Win a trip to the Gold Coast of Australia (Official Post)
Okay – it’s finally here.
This giveaway is sponsored by American Express Premier Gold Card Rewards card and the travel experts at BoardingArea.
The prize: Seven nights/eight days hotel accommodations, transportation, meals, activities and round-trip airfare for two people to the Gold Coast of Australia (Queensland). (And the trip is a revenue trip so it is points and miles earning ;))
Total value = $10,250!
Those that can enter: The contest is open at all United States residents, 18 years and older (void in US territories). For the complete list of full contest details and rules click here
How to enter: Post a comment on this blog post with an answer to this question: “What is your top tip for travelers who want to earn and use their loyalty points?”
You can enter between March 22, 2010 and March 28, 2010. Increase your chances of winning by posting a comment on the other 20 BoardingArea blogs that are participating. Only one entry per person per blog.
After March 28, 2010, I will randomly select one of the comments from this post to move on to the final drawing pool of 20 winners. So go ahead and comment!
Earn the miles/points in the cheapest possible ways and then burn them for the most luxurious travel!
Some credit cards round miles up to the next whole dollar. My US Airways card gives me a mile for a fraction of a dollar. So I charge gas at $20.01, for example. Gets me a few hundred extra miles annually!
If you have to get the dates/itinerary you want without question, plan ahead. Way ahead.
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.
Life is short, use those miles!
Be consistent and focused. One or two but no more than three airline programs at the same time. My favorite is AA.
For hotel pograms, I focused on IHG and *Wood.
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.
Before the miles or points are devalued or expire, use them up.
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.
Be flexible with your plans, and sometimes consider traveling somewhere near your intended destination
One of the better mileage earning opps is choosing Fixed Miles for Hilton stays, and crediting them to bmi Diamond Club. You can earn 1000 miles/night, up to 3 nights.
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.
Get a relevant credit card to focus your spending on.
Follow the blogs and hire Gary or Cranky to book your flights!
Checkin with boardingarea.com and Flyertalk daily, don’t miss out on the 100000 mile deals when they come around.
Define the experience you are looking for – and work specifically to get the points for that!
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.
Two tips for the price of one entry! 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?
In the beginning, stick with one airline and one alliance so one can achieve status faster and have less orphan miles.
Consider the less popular destinations for your reward vacation. Places like Hawaii and Paris will book early and book fast – and very few awards will be allocated for these popular revenue destinations. A trip off the beaten path can be just as wonderful… and easier to book as a reward, even at the last minute.
If you fly with several airlines, maintain loyalty with only one carrier per alliance. Consolidate those miles so awards come faster and easier.
Points = Money
Earn’em, Track’em, most importantly spend’em!
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.
Understand your situation. I want miles for airfare rather than hotel points because I most often take tours that provide the hotel rather than me selecting a hotel.
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).
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.
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
Join Flyertalk.com
Resist the temptation to never use your miles/points. Force youself to use your points/miles at least once a year. Life is short, points/miles are easy to accumulate.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Redeem awards for places that are expensive to fly to, buy tickets and earn miles on places that are cheap to fly to.
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.
If you’re a business traveler, ask if your company would allow you to charge your 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.
Use miles for redeeming premium class air ticket. Economy is just a waste of miles
Keep updating the promotion so you can get the first class ticket without flyong with them.
For some frequent flyer program keep calling until you get what you want
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.
Don’t use your miles for domestic trips, save up for a big international trip in First or Business class and your miles will be worth much more.
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.
Every airline rewards program has its own strengths and weaknesses. Try to learn these differences, at least from a high level, then focus your mileage/point earning in programs that nicely align with your personal travel dreams.
Select a credit card with an airline you will fly often and use that card for all your purchases. Take advantage of bonus points offers when you can and soon you’ll be packing.
My tip is to avoid Delta Skymiles since it is impossible to use those miles for awards at the lowest tier level!