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!
Be loyal and loyalty will reward you. Use a card for your top airline or hotel, and always fly the same airline (or alliance) and stay at the same hotel.
In the beginning, stick with one airline and one alliance so one can achieve status faster and have less orphan miles.
Top Tip – Read the blogs on Boardingarea.com. The bloggers on the website do a fantastic job gathering and synthesizing all of the information out there in order to keep you up to date on ways to maximize earning rewards. On the “using” side of the equation, they stay abreast of all of the best deals to use points, and also provide detailed advice and comparisons on using your rewards.
Checkin with boardingarea.com and Flyertalk daily, don’t miss out on the 100000 mile deals when they come around.
Using an airline specific miles credit card for all purchases and monthly revolving bills allows building of miles without flying and then booking flights with that card often provides double (or higher) miles.
Never throw away boarding passes until miles post! Or learn the hard way if you must!
Always check for miles promos before buying flights; Many promos require registration before you purchase.
I use an American Express Rewards card, it gives me more flexibility in choosing an airline/alliance to fly with.
Be flexible with your plans, and sometimes consider traveling somewhere near your intended destination
SPG points are versatile b/c they can be transferred to many different airlines, and will usually earn 25K miles for 20K SPG points.
try to concentrate your travel, hotel and credit card usage to programs that can be tranfered between, that way if you need to boost point in one for a particular aware it is easier to do.
Have Cranky book your tickets!
Get a good reward credit card and focus spending
Chose one airline programs and get their credit card which will earn miles. Charge everything you can to the card and pay off at the end of the month. My favorite is AA.
I’ve always tried to work out deals with friends where I’ll pay for their travel via awards, and then they give me the money for what they would’ve paid (within reason). That way, you can essentially convert your miles into cash (at a rate acceptable to you), and you don’t lose out of miles that you could’ve earned by paying for trips that you would’ve spent miles on.
For earning, your time is better spent earning big chunks of points. Charge your phone bill, utility bill, car payments, and other big bills regularly. If you can swing it, even pay for college classes with a card (and pay it off completely and immediately).
For burning, stick with the go big opportunity. If you have family on the opposite coast, you probably already have those travel costs baked into your budget, so don’t use rewards for them. Instead, treat yourself to international travel, business/first class, or a ticket for a friend/family.
Take anything you’d usually pay by check – utilities, tuition, bills, etc. – and pay with a program affiliated credit card instead. Just make sure to pay those amounts off quickly… as you would’ve paid them off by check anyway!
Definitely stick with one airline until you achieve status or enough miles for a desirable award. Either that, or neurotically refresh the mileage page after your flight – over, and over, and over again – until you see points post.
Try to stick with one airline or alliance so that you can use your points/miles on any airline in that alliance. However, sticking with one airline is the best idea, because then you can accrue miles via an airline credit card, actually flying, hotel stays, car rentals, etc.
Like my dad, who is a million-miler with AA, and is AAdvantageGold for life – he gets upgraded on most domestic flights, no questions asked – and he doesn’t even fly that much!
Use them! Life is short!
Points = Money
Earn’em, Track’em, most importantly Spend’em!
Keep a log of ALL points earned and any promotion associated. Regularly reconcile your earnings. So many points are just lost because they were never awarded. Think about hiring one of your children to help you keep track.
When booking award travel, be flexible and be EARLY!
The magic number is 330. Most airlines load new inventory into their reservations system 330 days prior to the flight date. If there are any award seats on the flight you want, they will be available right after that flight is loaded into the system.
Of course, popular travel days (i.e. holidays, spring break, etc.) and popular travel routes/destinations may cause these seats to disappear nearly immediately after release, but be patient, plan well in advance, and mark (and double-check) your calendar for the correct day to start your search.
Happy travels!
Always sign up for loyalty programs, even if you don’t think you’re going to fly with the airline/alliance a lot. They’ll collect over time, and you never know when your situation might change (along with your primary carrier or alliance).
1)never use cash
2)go against the conventional wisdom of participating in only one FF program–join those in which you anticipate mergers(much like stock investing), get the credit cards when there are a minimum of 25,000 bonus miles for sign-up, and hold those like a long term investment, using them on the occasions that your primary carrier is not attractive.
3) churn wherever possible
Focus on a single airline alliance and hotel chain as much as possible, having 50,000 miles in one program is infinitely better than having 10,000 in 5 different programs. It sounds basic (they’re loyalty programs after all) but the first decision as to which program to focus on is the most important.
Go ahead and collect the scrap miles/points for the others too, but donate them to charity or order magazines or other cheap redemptions.
Also – burn those points as soon as they reach a significant value you can use! Saving money today is better than maybe saving slightly more in six months.
Join Flyertalk.com
Don’t always choose the frequent flyer program of the airline you’re flying. 🙂
If you have a choice of primary carrier – pick with the one with the alliance that suits your travel best. If you plan on doing a lot of flying within Canada – Star Alliance may work for you (for Air Canada). If you plan on a lot of flying to and from the UK – then perhaps OneWorld (for BA). Or if you’re a francophile – there’s SkyTeam (for Air France). Elite status there will give you access to the partner lounges which will make a trip in coach even a little bit better.
Try to consolidate your points/miles in as few programs as possible, that way its easier to save up for the big award. I use Alaska and United as my two airline programs and I can earn (and redeem) miles on ALL of the major domestic airlines and many, many major international carriers. Where possible, use a program like starwood or american express membership rewards for your credit card so you can move the points easily into many programs. When booking an award, plan as far in advance as you can, and be flexible, never, ever, ever redeem miles for a non-“saver” award – if you’re going to be paying that many miles the game just isn’t worth playing.
it’s not that exciting, but my top tip is to be sure you’re in the mileage dining program– it makes it easy to quickly top off points and keep accounts “alive” while you’re building the balance.
Use an amex card to get points that you can use to top of multiple airline accounts.
Always keep your eye out for free mile reward credit cards. It is one of the best deals anywhere, since it’s a free domestic flight usually.
Practice using the reward booking engine, so you have an idea of what kind of flights you can get both within a few weeks and a few months out. This helps when you are discussing possible vacations times with others!
Concentrate on 1 program until you reach a goal or fly alot. Even though Hertz may offer 3000 bonus miles on program X, 2000 may be better on your program account.
If you’re a business traveler, ask if your company would allow you to charge your (work travel) air fare to your own card, and reimburse you. That way, you get the frequent flier miles without having paid for the initial air travel in the first place.
Explore ALL your options when booking Award flights. Pull up the route maps for airlines in your alliance and look for the obscure/unusual, and then check availability. Never trust a phone agent to help you find a creative award routing. Do the legwork if you want to find that dream trip, and be flexible.
Don’t just travel, be an adventurer. One year while booking reward travel to Athens, the agent told me she could get us to Athens, but couldn’t find a return flight. I asked, is there anything available from a nearby city. She responded, “Two days later, I can get you out of Bucharest Romania.” Without thinking how I was going to make it work, I told her to book it.
That trip to Greece ended up taking us through Turkey to Romania. We traveled on boat, bus, prop airplane and taxi to complete the trip. It became one of the best vacations of our lives.
Don’t let you miles expire. Something as simple as a restaurant dine or small redemption is enough to keep your miles alive.
I have used my American Express points (Approximately 35,000 miles each) during the last 3 years to secure my 5 day ski pass with Vail Resorts (good at Breckenridge, Vail, Keystone, A-Basin and Beaver Creek). What a savings!
Stick to one airline/alliance and watch the miles accumulate!
Tip #1: Buy a good bluetooth earpiece/headset before calling in to redeem your miles – you’ll be on the phone for a while so you might as well be comfortable.
Tip #2: If flying Star Alliance, try crediting miles to BMI for their lower Gold Status requirements and then getting a status match to your airline of choice.
Being a novice to the whole FF miles game I have come to rely on advice from the intelligent crowd that frequents http://www.flyertalk.com/. I try to use my miles to upgrade to the front of the cabin rather than free flights.
If a travel agent books your trip for you and messes up your name, so that your FFPs don’t match up, try to get it fixed prior to boarding the plane. If the GA isn’t too busy, s/he can easily do the matchback to your real name and you should be good to go. Much easier than trying to fix it after your flight.
Do your best to become familiar with award charts. Each program has its own strengths and weaknesses. If you can make those strengths align with travel you’ve been dreaming about, things will work out all the better for you.
My tip is to avoid Delta Skymiles since it is impossible to use those miles for awards at the lowest tier level!
Read FlyerTalk every day.
I’d suggest reading up on all programs offered by those you most frequently use, and spend points smart…get the most out of it, but also be aware of all the rules involved with spending the points.
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!
This is easy – I use one card for everything 🙂 Keeps track of all my points and when it’s time to use – so easy! 🙂 PLUS I’m always looking out for specials where I can get double the points or even free along the way!
Safe travels and Happy flying! 🙂
If you can swing it, use your own credit card that gives you the miles for the purchase which gets reimbursed by your employer, then get miles from the flight.
Credit cards w/miles are great but potential for higher interest rates and potentially yearly fees does mean you need to be careful about how you do the spending with that card.