Details of the Randy Petersen Travel Executive Summit have been announced. The world’s oldest, as well as the first ever frequent flyer program AAdvantage®, the program that started it all, turns 30 on May 1st this year. The mileage Guru himself, Randy Petersen invites you to celebrate 30 years of miles and points. We will take a look back — and towards the future. The leaders in the loyalty industry will join Randy, including Maya Leibman, President of AAdvantage Jeff Foland, President of United Mileage Plus Jeff Zidell, Vice President of Hyatt Gold Passport And more guests to be confirmed! What to expect Randy will take you for a ride through the highlights of the last 30 years of miles and points Each of his guests will have a 15 minute presentation and after, there…
General
Category Archives for General.
The World’s First 110,000 Mile Credit Card Signup Bonus
[Offer currently unavailable.] Details in this Milepoint thread. Capital One offers a 10,000 ‘mile’ signup bonus for their Venture Card. But they’ve added a huge kicker — they will match up to 100,000 miles you currently have in another program. So if you have an account with one of several airlines that has 100,000 miles in it, when you spend $1000 on their Capital One Venture card within 3 months they’ll give you the usual 10,000 miles plus 100,000 miles. Since it’s a ‘match’ they’ll give you whatever your current balance is, even if it’s less than 100,000 miles of course. Now, Capital One “miles” are really just credits towards the purchase of airfare, a point is worth a penny’s worth of travel. I don’t really like this for my regular credit card spend. They…
100 Free Starwood Points
Starwood is giving 100 free Starpoints for registering your pledge to participate in ‘Earth Hour’ by March 26. (HT: Carol)
Combine Miles and Elite Qualifying Acitivity Between United and Continental Mileage Accounts
United and Continental will now let you move miles back and forth between your own accounts in the two frequent flyer programs. This is great to combine balances towards an award. It also means that effectively, Starnet blocking is dead, at least until the programs are actually combined. Because unless they’ve imported the architecture to do it over onto the Continental Onepass side, you could always just move your United miles over to Continental to book an award ticket. So at least for those in the know, if not for everyone, we’ve got full access to Star Alliance partner award inventory with United miles through the end of the year. You can transfer miles once per 24 hours, in 1000 mile increments and up to 200,000 miles per transaction. You can also combine your account…
Hyatt’s Second Quarter Promo is Out!
It’s not Faster Free Nights, it’s more like the promo from end of 2010, The Great 10k. Between April 1 and June 30, members earn 10,000 Gold Passport points after their first five nights, and then 5000 points for each additional two nights. A maximum of 60,000 bonus points for 25 nights can be earned under the promo. Registration will be required, I’ll update this post when I come across the link. Update: The registration website (goldpassport.com/possibilities) won’t be live until March 31.
Milepoint.com Giving Away 25 More iPad 2’s Just for Registering
As I mentioned last week, Milepoint is giving away an iPad every day in the month of March. To be eligible for the drawing each day, all you have to do is register for the site which is quick and easy. So far iPads have been won by the following members of milepoint.com: Kagehitokiri Raffles dcpatti IMGone joanek Marty McFry Jaimito Cartero fuseli joediver Sean Colahan Randy Petersen announced mid-stream that it’ll be iPad 2‘s being given out, not just the older iPads everyone was expecting. And there’s still about 25 iPads left to win. The earlier you register the more chances to win.
BankDirect Mileage Earning Program Changes and Improved Signup Bonus
I’m a big fan of BankDirect, I’ve written about it in the past such as here, they’ve hosted my primary checking account since July 2003. I’ve found the customer service excellent and the value proposition compelling. I get 100 American Airlines miles for every thousand dollars of average balance each month, which in a low interest rate environment is a pretty good rate of return (and unlike Citibank, they don’t 1099 the miles). As long as I keep an average balance of $2500 in the account I’m avoiding fees. They reimburse my out-of-network ATM fees and give me postage-paid envelopes for mailing in deposits. Yesterday I received a letter explaining changes to their program. They’re capping mileage earning for some very large depositors (hint: it won’t affect me at all!) and they’re upping their new…
Earn 18 US Airways Miles Per Dollar for Travel Purchases
Booking Buddy is a participant in the US Airways Skymall portal and they are offering 18 miles per dollar spent. Not sure how I missed this a couple of weeks back, other than that I was in the air enroute back from Asia when it was posted on Milepoint. A $500 ticket is worth 9000 US Airways miles. As Keri pointed out to me, a W (systemwide upgrade-eligible) fare on United to Sydney for $1300 will get you enough miles for a free domestic coach ticket. BookingBuddy is a free service designed to help travelers search all their favorite travel websites with fewer clicks and in less time. And restrictions? There aren’t any: Restrictions There are no restrictions at this time. The site offers air, hotel, and car reservations. It’s hard to imagine earning 18…
Marriott Comes Forward with List of Hotels Changing Award Categories on March 8
I gave Marriott a very hard time over the weekend for announcing that hundreds of properties would be going up in rewards category, requiring more points, on March 8 — but not telling us which ones. Loyalty Traveler reports that Marriott has made good and announced which properties will be moving up (and which will be moving down). He’s got the full list. Making these details available less than a week before the price changes doesn’t really satisfy me, but it’s still huge progress, in the recent past Marriott hasn’t announced which hotels would change categories in advance at all. Let’s hope they keep this precedent, and provide more notice going forward as well.
Free Award Wallet Premium for New Registrants
I’ve reviewed the various mileage management tools in the past, mentioned my favorites here on this blog and in various media, and the one that I use is Award Wallet. Now, there are certainly others on the scene, the folks at Mileage Manager have a tool that helps you find award seats for redemption and will keep checking the websites of your programs to let you know when seats open up. And Using Miles is a new service that I’ve heard good things about and may have promise, but I really haven’t fully vetted yet. But as I say, I’ve been happiest to date with Award Wallet. They have a free service that tracks the balances on all of your accounts, and their coverage across programs is really extensive even including the rental car and…
