Citi® Hilton HHonorsTM Visa Signature® Card 50,000 points after spending $1,000 in the first four months $50 statement credit after you spend $50 or more on your first hotel stay within the Hilton HHonors Portfolio during the first six months of cardmembership This is the best offer for the no annual fee Hilton card that I’ve seen and it expires tomorrow. This free card gives you free Hilton Silver status. Better to walk into Hilton as a silver than as a base member. First, because of the bonus points and in some cases free bottled water. But second and more importantly is that it serves as a reason not to be given the worst room on property, the one above the HVAC system or overlooking construction. That’s not a guarantee, but it helps. It also…
Monthly Archives
Monthly Archives for April 2014.
How to Be a Travel Ninja With Reservations That Stay Perfect
Many things can go wrong after you make a reservation. You don’t want them to go wrong for you, and you want to be able to fix them proactively when they do. Don’t get caught off-balance. Just yesterday American Airlines posted this advisory for travel agents about making double booking mistakes. American loves issuing debit memos to travel agents. Point is, though, ticketing problems happen. You may never really have a confirmed reservation in the first place. A third party hotel booking site may not have properly communicated with the hotel you’re staying at, or a problem especially common to United an award ticket may never have been issued in the first place. Schedules change. Sometimes it’s a modest change but even 15 minutes could change when you’d want to leave for the airport. Schedule…
6 Simple Ways to Enjoy Your Vacations More
This is all advice I’ve shared before but really does bear repeating — we take trips but do we get the most out of them? Or are we traveling, putting too much pressure on our trips, and letting great opportunities go to waste? The best advice comes down to: spend time planning vacations, take more trips, work while you’re gone, and experience new and unusual things. Planning vacations contributes more to your happiness than actually taking them. Of course you may need to go on vacation to justify all of the planning time, and to convince yourself that the planning is meaningful. You get all of your relaxation benefits on the trip itself, but don’t expect to be relaxed when you get back. We quickly snap back into the stress of daily life, sans any…
30% Bonus for Transferring American Express Points to Virgin America Through April 30: Good Deal?
American Express is offering a 30% bonus on transfers to Virgin America through April 30. This isn’t unusual, they had a 40% transfer bonus to Virgin America in January of this year and also in the latter half of September 2013. Both of those offers, of course, were better. A year ago they even ran a 50% transfer bonus. Should you transfer? Normally American Express points transfer 2:1 into Virgin America. A 30% bonus is significant, but it’s important to understand how Virgin America points can be valued. My rule of thumb is that Virgin America’s points are deflated, that one Virgin America point is worth about 2 points in a European airline frequent flyer program. Their points are reasonably good, then, for redeeming on partners (with fuel surcharges). You can use the points for…
How to Handle Travel When Things Go Wrong
If your flight is delayed or cancelled, don’t be a wallflower, don’t be at the airline’s mercy. There are things you can do to proactive solve problems that come your way, and ways to handle travel stress effectively. Whom to Seek Out for Help The Customer Service counter at any airport is usually the least customer and service-focused place at the airport. The lines are long serving everyone that’s displaced. The agents deal only with unhappy passengers. No matter their disposition, after a day of getting yelled at it’s tough to be proactive and helpful. They’re beaten down and just want to get through the day. While sometimes you’ll get stuck in this line, the first thing I do if there’s an airline club lounge I have access to is go there. The lines will…
Starwood Offering Up to 25% Off Purchased Points: When It Makes Sense — And Doesn’t
Starwood is offering up to a 25% discount on purchased points through May 31. The same discount applies to gifting points as to buying them for yourself. Buy Starpoints® for yourself or as a gift now through May 31, 2014, and get up to 25% off the regular price. • Get 10% off 500–9,500 Starpoints • Get 15% off 10,000–14,500 Starpoints • Get 20% off 15,000–19,500 Starpoints • Get 25% off 20,000 Starpoints Now let’s do the math. 20,000 Starpoints still costs you $525. That’s 2.625 cents per point. Starwood points are worth a lot, and I’ll usually get at least 2 cents per point out of my hotel redemptions. But even for ‘topping off’ towards a hotel award this is dicey. Remember, you’ll get a better deal than buying Starpoints at 2.6 cents with…
20% Off United Economy Saver Awards to Mexico City
United MileagePlus is offering a 20% discount on roundtrip saver economy awards between the US (excluding Hawaii) or Canada and Mexico City if you book by April 29 and travel in May. That’s a 7000 mile discount — 28,000 miles instead of the usual 35,000. Of course travel must be booked less than 21 days out to qualify for this discount, so most members will have to pay United’s close-in booking fees ($75 for general members, $50 for Silver, $25 for Gold, waived for Platinum and above). You can join the 40,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. You can also follow me on Twitter for the latest deals. Don’t miss…
How to Make Sure Your Checked Bag Arrives When You Do (Or Soon After)
If you are checking a bag, assume it will get lost — at least for a little while. Split up your most important items, try to carry on the things you can’t do without in first day, and don’t put all of your most valuable items in the same bag. Checked bags will get lost. Not every time, of course, just when you’re the one checking them and when you need their contents the most. They’re most likely to get lost when: Transferring bags between airlines. It’s an extra complication and condition that needs to go right. You have a short connection, whether because of flight delays or not There are disgruntled employees. When Alaska had a baggage handler job action I had one bag mutilated to shreds and another sent to Reno rather than…
Double Miles, Changing Free One-Ways, Another Delta Blow to Alaska’s Peeps (Bits ‘n Pieces for April 15, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: The one thing the US Airways website apparently does well. (It certainly ain’t this.) Iberia is offering double miles for tickets purchased at Iberia.com by April 21 for travel through April 30. Iberia, Iberia Express, Iberia Regional Air Nostrum and Puente Aéreo flights are eligible. Partner airlines and codeshare flights are not. I like having an Iberia account with some points in it because I can move British Airways Avios over to Iberia, and no fuel surcharges are added to Iberia flights booked out of an Iberia account. A reminder that even though American has eliminated stopovers at the North American gateway city on international award tickets (“free one-ways“), you can still make date changes to existing itineraries booked with these stopovers. The rules at the time of…
How Not to Determine the Best Hotel Loyalty Program
Skift reported yesterday on JD Power’s rankings of hotel loyalty programs (their “Hotel Loyalty/Rewards Program Satisfaction Report”). Honestly I was hoping this wouldn’t get any pickup, since it’s just another missive likely to mislead consumers. The most heavily-weighted factor in the rankings — nearly a quarter of it — was ‘account maintenance’. That just doesn’t strike me as the single biggest factor in how valuable a hotel loyalty program is. Note that this isn’t “customer service” which is its own category and worth just 5% of the survey’s weight. They factor how easy it is to earn (which will heavily weight number of points earned and number of partners with which you can earn) and ease of redemption (but not the value of what you’re redeeming for). An undisclosed amount — less than 5% of…
