Boarding area has teamed up with American Express to offer a trip for two to the Gold Coast of Austrailia. See this official page for more details.
How To Enter
Simply leave a comment (at top of this post) in this post answering this question; What’s your top tip for travelers who want to earn and use their loyalty points?
My Tip
Since the question of the promotion is to share loyalty points earning and using tips, I”ll share mine. When booking your award tickets look into the use of open jaws or stop overs to ensure you get the most value out of your miles and trip. See my trip report here on how I used both an open jaw and stop over to get to the Seychelles, Mauritius, and Paris in business class all in one trip while using a minimum amount of miles.
Here are the details
- Seven nights/eight days hotel accommodations, transportation, meals, activities and round-trip airfare for two people to the Gold Coast of Australia (Queensland)
- Total value = $10,250!**
- American Express and Boarding Area are kicking in a combination of cash and cards to cover any related tax associated with the prize
- A winning reader will be chosen from a random comment selected on each blog, then 1 winner will be selected from the 20 blog selections
- The more you enter the more you have a chance to win
- Fine Print: Contest is only open to those 18 years and up/US Residents only (void in Canada and U.S. Territories)
Bottom Line
This is a great promotion being put on by American Express and Boarding Area. A very easy way to enter to win a trip to Austrailia for two. I would encourage you to visit the other participating blogs to get as many entries possible into this promotion.
About The Weekly Flyer
The Weekly Flyer writes about travel from a business traveler perspective. He travels the world every week accumulating points and miles along the way.
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I use the American Express Starwood Card to earn points. I also have a mileage card from an airline, which I rarely use, because the rules and restrictions to actually earn a flight have taken a turn for the worst.
Key benefits of the American Express Card through Starwood:
1. Unless I am mistaken, you’re automatically upgraded to Gold Status if you spend xx amount of dollars per year. I’ve received a ton of room upgrades, even governor suites, simply by being a Gold Preferred member with Starwood using the Starwood Amex. The bonus is that I have always been offered a free upgrade & haven’t had to ask. If I don’t get one, that’s fine…I’ve received more than enough.
2. I earn even more points when I stay at a Starwood property.
3. Starwood has multiple redemption options (cash + points, or just points).
I spend a great deal of time in Southeast Asia, which means I can get some rooms for as little as 2000 points per night. If I want to stay at a great 4-5 star resort as an option, I can generally stay for $45-60 USD per night if I use some of my points towards the rate (this can drop the price from 100 USD + per night up). I also tend to get special offers from the hotels/resorts simply be being a member.
You can also earn extra points by shopping on the American Express site and/or earn additional discounts:)
“SPG Flights”-a fairly recently added redemption option for Starwood points usually isn’t a deal, but I’ve found that their lowest tier award: 10k points for a trip up to $150 can be a nice way to redeem a ’short hop award’ for little cost in points. It certainly beats the 25k miles most of the airlines would charge for a similar short hop redemption.
Do your homework. Read as many travel blogs as possible and register for as many promotions as possible, those points will add up!
Don’t let points or miles expire unused! You can easily credit a car rental that you’re already going to make to extend the life of miles in most programs, or use many programs’ online shopping malls to buy a giftcard or something as small as a single iTunes song.
Keep an eye out for bonus promotions from airline credit cards or frequent flier programs sent in email or snail mail. Don’t forget to register for the promotion. Once I bought a $2 cookie on a flight with the airline’s credit card and received 1000 miles.
Stick to your favorite companies (airline, car rental, hotel) to really rack up the miles! Sometimes they will offer their most loyal customers really great bonus mile options.
Stay loyal to one program for sure, especially if your hometown is a hub or “focus” city. Then make sure you are earning all points, for flights, credit cards, hotels (sometimes), car rentals, dining, and shopping online for the same airline. Hopefully it is with a Star Alliance member! (I learned the hard way that Skyteam miles are very invaluable). G’day mate!
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), etc…
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.
My tip. If the offer seems too good to be true, consider the source. If you trust it , act fast. It may not last.
Always consider an airline’s partners when trying to book award travel. More likely than not, this will open up new possibilities to redeem at the lower mileage levels.
Stay organized and document every promotion you enter/sign-up for.
Plan a group trip with friends and be in charge of all the booking. You get all the miles and points on your card and your friends are happy to let you organize it and then pay you afterwards.
Don’t overlook earning opportunities that may not be obvious. Sometimes all that is required to earn miles is a single purchase (e.g., 750 miles from deluxe.com through e-miles.com). While the cheapest items on websites may be hard do find, our friend Google will allow you to search a single domain (e.g. deluxe.com). Try searching for terms like “$1.”, “1.”, “$2.”, etc. to find cheap items. With this method, I earned 750 US miles for buying a $3 check cover shipped free. .4cpm!
Be loyal to one of the global airline teams (which has the many flights from your point of origin) and try to have all of your miles credit to one Frequent Flyer account. Also, try finding different credit cards/ programs that give you non-flying miles/points bonuses on that account This will ensure that your miles are always dumped to one account, making it easy to accumulate enough miles/points to redeem anytime and anywhere.
Concentrate your miles and flights on one Alliance and exploit it for all its worth: car rental, dining, flying, purchasing toilet paper from drugstore.com… 🙂 Be sure you also sign up for all the bonus mileage offers that your airline of choice offers, even if you aren’t planning to fly the route immediately. You never know where IRROPS will take you. Subscribe to ExpertFlyer. Check Flyertalk obsessively.
Don’t be afraid to use airline/hotel credit cards to accumulate points in order to prevent older points from expiring. Sending a bouquet of flowers to someone can be an easy way to prevent thousands of points from disappearing.
Use a spreadsheet to keep track of your miles/points. You never know when the company might make a mistake, and it will help you plan your travel to make sure you get the most out of each trip.
Also utilize online tracking consolidator websites like http://www.yodlee.com to keep track of multiple travel accounts in 1 convenient location.
Use your points-accumulating credit card(s) for every possible purchase including household bills and the entire meal bill with friends (hopefully they’ll pay you back in cash or by check!).
Accumulating miles takes a bit of work, much like making money. So continue doing your homework & overtime you will be successful as I continue to be.
learn from those who write these blogs and post on flyertalk. the information available can put you on your way to frugal, while luxurious, travel
If you have miles that are about to expire, it’s usually pretty easy to extend them my purchasing something small (preferably something you would have purchased anyway) in the airline’s online mall.
SPG…The best points program ever! Earn points through American Express and then use them for a lot of different programs. I use mine to get discounted hotel rooms, for example, I’m staying using a few points and only $60 bucks to stay a night in Hawaii! And they convert to a lot of airlines miles programs. I gave 20K SPG points to Hawaiian Air and got 25K miles!
1)Make sure your miles program matches your
award goals.
2)If you have a mileage credit card make sure it
allows you to redeem awards with numerous
carriers.
3)Start looking for your award seats 6 months in
advance of your trip.
4)Don’t forget to check code-share partners for
award seats.
5)Look for award seats on midweek days.
6)Since carriers change their award inventory on
Friday & Saturday nights at midnight, check then
for award seats.
7)Try BookYourAward.com. Worth the price to get
the seat you want.(According to Wendy Perrin at
Conde Nast Traveler.)
*** Learn the intricacies of status matching ***
Occasionally there are promotions with hotels and airlines that temporarily boost elite status in their program. Take your new elite status level and match to competing programs! With some careful planning you can quickly attain elite status in several programs with an opportunity to
“challenge” to further upgrade or keep your new level of status.
Check out all programs in an area of interest. If you just concentrate on one you are familiar with you could be missing out on some great opportunities being made by competitors.
Never ever buy one of the catalog gifts–stick with the “native” program (hotel awards at a hotel program, etc.)
Buy a subscription to Mileage Manager and use it to keep track of all of your balances. If you want to redeem for a trip to a specific destination, it will do a daily check of all your qualifying programs to see what’s available, when, and in what class and keep you up-to-date by email.
Don’t always choose the frequent flyer program of the airline you fly on. Check their alliance partners, another program may be better suited to your needs and wants.
Happy Flying!
-Fish
I use Yodlee MoneyCenter to keep track of my miles. It’s free.
When the CSR says no, don’t give up!
Set a goal and work towards it. This year, my goals was free travel in F to Africa. Best way for that, is BA mileage card from CHASE and spend my 30K a year on that card. Badabing, we (yes, two is better than one) will have two F tickets to SA.
Try to be nice to your fellow passengers. Constantly grabbing their seat-backs and talking loudly on cell phones are a sure way to ruin someones trip.
Take advantage of credit card sign-up bonuses for new card applications.
Get a credit card to go with the program–even if only for the signup bonus. It gives you a big head start on miles, and makes the whole game seem a lot more worthwhile.
Make sure to provide your frequent flier numbers when you go to a hotel, especially when you stay in hotels often. The points add up FAST!
Ask my friend Sandy Y. She knows everything about frequent flying. That, and read FlyerTalk.
What’s 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 ‘em rather than earn ‘em…. when you have enough for a nice premium intercontinental award.
Focus. Do you research and figure out which cities you visit often and what airlines you tend to take the most. Then try to rack up as many miles as you can with those airlines by flying and through their credit cards. Don’t spread yourself too thin by having couple thousand points in different accounts, but not enough to get a trip or qualify for a status. Limiting yourselves to two or thre alliances will do you a lot of good.
Always apply for credit cards when they have high mileage promotions for opening a new account.
to maximize earning, put everything you buy on a mileage earning credit card, no matter how small the expense. To use miles, be as flexible as possible. I usually call and ask the agent to find seats at a specific airport, and anything within 100 miles and within 2 or 3 days. I’ve always found seats, even to Italy in the summer on Delta.
Always sign up for every loyalty program where you can earn any points. Even if you think you’ll never earn points again, or if you think your kids are too young to get a meaningful amount of points, sign up!
These programs offer bonuses, or they consolidate when they merge, and the bits and pieces add up to rewards after a while.
My TWA points got me something, years and years later.
Look into the connections between various programs – besides major alliances and families, some programs are more closely aligned than others. For instance, some hotels offer much better earnings on Southwest than other carriers… or some airlines offer special perks at Hyatt. Take advantage of these connections.
Top tip is to make sure you choose one airline partner and stick with the program. If you really want to maximize points, make sure that partner is one which has partnerships with hotels.
Consolidate your miles
If you are a student or under age 26, use sites like student universe for cheap fares. Also if you are a college or graduate student, enroll in college plus and get 10,000 free United miles after you graduate!
Think outside the box. Accrue miles on the best partner of the airline you are flying, not the necessarily the airline itself.
With respect to airlines – Learn how to redeem the points. Learn the partners, the different types of awards available for your given program etc… Just because the online search tool only gives you limited availability, doesn’t mean your award isn’t available. Even calling in isn’t 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.
Pay Attention! Watch your statements to catch any errors or missing trips, keep an eye out for promotions to increase your miles/points or standing, don’t forget to check for cross-promotions with credit cards or other businesses…
Pick a milage program and stick with it. The milage program you chose depends on the type of traveler you are – what kind of hotels do you like? Rental cars? etc. If you ever have questions about milage programs, checkout flyertalk.com.
Jonathan