Points, status, and bonuses are often the most leveraged way to secure the best overall travel experience at the lowest price overall. In other words, best value proposition — combination of best rooms, best benefits like breakfast and internet, for the lowest price considering all that you get. That’s mostly what I write about and how I approach my own travel. But there are times when it’s all about price, not all about the best overall travel experience. So instead of ‘how do you get elite status quickly?’ or ‘how do you leverage that status with points promotions and upgrades?’ this post is about ‘how do you get the best price?’. I’m going to give a shot at look at airfare, hotels, and rental cars separately. Let’s start with hotels. Though since I’m not always…
ASIA
Search Results for "ASIA".
How to Use Delta Skymiles to Book International Premium Class Awards
Yesterday I wrote a guide to redeeming US Airways Dividend Miles for awards on their Star Alliance partners. Now Troy has written up a similar guide for Delta Skymiles. Delta’s availability on its own flights tends to be much less generous than most other airlines. But they do have some pretty good partners, and those partners often have decent availability. But Delta makes the process more cumbersome than most airlines to find the great partner award availability, and to get it at the ‘low’ award level price. First, because the Delta website is very limited in the partners it has on offer. Second, because for most cases the only way to ‘hold’ an award is on the website, otherwise it’s instant ticketing only, which makes tinkering difficult. Third, because Delta agents aren’t very adept at…
Using US Airways Dividend Miles to Book Star Alliance Awards
You can use your US Airways Dividend Miles for travel on Star Alliance carriers. This is usually the best way to make use of your miles (although consider US Airways’ new business class product, especially during ‘low season’ when the awards are discounted). With the numerous partners in the Star Alliance, most awards are possible. The US Airways website doesn’t help, you have to call to make your booking. But prepare for your call, agents have limited tools at their disposal and aren’t always well-versed in the rules. If you have difficulty, best advice is ‘hang up, call back’ and you can probably get what you need. It’s always best to plan out your award in advance, and I’ll be writing more about how to go about doing this in the near future. There are…
The First Award Redemption I’ve Ever Been Jealous Of — All Nippon’s New First Class “Inspiration of Japan”
I’ve never been jealous of an award that I had booked for someone else, until now. I’ve flown many of the great airline products, tasted what the best carriers have to offer. And I’ll admit it, I do crave trying new and different seats and service and food and experiencing what innovative carriers are doing. Call it blog research if you’d like, but I admit to being a terrible geek for sucj things. We all have our quirks and foibles. It’s highly likely that I redeem more miles than anyone else, I’ve reserved over 80 million miles worth of awards during the past year for folks, and I’ve put together some very nice itineraries on the very best airlines among the more pedestrian ‘family of 4 to Italy this summer’ bookings. And I rarely stop…
40% Bonus on Transfers from American Express to British Airways
I logged into my Membership Rewards account and saw the following offer this morning, when selecting British Airways I get Limited Time Offer 40% Bonus BA Miles! and mousing over reveals: You can get 40% more BA Miles from British Airways just by transferring Membership Rewards® points to your British Airways Executive Club account now through March 31, 2011. It’s restricted to ‘one bonus per cardmember’ so only your first transfer during the promotion period will earn the 40%. Choose your transfer amount wisely! Transferring 72,000 Amex points to British Airways would yield enough miles for roundtrip business class on Cathay Pacific from North America to Asia, grab a free stopover in Hong Kong and travel as far as Bali. That’s a pretty excellent deal. Things to keep in mind about British Airways, though: You…
American AAdvantage Access to British Airways Award Space Across the Atlantic Really is a Game Changer
British Airways began offering full mileage-earning to their Executive Club members, even on discounted fares. That’s huge. No more 25% mileage-earning and never quite reaching an award. A monster step forward for a European program, and one that has Flying Blue scrambling and shaking their heads. Every European discount fare traveler with a choice, not wedded to a non-stop (or not able to access one from their home airport) and not striving for elite status in a competing program really should consider British Airways Executive Club. With bmi’s Diamond Club slated to go away, BA Executive Club became in one fell swoop arguably the best frequent flyer program in Europe. Sure, there are arguments to be made for Miles & More. But their award chart is expensive and has gotten more so. This really was…
The Two Most Difficult Frequent Flyer Award Redemptions Out There — And How to Book Them
I find the single most difficult award to get from North America is flying to Australia and New Zealand. It used to be easy, fortunately for me, because I have family there. For the past couple of years it’s been truly the needle in a haystack exercise. Not that many years ago United offered a brief period where every flight had the full first class cabin available on points, but that was a glitch. More often than not there’ll be seats opening on United when the schedule loads, perhaps a single first class award and a couple of business seats, and those go quickly. Randomly across the schedule as time progresses more seats will open, but any given flight may be very tough to get. Expertflyer automatic searches and email alerts are very useful here.…
And the Winner is…
Hyatt wanted to highlight the benefits of the Gold Passport program.. which for general members became especially attractive a year and a half back when they lifted capacity controls on their hotels, if there’s a standard room available at a property you can have that room with your points. And which for elites became especially attractive as well, they were the first chain to introduce free internet (and for all elites, not just top tier). And they won a Frequent Traveler Award for “Best Elite Level” in both North America and Asia Pacific, as well as a Loyalty Leadership Award for introducing confirmed suite upgrades four times annually for their Diamond members, providing top tier elites the benefit they want most when they decide they most want it. So they asked if I’d give away…
Basic Tips for Getting Organized and Getting Rewards in the New Year
Regular readers of this blog know that many of the things I often write for for intermediate travels than for beginners. But I’ve been evangelizing the benefits of miles, points, and free travel more often to colleagues and friends of friends more frequently lately, and I thought that passing along some of the basics that I’ve found helpful for the not-already-converted might be useful to some of y’all having similar conversations with family over the holidays. And thus I offer some basic tips for getting your rewards house in order for the New Year, since most everyone can set a goal to have their dream trips inexpensively with a little bit of attention to rewards programs. Sign up for frequent flyer programs. If you’re flying cross country and back, why not sign up for a…
Thanksgiving in Mumbai: Touring Mumbai
Thanksgiving in Mumbai – Touring Mumbai: Before heading to Mumbai I had done a bit of searching online for well-regarded guides. I first found Mumbai Moments, which seemed to receive raves at TripAdvisor. I emailed them and they were available during our stay, but as we discussed what I wanted to do and see it became clear that this wasn’t going to be a good match. I always like to try to understand a place in part through its food, had researched some of the restaurants and things from vendors that I wanted to try, and shared the particulars. Amish, the guide, let me know that he’s a follower of Jainism and won’t take clients to any non-vegetarian restaurant. I respectfully chose to find someone else, since that wasn’t going to match what I wanted…
