Points are so easy to earn with the IHG Rewards (formerly Priority Club) program. I don’t love IHG Rewards. Their terms and conditions exclude most elite benefits when staying on points (though some hotels will still give you benefits). There is also no option to spend more points or a better than base room on an award night. So at many properties no matter your status or points balance you can be stuck in a base room when claiming your reward for loyalty. But piling on the points is something you can really do because they run many concurrent promotions, ostensibly targeted but that are often in practice open to everyone and can often be stacked on top of each other. You don’t always know which promotions will post and which will not with this…
General
Category Archives for General.
Triple Points at Restaurants Today With the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card
If you’re not one of the folks that’s completely snowed in, then today is the day to go out to eat. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner — since the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card earns 3 points per dollar on dining. It’s the monthly ‘First Friday’ triple miles on dining bonus. It’s also a great day to buy any gift certificates from your favorite restaurants as well! I believe I’ve only written about this once before, more than 8 months ago when the benefit was first introduced, so it seemed worth a reminder in the new year. I do like the capitalized ‘First Friday,’ that makes the day sound almost religious. Of course on days that aren’t the First Friday of the month, the card earns double points on dining still so as my grandfather used…
2000 Free Lufthansa Miles for Joining Their Kids Program (And Why You Want To)
Several years ago I joined the JetFriends program which is designed for children. The reason I wanted to be a member is because for some reason I’ve not known the answer to, the Miles&More program wouldn’t allow members without miles in their account to search for award space (and I much wanted to be able to search Lufthansa and Swiss award availability as offered to their own members as opposed to as offered to their partners like United or ANA), but that restriction was lifted for members of this program. At the time I had to mail in written parental consent to be a member of the program. I had no problem giving my own consent, of course. Fortunately it appears that paper and postage is no longer necessary, consent is now handled via email.…
Earn Cash Back for Your Hotel Reservations: Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, and Intercontinental Up to 9%!
Cash back shopping site Ebates (new members get $5 cash from the site or $10 gift card after first $25+ purchase when signing up through my referral link, feel free to leave yours in the comments) is offering 9% cash back on all Intercontinental Hotels Group bookings. That means you can earn a 9% rebate on reservations with Holiday Inn, Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, and related brands when you go to the IHG website by clicking on it through the Ebates portal. Even bigger rebates were available a year ago, but then IHG disappeared as a cash back option. It returned about a month ago at 4.5%. It’s great to see this (likely limited-time) doubling. Currently Marriotts are available through the site with a 2.5% rebate, Hyatt at 2%, Hotels.com at 3.25%, Starwood at 1.5%, and…
American’s New Aircraft Paint Job Will Stay
A couple of weeks ago CEO of the newly merged American Airlines-US Airways announced he would let employees decide whether to keep the new aircraft tail paint job or revert to the old one. The vote is in: 52% of employees voted for the new American flag tail. More than 60,000 of the Fort Worth-based carrier’s 100,000 employees voted, with 52 percent in favor of the flag tail that was unveiled a year ago — just before the merger of American and US Airways was announced. The merger was completed last month. The new paint job stays – and is thus how US Airways aircraft will be painted, though one imagines there will be some “heritage” planes showing the history of airlines that make up what will become just American Airlines. You can join the…
The Price to Buy United Elite Qualifying Miles Has Dropped
United sells miles paired with the purchase of tickets online at its website. You can buy redeemable miles based on the number of miles flown on the itinerary. On top of that you can also buy elite qualifying miles, too. Some people do this during the year in order to qualify for elite status more quickly. Others may do it right at the end of the year when they realize how many miles short they are going to be for status. In fact, some use this feature just to straight up buy the qualifying miles, without actually flying the itinerary that those miles are sold with. That’s because when you buy the miles, they post right away and are not refundable. But remember that any United itinerary purchased on the airline’s website can be refunded…
5% Cash Back, 35,000 Points, and Cheap One-Way Awards (Bits ‘n Pieces for January 2, 2014)
News and notes from around the interweb: “A photograph taken by another passenger showed a man restrained in a seat with his legs bound and also appeared to have his arms tied.” (HT: Claire M.) PFdigest says that it may still be possible to get the old American Express Blue Cash card offering unlimited 5% rebates on gas, groceries, and drugstores after your first $6,500 in annual spend. 35,000 miles for the Hawaiian Airlines MasterCard is back, the card now issued by Barclays. This interests me not at all, their partner awards are generally expensive and you can’t combine partners on a single award, and transfers to Hilton are no longer as interesting post-devaluation. It could be useful for getting to Hawaii from a city Hawaiian flies to, of course. This past summer’s Aeroplan devaluation,…
Prepare for a New Year of Travel, Don’t Let the Government Destroy Your Flute, and You’d Better Give United Big Money Or You’re Over-entitled
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: US Customs destroyed 11 of flute virtuoso Boujemaa Razgui‘s instruments upon his return home to the U.S. because they were deemed “agricultural products.” This seems far worse than anything United did to Dave Carroll and much, much worse than Delta banning Lynn Harrell from the Skymiles program for attempting to earn miles for his instrument. Stephanie Rosenbloom offers good tips to be ready for a new year of travel: keep your passport up to date, don’t carry knives through TSA security, have the right mobile apps to respond to irregular operations during travel, prepare for lounge access, and have the best mileage-earning credit cards. She recommends my credit card advice page. Mommy Points sums up United’s new minimum revenue requirement for elite status. I covered this extensively when…
14% Off Airfare, $109 Suite, But Buy Your Own Lounge Food (Bits ‘n Pieces for December 31, 2013)
News and Notes from Around the Interweb: The Alaska Airlines lounge at LAX now offers food for sale. Frontier Airlines is offering a 14% discount with promo code FLY2014 on tickets purchased by January 5 for travel between Jan. 6 and March 12. TravelZoo has a suite at the Anantara Bangkok Sathorn for $109 Australian Dollars per night including daily breakfast for two, free wifi, and a free cocktail per guest. JetBlue offered its own version of the WestJet Christmas, trolling Craigslist for people looking for rides home and offering them free flights instead. (HT: Don H.) You can join the 30,000+ 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…
IHG Rewards Introducing Free Internet for All Members — Whether Staying as a Hotel Guest or Not
IHG Rewards, the loyalty program formerly known as Priority Club which includes Intercontinental (for points-earning and redemption), Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and other brands has updated its terms and conditions to include internet access not just for elites but for all members throughout most of the world, and to offer that access for free whether the member is even staying at the hotel or not. This benefit doesn’t apply in Europe, where only IHG Rewards elite members will receive complimentary internet. Internet Access for Members: Beginning January 2014, standard internet access will be available to all IHG® Rewards Club members at no additional cost at all IHG hotels located in the Americas, Greater China, Asia, Middle East and Africa with or without a hotel reservation and/or qualifying stay. Furthermore, IHG® Rewards Club Elite members will…
