the corresponding community page, not back onto the blog.
Search results
Search has been a pain point for some of you, and we’ve made some updates to our search functionality to make results more relevant.
What’s next?
The next set of updates is going to be behind the scenes. Hopefully, you continue to notice improved site speed as we work through some tech debt and let the community features mature.
That doesn’t mean we can’t pivot when we hear a good idea. I did want to quickly shout out reader Samar, who requested a forum to document his 2-week trip through Asia. Ben and I both loved the idea and set up a section in the forum where Platinum and Diamond members can share their trips. In addition to all of the cool things we’re working on, we still have time to try new things. Keep those community recommendations coming.
If you have any new bugs to report or improvements you’d like to recommend, get those in here. I’ll be wandering through Germany for the last couple of weeks in September, so the sooner, the better.
Is there a way to filter/sort trip reports by date instead of just search or the borad categories at the top? I was looking for an Emirates post from 2011 but there are quite a few Emirates posts to go through. On mobile, so not sure if that changes the options.
The quantity of ads here and other travel blogs have gotten out of control and cannot read effectively or easily. You lose the reader if its just too hard.....
I would also say its not just about ads but more relevent and honest reporting. This site has many CC and other airline financial relationships that you are effectively asking us to pay to be the audience. I think you cant have it both ways.
...The quantity of ads here and other travel blogs have gotten out of control and cannot read effectively or easily. You lose the reader if its just too hard.....
I would also say its not just about ads but more relevent and honest reporting. This site has many CC and other airline financial relationships that you are effectively asking us to pay to be the audience. I think you cant have it both ways.
Through this year its been quantity over quality. It shows on the blog posts as its generally about Bens travel life and CC upsells. I get he has a family but you cant be a travel blogger and still be home all the time.....i feel the relevancy is getting lower and there is obivous unknown bias towards unknown financial relationships (i.e. Atmos for example, there has been no coverage of the blunders of AS IT and the roll out...all rosy things....not to mention obvious recent errors in the reporting that a quick check would have been corrected....so why follow ben when we can read the site on alaskaair.com).
For a membership to work...there has to be some real value for the reader.....right now...i am not so sure thats the case.....a simple 100 dollar raffle isnt gonna cut it....how about exclusive airfare discounts (say 5%) etc. This is where you will get the money.
Meh. We all know that news sources have bias and follow revenue streams. It's a business, so what, plenty of great and relevant travel content and tips. Clearly BofA / Atmos is paying more bills right now than Citi / AA, no big deal. If Citi wants to pay Ben, I'm sure we'll read all about the 125k AA executive card offer.
Ever watch something like LA Flights on youtube? Guy livestreams his plane spotting...
Meh. We all know that news sources have bias and follow revenue streams. It's a business, so what, plenty of great and relevant travel content and tips. Clearly BofA / Atmos is paying more bills right now than Citi / AA, no big deal. If Citi wants to pay Ben, I'm sure we'll read all about the 125k AA executive card offer.
Ever watch something like LA Flights on youtube? Guy livestreams his plane spotting for half the day and there's an audience of thousands that sends in a lot of money in tips. Twitch etc. have similar models. Ben's run a site for decades and pumped out a lot of content - I think he's earned the right to put out a tip jar, which is effectively what this is.
Would I gameify the tip jar differently? Sure. I'd do a "drop me $5" tip jar for bonus points and if you give X number of tips per month you get an additional Y bonus points, and tip for X number of months in a row and get Z bonus points plus an OMAAT luggage tag. Something like that. But hey, not my site!
Did OMAAT just devalue but spin-zone it off of customer feedback? ;)
I, for one, look forward to the forthcoming 'OMAAT Diamond Reserve'... requires a minimum score of 18,000 points (and 80 nights or 40 stays at Hilton properties in a calendar year... huh). /s
Q: Will the weekly / monthly / yearly stats page include points purchases?
Great question - no. You cannot buy your way onto the leaderboard.
Gotcha - so basically community points are organically earned (and what the leaderboard is reflective of) and membership points are purchased? Makes sense... I'll just view through an AA base / bonus lens.
Looks like the newsletter is 1,500 points, not 1,000 points as noted in this article? May want to fix.
Also been enjoying @Samar's trip report!
Thanks, @Peter_. Got that updated.
The 'new membership page' is quite nice. (And, kudos to Samar on his trip reports!)
it is not completely the quantity of ads (sure, we all want less, but understand the bills need to be paid for) but rather the types of ads - the pop-ups, the ones that mess up reading continuity, hard to close, basically the crap that gets in the way of the experience in a manner that, by definition, you go out of your way to avoiding buying anything from the company advertising because their ads...
it is not completely the quantity of ads (sure, we all want less, but understand the bills need to be paid for) but rather the types of ads - the pop-ups, the ones that mess up reading continuity, hard to close, basically the crap that gets in the way of the experience in a manner that, by definition, you go out of your way to avoiding buying anything from the company advertising because their ads are so horrible.
Basically, more and more the ads are getting so invasive (especially on my iPhone) that I am just asking myself how badly do I want to read the article and since this is a hobby, not that badly.
sounds like we are on the path to "enshitification" .... can't wait
Hey Michael,
This is constructive feedback. The number of ads we display on a page is well within the industry standard (under, actually), but let me see what I can do about the ad types showing up at any one time. That should be solvable.
The site’s ad load has made it increasingly unreadable. Not sure why I’d start paying to deshittify it rather than visit less.
No need to pay, good adblocks do a great job of keeping this site ad free.
Yeah, no ads at all when I read this site.
Oh, and now you can't comment without agreeing to spam. See you later OMAT.