As some of you may have heard, Boarding Area is giving away a free trip to Australia’s Gold Coast. This trip includes airfare, hotel, excursions, meals, PLUS enough cash to cover the approximate taxes. What a great prize!! The official rules and information can be found here.
So, your immediate questions must be: How to I enter?? And how do I WIN????
The answer: Write a comment to this post about the following: What is your top tip for people who want to earn and use their loyalty points? Then one person who commented will be chosen by a random drawing. That person will then be entered in the Boarding Area drawing with the winners from the other blogs. So easy!!! Only one entry per person.
Good luck! I would LOVE for one of my readers to win this trip. Unfortunately, I cannot award it to myself (or my husband) but one of my readers would be the next best thing š
(And for those who commented early–please don’t comment again, I will count those for the drawing. Thanks!)
Life is short, use those miles!
Save your boarding passes. After your travel is finished, check your frequent flier account for the miles you traveled to show up. Once they do, you can toss the boarding passes. I use my boarding passes as bookmarks since I often travel with one or more new books. See, there’s two tips for the price of one!
Points have a cash value. Don’t get so blinded by earning a few more points that you spend way more that you may need to. Sometimes a different brand may be a better value, even after loyalty.
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 couldnāt 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.
Earn the miles/points in the cheapest possible ways and then burn them for the most luxurious travel!
Fly within one global airline alliance and credit all of your miles to one FF account. That way, your miles arenāt spread around to different accounts, making it hard to ever accumulate enough to redeem them for anything.
Concentrate your efforts on one or two programs. Use the Boarding Area blogs and FlyerTalk to find great deals and tips on making the best use of your miles/points.
Donāt just credit flight miles to your FF program, but also take advantage of partner offers where they make sense ā 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 Iām now mid-tier (Premier Exec) on United, I was a 3-4 times a year flier at the time.
My top tip is to try and accumulate miles in Membership Rewards by American Express since it allows you maximum flexibility to redeem the points and you can earn points for purchases, up to 10X points in the membershiprewards.com earn section and earn 3X points when you shop through the Bonus Points MallĀ® website.
My fiance and I are temporarily living on opposite coasts, and loyalty programs help us spend quality time together. Racking up miles on my business trips means we can see each other more often. Earning hotel points means that we can have special nights in hotels when we do get to see each other. Parking at the airport in a parking lot with rewards means I don’t have to pay for parking when I do get to see him. And I agree with Earl Christie above – always check after the trip to make sure the miles/points/whatever show up in your account.
Go with friends! Itās amazing how far you can get if you pool group resources ā one personās hotel upgrade with anotherās free car rental etc. Works on three levels (1) You can often score a āstay with your friendsā freebie (i.e., two of you have access to the first class lounge, the third can usually come along) (2) Friends who donāt have miles are often happy to pay any cash portion of a status change etc. as their contribution (3) Travelling companions!
Also, friends who “don’t bother with the whole miles thing” are often happy to lend a hand if you make it easier for them – i.e., “Hey friend, in advance of our trip – click this link, sign up for this promotion, earn 100,000 miles. I’ll show you how we can use them!” Then you have more to work with.
My tip is always be aware of partnerships for both earning and burning. I know a number of people who have lost out because theyāve collected in multiple placed when they would have done better by collecting in one locationāi.e. collecting on both United and USAir, or not knowing about Alaskaās various partnerships. Status in one progam is better than halfway to status in many programs.
Stick with one airline and hotel and even car company. It will be worth it when you can take a complete trip for free! Also, make sure you are signed up for all newsletters so you are aware of double miles/points, etc. And don’t be afraid to use the miles/points for upgrades!!
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!
Miles are great but don’t go crazy and overspend just to get miles.
When redeeming your miles it is always better to avoid school holidays and to travel off season to get the best value for your miles with airlines and hotels.
Make note and set up a reminder of the expiration dates of your points so you don’t let them expire.
Come to the Ann Arbor Art Fair DO this July 24 and 25th. You’ll get great tips, including how to book elusive award tickets. Past speakers include Viajero Joven, gleff, Ingy, Lucky9876Coins and wanaflyforless. Details in CommunityBuzz forum on flyertalk.com.
Top Tip – Read the blogs on Boardingarea.com. The bloggers on the website do a fantastic job gathering and synthesizing all of the information out there in order to keep you up to date on ways to maximize earning rewards. On the “using” side of the equation, they stay abreast of all of the best deals to use points, and also provide detailed advice and comparisons on using your rewards.
Make sure you earn miles for everything: car rentals, credit card spend, online shopping, everything. Spending money without incentives should be minimized. (Like paying cash for stuff. If you get to the point of being financially responsible, then debit cards are a bad deal.)
Run a few MRs or other enhanced itineraries in order to accumulate miles, once you have the miles redeem them for international Business or First class ticketsā¦ I spent 130,000 AA miles for a 20,000 miles RTW trip in Business Class
Keep a log of ALL points earned and any promotion associated. Regularly reconcile your earnings. So many points are just lost because they were never awarded. Think about hiring one of your children to help you keep track.
Save those points and keep racking them up for the well deserved vacay that lasts a week! Not just a random hotel here and there! Much better pointage spent
Two tips for the price of one entry! I know this doesnāt increase chances of winning, but I surely hope it doesnāt break the rules š
1. If you think you might lose elite status the following year due to changes in travel patterns, focus more on paid (point/mile-earning) flights and stays while you still have status. Two reasons this helps: (A) you take advantage of the elite benefit of bonus earning (10%, 25%, 50%, 100%, etc) that should more than compensation for the risk of devaluation in the coming year, and (B) you will continue to take advantage of upgrades associated with your status in the paid flights/stays. This means avoiding redemption of miles, points, and āfreeā vouchers (e.g. VDB) that do not earn miles ā use these for your family and friends instead, or maybe offer a tit-for-tat exchange (youāll pay for someone elseās trip using points, and theyāll pay for your similar or less expensive trip using money).
2. Donāt overestimate the value of your miles/points or be overzealous of spending money just to collect rewards, since this is counterproductive to your more important personal finance goals (that will fund more travel!). For example, if you would never pay $20,000 for an international first class flight, donāt benchmark your miles based on that cost! If you do the math, you might find that cashback cards will be more beneficial to your pocketbook than mile or point-earning cards. For example, the Schwab InvestFirst Visa gives 2% cash back on all purchases; would you rather have 2 cents in your pocket for every $1 you spend, or one mile/point? If you always redeem for domestic flights for 25k miles, are those limited-availability flights worth $500 to you?
Know all of your flight options before you book anything – revenue or reward. Those notes will help you be flexible and well-informed as you attempt a booking.
Remember to be polite and patient when making an award reservation. The agent will be more likely to go the extra mile to find a routing that works.
Use miles only for upgrades. Itās the biggest bang for the buck. Itās a total waste of miles for hotel nights etc. as well redemption reward tickets.
Besides checking out the Boarding Area and Road Warriorette for the best deals and current information, being flexible – you might be able to work in a five day layover somewhere fabulous to get a airline free ticket for half the cost of that ticket if you had to pay for it.
When looking to book, use a dollop of ITA, gobs of patience, plenty of flexibility and a good dose of bull headedness.
Explore ALL your options when booking Award flights. Pull up the route maps for airlines in your alliance and look for the obscure/unusual, and then check availability. Never trust a phone agent to help you find a creative award routing. Do the legwork if you want to find that dream trip, and be flexible.
Don’t overreach. If your travel is moderate, stick with one program and milk it all you can.
Pay for all of your purchases (and bills), no matter how small, with a mileage earning credit card.
Try to fly only one airline most of the time. It is more likely that you will earn elite status than choosing the cheapest flights. It does eventually pay for itself.
Use your points-accumulating credit card(s) for every possible purchase including household bills and the entire meal bill with friends (hopefully theyāll pay you back in cash or by check!).
Do your homework. Read as many travel blogs as possible and register for as many promotions as possible, those points will add up!
In the beginning, stick with one airline and one alliance so one can gain status faster.
My tip is to avoid Delta Skymiles since it is impossible to use those miles for awards at the lowest tier level!
Set goals for travel awards.
Points = Money
Earnāem, Trackāem, most importantly Spendāem!
Stay loyal to one airline alliance or hotel brand. That’s the quickest and easiest way to accumulate points/miles and reap the benefits.
Whatās your top tip for travelers who want to earn and use their loyalty points?
The value of points tends to decrease with time, so burn āem rather than earn āemā¦. when you have enough for a nice premium intercontinental award.
Do your research to find the alliance that best meets your needs. Also, subscribe to blogs such as this one for tips and advice on maximizing points!
Concentrate your loyalty to one hotel or airline program and try to earn the highest status level as possible in that program.
Simplify…don’t try to chase rewards from too many cards/airlines/whatever. What works for me personally is using the same credit card (with great rewards) for almost EVERYthing. It’s easy to track, and I’m never caught off-guard by losing points to expiration (or my really poor memory).
AA does reduced mileage awards to europe off peak for 40,000 miles. Is a good way to get to europe using less miles.
You need to have an organizational system. There’s just too much information on the Internet to remember it all and keep it all straight. I keep a folder on my computer for general miles and points information that I pick up, and then subfolders for each of the various destinations that I dream about visiting in the future. Any little useful tidbit gets filed away for future use. It’s amazing that, when I am able to redeem an award and go on one of those dream vacations, I’ve already got a lot of info salted away. Keeps me motivated as well to keep building those points and miles accounts.
Fly one airline or at least one alliance and make sure those miles post!
Pick a program that you like and stick to it, even if it may cost a little more. They’re not called loyalty rewards for nothing.
When making online purchases, check to see if your preferred incentive program offers miles for purchases made at partner retail websites when using their portal. For example, you can earn 3 miles per dollar spent at Overstock.com, Target, or Sephora via American’s program.
You can learn alot from reading blogs at boardingarea.