Pack of cards

For business travellers, an air miles credit card should offer the best deal. Period. The thrill of seeing all those free miles reflected on your statement every month is a rewarding experience.

Indian Airlines has been offering a co-branded card with American Express for some years now, while Jet has a tie-up with Citibank. Now there are two more in the fray.

Kingfisher Airlines has partnered with ICICI Bank to offer a premium credit card. Other than the usual benefits associated with an ICICI Bank Gold Card, the Kingfisher-ICICI-Visa card has some extras thrown in.

It allows access to almost 180 golf clubs in India through special tie-ups and has exclusive packages for golf holidays across the world.

You will also be invited for premium lifestyle shows, fashion shows, movie premieres... so who knows, maybe you'll find yourself on page 3, or Hi-Blitz, as the case may be! There's also a 24x7 concierge service that gives the card holder personalised assistance across various cities in India with services ranging from car rentals to city guides.

GoAir, on the other hand, has gone for mass appeal. They have tied up with State Bank of India, and quite predictably, card holders can avail of discounts of up to 10 per cent on GoAir tickets. Makes sense, considering booking on the Net and charging it to your credit card is how it's done nowadays.

The standard features of an SBI credit card are all there, like conversion of purchases in instalments, easy bill payment facility or balance transfer facility. GoAir-SBI card holders can also save on transaction fee on fuel purchases at select IOC and IBP petrol pumps.

TRIP TIPS
Net working

Ever noticed the engraved cards that sit on your hotel room desk and show a list of bewildering instructions for plugging your laptop into the Internet? Unfortunately, a majority of hotels still offer fairly clunky (but may or may not be slow) connections to the Net.

However, a number of big hotels in Europe and the US are now offering complimentary wireless Internet connections in their lobbies, and sometimes in the rooms. To access the facility all you need is a wireless enabled laptop (802.11b is the number you're looking for) or a PCMCIA card that meets that same specification.

Basically, you need to boot up and simply wait for the computer to find the network and log in. Internet connections can vary in speed, but remember, complimentary Net connections are generally low security environments, so you'll either want to be running your own firewall (many freeware, open-source ones can be found on the Net) or avoiding sending too much personal information out. Net banking, for instance, is a definite no-no.

Other cheap ways to connect up do exist, of course. Ranging from complimentary business centre Internet usage to using your colleague's/host's laptop and running up his bill. Always carry a memory stick; it comes in handy when moving data to other machines "" the colleague's or at the business centre.