Giveaway: Trip for 2 to Australia’s Gold Coast including airfare, 7 nights hotel, meals…!

by Gary Leff

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!

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Be flexible. If you know where you want to go, search around to find which days/times/months are the cheapest number of miles and go from there!

  2. Sometimes all that is required to earn miles is a single purchase (e.g., 750 miles from deluxe.com through e-miles). While the cheapest items on the website may be hard do find, our friend Google will allow you to search on a single domain. Try searching for terms like “$1.”, “1.”, “$2.”, etc. to find cheap items. With this method, I earned 750 US miles for buying a $3 check cover shipped free. .4cpm!

  3. You should never spend a dollar (unless you have to pay cash) that doesn’t earn you some kind of mileage or loyalty points.

  4. If you don’t get what you want the first time, hang up and call again. Always be informed about where you want to go and what routes you can take to get there and use the ANA website and expertflyer to be informed about what availability is out there.

  5. You can transfer SPG points to over 30 different airlines at a 1 to 1 ratio. Transferring 20,000 SPG points gives you a bonus of 5,000 miles, for a total of 25,000 miles — enough for a domestic award ticket.

  6. Stick to your favorite companies (airline, car rental, hotel) to really rack up the miles! Sometimes they will offer their most loyal customers really great bonus mile options.

  7. Ideally pick the program with the most flexibility in redeeming among OTHER programs (for example, Starwood points are useful not just for Starwood properties, but can be transferred into many airline programs at bonus miles for you(and if AA, can also count for lifetime status) and from there can be used for other hotel programs (for example the AA:HH 1:2 redemption). As a fallback, don’t hoard all in one program (Starwood good for most but not all airlines, using AMEX points for those airlines is a good backup)

  8. My tip is to have the credit card with the program you are in. This will be most efficient in earning points per spending. For instance, if you are platinum, Marriott credit card allows you to earn 20 points / $1 spent at Marriott (10 base pts + 5 Plat pts + 5 credit card pts); Amex Starwood allows you to earn 5 points / $1 spent (2 base pts + 1 Plat pts + 2 credit card pts), etc…

    My tip on spending is to be flexible and make use of the benefits offer by each program, such as staying 4 nights and get 1 night free, pointsaver stay. Plan and make reservation early since more options are available and the reservation can be cancelled should your plan changes.

  12. Don’t just credit flight miles to your FF program, but also take advantage of partner offers where they make sense – credit cards, dining, etc. This can go a long way to earning those rewards, particularly for infrequent fliers. Through credit card use and partner offers, I earned enough miles to fly myself and my wife to Hawaii for our one year anniversary. Although I’m now mid-tier (Premier Exec) on United, I was a 3-4 times a year flier at the time.

  13. Plan a group trip with friends and be in charge of all the booking. You get all the miles and points on your card and your friends are happy to let you organize it and then pay you afterwards.

  14. Accumulating miles takes a bit of work, much like making money. So continue doing your homework & overtime you will be successful as I continue to be.

  15. Don’t be afraid to use airline/hotel credit cards to accumulate points in order to prevent older points from expiring. Sending a bouquet of flowers to someone can be an easy way to prevent thousands of points from disappearing.

  16. Use your BA miles to Buenos Aires with a stopover on Easter Island for 80K BA miles in Business or 40K in Economy on LAN. Best use of BA miles IMHO.

  17. My only advice is repeating what others say – Read this blog religiously, watch Flyertalk, and someday, when you stumble upon the dream fare or rate (mistake or otherwise), pay it forward to Gary first! Then, of course, share!

  18. Not everyone can be the Pudding Guy, but we can all take advantage of the mileage opportunities that are out there. Don’t use a single resource to stay informed.

  19. SPG…The best points program ever! Earn points through American Express and then use them for a lot of different programs. I use mine to get discounted hotel rooms, for example, I’m staying using a few points and only $60 bucks to stay a night in Hawaii! And they convert to a lot of airlines miles programs. I gave 20K SPG points to Hawaiian Air and got 25K miles!

  20. Be loyal to one of the global airline teams (which has the many flights from your point of origin) and try to have all of your miles credit to one Frequent Flyer account. Also, try finding different credit cards/ programs that give you non-flying miles/points bonuses on that account This will ensure that your miles are always dumped to one account, making it easy to accumulate enough miles/points to redeem anytime and anywhere.

  21. Don’t hoard your miles, use them and earn more, read flyertalk at least once a day and of course, read the boarding area blogs and learn from those constantly beating the pavement for the rest of us…

  22. Use a spreadsheet to keep track of your miles/points. You never know when the company might make a mistake, and it will help you plan your travel to make sure you get the most out of each trip.

    Also utilize online tracking consolidator websites like http://www.yodlee.com to keep track of multiple travel accounts in 1 convenient location.

  23. Use your points-accumulating credit card(s) for every possible purchase including household bills and the entire meal bill with friends (hopefully they’ll pay you back in cash or by check!).

  24. What’s your top tip for travelers who want to earn and use their loyalty points?

    I would recommend utilizing a point tracker service like tripit.com! It’s great with tracking itineraries too!

  25. Don’t ever buy miles or pay to transfer miles. Often better to buy an item, rent a car, that also brings bonus miles. We’ve gotten as many miles with that as spending the extra $’s for a pure transfer of miles to miles. Of course starwood transfers, etc. to airlines can work great.

  26. stay on top of every blog and source for specials. Read Inside Flyer. There is always some little nugget to be found by doing the research.

  27. 1)Make sure your miles program matches your
    award goals.
    2)If you have a mileage credit card make sure it
    allows you to redeem awards with numerous
    carriers.
    3)Start looking for your award seats 6 months in
    advance of your trip.
    4)Don’t forget to check code-share partners for
    award seats.
    5)Look for award seats on midweek days.
    6)Since carriers change their award inventory on
    Friday & Saturday nights at midnight, check then
    for award seats.
    7)Try BookYourAward.com. Worth the price to get
    the seat you want.(According to Wendy Perrin at
    Conde Nast Traveler.)

  28. Two suggestions worth mentioning:
    1. Get family members into the game. My DP and I both applied for the Chase BA Visa and together we gathered up something over 400K BA miles and 270K AA miles by combining BA Visa, AA cc, and Citi USA savings account activity.
    2. Quite a while ago I read, but haven’t used, moving SPG points between accounts for people within the same household. If still good this would encourage having someone add an Amex SPG card and later combing the points.

  29. *** Learn the intricacies of status matching ***

    Occasionally there are promotions with hotels and airlines that temporarily boost status in their program. Take your new status level and match to competing programs! With some careful planning you can quickly attain status in several programs with an opportunity to
    “challenge” to further upgrade or keep your new level of status.

  31. Use your AA miles to purchase one ways awards to Australia, you may fly first one way and coach the other way.

  32. While it may seem simple, most people probably don’t think about it… Pay the extra $5 to throw in a layover somewhere if you’re not in a rush, or the extra $10 for two layovers. I’m a casual traveller with no rush to get places, so that $10 can buy an extra (potentially) 3000 miles per trip with some creativity. Since I don’t spend enough on cards and can only make 5 or so trips a year, an extra 3k per trip can make a difference for me.

  33. Pick one program that suits your needs and concentrate mileage accumulation in it.

  34. My best friend is my Delta Reserve. For someone who is more of a frequent spender than flier, it gets me oodles of MQM, free SkyClub access, tie-breaker on the upgrade ladder and – best of all – that free first class companion certificate. Totally worth the $450 annual fee to me.

  35. Don’t just save your miles for a 25k mile domestic ticket. International business class tickets offer far more value per mile.

  36. Consider using the Alaska Airlines MP as a catch-all for AM, DL, and others, especially if you are a low/moderate flier on any individual airline.

  37. Buy a subscription to Mileage Manager and use it to keep track of all of your balances. If you want to redeem for a trip to a specific destination, it will do a daily check of all your qualifying programs to see what’s available, when, and in what class and keep you up-to-date by email.

  41. Use your hotel points for an overnight stay at an airport hotel that includes parking for 7-10 days. That way you get a free night and free parking. Great for those early morning departures or arrivals after a long overseas flight.

  43. Well, I try to figure out what I want to achieve for the year about about three years out. Is it a trip to Africa, upgrades to the continent or what. Then, research what programs offer the best solution and options, then look at what I have in what program THEN figure out what the best way to transfer my $$ spend TO THAT PROGRAM.

    To sum up, SET A GOAL and work towards it.

  45. Be consistent. Why spread your points around and never have enough to do anything with? Find what works for you and stick with it. We recently found a nightly price on a hotel room that we felt we couldn’t pass up, but we really should have gone to the adjacent Intercontintental Hotel in order to get some Priority Club points while we were at it.

  49. If you don’t get the answer you want on the first call into the airlines, call back. Often, you’ll get a better answer after a few tries.

  50. Use the credit card promotions, read the blogs to stay on top of the giveaways and promotions. Make sure to keep the accounts active and don’t let the miles expire! – You can also find how to do that in this blog.

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