Win a trip to Australia!
Thanks to the generosity of American Express and Boarding Area, I am pleased to offer this contest to readers of Pearls of Travel Wisdom. You have an excellent chance to win a 7-day trip for two to Down Under. Total value of this contest is about $13,000.
To enter, simply post a comment here answering this question: What’s your top tip for travelers who want to earn and use their loyalty points?
Increase your chances of winning by posting a comment on all of the 20 participating blogs. Each blog offers great content with a different perspective on travel, all worth a regular read. Keep an eye out for their posts about the contest.
Also, you can follow the blogs with an RSS feed. If you use Twitter, a great source to keep up to date on all the Boarding Area blogs is @BoardingArea and feel free to follow me on Twitter, @smartwomentrav.
Please hurry, the last day to enter is Sunday, March 28, 2010.
The contest is open to anyone who is a US resident at least 18 years old. Very sorry, but this does not apply in Canada, US Territories, or the rest of the planet.
One lucky random winner will be chosen from all qualifying entries. Complete rules and details are here.
Again, many thanks to American Express and Boarding Area for offering this opportunity to my readers. Best of luck to each and every one of you winning what will be the trip of a lifetime!
Read blogs like this one and grab the deals when they are there. Be sure to only apply for the most rewarding credit card and combine offers with your travel plans. If you don’t have one, just create.
Pick a program that you like and stick to it, even if it ends up costing a little more. They’re not called loyalty rewards for nothing.
Pick the best alliance for your travel needs, and back that up with another airline. For me, in Seattle, United (Star Alliance) and Alaska offers a good mix of earning and redemption choices.
I believe it’s important to not spread yourself thin, but take advantage of points programs that let you apply it to hotels, airlines, car rentals and the like and not just one, such as only airlines.
It may take a long time to save the miles for two international premium class awards, so if you’re just a casual flier don’t worry about spending the miles on a domestic coach ticket – just make sure you’re getting a good value for the miles, such as using them for a late booking or a holiday period!
Use car rentals (which often earn pitifully small miles bonuses) to reset the clock on expiration of miles accounts in which you lack activity. This works not only mile accounts in your name, but for family members too: the rental companies report only the FF account number you give them, and not the renter’s name. I’ve used this many times without a hitch.
You can transfer SPG points to over 30 different airlines at a 1 to 1 ratio. Transferring 20,000 SPG points gives you a bonus of 5,000 miles, for a total of 25,000 miles — enough for a domestic award ticket.
Churn credit cards and bank sign up bonuses
Every mile counts so try to get every mile possible from dining, shopping etc. Use SPG as your primary credit card for easy ability to convert to other programs.
The way I usually go about this is have one credit card that is for miles and one that is affiliated to a hotel brand and then I put everything on either of those 2 cards. It is amazingly easy to spend the limits in order to get status on these cards without actually travelling.
Also make sure you keep up to date on awards and new cards offering great rewards. I am a United Mileage Plus account holder and am about to get 30,000 miles just for spending $250. This will put me in the next level of status for this year and I haven’t even flown yet!!!
Decide on an airline/alliance, get the miles/points credit cards + PLAN AHEAD!!!!!!
Airline miles are usually more valuable than hotel points, in addition to all the perks reserved for elites. So the quickest way is to get an airline-branded credit card and shoot for the bonus miles.
Concentrate on one of the airline alliances, and funnel all of miles to one frequent flier program within that alliance. This way, you don’t “orphan” miles over several different programs.
Take a few minutes to research current promotions before booking travel. You can exponentially increase your rewards.
My travel tips:
For airlines:
Get to elite status as soon as possible. Do Mileage Run if needed.
For hotels:
Use the promotions as much as possible. Do Mattress Run if needed.
(1) Never miss an opportunity to earn points, no matter how small; (2) Earn and burn — miles and points are only going to lose value with time.
There are so many ways out there to earn miles to get activity credit. Don’t let those hard earned miles expire. Use the shopping malls to earn with minimal purchases. Just remember to use the airline specific links to ensure you get credit for the spend.
Sign up for your points provider’s newsletter- and actually read it! You’ll often be pleasantly surprised by chances for bonus points. Consider buying points in small denominations when they are sold at a discount- I see them often listed at 20-30% off.
And follow your faves on Twitter, @IHG_Deals (I won 50,000 Priority Club points this way!) & @Lufthansa_USA for example have in the past offered points or flights as promotions- but there are tons of travel & points providers breaking into social media- if you have a good experience with a travel provider, talk them up on social media sites since they all like to build their reputations up with positive comments, etc.
And it’s a good way to keep up with special offers.
Read FT and these blogs for good tips, like 10k for car rentals and 20k for free hair appointments. Will definitely keep you updated as to the latest opportunities.
Network with frequent fliers.
Be sure and make all purchases with a mileage earning credit card and purchase as much as possible through a mileage earning shopping portal also.
Get a Hilton Surpass Amex and stay at lots of Hiltons, so you’ll earn 9 points to the dollar on every stay. Put $20,000 on your card in a year and score Gold VIP status with Hilton. Then, when you have 225,000 points, redeem them using one of Amex’ VIP Hilton special booking codes, GLONP, which will get you six free nights at a top of the line hotel in London – where the exchange rate isn’t favorable to U.S. travelers. You’ll wind up scoring a stay worth something like $3600, and it’ll only cost you about $8500 in spend if you stay at Hiltons a lot and earn the 9:1 rate.
Also – when you book the trip, use your Premier Rewards Gold Card to book your flight and get 3:1 Membership Rewards on the purchase. You can top up lots of airline and hotel programs using Membership Rewards, which makes PR Gold an extremely valuable card to carry (although I for one am very sorry to see Southwest Airlines leave Membership Rewards in June of this year.) You can even use MR points to transfer to Hilton at a great rate – more than 1:1 – so you can use them for another 225,000 point reward.
Also, don’t forget to add on Amex’ awesome baggage claim and trip delay protections, which will stop you from sightseeing in dirty clothes or having to sleep overnight in the airport – flights delayed more than three hours or past 9 P.M. mean you get generous rewards with these policies, up to $250 per night for a hotel. Enjoy!
It’s getting so hard to actually use them to fly. So if if they are with an airline, I would use them for frequent first class upgrades or luxury hotel rooms.
Wow, such great tips from everyone!
Thanks for entering and best of luck to each of you!
Carol
Bonus offers from airline partners, like hotels. Some offer double miles for multi-night stays, etc.
Burn your miles for a few nice vacations with your better half. This way, you’ll at least find your keys still working when you get back from a MR.
Get a mile-earning credit card and use it for everything
Make sure your miles aren’t expiring.. redeem for a magazine or use the iDine service
My tips are simple: First, make sure you are earning miles/points on the major airline serving your home airport. Secondly, do the research on the best credit card for earning miles/points for the way you travel. There are many websites that will help you compare the various credit cards programs
Pay for everything, no matter how small the amount, with a mileage earning credit card.
Keep track of your credit score and if it can stand the small hit, apply over time, for a steady stream of credit cards that give you a sign-up bonus. Those bonuses are the foundation for building miles in many programs. You can easily earn 150,000 miles a year doing this, with no appreciable affect on your credit score. And you can do this for several years before exhausting all of the card possibilities.
Save your boarding passes. After your travel is finished, check your frequent flier account for the miles you traveled to show up. Once they do, you can toss the boarding passes. I use my boarding passes as bookmarks since I often travel with one or more new books. See, there’s two tips for the price of one!
Points have a cash value. Don’t get so blinded by earning a few more points that you spend way more that you may have. Sometimes a different brand may be a better value, even after loyalty.
Loyalty is rewarded in the travel world! Stick to one airline, one hotel chain and one rental car vendor if at all possible! And not just to reach the published ‘max’ levels. They notice loyalty beyond the max. I rarely stay in anything other than a suite or fly in coach or drive the class of rental car I pay for. Even when using miles / points to pay for my trip! Loyalty, Loyalty, Loyalty!
My top tip is to try and accumulate miles in Membership Rewards by American Express since it allows you maximum flexibility to redeem the points and you can earn points for purchases, up to 10X points in the membershiprewards.com earn section and earn 3X points when you shop through the Bonus Points Mall® website.
My husband and I try to focus racking up our miles on one or two airlines. We pool our miles and each year try and send his sister and family who live in Australia, tickets to visit the rellies in the States. 🙂
My tip is always be aware of partnerships for both earning and burning. I know a number of people who have lost out because they’ve collected in multiple placed when they would have done better by collecting in one location–i.e. collecting on both United and USAir, or not knowing about Alaska’s various partnerships. Status in one progam is better than halfway to status in many programs.
Stick with one airline and hotel and even car company. It will be worth it when you can take a complete trip for free! Also, make sure you are signed up for all newsletters so you are aware of double miles/points, etc.
Read read read! Educate yourself! Learn the ins and outs of the mileage and award programs so you can get the best bang for your buck. Only a savvy customer gets the best deal!
Go with friends! It’s amazing how far you can get if you pool group resources — one person’s hotel upgrade with another’s free car rental etc. Works on three levels (1) You can often score a “stay with your friends” freebie (i.e., two of you have access to the first class lounge, the third can usually come along) (2) Friends who don’t have miles are often happy to pay any cash portion of a status change etc. as their contribution (3) Travelling companions!
I have a separate email account set up just for my
travel accounts. It makes it much easier to find
register for promotions and track mileage accounts.
A travel list on Twitter is my other tool to monitor
what is happening in the travel world.
Use some of your miles for magazines and newspapers you enjoy. Dollar for dollar, this is one of the best ways to maximize the “real world” value of those miles!
Come to the Ann Arbor Art Fair DO this July 24 and 25th. You’ll get great tips, including how to book elusive award tickets. Past speakers include Viajero Joven, gleff, Ingy, Lucky9876Coins and wanaflyforless. Details in CommunityBuzz forum on flyertalk.com.
Bring Several pairs of Ear plugs for small flights, for noisy flights, for sleeping on flights, for sleeping in noisy hotels, and for wrapping your necklaces around so the chains don’t get tangled.
My best tip: Pay your divorce lawyer with your mileage accruing credit card! I used my accrued points to visit Alaska with my 10 year old son. It was a great adventure that wouldn’t have happened any other way. It was the best part of the divorce!
Use miles only for upgrades. It’s the biggest bang for the buck. It’s a total waste of miles for hotel nights etc. as well redemption reward tickets.
When looking to book, use a dollop of ITA, gobs of patience, plenty of flexibility and a good dose of bull headedness.
Don’t overreach. If your travel is moderate, stick with one program and milk it all you can.
Save your miles for big trips – don’t burn them on small ones. I have used miles for trips all over the world and have always had great luck getting flights when I want to where I want. Don’t believe those who say you can’t book flights anymore with miles.