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 pay for everything with mileage earning credit cards, buy only what I would have purchased anyways, and pay off the bill at the end of the month. Convenient and mileage earning.
Always carefully consider an airline’s partners, especially when trying to book award travel.
While it’s great to strive for using your miles on a First-Class seat to Asia or Africa, you’ll get the experience of visiting more places if you instead redeem for coach international seats for a half or a third as many miles as premium seats. Travel to experience parts of the world that are new to you. Got 100,000 miles? That’s business class somewhere far away, or coach seats to two different places. Pick wisely, and you can be a globetrotter on a dime.
For Continental credit-card-holders, shop using the double miles Chase links for places like ebags, big-box stores, and other places giving really big bonuses on stuff you would otherwise be planning to buy. Then use the miles on open-jawed Copa to harder-to-reach places like Santa Marta, Colombia and another city in the region.
Use your rewards for something you cannot afford — premium class flights, expensive hotel rooms. You get to feel like a star and it has the best % return!
Read FlyerTalk every day.
Try to charge everything on your loyalty charge card, then spend the miles on that really long trip to Yap in business class.
If you can swing it, use your own credit card that gives you the miles for the purchase which gets reimbursed by your employer, then get miles from the flight.
Also, make sure the FF program you sign up for is actually useful in your region so you can actually use the points from your location.
Try to focus your miles/points to a few programs (don’t spread yourself too thin). Get a mileage earning cc and charge all your bills/expenses to it to earn miles/points towards vacation travels!
If you’re a business traveler, ask if your company would allow you to charge your air fare to your own card, and reimburse you. That way, you get the frequent flier miles without having paid for the initial (work travel) air fare in the first place. Then, when you cash out your frequent flier miles, it is truly a “free flight.”
What a great incentive to take a vacation!
Miles/points credit cards + plan ahead!
Never take a trip or hotel stay without joining the mileage or hotel program, you may never use it but you never know the future
This is easy – I use one card for everything 🙂 Keeps track of all my points and when it’s time to use – so easy! 🙂 PLUS I’m always looking out for specials where I can get double the points or even free along the way!
Safe travels and Happy flying! 🙂
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!
At the same time that you want to focus your earning on specific programs, remember — you didn’t get married to your primary frequent flier program. Sometimes you will be better off just buying the best available value even if that won’t earn points in your primary program.
Tip 1: If you travel internationally, investigate which program has the best redemption value for the locations you like to visit. Earn your miles with that program. Make sure that you can redeem your miles with the program’s partner airlines, too. Sometimes the partner airlines offer the best deals.
Tip 2: When booking your flight using mileage, do your research. Keep some routes in mind to suggest to your agent. If the ticketing agent can’t find anything, consider calling back at a later time to speak with someone else who might be more willing to explore alternate routing with you.
Tip 3: Credit cards offer more than just miles. First of all, CCs provide a quick way to earn miles to top off your account for the perfect trip. But more importantly, CCs sometimes offer other great savings. For example, with US Airways, the CC saves you 5,000 miles each time you book a flight with miles. For British Airways, you can earn a free companion airfare when redeeming miles (after a $30K spend). Some other airline cards also offer free or reduced companion fare with purchase. All that is on top of the 20-30K miles for your program account!
Look for promotions to buy/transfer miles. Transfer to your husband/wife/sister/brother and plan a family trip.
Or, look for a bank card that offers travel rewards – a mile for every dollar you spend directly from your checking account. We pay everything with our check card and have a few tickets ready!
consider the bank of America virgin amex. you ean 1.5 miles per dollar, redeemable on partners such as continental and us air as well
Use the dining for mile web sites… and when you need to spend so many $$$ by a certain time to get a bonus, but a gift card from one of the participating restaurants to get the bonus!
Earn points on everything! Spend on what you want! No matter what it is!
Ok, here’s my tip – it’s sort of a two-fer. First is, it’s worth spending money at the end of the year on mileage runs to gain or maintain status (I’m currently coping with losing top tier on AA due to not following this tip). The second is, when you are doing mileage runs, it’s often worth it to look at airports near where you’re considering going. For example, LAX might sound like a fun weekend destination for a mileage run – if you’re having a hard time finding good fares to LAX, though, look at the other airports that are in the area, like SBA, SNA, and BUR. You might even end up connecting through LA, but you’ll get your miles, end up in the area, and could save a lot of money.
in … i used to live there–it’d be nice to visit again.
here’s the tip: there’s still time to open a chase checking account with $100 and get up to 25,000 in onepass miles … here’s the link to get the required coupon from chase: https://www.chase.com/index.jsp?pg_name=ccpmapp/shared/marketing/page/Continental_Consumer_9938 …
If you have a family mileage account, make sure that your dad doesn’t dip into your balance and steal miles for his business class upgrades 🙂
Sign up for every loyalty program you can! You never know when you might earn, need, or be able to transfer them to another program you prefer.
Rather than redeem a large chunk of miles for a free international business class seat, it can sometimes be worth it to use fewer miles to upgrade a coach seat. You can earn miles on an upgraded seat which can then be used to maintain status with an airline.
Check partner sites–for example you could use less BA points for an American Airlines domestic flight than using AA miles. Additionally you will avoid the 21 days or less fee. Also, check for seasonal deals/promotions–for example several airlines require less miles to travel to Hawaii/Europe right now than in the peak summer season.
Get the AMEX starwood card and increase your miles when you transfer them
Research partners/alliances–don’t assume an award seat isn’t available until you’ve checked with partner airlines. Try sticking to one credit card such as American Express Membership Rewards which will give you more choices with a larger balance than spreading between multiple credit cards.
Read read read! Educate yourself! Learn the ins and outs of the mileage and award programs so you can get the best bang for your buck. Only a savvy customer gets the best deal.
My top tip to a newbie is simply to read Flyertalk, understand how it works by being willing to spend hours on it until you have absorbed the basic information for the loyalty programs you have chosen. Lurk for a while. Do not get discouraged by the insane use of three-letter codes for airports and things you have never heard of!
Pick your primary plans carefully and don’t forget the expiration policies.
It is paramount to understand all of the available awards for each loyalty program. A thorough knowledge of the intricacies of each program permit a certain degree of flexibility and creativity to enable redemption in non-standard ways.
For example: when there is no AA award availability to Europe, other options such as BA through YYZ or MEX could be viable, and possibly even for fewer miles by using a oneworld award!
For someone just starting out, figure out which airlines you would be flying most. Then choose one that has the most flights and most partner airlines available for your desired routes. No matter which partner airline you fly, make sure to always credit your miles to the one frequent flyer program that you signed up with. Eventually you will have enough miles for your first award, whatever that may be.
Don’t let anyone tell you how you should use your miles. In my opinion, your miles are worth whatever they are worth to YOU. Use them to fly coach, to fly premium, for upgrades, for merchandise, or for magazines. Redeem them however you wish, and enjoy your hard-earned work!
If you want to earn & use your points effectively, read FlyerTalk religiously. Earn ’em and Burn ’em, sure, save some for a rainy day, but just enough to get you & your loved ones home for an emergency – other than, play all you can, you only live once – work hard, but play harder.
Plan ahead of time and grab the deal before figuring out what it is! Stay tuned and be loyal.
Always keep an emergency stash of miles for those unexpected circumstances, but take advantage of First Class redemptions whenever possible.
Always sign up for every program, even if it is a one time trip or stay, in the future it may come around again.
When considering redeeming miles for a trip instead of paying cash, take into account not just the cost of the miles you are redeeming, but also the miles you won’t earn but would have earned if you paid cash.
Every point counts. Those stupid 5 point things you do eventually add up. It won’t be long before you realize have enough points for a coach trip to Hawaii. You have to be vigilant, though!
My advice would be *not* to hoard miles, but instead burn them as soon as you can. Airlines keep charging more miles for a free ticket, and keep limiting available seats on useful routes. As a result, I have thousands of miles on American and Northwest which I’m unable to find a use for.
I think you’re better off with incremental awards than trying to save up miles on a single airline. I use a good cash back credit card (Schwab gives 2% cash back) and I book my travel based on price and convenience.
It isn’t all about the domestic redemptions! Gotta look outside the country and see where a big bucket of miles takes you instead of just 25k. That’s probably the biggest one to impart on the VX, B6, and WN fliers of the USA.
Beyond that, find a decent rewards card. And go to flyertalk if you want nerd out on the whole thing.
Be flexible
Unless you need the status miles, credit card sign up bonuses offer much better CPM than mileage runs. 20-50k miles for an annual fee or sometimes even free.
Learn the ins and outs of your loyalty program by reading the FAQs or Stickies of the individual loyalty program you’re interested in at FlyerTalk.com. Plan ahead. And the old adage “Try and try again” also applies. Be persistent.
Pick your blogs, just spend couple of your leisure minutes everyday. You are updated and remains on the top of the game.
Be vigilant about making sure every flight/stay/rental is counted, and try to pick a program that best suits your needs (locations, availability, etc). Then use em on that dream vacation – points are meant to be redeemed!
For earning: Credit card promos, charge everything
For burning: Book far in advance – 330 days!
Always be sure to find the legs with the most miles. Someitmes that may mean you book a flight from SLC to DEN routing through ATL, but that nets you and extra 2k or so of miles for no additional cost.