Frequent Traveler University, December 5-7, Hyatt Regency Crystal City (near Washington’s National Airport)
This promises to be the largest gathering of frequent flyers ever, bringing together some of the best minds in miles and points and creating an opportunity for folks interested in the hobby to learn, trade tips, and build friendships (and networks for sharing knowledge offline as well).
I’m excited to be helping to put it together, and I’m giving away two packages to FTU on the blog this week. Each of two winners will receive:
- A complimentary ticket to FTU ($149)
- 2 hotel nights for the event (valued at $99+tax per night)
So that’s over $350 in value per prize, with two prizes, an all you have to do to enter is comment on this post as I explain below. And of course everyone who buys (or wins!) a ticket receives Hyatt Platinum status.
And don’t worry, you can go ahead and buy one, if you win the contest I’ll make sure your purchase gets refunded – or refund it myself!
Here’s the details for the giveaway:
- This is the official entry post. Comment on this post to enter, by providing either one travel tip or one thing you would hope to learn at Frequent Traveler University.
- Since there are (2) questions, you may enter to up (2) times.
- Contest ends Friday at noon Eastern time.
- All of my decisions are final and unappealable and by entering you agree to this. In other words, don’t make it hard for me to give stuff away!
Truly a can’t-miss event and promises to be the best Frequent Traveler University ever! The room block is filling up, so I’d suggest signing up now…
Related:
- Tickets now available for the biggest frequent flyer gathering in history
- Everyone at December’s Frequent Traveler University Gets Elite Status
- New speakers added for Frequent Traveler University
- 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 out!
I would love attend FTU to learn how to utilize some of the sites to search award space on partner airlines.
My travel tip is to review all the boarding area bloggers sites to maximize opportunities for mile earning opportunities.
tip: if you’re traveling primarily on your own dime, don’t spend money chasing hotel loyalty programs – instead use opaque booking sites like Priceline and Hotwire to save serious coin.
wanted: more ways to stretch an award booking. e.g. adding extra domestic segments to the end of a UA int’l award (is there an equivalent on AA? how can I best exploit it? are there similar values in some of the non-US programs like Korean Skypass or Signapore KrisFlyer?)
I’d like to learn more about manufactured spend. Like “Redbird”.
I’d love to learn more about the best ways to maximize points earning despite not having a lot of monthly expenses/credit card spend
Tip-carry on only, always.
Be nice to everyone – especially those who control or can impact part of your travel experience.
Besides being the right thing to do, it certainly helps with IRROPS, seating, upgrades “sometimes,” voucher amounts, volunteering for bumps, club level access, airport club access, and a host of other benefits.
Wanted: A guide to getting started on acquiring frequent travel information. For a beginner, it’s overwhelming.
I’d love to learn how to more effectively leverage my frequent business travel to garner bigger rewards.
Tip: When paying for a meal with friends, frequently one uses a credit card and others give her or him cash. Arrange in advance that the one working on a credit card bonus would get to use the card. Then rotate.
Tip – when traveling internationally, make sure you take a credit card that doesn’t charge a foreign transaction fee.
At FTU, I’d like to get updates on rules for booking award travel. It seems there have been lots of changes lately in many of the frequent flyer programs. I need a refresher!
My travel tip is sign up for hotel and airline promotions right when they come out even if you’re not sure about your travel plans. Otherwise your plans may change & you may miss sign-up deadlines, forget about the promotion completely, or not remember whether you signed up. Just make signing up part of your routine!
I would like to learn how to get higher status with hotels, without doing all the stays.
travel tip：buy those quick-dry underwear and travel light with two pairs!
one thing I would hope to learn at Frequent Traveler University is strategies on those foreign FFPs given how much worse the North American programs have changed over the past couple years.
Tip — ALWAYS check seatguru before choosing seats.
I would love to learn more about taking advantage of stopovers (on the airlines that still let you take advantage of stopovers)!
I have been blessed to be able travel within the US using points. Next year is my 25th wedding anniversary and I would like to learn how to utilize the points I have to take my husband to Paris. I am simply lost when it come to the major airlines because I utilized my Southwest points for domestic travel. I do a great job with those points but again am quite a novice when it comes to planning this aspirational trip. Thank you for the opportunity.
I hope to learn how to maximize the use of the airline miles and hotel points I have.
Hope to learn one or two new tricks to quicker airline elite status.
TIP: Never buy lounge membership or other high dollar amenities directly. Instead, look for other products – credit cards being the most common – that offer the amenity as part of their cost. You can almost always get the amenity for the same price (plus other benefits), and often for considerably less.
My first grand child is due any day and her parents are moving to Austria in the spring. I hope to learn how to maximize my miles to visit them as often as possible, please!
Thanks!
Travel Tip: When traveling to a beach vacation, use a soft sided cooler as your carry on. That way you can easily pack a romantic lunch and beverages with you any day you go to the beach! Include a couple of large freezer baggies to put ice in and make sure there’s no knife on the corkscrew (because of TSA rules) or put that in your checked bag!
Travel Tip: always sign up for every loyalty program you can utilize! Never know when those points will come in handy!
I want to attend FTU to maximize the use of my miles and I just moved to DC 🙂
When I get to a new city and I have touristy things to check off my list I try and do them the first few days that I’m there, preferably during the week when crowds are low. The last thing I want to do is get into a time crunch for big sightseeing spots at the end of my trip and waste hours of time shuffling through lines and crowds. Sometimes features spots have ‘free’ days that require no payment to sightsee, but those days can often be the most crowded. So get in early if you want to see for free!
When I get to a new city and I have touristy things to check off my list I try and do them the first few days that I’m there, preferably during the week when crowds are low. The last thing I want to do is get into a time crunch for big sightseeing spots at the end of my trip (or on a weekend) and waste hours of time shuffling through lines and crowds. Sometimes features spots have ‘free’ days that require no payment to sightsee, but those days can often be the most crowded. So get in early if you want to see for free!
Tip: You can buy almost anything you need almost anywhere in the world, so pack lighter than you think you should.
Want to learn: How to split up single award bookings so my wife can fly up front and I can slum it with the kids in back.
I would like to learn more about fuel dumping and ITA Matrix
My travel tip is to bring along a travel power plug with USB ports. It never fails to happen that you’re hotel room is the only one with only one convenient outlet on the desk. The travel plug solves this problem. I like the Belkin (BST300) because it has the swivel plug-in.
As for one thing I would hope to learn at Frequent Traveler University, that would be more details on cross-alliance airline mile redemption sweet spots.
I want to learn how to maximize credit card bonuses
my travel tip is to bring along extra chargers for my friends who always forget them.
What’s the difference between ftu advance and the ftu non advance