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!
Always use Twitter and follow all the places that give you the miles and benefits you want. Deals are always tweeted first.
Flyertalk is the single one stop database to get more info / deals on ff programs.
Follow your favorite hotels on Twitter. Some offer short-term promotions only announced on Twitter.
I really didn’t mean to be a copy cat. I posted before noticing the same comment in #351!
Make people around you and your family aware of the benefits of miles. You”ll be surprised to find how many people just let go of miles and don’t know how to take advantage of them.
I use google to look for frequent flier miles, ff, miles promotions or miles codes…etc…when I want to book travel plans : )
Pay attention to hotel points – they are often more valuable than airline miles.
When booking an award ticket with miles, use allowed free stopovers to get the most value out of your miles and see new places that you may not otherwise have seen.
Pick your loyalties and stick with them! Switching around between airlines and hotel chains will scatter your points around and probably not earn you elite status anywhere. It’s worth it in the long run to not always go with the cheapest price in order to maintain your loyalty to that carrier or brand!
Make sure every fare/hotel you stay at “actually” earns points, I don’t know how many times people book something and they end up not earning points on it. Look for promotions and BE FLEXIBLE when it comes to redeeming. The farther out you can book the better off you are!
Concentrate your loyalty to only a few programs(at most) and take advantage of all their bonus promos! They add up surprisingly quick.
Have flexibility with your dates, think outside of the box on routings, and be nice to the people helping you on the reservation!
Use a mileage tracking tool for a consolidated view of your portfolio of air, car and hotel accounts. It can be easy to miss expriring miles, etc otherwise.
Try to use partner programs with your frequent flier card, such as at grocery stores and drugstores. Also, many reward programs offer bonus miles when you make certain categories of purchases, such as paying for school-related items, etc.
Nothing beats the Starwood Amex card. Easiest way we’ve found to earn and use points. Starwood also has the excellent cash+points option which I haven’t seen from other loyalty programs.
Use your point earning credit card for EVERYTHING Yes, I mean EVERYTHING (but pay it off at the end of the month of course). I even use it in the soda machine at work. And be sure to sign up for all of the extras such as ‘dining for miles’, special airline promotions, and miles earning surveys. Fun to watch the miles add up.
Don’t let your miles expire! When the expiration date nears, you can buy a coke at a restaurant in the dining network. To avoid outlaying any cash, remember that in most major programs, both earning and REDEEMING miles resets the expiration counter — redeem a few miles for a magazine or donate a couple of miles.
Mileage cards are often the best bang for the credit card buck, and Amex often does have the better mileage offers than many other cards. I personally prefer to get cash back on my cards, though, and spend it as I choose. (Up to 4%).
Can’t really come up with anything better for building miles than Fish has already reported on. Choosing an alliance that services your local airport(s) to destinations that you tend to fly to, sticking with that alliance when possible, and picking the longer route if available that’ll still get you there on time.
Check your main airline’s foreign partner airlines for earning miles, not just alliance airlines.
For example, one can fly direct to Taipei on EVA Airways and earn Continental One Pass miles, even though EVA is not in the star alliance. EVA is cheaper than United and United no longer flies direct.
Add the American Express Premier Rewards Gold card to your wallet and earn 3x points on airfare and 2x points on gas and groceries. Plus, if you spend $30,000 in a calendar year, you can earn 15,000 bonus points. There are more than 140 partners with whom to redeem your points for a wide selection of travel, shopping and dining rewards.
don’t ignore status in hotels. when i started, i collected united miles but still stayed at priceline hotels. after learning a bit more, i started spending a bit more money but also collecting starwood points. now, i might pay a bit more for my hotel stays overall, but instead of the room with the view of the parking lot i’m in a suite with free internet…and for vacations, my room is free! you don’t get that with priceline.
when redeeming points, be patient, and know all your potential flights’ schedule, including your partner airlines.
Use miles for awards in premium cabins, either for award tickets or upgrades, to get the most $$ value out of them.
If your airline miles or hotel points are expiring, you can order something from a partner vendor to keep your account active (and earn points at the same time).
Go for credit card sign up bonuses and rack up points and miles in a hurry.
Watch out for SPG/Hyatt/Hilton/Marriott/Priority Club free night promos… burn those and save the points! Also, look for the best free night promotions: longer redemption period, less restrictions on hotel categories, less nights/stays per free night earned.
Pay for all purchases with a mileage earning credit card.
Be flexible with vacation days to utilize the saver rewards
At the same time that you want to focus your earning on specific programs, remember — you didn’t get married to your primary frequent flier program. Sometimes you will be better off just buying the best available value even if that won’t earn points in your primary program.
subscribe to flyertalk threads to stay current on promos
As amateurish as it sound, I go through my “travel checklist” before every trip that includes bringing a printout of all my FF and FH account numbers. Just in case I have to switch flights or hotels.
Even the things you weren’t planning to buy online, buy online anyway. What?!
Need a new fridge? Go down to say Best Buy…pick the one you want…go home & research where it’s at the lowest price…go to your airline partner pages…buy it there and get the miles. Don’t forget to use you rewards credit card to get the miles there too. Then pay it IMMEDIATELY online as soon as the charge appears on your card. Amassing miles is of no benfit if you amass interest charges too.
I use Priority Club PointBreaks when a travel around the country for my photography. Many times my driving itinerary allows a lot of flexibility in where I spend the night. At 5,000 points per night my points go a lot further than they would using them for a standard stay. On a recent four week trip I used PointBreaks fifteen times.
Use a credit card that awards points for money spent on it. It is an easy way to collect points each month without flying.
Find several (in our family, three) credit cards that are free or very low cost, and that have good points programs with elite (silver, platinum, etc) bonuses. Then split up your charges (for us, reaching $20K per year on each card does the trick to get elite status.
My tip is to use credit card offers as much as possible. I do that, earning sign-up bonuses, and occassionally retention bonuses. Some cards allow you to get the sign up bonus multiple times. I also transfer some AA miles I earn to Hilton to allow me hotel points also.
Choose a card carrier that offers an online shopping mall ( i.e. bonuspointsmall, skymiles…). Stretch that extra buck for mileage at your convenience – allows you to continue to shop at your favorite stores, while earning double the points.
When dining out with a group of friends and the bill comes on one ticket they always choose to pay cash. I take all their cash and then pay the entire bill – along with my portion of course – on my credit card simply to get the miles.
I’m disciplined enough to put the cash in my banking account and make a payment towards the credit card right away.
Earn some points and use them wisely 🙂
If you have “world points” or any sort of airline reward points, use those for big trips. Use smaller trips you can pay for “out of pocket” on your credit card towards more reward points.
When redeeming remember to use partner award travel options. Several times they will not be displayed online and the agent will not list them over the phone. Make sure you know the alliance and non alliance airline partners and try to create your own itinerary using a travel site. Once you have an itinerary call the airline and ask the agent for availability on those flights you’ve selected. Have several options in terms of airlines, dates, and flight times. For earning miles use your credit card for everything. I use my SPG Amex card for something as small as a 99cent purchase. The SPG Amex actually allows you to earn 1.25 miles per dollar as for every 20000 points transferred to an airline you received a 5,000 bonus.
Focus Focus Focus. Two programs, a cc that generates reward points, put your hotel points into your airline program. I never buy anything, including a house, unless I get points.
You and up to six other members of your household, including children, can earn and spend British Airways Miles together. Each member has an individual account, which is linked with the others so you can pool BA Miles, making it easier to take reward flights sooner.
Don’t let your points expire! It’s a great idea to get and hoard as many miles as possible, but make sure to know the rules of your particular program as they can all go to waste if you don’t meet minimum activity requirements…
You don’t need to be a customer of an airline to take advantage of their loyalty programme – think alliances. For example, I am one of BMI’s best customers despite having never flown on one of their flights. The same has been true of Air Canada in the past.
Know where you are going, research the award chart, get enough miles (a much easier job with Amex MR), finally be flexible and secure the award seat EARLY!
Use your miles to travel to exotic places where the tickets are extremely expensive, but you need to plan ahead. Well, sometimes you don’t have to, because not many people know those places 😀
Anyway, this usually yields the best value of miles.
Get yourself a mileage earning credit card!
If you are going to spend money, then why not spend it and earn something back at the same time?
Be smart about what you use your points for. International tickets and international upgrades tend to be the best uses of points.
Take advantage of low fares to boost up your mileage total. Quick weekend trips can rack up the miles if you pay attention to what you earn versus what the trip costs.