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!)
Be flexible. We can’t always get everything we want, at the time we want, at the price we want in other areas of our life so sometimes the awards won’t match our desires. Be flexible and keep trying.
With respect to airlines ā Learn how to redeem the points. Learn the partners, the different types of awards available for your given program etcā¦ Just because the online search tool only gives you limited availability, doesnāt mean your award isnāt available. Even calling in isnāt a sure bet. If you know the rules and the booking classes, you can help guide a helpful phone agent to craft the itinerary you want.
If the flight you want isn’t available, before paying double miles to get what you want, check business and first class, even for short domestic flights. Sometimes there’s unexpected availability for no extra miles.
Use ANA to research award travel and expert flyer/KVS for other airlines. Study the airlineās award website and have 1 or 2 backups. If you spread points across alliances (easy to do with credit card churning) you will have a lot more options! Do NOT rely on the agent to find you a routing!
Every mile counts so try to get every mile possible from dining, shopping etc. Use SPG as your primary credit card for easy ability to convert to other programs.
Sign up for a credit card/check card that will award you miles to your favorite FF program, and book your flights using said card if at all possible.
decide how using your points/miles makes sense for you…whether for upgrades, free nights or flights, whatever…and then concentrate on maximizing accumulation with partners, promotions, etc…
Pick the best alliance for your travel needs, and back that up with another airline. For me, in Seattle, United (Star Alliance) and Alaska offers a good mix of earning and redemption choices.
How to earn points?!: Easy..choose an airline that serves your “home” city.. the major airport hub closest to youSign up for their frequent flyer program and consolidate all of your travel on that airline. In addition, sign up for all of the extra ways to earn points; dining, making regular purchases, etc.. and credit those points to your airline frequent flyer account. In no time you’ll have enough points saved up for that free trip!!
As several other bloggers have noted, there is value in putting your points in one airline alliance! Here are more thoughts on that: Do a bit of research and decide which alliance network is best for your travel style. Join and work to put all your flights through that alliance. This way all your points are put into one source. Additionally, finding a credit card with the main airline of this alliance increases your base of points and sometimes your status. When you purchase tickets make sure that the tickets count towards your miles.
Apply for a new credit card and earn bonus sign-up miles.
Join a loyalty program with household accounts that pool miles. Combine that with a credit card program and you will have more miles to use faster!
Pick one airline and aim for elite status!
SPG AMEX
Collect miles and points only for airlines and hotels that you really like and that are readily available for use.
Treat your miles like money – if you take your time to spend your money, take the time to research your options. A few clicks could save you thousands of miles, increasing your redemption power.
Keep an eye out for lifetime miles. If you earn more than a million miles over your lifetime on most programs, you get added benefits, including elite status for life.
Focus on one hotel program to concentrate your loyalty point earning. Oftentimes, once you reach top tier status, other hotel loyalty programs will match status with a minimal night/stay requirement. Some hotels say they will only match status once, but in the past few years, status matching has been easier than ever…follow-up and don’t take no for an answer.
Check your account regularly to make sure all miles get posted. Keep your boarding passes to retroactively get any miles to post that slip through the cracks.
If you have a lot of miles in a program that you are having a hard time redeeming for flights (like Delta ), do not rule out hotel redemptions! Not all programs are alike – I found the redemption rates for Delta for hotel stays to be much better than other programs, and not as odious as having to use them on mid or high level flight awards!
For someone just starting out, figure out which airlines you would be flying most. Then choose one that has the most flights and most partner airlines available for your desired routes. No matter which partner airline you fly, make sure to always credit your miles to the one frequent flyer program that you signed up with. Eventually you will have enough miles for your first award, whatever that may be.
Donāt let anyone tell you how you should use your miles. In my opinion, your miles are worth whatever they are worth to YOU. Use them to fly coach, to fly premium, for upgrades, for merchandise, or for magazines. Redeem them however you wish, and enjoy your hard-earned work!
Make sure you know all the partners for your mileage plan…you can get miles for flying other airlines & car rentals too… check out “travel partners” on your airlines web-ste…
Cheers,
Gustavo
Ps, hope I can get to add Aussie trip miles š
Get a mileage or point credit card with your prefered airline..it’s a great way to earn double miles, and points on purchases you would make anyway on a bank card…. there are also websites that give you miles just for answering quick surveys, totally worth it!
Iād suggest reading up on all programs offered by those you most frequently use, and spend points smartā¦get the most out of it, but also be aware of all the rules involved with spending the points.
Redeem, redeem and redeem. Don’t let the miles/points devaluate!!!
My travel tips:
For airlines:
Get to elite status as soon as possible. Do Mileage Run if needed.
For hotels:
Use the promotions as much as possible. Do Mattress Run if needed.
Top tip: Flexibility. Be willing to be a little bit flexible when it comes both to dates and destinations. Also, be flexible about using the points at all – keep an eye on the costs of booking the hotel or flights that you have chosen, and be willing to cancel if the economics are reasonable.
Focus your travel in a single program, but always be open to earning bonuses and taking advantages of great promotions in other programs you donāt typically use.
Just read the flyertalk forums and the boardingarea blogs!
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), etcā¦
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.
Do your research first and get the credit card the provides miles/points for the way you travel. Make sure you earn your popints for the major airline serving your airport.
I’d recommend American Express Membership Rewards program – you can transfer miles to a lot of different airlines and hotels (you’re not stuck with one brand), and they have come good incentive promotions – double/triple miles etc. Kind of a one-stop-shop approach.
Set up your bills to be paid automatically using your American Express Card.
Keep everything in one family: Hotel stays, credit card usage, car rentals, airlines. Always ātake the points,ā never the gifts.
Choose a loyalty program that allows you to earn points over a wide variety of opportunities, airline tickets, hotels, car rentals, meals, shopping opportunities, as well as bonus offers.
Suppose you need to fly from Cleveland to Venice. Never ask whether award seats are available from Cleveland to Venice. Instead, start with the hub-to-hub routes flown by the carriers in your alliance. Say it’s the Star Alliance: Look for availability on flights from Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia, Toronto, or Washington, D.C. (hubs for Star Alliance partners Continental, United, US Airways, and Air Canada) to Frankfurt, Vienna, Munich, or Copenhagen. That gives you more than 20 possibilities. Once you’ve found a hub-to-hub flight with award seats, tack on the short-haul spoke-to-hub or hub-to-spoke options (Cleveland to Chicago or Dulles, for example, and Frankfurt or Vienna to Venice).
My tip is to plan early and be persistent. In order to maximize your points, you have to be patient and organized.
Sign up all your credit cards for every points program on one airline/alliance. My husband and I earn points just for eating at places we normally eat (or, we try new places when the points are doubled/tripled!) and shopping at places we frequently shop and, VOILA, at the end of the month I get an email update from American on how many points we’ve earned simply by doing what we normally do. The email update also provides a nice reminder to get out and enjoy life, so I start planning my next trip as I’m reading it!
When booking award travel, be flexible and be EARLY!
The magic number is 330. Most airlines load new inventory into their reservations system 330 days prior to the flight date. If there are any award seats on the flight you want, they will be available right after that flight is loaded into the system.
Of course, popular travel days (i.e. holidays, spring break, etc.) and popular travel routes/destinations may cause these seats to disappear nearly immediately after release, but be patient, plan well in advance, and mark (and double-check) your calendar for the correct day to start your search.
Happy travels!
Many semi-frequent flyers donāt realize that they can often credit their flown miles to a different airline miles program within an alliance or through other reciprocal agreements. Doing so can keep all your miles in one place (or at least just a few places), with a potentially significant impact on how soon youāll have enough miles for award travel.
Earning miles quickly is much easier than you think! Every time you have to pay for something, think of gaining mileage points. Get a credit card (like AmEx) that gives the most mileage points for your favorite airline every time you use the card; I use that one card for just about everything. Then, check out what companies your airline partners with and shop through them (for i.e. hotel stays, car rentals, and even for significant things like home loans, larger purchases, loans, insurance and even home purchases). Many airlines have ādining for milesā programs (linked up to your credit card). You can also shop at your regular stores online but go through mall sites (like Deltaās SkyMall) where you get points for money spent (thatās in addition to the miles your credit card will give). You can also rack up the points by completing online surveys for companies linked up to your airline (like erewards.com for Delta miles). Also, check your airlineās frequent flier webpage every now and then for specials offering points. It all adds up quickly!
Once you have enough miles on an airline, plan to use them, but do your planning well in advance, like making reservations 2 months early, to ensure availability of your preferred travel dates. Remember: once made, the reservations cannot be changed. Lastly, make your hard-earned $$ work for you and enjoy your free reward trip to the max!
ā¢ Hereās one for you. Tax time is drawing near pay your taxes with an airline linked credit card. here is another for you (2 for the price of 1). there are certain food chains vonns, pathmarkā¦ that you can link your ff account to there card so everytime you grocery shop you get ff miles). we all must eat and if u think about it you probably spend at least $10K a year at the grocery store.
read boarding area blogs; browse flyertalk discussions; use Starwood Preferred Guest Card from America Express.
Log onto Flyertalk.com every day and learn.
[Full Disclaimer: I am one of the founders of the site, so consider this a shameless self-promotion!]
My hint is to use Grativis.com to manage all your frequent flyer program information – it’s like Mint.com for points.
It will pull in all of your points (flights, hotels, car, and others) and show it to you in a 1-page dashboard, while also showing the detailed information just 1 click away. What makes it different (and better) than other point management sites is that, in addition to showing your points, it will show what you can buy (eg “how many round trip coach tickets to Europe can I buy?”) with your points!
It’s in private beta right now, but I’ve set up 100 invites for BoardingArea.com users so that they can test it out themselves and see how it makes managing points easier than anything else out there.
To Sign Up:
https://www.grativis.com/index.php?step=newuser
Referral Code: BOARDINGAREA-FRIENDS
Thanks for a great site!
Michael Komarnitsky
Grativis.com
My two power strategies are to select a few travel partners and be loyal to them to maximize your benefits. Secondly, use a single credit card with a good reward program for everyting. Yes I mean everything. You should have heard me and the Acura salesman negotiating over a $42,000 purchase being put on my American Express card!
As for the travel partners, I have a friend who has used Hyatt hotels exclusively for 25 years. He hasn’t paid for an exotic luxury hotel detstination vacation in 12 years and he can get a great room at any Hyatt anytime – they never tell him they are sold out!
If you get an agent that is unhelpful – hang up and call back until you get an agent who is knowledgeable and willing to help.
People have said this already but I’ll say it again – CONSOLIDATE. Put em all in one place. American is going ga ga about offering so many ways to get points (even eating at my obscure neighborhood bar&grill gets me points) so try to enjoy the accumulation and keep em all in one pocket.
My top tip for using airline points is to be ready to plan several months in advance, be flexible and pick a few dates and surrounding airports to chose to fly into, and if you’re unable to find a flight by yourself online, try calling a points representative. You may have to pay a small fee but often they are able to search with partner airlines and get you where you want to go! You may want to check back a few times if you aren’t able to get it on the first try, as sometimes ther is an extra special agent that will go out of their way to help you a litte more. Be nice!
My miles-earning tip is to frequently try to use the shopping portals offered through airline and hotel sites (for example, Mileage Plus Mall for United Airlines, or Priority Club Shopping for Priority Club Rewards) to buy things that I need. Not only do I earn miles on my airline or hotel affiliated credit card, but also an additional minimum of 1 mile per $1 spent. Even better though is when you come across an item that you might not particularly need, but after the free shipping and mail-in rebate, the item is free. I then immediately post it on ebay and walk away with more money in my pocket that I started with, and a bunch of miles or points.