tonrob

The rules of most miles programmes cause your miles to expire if there is no activity on your account within a given period. There are many ways, however, of earning miles that will serve to 'reset the clock' on the miles in your account.

I spotted a well-written blog post today that lists the expiration terms of most of the major programmes in addition to detailing the various ways you can refresh your balances.

tonrob

Don't know if any of you have tried this before, but Great Circle Mapper is a fun and esy to use little mapping tool that shows you distances between airports on a map of the globe.

Here's a map of the 19,000 mile round the world first class booking I made the other day using US Airways miles.

tonrob

There's a seriously good hotel deal going on at the moment that you can combine with some other goodies in order to really cash in.

Firstly Club Carlson (Radisson, Park Plaza, Country Inn and Suites etc.) has just announced a triple points promotion for stays between now and March 15 (registration required). They normally give 20 points per $ spent so this brings it to 60x.

You can get an extra 10 points per $ (and possible free upgrades) by being a Gold member. Normally to be Gold you have to stay a certain number of nights in a year, but Club Carlson is one of the few hotels that will 'status match' - i.e. if you prove you have an elite level membership elsewhere they will give you elevated status in their programme. Generally you need to be Platinum with another hotel chain in order to status match to Club Carlson Gold. If you don't have Platinum with any chain yet, then there are sometimes offers to get instant Platinum status when you join Le Club Accor (Mercure hotels). Here's a link that seeme to work currently.

If 70 points per dollar spent and a free upgrade isn't good enough for you (honestly, some people are never satisfied) then joining Club Carlson for Business programme gets you an additional 10 points per dollar and a 5% discount on their Best Available Rates.

So, 80 points per dollar, a free upgrade and a 5% discount. Good enough? Maybe not...

US Bank has just launched a Club Carlson credit card, with a sign-up bonus of 85,000 points and a really cool benefit whereby cardholders can book award stays of 2 nights or more and get the first night free! That makes the points that you're already swimming in now stretch even further. You also get an additioonal 10 points per dollar spent for paying for your stay using your Club Carlson credit card.... (Edit: The card gives you automatic Gold status too after you use it for the first time, so if you get the card there's no need to do the status match thing).

This is seriously one of the coolest combinations of hotel offers I have ever seen.

Note: Radisson properties can often be a bit down at heel in the US (with a few notable exceptions) but there are some seriously nice (and normally expensive) properties that you can book easily with points in Europe (TripAdvisor is your friend, as always). Many major cities have Radisson Blu hotels that are usually very nice and normally go for 50,000 points per night. If you followed all my instructions above you'd get two free nights at one of these places after spending a total of just $600 on paid Radisson stays during the period of the promotion. I'm off to London and Edinburgh for 8 nights next month. Any guess who I'm staying with?

GeoffM

Unfortunately didn't work for long! "The given promotion code is not usable anymore"

coastieexpat

Another nice deal from Amex for there Platinum card, 100,000 points for spending $3,000.00 in 3 months. I quite like this card and have almost recovered the $450 fee through there various promos. Be careful when applying though as some people seem to be getting the bonus and others are having trouble, perhaps Tonrob can illuminate us on the finer details.

http://thepointsguy.com/2013/01/amaz...+Points+Guy%29

tonrob

Unfortunately that one went tits-up in just a matter of hours. My guess is that AMEX intended this to be targeted via a very specific channel and wasn't happy that it got blown wide open via several travel bloggers yesterday.

Ahh, the fickle world of travel deals. Six days from now it will have been a year since I canceled my last AMEX Platinum, so I'd have been all over that - and a 50,000 AMEX Gold deal which was also available via that same channel.

tonrob

Try the one listed in this blog entry. I got to the second page just now so still seems to work.

GeoffM

That worked! You don't get any confirmation of this until you've filled in the entire profile, submitted it, and then logged in to the site:
Card type :
Le Club Accorhotels Loyalty Platinum

tonrob

Just Googled and found this website that shows what other people have managed to status match to from Le Club Accor Platinum.

GeoffM

I don't know whether this is actually worth much, but a promo from SPG for the next few months:

tonrob

It's a good promo if you were going to stay at Starwood properties anyway (for those who don't know the name Starwood - this covers hotels like Sheraton, Four Points, W, Westin, St Regis etc.) - but I wouldn't divert a stay from another hotel to one of these just for this promo - it just doesn't give enough back (500 extra points per night but having to stay 4 nights - or multiples thereof).

Starwood points are worth the most out of all the hotel points programmes because you need fewer of them for award nights. Conversely it also means they're slower to earn. As a rule of thumb you need 10,000 points minimum for a decent hotel in a major city - moreso if it's a popular city. Yesterday I just booked the Four Points SoHo (Manhattan) for 12,000 points a night. It's a lower class of hotel to a lot of other Starwood properties in Manhattan, but they were going for 20,000+ and as I'm traveling alone I didn't feel I could justify it.

Incidentally Starwood is unique among the hotels in that you can convert Starwood points to airline partners and not get ripped off. They have a bonus too that's triggered when you convert points in units of 20,000 (this gives you 25,000 airline miles). Details here. Occasionally the offer higher transfer bonuses too.

Mrs tonrob and I get most of our Starpoints through the AMEX Starwood cards. There are both personal and business versions (each person can apply for both) and these typically have sign-up bonuses in the 25,000 range, although in the summer they usually have a promo where you can get 30,000 for applying. Minimum spends for these offers vary. The appropriate links are in Frequent Miler's credit card round up list. Note: This is yet another case of needing to find the right/best affiliate links to apply - the public offer (if you simply Google the card) is a paltry 10,000.

tonrob

Back in September I wrote that I considered Hilton HHonors to be the complete slapper of the miles and points world due to the sheer number of ways you could get into bed with them and earn even more.

I also like to post when I make redemptions using my points, as I want readers to understand what the possibilities are (rather than simply have this thread be just posts on how to acquire points/miles).

I recently wrote here that I'd just shelled out 120,000 miles and $228 for a first class round-the-world jaunt next summer, and that this included 3 nights in Tokyo. Never being satisfied, I was miffed about the 3 night thing partly because it would see me back in JFK on a Friday night, and I felt I'd rather spend the weekend in Tokyo than back home (or even in New York), but the next date first class was available NRT-JFK on ANA was several days later.



Anyhoo - after making the booking I carried on checking availability for the Saturday flight back from Japan, and bugger me it opened up last night! I was on the phone with US Aiways (whose miles I'd used to book) faster than you could say "bento box" and - after paying an eye-watering $150 change fee (that I knew about beforehand and had reconciled to pay) - my flight is now a day later and I have 4 nights to spend in Tokyo rather than 3.

The reason this has got anything to do with Hilton is that my intent was to stay at the Conrad in Tokyo. Conrad is the daddy of the Hilton brand, and their property in Ginza, in addition to looking quite lush, also ranks #7 in the city on Tripadvisor.





The cheapest rate for the dates I'm staying equates to $526 per night, or - as a category 7 hotel - 50,000 Hilton HHonors points per night. As a Gold member if I stay for 4 nights (but not 3) I get a 15% discount on points, so 170,000 instead of 200,000. Even better though - as a Hilton AMEX cardholder I have access to special rates - again for 4 nights or more - so the 4 night stay will cost be just 145,000 - 5,000 points less than it would have cost to stay just 3 nights! This is what really made the $150 US Airways change fee much easier to swallow - I'd lose $150 but gain an extra night in a $500+ hotel and get some points back - in adition to having another full day to explore the city.

Hilton redemptions can be excellent value, and this Flyertalk thread does a good job of unraveling the frankly confusing array of different ways to book with points.

tonrob

I've just tried Autoslash for the first time. Autoslash is basically a free tracking service that keeps an eye on any car rentals you've booked and alerts you if the price falls, so that you can re-book and take the saving. I'm not an expert on this but I have read in a couple of the travel blogs I follow that the bloggers themselves saved money in doing this.

Needless to say it's always worth shopping around. I've just this second booked a one way car rental for next June, picking up at Sioux Falls, SD and dropping 570 miles away at Oklahoma City 2 days later (I'll probably treat the 'why' of this as another post in its own right sometime soon).

Of the few companies I checked, Hertz were the worst, building an obvious one-way fee into the daily rate leaving a total cost of over $900 inc. taxes and fees. Next I tried Enterprise, who had always given me good rates locally - and sure enough they were around $500 (not great, but much lower).

I was overjoyed then when on trying National I was quoted around $350. I haven't used National for a few years (when they gave me the best price for a one-way from Santa Barbara to San Francisco) but - just as I was about to book this time I remembered that I'd joined their frequent renter programme. Never being one to leave points on 'on the table', I figured I'd log in (just for the hell of it - I'd probably never use the points I'd earn here), re-do my reservation request and book that way. Don't ask me why - but just logging in somehow dropped the total to $140 - less than half of the figure quoted when I was a 'guest'.

Needless to say, I'm as happy as a dog with two dicks right now, but I'll be even happer if I hear from Autoslash in the coming months!

RICH

I am clueless. I am planning to visit UK in May 2013 for a week or so. On Kayak I see flights for $1000 +/- $100.

I have credit card points (not airmiles) 13k on Sears/Citi and 23k on Bank of America. Are they worth anything for flights?

What is the current wisdom for finding cheap UK flights. I haven't been back for 5 years. (TPA-LHR ideally, heading to Bristol.) Cheers.

tonrob

Maybe someone else can weigh in a bit more on this one. I'm not familiar at all with either programme you mentioned, nor am I particularly good at finding cheap cash fares for flights as I haven't actually paid for a flight for a few years now...

Doing a quick search on the BoA programme I turned up this NerdWallet article (albeit a couple of years old) that seems to be saying that you need at least 60k to get to Europe, so the best you might be able to do is to simply cash out your stash and put this towards the fare - although your return might not be so good. Before doing anything though try to do some more research as programmes to inevitably change over time.

I used to be a member of the BoA programme, but abandoned it about 5 years ago as the points simply weren't worth anything to me compared to what I could be earning by using other cards. I moved onto a Chase Amazon card for a couple of years, then onto Chase BA card... and then on from there.

Good luck.