Tag Archives for award discount.
Star Alliance member TAP Air Portugal is putting cash and points redemptions on sale so that the miles portion of a one way trip is just two miles. This is available for Friday, November 6 long haul bookings only but you can fly next year.
Marriott has a series of promotions running for a week that starts today under the banner of “Week of Wonders”. There’s a sale on paid rates, a bonus offer for making a home booking, and the biggest in my view is all hotels at off peak rates and over 7000 Marriot properties are participating in this.
Booking category 7 hotels for 50,000 points per night, and category 8 hotels for 70,000 points, especially where fall is normally peak season is an amazing deal.
British Airways is offering 50% off long haul redemptions in any cabin and 25% off of short haul. Book by October 13 for travel through June 30, 2021. No registration is required, and this appears to be available to all members worldwide and isn’t restricted to particular routes.
For instance book New York – London for just 25,000 miles each way in business class, 34,000 miles each way in first.
Air Canada is running a duo of rich promotions. These aren’t going to move the needle to get most Americans to travel since actually visiting Canada isn’t feasible right now given quarantine requirements and connecting on Air Canada is of limited use given the number of countries that are closed to those carrying U.S. passports.
Nonetheless these are offers to watch, because they underscore what a loyalty program can do to help get members excited and because they’ll be gathering strong data on how much promotions can move the needle right now on travel in places where the virus seems under control.
IHG appears to have rolled out fully dynamic pricing for awards. While that means some hotel redemptions for a very low number of points now, long term this is a terrible thing for members. Don’t believe others who call dynamic pricing an ‘amazing deal’.
One of the best tools in travel years ago was Travelocity Dream Maps. You’d plug in the city you were starting from, and how much you were willing to spend, and it would give you a map of all the places you could go for that amount or less. The tool was decommissioned about a decade ago, but American Airlines has an award map that is similar for miles.
Star Alliance member TAP Air Portugal has 280,000 frequent flyer members in the U.S. market, growing at about 12,000 members per month, and now serves 9 North American cities with 81 weekly flights. They’re even launching Boston to the Azores in June. And they acknowledge that their Miles & Go program “hasn’t been as relevant as it should be.” They aim to change that.
They are offering status matches up to their top elite tier, mileage on sale for less than 9/10ths of a cent apiece, 25% discounts on award redemption, and miles just for joining the program and referring others to join as well.
San Francisco – Singapore non-stop, SQ flights 1 and 2, are on sale for 66,500 miles each way in business class. That’s a 30% discount. You need to book in February for March travel. Premium economy awards are also on sale for several routes.
LifeMiles is one of the best frequent flyer programs for advanced miles and points collectors because they have hidden deals and there are tricks to reduce the price of awards.
I once heard the head of the program give a presentation where he called miles earned by flying “bad miles” and miles sold to partners (like banks) and to customers “good miles.” This frequent flyer program is basically the consolidator for Star Alliance airline excess premium cabin inventory. Lots of ways to get their miles cheap, and use them for seats that their partners aren’t going to sell for cash (saver award inventory).
Hyatt is offering 25% off the cash portion of cash and points redemptions and up to a 25% rebate on free night award redemptions at top properties, and for a brief period this even stacks with the 10% rebate available to co-brand credit card customers.
This includes the Park Hyatts Maldives, St. Kitts, Mallorca and MIlan as well as Andaz Papagayo and more.
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 »
