Yesterday I wrote about an offer of 16,000 Wyndham Rewards bonus points per stay for up to 3 stays at new hotel properties. The beauty of the deal is that Wyndham Rewards allows points to be earned if you pay for your room, even if you don’t keep the reservation. Many of these hotels are quite cheap, around $50 a night plus tax. And the bonus also coincides with a fall promotion of 5500 points after your second stay. Wyndham has plenty of airline mileage partners to transfer points to for folks who don’t want to keep the Wyndham Rewards points. For them, it’s an opportunity to buy miles very inexpensively. There was a similar promotion offered via email earlier on, most folks signed for marketing emails got one, the last time one was supposed…
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Up to 50% Rebate on Starwood Award Nights at Select Top Resorts
Starwood has a great award night redemption promotion, registration required by November 30. For award stays at specific hotels between October 21 and December 20, you’ll receive a rebate of 30% to 50% of the points you redeem. (That means you do need the full amount of points in your account to begin with, and will get a portion of those points back later). Participating hotels at the 50% rebate level: St. Regis Aspen St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort, Puerto Rico St. Regis Bal Harbor Resort, Miami Beach St. Regis Monarch Beach, Dana Point The Phoenician, Scottsdale W South Beach Westin Diplomat Participating hotels at the 40% rebate level: W Retreat & Spa — Vieques Westin Trillium House, Ontario Westin St. John Resort Westin Mission Hills Resort, Rancho Mirage Westin Grand Cayman Westin Resort Aruba…
Free One-Way Awards on American Using Stopovers, Just How Many Miles are You Allowed to Fly?
Back in January I wrote a post explaining that if you were booking an award where you arrived home from an international flight without any additional connections once you landed in the U.S., that you could book yourself a free one-way award ticket for later. In general I didn’t think this required a ton of explanation for most frequent flyer programs, some have very generous routing rules like United where you can have a ‘stopover’ (visit one city for awhile enroute to your final destination) and an ‘open jaw’ (fly into one city, then out of another) on an international award. So if you have a simple roundtrip to Paris, why end your trip when you make it back home? Call that your stopover, and grab a free flight to somewhere else at the end…
Will ALL the U.S. Legacy Airlines Adopt a Revenue-Based Frequent Flyer Program?
In the October 17 MilesLink newsletter, Randy Petersen declares that revenue-based frequent flyer programs are coming. [I]t is not a matter of if the legacy carriers will follow the current trend, but when. I’m comfortable saying that at least one or all of the remaining legacy carriers will have announced a change or conversion to a “new normal” of how miles and other travel currencies are earned and burned within a year. …Let’s be realistic, many don’t place Southwest Rapid Rewards in the same category as other legacy carriers such as American and United. But the fact is they are one of the largest domestic carriers and as such actually have one of the largest frequent flyer programs. Granted, its appeal and practicality isn’t for the global warrior and “upgrades” aren’t even listed in the…
Where the First Class Award Seats are Using United and US Airways Miles
I love international first class. Living on the East Coast, for trips to Europe, business class is ‘good enough’ but often the mileage premium when redeeming an award ticket isn’t very much between business and first class. Miles provide me with an opportunity to travel in a manner that I could never otherwise afford to pay for, and they’ve allowed the travel itself to become part of the experience and not just a ‘way to get there’. I’ve certainly become spoiled over the years since I started redeeming for international first class awards, such that on longer trips I really don’t want to fly ‘just’ business class. I’ve accumulated enough miles, know about about the partner airlines, that most of the time when I’m flying more than 10 hours I do not need to. Sure,…
Opportunity to Buy Miles at $0.008 in Your Choice of Airline Programs Thanks to Wyndham Rewards
A reader pointed out to me that Wyndham has a new promotion to highlight 20 of their new hotel properties, offering 16,000 points per stay as a bonus on top of the usual points earned. The bonus is valid on up to 3 stays through December 31, no registration required. That promotion is stackable with Wyndham’s fall promotion (that does require registration) of 5500 bonus points on your second and fourth stays between September 26 and November 3026. You’re thinking, the 16,000 point bonus applies at only 20 hotels and I’m not headed to Greensboro and really don’t want to stay at the Hawthorne Suites there anyway, right? But according to the terms and conditions of Wyndham Rewards, no show stays earn points. If the property requires a credit card for a reservation, the Member…
$75 Off Even One Night Hotel Stays at Jetsetter
According to Deals We Like, Jetsetter is offering $75 off of a hotel night with promo code jetset75 (which you enter by clicking on the “Redeem promo code or gift code” link underneath billing information) for bookings made by tomorrow at 11:59pm Eastern. Some hotels will allow you to take $75 off a single hotel night while others require a two-night minimum stay. The code is usable only once per account, but if two people are traveling together then make two reservations where you each apply the code. I’ve had my run-ins with Jetsetter in the past. And I don’t entirely trust them in honoring referral credits. But since I’d hate for them not to even have the chance to pay out their referral credits when someone uses this deal, this is my referral link…
Bits ‘n Pieces for October 17, 2012
News and notes from around the interweb: Via Milepoint, Accor Hotels has a Facebook quiz where youcan earn 500 points a week for 4 weeks. 2000 points are worth $60 towards a hotel stay, some folks will use that to cover on-property charges during their 40% off Sofitel stays, and where they’ve obtained instant top tier elite status. 2000 points also convert to 1000 frequent flyer miles. American is asking the bankruptcy court for an extra 30 days to file their reorganization plan. That would give them until January 28th. The hearing is scheduled for 10am Eastern time. Meanwhile, American’s third quarter financial results are in. They have five billion in cash on hand, revenue per seat mile are up (presumably driven by industry-wide higher yield, strategic cuts in their schedule as part of reorganization,…
Will Security of the Future Be Better than PreCheck?
I’m in the November issue of Travel and Leisure beating the drum about how TSA hamstrings the usefulness of PreCheck. Is it worth it? Gary Leff, cofounder of the frequent-flier community milepoint.com, says there’s hardly ever a line, since the program is exclusive. But since PreCheck privileges aren’t ubiquitous, he can’t bank on having them every time he flies. I’ve made the point before, it’s a great experience. I admit, I love getting my three beeps and being directed to the metal detector and x-ray with no line, no nude-o-scope, and no need to take off my shoes (I don’t take my laptop out anyway, since I use a bag where it isn’t required, and I’m almost never required to take my Freedom Baggie of liquids out anyway). It’s far more civilized. But it doesn’t…
Free Marriott Silver Status
Today’s been all about free hotel status, starting with Langham Hotels 1865 Voyager status and then Accor Platinum. Now, via FatWallet, a simple explanation of how Marriott signs up people at the Silver status level from a variety of companies that they have corporate agreements with. There’s a simple link, the format is http://www.joinmarriottrewards.com/account/silver/default.aspx?source=COMPANYNAME So the link for IBM is http://www.joinmarriottrewards.com/account/silver/default.aspx?source=IBM And the link for Accenture is http://www.joinmarriottrewards.com/account/silver/default.aspx?source=ACCENTURE And the link for the University of California is http://joinmarriottrewards.com/account/silver/default.aspx?source=UniversityofCalifornia … to give a few examples, each of which open new accounts at the Silver level. You can try to enter your own company name to see what’s offered, if anything. (For instance, Microsoft has a page but it doesn’t offer silver status.) The benefits of Marriott Rewards silver status aren’t exceptional, but it’s better to be…
