Visa Signature is offering 90 days of free Hyatt Platinum status. Platinum is Hyatt’s first level of status, which gets you: 2pm late checkout (subject to availability at resorts) Free internet access 15% bonus on points earned from Hyatt stays Just enter a US-issued Visa signature account number to activate the form. Status should update right away. The offer runs through May 11, 2012, so you may want to time your registration based on when you have potential Hyatt stays in order to get the most out of your 90 days of status. (HT: One Mile at a Time blog)
American Selling Miles at 2 Cents Apiece through Noon on April 5
Pizza in Motion has details of a short-term promotion on buying miles from American AAdvantage. Through noon Central time on April 5, American is offering both a 30% bonus on purchased miles and a 15% discount on the purchase of those miles. They’ll sell you up to 40,000 miles in a year, which means you net 52,000 miles, and the cost all-in is $1035.13 or 1.99 cents per mile. The 40,000 mile limit means you can’t straight-up buy yourself a transatlantic or transpacific premium class roundtrip award. But if there’s any mile out there right now that I, for my own particular preferences, value highly it’s American miles as best-able to access international first class award seats more than a couple of weeks prior to travel. Folks often forget that when they put spending on…
Citi Introduces New Benefits from American Airlines Co-Branded Credit Cards
Citibank hasn’t been nearly as aggressive as Chase (especially) or American Express the past couple of years in attracting cardmembers by adding on benefits. Perhaps it’s been their financial condition, along with Bank of America (which has been similarly sleepy in the credit card game) they’re the ones which have received some of the biggest bailouts. There are signs that that is changing with Citi. They introduced the Citi Executive card bundling American Airlines lounge access and offering the chance to earn elite qualifying miles. I get my lounge access via the American Express Platinum card, and get waved foreign currency conversion through several cards. It’s an expensive card to carry, but if I needed the elite qualifying miles to hit Executive Platinum I’d probably shell out on that basis alone, $450 for 10,000 qualifying…
First Two Weeks of Discover America Daily Getaways, Mostly Disappointing
The US Travel Association’s Daily Getaways — prepurchased discounted travel deals — returns weekdays from April 9 through May 11. Sponsored by American Express, paying with an Amex yields a 10% discount, it’s hard to imagine many people won’t do this. There’s a limited number of each deal, the better ones tend to sell out quickly, and this year some of the deals will offer a portion of the available items on ‘pre-sale’ — with access codes made available on the prize provider’s Facebook page, as an incentive to get people liking their pages. It’s being covered across lots of blogs and forums, and in the past there have been some pretty good deals. So far the Daily Getaways website shows the first two weeks’ worth of deals and there aren’t any that I’ll be…
Maximizing Miles in the Maldives: Cathay First, Eating in Singapore, and a Park Hyatt Water Villa – Park Hyatt Maldives – Part II
Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa: Introduction Positioning flights to San Francisco, Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf, and Some Dim Sum for the Day Cathay’s New San Francisco Lounge Cathay Pacific First Class, San Francisco – Hong Kong The Wing and Cathay Pacific First Class, Hong Kong – Singapore A Grand Suite at the Grand Hyatt Singapore Eating in Singapore Dinner at Waku Ghin, Marina Bay Sands Singapore Airlines Business Class: Singapore – Male Transfer to the Park Hyatt Hadahaa, Maldives Park Hyatt Maldives – Part I Park Hyatt Maldives – Part II Park Hyatt Maldives – Part III Maldivian, Kaadehdhoo – Male Singapore Airlines Business Class, Male – Singapore Cathay Pacific Business Class, Singapore – Hong Kong Conrad Hong Kong Cathay Pacific First Class, Hong Kong – Chicago American’s Chicago Flagship Lounge and the Final Journey Home Service…
Maximizing Miles in the Maldives: Cathay First, Eating in Singapore, and a Park Hyatt Water Villa – Park Hyatt Maldives – Part I
Introduction Positioning flights to San Francisco, Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf, and Some Dim Sum for the Day Cathay’s New San Francisco Lounge Cathay Pacific First Class, San Francisco – Hong Kong The Wing and Cathay Pacific First Class, Hong Kong – Singapore A Grand Suite at the Grand Hyatt Singapore Eating in Singapore Dinner at Waku Ghin, Marina Bay Sands Singapore Airlines Business Class: Singapore – Male Transfer to the Park Hyatt Hadahaa, Maldives Park Hyatt Maldives – Part I Park Hyatt Maldives – Part II Park Hyatt Maldives – Part III Maldivian, Kaadehdhoo – Male Singapore Airlines Business Class, Male – Singapore Cathay Pacific Business Class, Singapore – Hong Kong Conrad Hong Kong Cathay Pacific First Class, Hong Kong – Chicago American’s Chicago Flagship Lounge and the Final Journey Home Here’s a view of one…
25% Bonus on Transfers from Membership Rewards to Virgin Atlantic
Membership Rewards transfers to Virgin Atlantic will come with a 25% bonus from April 1 through May 15. The offer should appear on the site and tell you how many miles you’ll receive for your transfer, inclusive of the 25% bonus. As I post this it isn’t up quite yet but should be working within a few hours. Virgin has pretty darned good availability from most of its North American cities (New York-JFK, Newark, Boston, Washington Dulles, Miami, Orlando, Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Vancouver) to London, and also really good availability on to Africa as well. Its business class seat is excellent and will be refreshed as well. The downsides to Virgin are the very high fuel surcharges, which the mileage program assesses on award redemptions (as do most European and…
The Effect of Credit Card Signups on Credit Scores
One of the most-asked questions about credit cards is how does it affect your credit score, and of course the implied followup, do you care? I’ve signed up for scores of cards over many years and I still have an excellent credit score, it was nearly 800 FICO on the three major credit bureaus when I went to get my mortgage. In part because of signing up for more cards, rather than in spite of it. Each time you request credit, and your credit is pulled as a result, your score usually dips a little bit but just on the credit bureau that was pulled. So if an Experian credit report was pulled, the inquiry only shows up at Experian. Requests for credit suggest you might need credit, and lots of requests for credit can…
Deals and Updates for the Morning of March 30, 2012
Radisson has introduced Club Carlson points purchase, $7 per 1000 points up to 40,000 points annually. Not worth it for its own sake but useful to top off towards awards at the margin. Live from a Lounge says Jet Airways is offering 20% off on mileage redemptions through September 30 for awards booked on Jet metal using their website. Priority Club’s new PointBreaks list, valid through May 31, are now available. The lists are in the process of being updated, e.g. as of this writing the Asia list still shows hotels available through March 31 only, but I’m told that interesting properties in Asia include the Intercontinentals in Manila and Ho Chi Minh City for the new period. PointBreaks offer redemptions at 5000 points per night. Mommypoints says that the US Airways Debit Card from…
Booking Air France Business Class Awards with Delta Miles: IT Glitch Workaround
For the past few weeks Delta has been unable to book otherwise-available business class seats on Air France. That’s been true systemwide, and their only advice is to try to find Delta flights instead. Good luck with that (even if Delta serves your planned destination, Air France business class availability is generally good, Delta’s very much is not). Delta Points notes that the Asian call centers for Skymiles are now able to book these awards again, even though US call centers won’t see the availability. He suggests calling Hong Kong at 011 852 2810 4288. I’ve had good luck in the past with the Singapore call center, English is quite good: 011 65 6336 3371. Ask them to waive the telephone booking fee because the award cannot be booked online, some folks have been successful…
