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!
In my experience there are 2 types of travelers who collect and use miles; 1. those that are very occasional travelers and collect for a long time and 2. those who are frequent travelers and collect and use often.
My advice would be to those who collect for a long time, to either use large chunks of miles to travel in business or first class (choose your airlines carefully as the products vary greatly!) or save up and use 1/2 the miles for an upgrade. For those who travel frequently I would use my miles almost exclusively for upgrades as your value for the money is much greater. It only costs twice the miles to book a reward business over economy but the cost in money is more like 4-6 times more. So for the same miles you can upgrade instead.
Above all do your research and know that you can get 2 completely different answers on availability from 2 different agents.
If you combine your loyalty program with a credit card then you will quickly earn enough points to use.
Lastly, it is always best to collect and use miles with airlines that are part of an alliance. That way you have much more seat availability at your disposal.
Stick to one airline and aim for elite status!
Attend the 6th Annual Ann Arbor Art Fair DO. This year is devoted to discussing the ins and outs of award ticket booking. It is the perfect opportunity to network with fellow points and miles fiends. Details available at Flyertalk.com
Collect miles and points only for airlines and hotels that you really like and are readily available for use.
SPG AMEX
Realize that every travel company has a link with a frequent flyer program. Always always always inquire as to whether you can earn miles for things such as hotels, car rentals, etc.
Focus on one hotel program to concentrate your loyalty point earning. Oftentimes, once you reach top tier status, other hotel loyalty programs will match status with a minimal night/stay requirement. Some hotels say they will only match status once, but in the past few years, status matching has been easier than ever…follow-up and don’t take no for an answer.
Check your account regularly to make sure all miles get posted. Keep your boarding passes to retroactively get any miles to post that slip through the cracks.
When trying to redeem miles for an award ticket plan on doing all the leg work yourself – most airline phone agents will search the simplest routings, find no availability, and stop. Know all your airline’s partners (both in and outside the alliance) and all hub and gateway cities, and tell the agent exactly what you want.
For example, Delta had no availability for a West Coast to Israel award. But the agent only checked Delta flights. By knowing ahead of time that Air France serves Seattle, SFO, and LAX, and that Alaska serves my city and the AF gateways, I got the outbound on the exact dates I wanted.
Similarly, secure the international flight first. There is only one SEA-CDG flight a day. Find availability for that, then work on getting to SEA – there’s likely many more options for the domestic flight. Many agents will not even search the international flight on a particular day if your first domestic segment doesn’t appear to be available.
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.
Top tip: Flexibility. Be willing to be a little bit flexible when it comes both to dates and destinations. Also, be flexible about using the points at all – keep an eye on the costs of booking the hotel or flights that you have chosen, and be willing to cancel if the economics are reasonable.
Focus your travel in a single program, but always be open to earning bonuses and taking advantages of great promotions in other programs you don’t typically use.
Just read the flyertalk forums and the boardingarea blogs!
Read flyertalk for the best new credit card deals and take advantage of them!
Initially focus on one or 2 programs to learn all the tips and tricks as well as building up miles or points.
Get an AMEX SPG card, charge EVERYTHING to it – even $2 purchases – and set it up to be paid automatically, in full, every month from your checking account. Paying interest and fees nullifies the value ofyour points; by having it automatically paid in full each month does 2 things: keeps you disciplined so you don’t overspend; and insures that you never pay a late fee or interest.SPG points are so great because you can transfer them to a variety of different airlines at a premium. For example, transferring 20,000 points to AA gets you 25000 miles – it’s wonderful!
Set up your bills to be paid automatically using your American Express Card.
Choose a loyalty program that allows you to earn points over a wide variety of opportunities, airline tickets, hotels, car rentals, meals, shopping opportunities, as well as bonus offers.
My #1 trip is to consolidate spending on a single card. Most cards let you add “additional users” to your card. By giving our college-age kids “additional user” cards with points that report back to my husband’s frequent flier mileage program, and my linking my card to his account, too, there are five people spending every day (and boy, do the kids spend) with my husband collecting 2 miles for every dollar we spend. Check out the program requirements — this works with our card, but we have heard from others that their program didn’t allow it. We actually have 10 cards all collecting miles for the same airline rewards program — five debit cards, five credit cards. And, of course, we also have a Platinum American Express card that earns points for any airline program, so that makes a total of 12 cards. (No, we didn’t give a high-limit Amex card to the college kids. We like having a good credit score.)
The trick is to really be loyal — link everything to a single program, preferably a coalition program where your miles can be used and earned on multiple airlines.
Be extremely flexible in when you can travel. If you must travel on certain dates you are more likely to pay “premium” miles to do so.
Suppose you need to fly from Cleveland to Venice. Never ask whether award seats are available from Cleveland to Venice. Instead, start with the hub-to-hub routes flown by the carriers in your alliance. Say it’s the Star Alliance: Look for availability on flights from Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia, Toronto, or Washington, D.C. (hubs for Star Alliance partners Continental, United, US Airways, and Air Canada) to Frankfurt, Vienna, Munich, or Copenhagen. That gives you more than 20 possibilities. Once you’ve found a hub-to-hub flight with award seats, tack on the short-haul spoke-to-hub or hub-to-spoke options (Cleveland to Chicago or Dulles, for example, and Frankfurt or Vienna to Venice).
My tip is to plan early and be persistent. It is possible to get the most out of them, but it takes some effort.
Keep adding pts to your various travel accounts whenever possible. Small additions keep the pts / miles alive. You never know when an account will have just the right pts for something you need. Recently got bonus hotel pts for transferring a small number of unuses air miles I might not have ever used.
to earn miles, credit cards are a fast way. In addition, almost everything can be paid with cards (so there are tons of possibilities to earn those miles)
Earning miles quickly is much easier than you think. Every time you go to pay for something, think of gaining mileage points. Get a credit card (like AmEx) that gives the most mileage points for your favorite airline every time you use the card; I use just that one card for just about everything. Then, check out what companies your airline partners with and shop through them (for i.e. hotel stays, car rentals, and even for significant things like home loans, larger purchases, loans, insurance and even home purchases). Many airlines have “dining for miles” programs (linked up to your credit card), and also online shopping sites (like Delta’s SkyMall) where you get points for money spent (that’s in addition to the miles your credit card will give). You can also rack up the points by completing online surveys for companies linked up to your airline (like erewards.com for Delta miles). Also, check your airline’s frequent flier webpage every now and then for specials offering points. It all adds up quickly! Once you have enough miles on an airline, plan to use them, but give yourself good planning, like 2 months advance reservations, to ensure availability of your preferred travel dates. Remember: once made, the reservations cannot be changed. Lastly, enjoy your free trip to the max!
Many semi-frequent flyers don’t realize that they can often credit their flown miles to a different airline miles program within an alliance or through other reciprocal agreements. Doing so can keep all your miles in one place (or at least just a few places), with a potentially significant impact on how soon you’ll have enough miles for award travel.
read boarding area blogs; browse flyertalk discussions; use Starwood Preferred Guest Card from America Express.
[Full Disclaimer: I am one of the founders of the site, so consider this a shameless self-promotion!]
My hint is to use Grativis.com to manage all your frequent flyer program information – it’s like Mint.com for points.
It will pull in all of your points (flights, hotels, car, and others) and show it to you in a 1-page dashboard, while also showing the detailed information just 1 click away. What makes it different (and better) than other point management sites is that, in addition to showing your points, it will show what you can buy (eg “how many round trip coach tickets to Europe can I buy?”) with your points!
It’s in private beta right now, but I’ve set up 100 invites for BoardingArea.com users so that they can test it out themselves and see how it makes managing points easier than anything else out there.
To Sign Up:
https://www.grativis.com/index.php?step=newuser
Referall Code: BOARDINGAREA-FRIENDS
Thanks for a great site!
Michael Komarnitsky
Grativis.com
Read everything you can on flyertalk weekly. On flyer websites, try every option for redeeming, change price to schedule etc. One little change can be the difference between a seat or not.
My two power strategies are to select a few travel partners and be loyal to them to maximize your benefits. Secondly, use a single credit card with a good reward program for everyting. Yes I mean everything. You should have heard me and the Acura salesman negotiating over a $42,000 purchase being put on my American Express card!
As for the travel partners, I have a friend who has used Hyatt hotels exclusively for 25 years. He hasn’t paid for an exotic luxury hotel detstination vacation in 12 years and he can get a great room at any Hyatt anytime – they never tell him they are sold out!
Set up a Google Alert with keywords for your favorite airline’s name and something like “frequent flier miles” or “miles promotion”–go crazy and do all the combinations–it costs nothing and can help make sure you don’t miss out on an opportunity you might not have otherwise noticed.
Sign up for your airline’s Dining Rewards program and sign up for every bonus there. It’s an easy way to make miles on stuff you’d do anyway. Always offer to pay the bill, you’ll look like a nice guy and get the miles, you can double dip if you have a mileage earning credit card.
Dont spend your miles on upgrades, use them for free flights. You will get more bang for your buck.
My top tip for using airline points is to be ready to plan several months in advance, pick a few dates and surrounding airports to chose to fly to, and if you’re unable to find a flight by yourself onlie, try calling a points representative. You may have to pay a small fee but often they are able to search with partner airlines and get you where you want to go!
My miles-earning tip is to frequently try to use the shopping portals offered through airline and hotel sites (for example, Mileage Plus Mall for United Airlines, or Priority Club Shopping for Priority Club Rewards) to buy things that I need. Not only do I earn miles on my airline or hotel affiliated credit card, but also an additional minimum of 1 mile per $1 spent. Even better though is when you come across an item that you might not particularly need, but after the free shipping and mail-in rebate, the item is free. I then immediately post it on ebay and walk away with more money in my pocket that I started with, and a bunch of miles or points.
Establish a habit to check flyertalk.com at least
TWICE a day!
Try to consolidate travel and therefore mileage earning into one airline program and make sure that the airline is convenient to your home location. That way elite status is more within reach.
Be very flexible. Be willing to travel to another airport on your own dime to get an international flight to your desired destination.
Sign up for every hotel/airline/train loyalty program out there. Just because you think that you aren’t going to actually fly on a particular airline or stay in a particular hotel chain, does not mean that’s a reason not to sign up for these programs. After that, make sure that you participate in every bonus, sign-up promo or opt-in promo available (think Continental’s frequent 100 mile promos). You never know when those couple hundred miles or points will come in handy for a larger promotion that is being offered. Often you can transfer points or miles to other programs via points.com to get that last necessary partner participation.
Details, details, check the details in the program contract!
Use a single credit card for everything you purchase including travel, household and personal expense, utilities, and paying your taxes. The card you use should be the one that has the best rewards program and flexibility for your personal lifestyle.
Jumpstart your miles by getting status. AA offers a Platinum challenge. Once you get status, many other airlines are willing to match. After you have status, you earn twice as many miles for every trip.
Read the various blogs and follow their tips. I’ve added thousands of miles this way.
I also like my new tumi t-pass bag. People look at me like im crazy when I don’t take my bag out. Probably free advertising for tumi.
Always be sure to keep up to date with promotions and special offers of your favorite loyalty programs. These promotions allow you to earn points, miles, and rewards at greatly accelerated rates. Read the T&C’s carefully and be sure to follow up with Customer Service if any bonuses do not post.
My best advice when searching for flights using miles, 3 step approach
1. Always start 330 days before travel date or at least 3 months in advance. The longer one waits the less chance of getting a seat.
2. Always check on website and then calling the airline rep. Try multiple airline reps. One may offer a better route than the other.
3. Book as soon as you get a good flight and connection – what’s available now may not be available 2 hours from now.
Weigh your luggage before you head to the airport to avoid embarrassing repacking in public in case you are a few pounds over.
We do two things to maximize our FF points. First, we maintain elite status on an airline within one of the international alliances — that gives us bonus points every time we fly. Second, my husband accrues points only for the actual flights he takes — all the points from his credit and debit cards go to MY frequent flyer account, since I fly more than he does due to the nature of our jobs. It doesn’t matter to him that most of the points wind up in my name — he’ll be in first class with me on our next international vacation.
Enjoy reward flights sooner with a Household Account.
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.
Do not sign up for the email communication when you sign up for the loyalty programs. And they will send email offer you miles/points for signing up.