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 🙂
(And for those who commented early–please don’t comment again, I will count those for the drawing. Thanks!)
Make sure every fare/hotel you stay at “actually” earns points, I don’t know how many times people book something and they end up not earning points on it. Look for promotions and BE FLEXIBLE when it comes to redeeming. The farther out you can book the better off you are!
Concentrate your loyalty to only a few programs(at most) and take advantage of all their bonus promos! They add up surprisingly quick.
Have flexibility with your dates, think outside of the box on routings, and be nice to the people helping you on the reservation!
Use a mileage tracking tool for a consolidated view of your portfolio of air, car and hotel accounts. It can be easy to miss expriring miles, etc otherwise.
Nothing beats the Starwood Amex card. Easiest way we’ve found to earn and use points. Starwood also has the excellent cash+points option which I haven’t seen from other loyalty programs.
Don’t let your miles expire! Of course you can EARN some miles to keep them alive, but to avoid outlaying any cash and generate activity in a hurry, remember that in most major programs, both earning and REDEEMING miles resets the expiration counter — redeem a few miles for a magazine or donate a couple of miles.
Use your point earning credit card for EVERYTHING Yes, I mean EVERYTHING (but pay it off at the end of the month of course). I even use it in the soda machine at work. And be sure to sign up for all of the extras such as ‘dining for miles’, special airline promotions, and miles earning surveys. Fun to watch the miles add up.
Check your main airline’s foreign partner airlines for earning miles, not just alliance airlines.
For example, one can fly direct to Taipei on EVA Airways and earn Continental One Pass miles, even though EVA is not in the star alliance. EVA is cheaper than United and United no longer flies direct.
Mileage cards are often the best bang for the credit card buck, and Amex often does have the better mileage offers than many other cards. I personally prefer to get cash back on my cards, though, and spend it as I choose. (Up to 4%).
Can’t really come up with anything better for building miles than have already reported on. Choosing an alliance that services your local airport(s) to destinations that you tend to fly to, sticking with that alliance when possible, and picking the longer route if available that’ll still get you there on time.
don’t ignore status in hotels. when i started, i collected united miles but still stayed at priceline hotels. after learning a bit more, i started spending a bit more money but also collecting starwood points. now, i might pay a bit more for my hotel stays overall, but instead of the room with the view of the parking lot i’m in a suite with free internet…and for vacations, my room is free! you don’t get that with priceline.
Starwood Preferred Guest points are powerful currency, especially since you can convert them 1:1 into most airline programs, allowing you some of the best flexibility for finding and redeeming awards, depending on which airline may have availability.
Watch out for SPG/Hyatt/Hilton/Marriott/Priority Club free night promos… burn those and save the points! Also, look for the best free night promotions: longer redemption period, less restrictions on hotel categories the free nights can be used for, less nights/stays needed per free night earned.
wow that’s a lot of responses! after i earned enough points to fly business class to europe one time i was HOOKED and i charge everything to my one airline (American) so that i can enjoy that wonderful experience again.
Pay for all purchases with a mileage earning credit card.
credit card sign up bonuses are super lucrative – if there is an annual fee, just cancel the card after the first year and keep the bonus
Sign all family member up fo the same mileage program with mainly one or two airlines
At the same time that you want to focus your earning on specific programs, remember — you didn’t get married to your primary frequent flier program. Sometimes you will be better off just buying the best available value even if that won’t earn points in your primary program.
The Southwest Airlines Companion Pass is one of the wonders of travel. Once you have one, you’ll have a few free rewards and then your designated companion flies free…whether you fly on a paid fare or a reward. Genius. All it takes is 100 Rapid Rewards. There are many ways to earn them other than flying.
If your airline miles or hotel points are expiring, you can order something from a partner vendor to keep your account active (and earn points at the same time).
I go through my “travel checklist” before every trip that includes bringing a printout of all my FF and FH account numbers. Just in case I have to switch flights or hotels.
Make sure to subscribe to flyertalk threads to stay current on promos
Use a credit card that awards points for money spent on it. It is an easy way to collect points each month without flying.
I use Priority Club PointBreaks when a travel around the country for my photography. Many times my driving itinerary allows a lot of flexibility in where I spend the night. At 5,000 points per night my points go a lot further than they would using them for a standard stay. On a recent four week trip I used PointBreaks fifteen times.
Find several (in our family, three) credit cards that are free or very low cost, and that have good points programs with elite (silver, platinum, etc) bonuses. Then split up your charges (for us, reaching $20K per year on each card does the trick to get elite status.
My tip is to use credit card offers as much as possible. I do that, earning sign-up bonuses, and occassionally retention bonuses. Some cards allow you to get the sign up bonus multiple times. I also transfer some AA miles I earn to Hilton to allow me hotel points also.
When dining out with a group of friends and the bill comes on one ticket they always choose to pay cash. I take all their cash and then pay the entire bill – along with my portion of course – on my credit card simply to get the miles.
I’m disciplined enough to put the cash in my banking account and make a payment towards the credit card right away.
Earn some points and use them wisely 🙂
When redeeming remember to use partner award travel options. Several times they will not be displayed online and the agent will not list them over the phone. Make sure you know the alliance and non alliance airline partners and try to create your own itinerary using a travel site. Once you have an itinerary call the airline and ask the agent for availability on those flights you’ve selected. Have several options in terms of airlines, dates, and flight times. For earning miles use your credit card for everything. I use my SPG Amex card for something as small as a 99cent purchase. The SPG Amex actually allows you to earn 1.25 miles per dollar as for every 20000 points transferred to an airline you received a 5,000 bonus.
If you have “world points” or any sort of airline reward points, use those for big trips. Use smaller trips you can pay for “out of pocket” on your credit card towards more reward points.
Save. Go in style.
Focus Focus Focus. Two programs, a cc that generates reward points, put your hotel points into your airline program. I never buy anything, including a house, unless I get points.
You don’t need to be a customer of an airline to take advantage of their loyalty programme – think alliances. For example, I am one of BMI’s best customers despite having never flown on one of their flights. The same has been true of Air Canada in the past.
Know where you are going, research the award chart, get enough miles (a much easier job with Amex MR), finally be flexible and secure the award seat EARLY!
Keep a spreadsheet of all your point activity. That way if the program makes a mistake- and it happens- you can get it corrected.
In addition, it’s a positive motivator and helps you manage your points (to keep them from expiring for instance.)
Use your miles to travel to exotic places where the tickets are extremely expensive, but you need to plan ahead. Try to make it a open-jaw to save even more.
This usually yields the best value of miles.
pay attention to Credit Card Points i.e HH Amex 6 Points for Groceries, Gas, Wireless. While other spending gets 3 points.
Get yourself a mileage earning credit card!
If you are going to spend money, then why not spend it and earn something back at the same time?
Redeem your miles for premium class tickets to overseas, or Hawaii, and Alaska. These are among the best value of your miles. Always plan ahead, usually you can book your award travels 330 days in advance. Keep that information in mind whenever you are thinking a nice trip. Good luck to us all!
If the end of the year is drawing near and you are a few points/miles shy of the next status level, decide if you think you will travel often the next year. If so, take that extra trip to put you over the threshold as the extra points/miles earned by elite bonuses will help you earn more points to use on future travel and the status will help both when redeeming and during all of your travels.
Sign up for all the loyalty programs you can then track the detailed information, membership numbers, benefits, enrollment dates etc. Use this information every time you book travel or stays for frequent upgrades, perks and free stays. There are a lot of programs out there so search and track once you find them.
Register for all promotions! FT is a great place to find out about new promos and get ideas for how others are maximizing the most bang for their bucks.
Sometimes, travel companies have some incredibly lucrative promotions (like the LatinPass promotion, through which we earned a million miles, most of which were used on USAir, or transferred to Hilton and Marriott). When these promotions happen, DON’T delay! They frequently get pulled, or closed to additional entrants. You have to figure out the benefits and pull the trigger quickly.
I use my hotel credit card to pay my elderly mother’s pharmacy bill each month then have her pay me back.
I tell her it’s just easier for me to pay with the credit card than getting a check from her to pay the bill and I rack up a lot of points each year this way 🙂 .
1 Consider using your airline rewards for upgrades to first class or business class.
2 Read flyertalk and the blogs like this
3 Plan ahead for better availability
4 some good luck
Try to use some of the new one way awards, often these have more availability than the regular standard (25K) awards. I have found them to be available when I cannot a round trip.
Keep a positive attitude and the longview about reaching your destination. Actual airtime goes quickly when you are calm and content.
Concentrate on quickly gaining the highest elite status in one program, because you can parlay that into status at others through matching. Plus it makes the travel that much more comfortable.
Burn them when you can. Points/miles will devalue over time.
Attend the 6th Annual Ann Arbor Art Fair DO. This year is devoted to discussing the ins and outs of award ticket booking. It is the perfect opportunity to network with fellow points and miles fiends. Details available at Flyertalk.com
Follow blogs with an RSS reader to efficiently keep up with promos and deals.