Want To Win An All Expenses Paid Trip To Australia? ENTER HERE!
A few weeks ago Boarding Area & Hilton Hotels allowed the Boarding Area bloggers to each give away a free night any Hilton in the United States. Well apparently that was so much fun, Boarding Area has now teamed up with American Express to give away something even better…
…what could be better than a free night in a hotel? How about an all expenses paid trip for two from the United States to Australia’s Gold Coast for eight days and seven nights.
Is that not good enough for you? What if Boarding Area and American Express were covering not only your airfare and hotel, but also your transportation, your meals, some activities … and also just for the hell of it, covering all of your taxes (since most contests like this require the winner to pay the taxes).
For the mileage run geeks, there is an added bonus … you’ll get full mileage credit and hotel stay points for your journey. If you’re flying from New York, that’s roughly 19,272 frequent flyer miles!
How could this get any better? You can enter 20 times!
Well you can only enter once on Flying With Fish, but you can enter once on each of the participating Boarding Area blogs.
Musings of The Global Traveler
I hate fine print, but American Express requires some fine print be added. This fine print includes entrants must be legal residents of the 50 United States and be aged 18 or older. One winner will be selected from each blog to be entered in the final drawing. From those 20 eligible entrants, one winner will be selected at random. Yadda yadda yadda yadda. For complete rules of entry and eligibility click HERE.
To enter simply leave a comment below detailing your top tip for earning or using airline or hotel loyalty points.
Remember you must enter with your real name and an email address you can be contacted at if you win.
I’m pulling for one of my readers to win for two reasons. One, I like my readers – Two, the blog with the selected winner takes home a new Apple iPad.
All entries must be received by the 28th of March … so what are you waiting for … ENTER!
Happy Flying!
Fly within one global airline alliance and credit all of your miles to one FF account. That way, your miles aren’t spread around to different accounts, making it hard to ever accumulate enough to redeem them for anything.
Earn the miles/points in the cheapest possible ways and then burn them for the most luxurious travel!
I’d say the biggest thing is that you need to be patient when trying to redeem rewards. Recently, I was looking for 2 business class award seats from DC to SE Asia. I called and spoke with multiple agents, as I needed to use partners. They were all helpful but couldn’t quite get where we were going when we wanted. So I called back every day and poof! 2 business class award seats on the dates we wanted. Be patient and polite and good things will come.
Plan in advance to maximize award redemptions. For example, even though AA essentially eliminated stopovers, they still allow stopovers in North American gateway cities for international departures. So, although my base airport is a gateway city, I’ve tacked on what is essentially a one-way from another trip as the “stopover.”
Sign me up!
My key to earning points is to check ALL of your program’s participating partners. My local grocery store’s discount program links up with my airline’s miles program and I earn miles while purchasing groceries. Hotel programs and rental cars also link in. I also have my monthly bills paid automatically by my frequent flier credit card.
Use your Amex to earn points (especially the places that give double points) and then use them for the longest flight posible. A transcontinental flight is the same as a flight to the next state.
For greatest flexibility, use American Express Membership Rewards, which have at least one partner in each of the alliances, where you can exchange points for miles on a 1-to-1 basis. Combine the miles you fly, with the points you accumulate to maximize your mileage value.
Just calling in to a live person always works best for me. Unfortunately, the websites never seem to show the same availability that you can get dialing in directly. It is a hassle, but worth it when you need to get complex trips for multiple people.
Plan far in advance in order to redeem rewards and then talk to an agent on the phone.
Read Boarding area blogs!
Make sure your points get credited and do all your travel on one airline, or at least the same alliance.
I have found that using my miles for upgrades gives me a 2 for 1 bonus. I get regular miles and get to turn around and use them for upgrades as well.
When redeeming your miles it is always better to avoid school holidays and to travel off season to get the best value for your miles with airlines and hotels.
Purchase all your household needs and bills with the Starwood American Express card – and watch your year’s expenses turn into airline miles or hotel points without blackout.
Oopsie, your link to the following are missing the /blog/ portion of the url and are all broken links:
Loyalty Traveler
Marshall Jackson on Travel
Miles Quest
Musings of The Global Traveler
One Mile at a Time
Pearls of Travel Wisdom
Planereality
Points, Miles and Martinis
Points Wizard
Road Warriorette
Things in the Sky
TM Travel World
Unroadwarrior
View From the Wing
The Wandering Aramean
Wing and a Prayer
Using American Express cards has been the best mileage gathering for me. They can then be transferred to a number of different frequent flyer programs. There are often special mileage opportunities…sometimes triple miles for everyday expenitures. I’m going to India this week…business class, courtesy of American Express mileage.
Be willing to take the time to research to get the best deals on flights, hotels, car rentals, etc. Also, if you are going to put all purchases on a credit card that accumulates frequent flier miles, be *disciplined* in budgeting and paying it off each month! Debt is not worth having many FF points.
Life is short, use those miles!
Don’t just credit flight miles to your FF program, but also take advantage of partner offers where they make sense – credit cards, dining, etc. This can go a long way to earning those rewards, particularly for infrequent fliers. Through credit card use and partner offers, I earned enough miles to fly myself and my wife to Hawaii for our one year anniversary. Although I’m now mid-tier (Premier Exec) on United, I was a 3-4 times a year flier at the time.
Don’t forget the additional bonus ways to get miles and points. Never know when you might be justthismuchshort.
To use your loyalty points when you want to use them, plan ahead. Way ahead.
Earn miles from flying thru all the airline has as you can. IE DFW to IND fly CO -> DFW-IAH-EWR-CLE-IND. or UA DFW-LAX-SFO-DEN-IAD-ORD-IND both will get you tons of miles and does not normal cost any more the the additional PFC costs.
look for hotels offering discounted point stays. That way, you make the most of your points. For instance, on certain dates 25k Marriott points can be used for a night at a Ritz-Carlton.
Hook me up, Fish!:)
Stick with one airline alliance.
I’ll save my points to use towards upgrades, when possible.
I have also heard of some using this site to gain some free points:
http://www.e-miles.com/home.do
Personally I’d create a ‘catch all’ email in case of spam.
Bonus offers from airline partners, like hotels. Some offer double miles for multi-night stays, etc.
Keep everything in one family: Hotel stays, credit card usage, car rentals, airlines. Always ‘take the points,’ never the gifts.
Two tips! I know this doesn’t increase chances of winning, but I surely hope it doesn’t break the rules 🙂
1. If you think you might lose elite status the following year due to changes in travel patterns, focus more on paid (point/mile-earning) flights and stays while you still have status. Two reasons this helps: (A) you take advantage of the elite benefit of bonus earning (10%, 25%, 50%, 100%, etc) that should more than compensation for the risk of devaluation in the coming year, and (B) you will continue to take advantage of upgrades associated with your status in the paid flights/stays. This means avoiding redemption of miles, points, and “free” vouchers (e.g. VDB) that do not earn miles — use these for your family and friends instead, or maybe offer a tit-for-tat exchange (you’ll pay for someone else’s trip using points, and they’ll pay for your similar or less expensive trip using money).
2. Don’t overestimate the value of your miles/points or be overzealous of spending money just to collect rewards, since this is counterproductive to your more important personal finance goals (that will fund more travel!). For example, if you would never pay $20,000 for an international first class flight, don’t benchmark your miles based on that cost! If you do the math, you might find that cashback cards will be more beneficial to your pocketbook than mile or point-earning cards. For example, the Schwab InvestFirst Visa gives 2% cash back on all purchases; would you rather have 2 cents in your pocket for every $1 you spend, or one mile/point? If you always redeem for domestic flights for 25k miles, are those limited-availability flights worth $500 to you?
American Express Membership Rewards are definitely an excellent way to consolidate a lot of miles. You’re free to choose how and with whom to spend them – great flexibility – and less paperwork compared to signing up for each individual plan. And as a bonus idea – read all the great blogs available on this subject.
It never hurts to ask… just for asking I’ve recieved status matches, waived CC fees, gotten agents to round up total miles to book a flight or hotel when I was short. So ask! The worst they can say is ‘no’.
Starwood Amex indeed on every single purchase you do. Not only can you use those miles on hotel stays but you can also use them for flying to your dream destination!
Focus on one or two programs to maximize your benefits, then be flexible and plan ahead to get the most use out of the miles/points you’ve accumulated.
Earn points with American Express 3x gold card or the starwood Amex for more flexability.
The try to get your award with the following information.
If you don’t get what you want the first time, hang up and call again. Always be informed about where you want to go and what routes you can take to get there and use the ANA website and expertflyer to be informed about what availability is out there.
Set award goals to help prioritize earning and redemption programs.
With my points I get to give others some great gifts I probably won’t have thought of with this option.
All miles are not equal. Know the strengths and weaknesses of the programs you participate in so that when it comes time to redeem an award, you’re using the currency that gets you the most bang for your buck (or mile or point).
Have a goal in mind for those miles; it keeps you motivated to accrue and stay on top of it.
If you earn hotel points, spend them on that hotel. Same for airlines. Never spend on a partner award.
Use SPG AMEX for all CC transactions. Use for hotel and xfer to airlines awards.
Try to be loyal to one carrier/alliance, at least until you get some sort of status.
Scour the web and pay attention to program e-mails for promotions such as double points/miles, etc. I’ve found this to be a great way to increase my account balances for very little effort (often clicking/entering your account number)!
Be consistent. Why spread your points around and never have enough to do anything with? Find what works for you and stick with it. We recently found a nightly price on a hotel room that we felt we couldn’t pass up, but we really should have gone to the adjacent Intercontintental Hotel in order to get some Priority Club points while we were at it.
Adopt a multi-faceted approach in order to earn the most miles possible! Sure flying on the airline will get you miles but so can a host of other activities! Check out what airlines your bank or credit union has aligned with and get the mileage debit and/or credit card. When shopping online, check out your airline’s website first as many of them link to the e-commerce sites you shop most and allow you to earn miles as well. Check out sites such as http://www.e-rewards.com and http://www.e-miles.com to take quick and simple surveys to earn miles. Also, sign up for your preferred airline’s e-newsletter as they will send you chances to earn more miles when you fly or buy. Most of all, have fun and use those hard-earned miles on something great!
Never, ever let a mile/point opportunity pass you by. The tortoise always wins the race – those little bonuses add up.
Check airline partner websites for seat availability to international destinations. Then call your airline and suggest the dates that you found available on the partner sites.
Concentrate your efforts on one or two programs. Use the Boarding Area blogs and FlyerTalk to find great deals and tips on making the best use of your miles/points.
My top tip for earning and using rewards points: focus, focus, focus! There’s no sense in spreading out 60,000 points to different airlines, credit cards, and hotels plans. Focus on the plan that makes the most sens for you, and work it. Check the plan’s site frequently for bonus opportunities, credit card signup bonuses, and other earning opportunities, and — if they make sense — take advantage. Secondary tip: don’t become so enamored with points that you spend uneccesarily just to earn points