You’re going to be reading about this one on many of the BoardingArea blogs.
BoardingArea and the American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card are sponsoring a giveaway — a trip for two to Australia’s Gold Coast including air and seven nights hotel (all mileage-earning), meals even, and cash and gift cards as a kick-in to cover taxes on a trip that’s otherwise valued at over $10,000.
Each of 20 participating BoardingArea blogs will be able to select one reader for the final drawing. By reading several of the blogs you have more chances to win and by being selected on one of the blogs you have about a 1 in 20 chance of winning the grand prize.
The contest is only open to those 18 years of age and older and to US residents only, not to our friendly Canadians or to residents of U.S. Territories.
Here’s how you enter. Leave a comment to this post answering the question:
What’s your top tip for travelers who want to earn and use their loyalty points?
I will select at random a tip from among those that meets, in my sole discretion, a minimum standard of usefulness.
In other words, your tip doesn’t have to be the single greatest one ever. It just has to be useful or thoughtful to some. I don’t want blank entries here, or “I’m in!” as a comment, that won’t get you an entry. But anyone with a reasonable tip about something they’ve found useful in earning or burning points gets you an entry.
And I don’t want to get into the game of selecting what’s the best, the winner from my blog will be selected at random (via random.org).
That winner will be selected based on comments received by noon eastern time on March 28. They’ll be forwarded to BoardingArea as one of ~ 20 finalists who will go on to be selected to win the trip!
More details on the contest can be found at contest page, along with a full list of the twenty or so participating blogs where you can leave similar tips and gain additional entries into the giveaway!
Questions? Shoot those over to me by email rather than in the comments to this post, the comments here are tips about earning and burning points in order to enter to win a truly amazing trip!
I read boarding area blogs, they help tip me off to promotions…
Don’t use miles on low cost trips and don’t be afraid to burn lots of miles for a biz class ticket if you have them. There’s no sense in hoarding. Use ’em and enjoy.
Credit every flight and every hotel stay. If possible, every dollar spent should earn points.
Earn the miles/points in the cheapest possible ways and then burn them for the most luxurious travel!
I frequently advise my friends and family on redeeming their airline miles, and my most commonly offered tip is to not forget about all the partners on which they can also redeem their miles. My father has lots of United miles, and in the past used to look up availability to visit family in the Middle East on United’s website, and stop there when he couldn’t find what he was looking for. But by now I’ve trained him to think about options on Continental, Lufthansa, Austrian, BMI, etc.
this is pretty pedestrian, but so very important…
READ THE PROGRAM RULES AND BENEFITS! Seriously!
Know the program(s) that you’ve joined. Know who all the partners are, and how they credit mileage.
Better yet, do some research into the loyalty programs *before* you join, so you aren’t duplicating effort, and spreading around miles that could otherwise be accumulating in one place.
Take advantage of promotions (many are mentioned in boardingarea.com blogs) and then use the miles before they’re devalued.
“What’s your top tip for travelers who want to earn and use their loyalty points?”
Mine is flexibility. Like other similar programs, you do yourself the ultimate disservice if you’re not flexible. Given the different ways you can put loyalty points to work, it’s easy to forget that you can get a lot more bang for your point if you are willing to be flexible what you apply them to. Mix it up, keep it open and take advantage of the added benefits you’ll inevitably realize.
Fly within one global airline alliance and credit all of your miles to one FF account. That way, your miles aren’t spread around to different accounts, making it hard to ever accumulate enough to redeem them for anything.
Define your goal – where do you want to go? what do you want to do? …and work towards getting points for it.
P.S – make it a SMART goal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria)
Cheers!
Life is short, use those miles!
try to concentrate your travel, hotel and credit card usage to programs that can be tranfered between, that way if you need to boost point in one for a particular aware it is easier to do.
Some alliances have more and better options to certain parts of the world, so make sure you’re happy with where your points are being credited. (Star Alliance: Asia and Europe. oneworld: Australia and South America)
Ensure you keep your account active and know when your miles expire. Even good programs like Aeroplan have stingy expiration policies (in Aeroplan’s case, one year of inactivity).
Be sure to pay for any and all purchases with a mileage/points earning credit card. No purchase is too small and that pack of gum puts you 2 points closer to paradise.
If you have miles that are about to expire, it’s usually super easy to extend the miles by buying something small (preferably something you would probably buy anyway) through the airline’s online mall.
Two tips for the price of one entry! I know this doesn’t increase chances of winning, but I surely hope it doesn’t break the rules 🙂
1. If you think you might lose elite status the following year due to changes in travel patterns, focus more on paid (point/mile-earning) flights and stays while you still have status. Two reasons this helps: (A) you take advantage of the elite benefit of bonus earning (10%, 25%, 50%, 100%, etc) that should more than compensation for the risk of devaluation in the coming year, and (B) you will continue to take advantage of upgrades associated with your status in the paid flights/stays. This means avoiding redemption of miles, points, and “free” vouchers (e.g. VDB) that do not earn miles — use these for your family and friends instead, or maybe offer a tit-for-tat exchange (you’ll pay for someone else’s trip using points, and they’ll pay for your similar or less expensive trip using money).
2. Don’t overestimate the value of your miles/points or be overzealous of spending money just to collect rewards, since this is counterproductive to your more important personal finance goals (that will fund more travel!). For example, if you would never pay $20,000 for an international first class flight, don’t benchmark your miles based on that cost! If you do the math, you might find that cashback cards will be more beneficial to your pocketbook than mile or point-earning cards. For example, the Schwab InvestFirst Visa gives 2% cash back on all purchases; would you rather have 2 cents in your pocket for every $1 you spend, or one mile/point? If you always redeem for domestic flights for 25k miles, are those limited-availability flights worth $500 to you?
Resist saying that “I’m only going to fly this airline once so there’s no reason to sign up for its mileage program”. I probably missed out on a couple of free flights by failing to anticipate the diversity of airlines I would wind up using over a few years. Join the frequent flyer program for every airline you fly and manage them at AwardWallet.com to save a lot of hassle.
In the beginning, stick with one airline and one alliance so one can achieve status faster and have less orphan miles.
Earn locally, burn globally. It’s surprising how many people don’t know about partner awards.
Earn locally, burn locally. It’s surprising that people would earn hotel points and spend them on partner awards
Be flexible with your plans, and sometimes consider traveling somewhere near your intended destination
Earn something for everything you do. It doesn’t hurt to earn outside your regular loyalty programs and alliances, especially when there are opportunities to trade through sites like points.com.
Chose one airline programs and get their credit card which will earn miles. Charge everything you can to the card and pay off at the end of the month. My favorite is AA.
To earn miles/points, concentrate on one main airline/hotel and try to maximize point/mile earning by registering for promotions. To use the points/miles, plan ahead, be flexible, maximize redemption promotions (pointsavers, etc), and check points/cash combos.
For earning, your time is better spent earning big chunks of points. Charge your phone bill, utility bill, car payments, and other big bills regularly. If you can swing it, even pay for college classes with a card (and pay it off completely and immediately).
For burning, stick with the go big opportunity. If you have family on the opposite coast, you probably already have those travel costs baked into your budget, so don’t use rewards for them. Instead, treat yourself to international travel, business/first class, or a ticket for a friend/family.
If something is broke, it ain’t going to fix itself! Reporting problem seats on planes, for example, can result in generous travel credits or miles!
I’ve always tried to work out deals with friends where I’ll pay for their travel via awards, and then they give me the money for what they would’ve paid (within reason). That way, you can essentially convert your miles into cash (at a rate acceptable to you), and you don’t lose out of miles that you could’ve earned by paying for trips that you would’ve spent miles on.
“What’s your top tip for travelers who want to earn and use their loyalty points?”
Read View From the Wing every day and read Flyertalk!
Top tip for folks who aren’t already frequent flier experts: Pick one airline and one hotel program, and try to get as many as possible of your flights on that airline (or partners) and stays in that hotel chain.
Top tip for folks who are already frequent flier experts: DO NOT insist on always getting miles or points. There are sometimes when it’s a much better deal not to get the miles/points, but to get a lower rate instead. For example, if you can save a bunch of money by getting a hotel room at a rate that doesn’t earn points, that can be a better deal than getting the points.
Be very flexible
Casual travelers – who at most travel maybe half a dozen times a year domestically – and perhaps earn points on credit card spend without going nuts – should burn the miles as soon as they have enough to redeem for something of value. Low mile earners who save up for years for that once in a lifetime trip are setting themselves up for disappointment. As soon as that high milestone nears, the airline will up the requirements. Better to earn and burn quickly – this goes for high mileage earners as well really.
Use your Amex to earn points (especially the places that give double points) and then use them for the longest flight posible. A transcontinental flight is the same as a flight to the next state.
Don’t hoard points, use them up and have fun!
Focus spend on SPG credit card
Plan ahead, way ahead, if you have certain dates in mind!
Hire Gary to book your award ticket!
Be consistent and focused. One or two but no more than three airline programs at the same time. My favorite is AA.
For hotel pograms, I focused on IHG and *Wood.
Points = Money
Earn’em, Track’em, most importantly Spend’em!
read top blogs daily, like view from the wing, the frugal travel guy–then adopt their tips and use awardwallet to manage your various ff programs.
Plan in advance to maximize award redemptions. For example, even though AA essentially eliminated stopovers, they still allow stopovers in North American gateway cities for international departures. So, although my base airport is a gateway city, I’ve tacked on what is essentially a one-way from another trip as the “stopover.”
Don’t spend miles on domestic coach unless it is a last minute emergency trip.
Look for weekly mileage specials such as those posted on continental.com. I’ve booked an international flight r/t for as little as 15,000 miles!
Always sign up for loyalty programs, even if you don’t think you’re going to fly with the airline/alliance a lot. They’ll collect over time, and you never know when your situation might change (along with your primary carrier).
As Delta redemption value and availability is so bad for non elite fliers, I open a Hawaiian airlines account for members of the family that don’t fly a lot. They can earn Hawaiian miles for any Delta flight. (And most Continental & Virgin Atlantic too) I have a Hawaiian airlines classic credit card which allows me to pool miles so that they don’t expire.
Focus on a single airline alliance and hotel chain as much as possible, having 50,000 miles in one program is infinitely better than having 10,000 in 5 different programs. It sounds basic (they’re loyalty programs after all) but the first decision as to which program to focus on is the most important.
Go ahead and collect the scrap miles/points for the others too, but donate them to charity or order magazines or other cheap redemptions.
When booking award travel, be flexible and be EARLY!
The magic number is 330. Most airlines load new inventory into their reservations system 330 days prior to the flight date. If there are any award seats on the flight you want, they will be available right after that flight is loaded into the system.
Of course, popular travel days (i.e. holidays, spring break, etc.) and popular travel routes/destinations may cause these seats to disappear nearly immediately after release, but be patient, plan well in advance, and mark (and double-check) your calendar for the correct day to start your search.
Happy travels!
Sign up for special promotions (i.e. Continental’s Twice as Fast promotion) that will get you double miles on all trips taken during a specific period. It’s also useful when you need to meet elite mileage requirements.
As with any worthwhile endeavor, you need to spent the time and energy to collect and spend miles successfully.
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