Archive for December, 2011

1. Credit card churning will continue to be the primary source of free or inexpensive miles throughout the year. As a result more people will actually work on improving their credit to take advantage.
2. The competition for card accounts by the card issuers will continue with 50K offers remaining the norm or standard to generate excitement.
3. American Airlines will survive as a stronger competitor and will not merge with US Airways.
4. In an effort to hold their market share both American and US Airways will offer significant bonus opportunities.
5. The US Airways Grand Slam promotion will return with basically the same guidelines and opportunities.
6. The Chicago Seminars will be again held in Chicago at the Holiday Inn Elk Grove Village in the month of October. There will be at a minimum at least three new speakers. Carnac predicts Mommy Points will enlighten us all on the US Airways Grand Slam and both ITA Software by Google and Expert Flyer will each offer full one hour presentations on their outstanding products.
7. Ninety Nine percent of the public still won’t get it and the age old battle of share the info or hoard it all to ourselves will rage on for another year.
8. Catera Commerce will make another huge shopping mall mistake and lose at least one airline as a customer.
9. The proliferation of new travel bloggers will continue with some offering additional worthwhile content, but most will be copycat blogs at best.
10. The Frugal Travel Guy blog will continue to offer quality content and tips of a diverse nature from the viewpoint of rookies, business travelers, world explorers and a guy that just wants us all to see the world at prices we all can afford.
11. And all of us at the FTG blog will continue to be grateful for the gifts of free travel tips we have received from you our readers and our experiences we have been able to share.

Happy New Year to All!

And Howie’s 2012 prediction? Delta merges with Alaska Airlines. 

First Year Fee Waived: 50,000 Points Transferable to Hyatt, Marriott, Priority Club, Continental and British Airways

Alitalia is offering 50% off “classic” reward redemptions. This means that roundtrip from the States to Italy is only 25,000 miles! You can transfer from AMEX or SPG.

You can stay at the Wyndham Grand in Rio Mar from only $399/person incl. air for 4 nights.

You can enter to win a trip for two to the new Trump Toronto here

You can enter to win a free 7-day cruise from Princess Cruises!

TripAlertz is still giving $5 for every person that you invite. You can use my link if you want to join or you can use on of the links in the comments.

Here is this week’s Top 20 from Travel Zoo

Sometime in the near future my husband and I plan to travel too Europe. In a quest to find cheap lodging without relying on hotel points I came across a nice  booking website, www.hostelworld.com.
This website is a huge hostel booking website that also has bookings for bed and breakfasts and hotels. They offer a ton of additional information and services to travelers in general, so much that I could not included it all here, my focus on this site was learning about  booking hostels and bed and breakfasts. This booking site offers a 100% guarantee on your booking that if anything goes wrong they will refund you and give you an additional $50 credit.
Their mission:
“ To become the fastest-growing online provider of great value accommodation, using innovative technology to inspire independently minded travellers everywhere.”
From the home page you can search by country, city and/or property type, then plug in your travel dates and the site brings up an extensive list of the available properties. If you are really looking for something cheap and are flexible in your travels they have a “deals” section below the search feature.
They offer bookings on over 25,000 hostels in more than 180 countries, surely there is something for everyone.
Okay, why a hostel or bed and breakfast when we all have hotel points and standards right? Every one’s travel desires are different and frankly some of you have no desire for this kind of lodging. This post is not for you. But for those of you who are open and looking for a new experience, traveling alone and want to meet people or just plain cheap, a hostel may be for you. They are much nicer than they used to be and the site offers pictures of the properties for you to browse.  Check some out.
When you search a property you get an overall rating of the place done by previous visitors and also a rating on topics such as security, location, staff, cleanliness, character, and fun. You can see how many people have rated the property and read personal reviews with some very helpful tips. They give detailed information about the property,pictures, maps directions, and all the rates.
Deals:

If you spend some time looking through the current deals section you will find an array of different offers such as free nights, free meals, last minute discounts, and added tours.
Example:

-Stay 2 nights get the 3rd free Florence Italy in a mixed dorm for $21.90 per person per night. With an overall rating of 88% from 354 reviews. A central location, 10 minute walk from the train station,a pool, on site cafe, bar, restaurant, free WiFi, gym, pool table, AC and flat screen T.V’s in every room. They provide linens and lockers, and an all you can eat breakfast buffet for 6 Euros.
Some General Search Examples:
Hostels: 
St.Christopher’s, Paris France, August 25-27, 2012
25th $50.75 (shared mixed room) $68.59 (private double)
26th $45.27 (shared mixed room) $63.10 (private double)
Prices are per person per night.
At 7 pm every night the hostel serves a “backpackers meal” for 6 Euros and breakfast is FREE.
They provide linens, but you must bring a towel.
They have lockers for storage. You must bring your own padlock and they will store your luggage during the day for free so you can go out and explore.
Free Wi-Fi so you won’t need to pay at an Internet cafe.
Auckland New Zealand, Nomads January 12th-15th 2012
12th-15th $28.83 ( standard Double bed Private room)
per person per night
Free drink vouchers, Free sauna and heated spa
Located downtown Auckland
Rooftop sun deck
Communal Kitchen
Wifi
Airport transfers
Linens included
Bed and Breakfast: 

Paris, France Namdemun Guesthouse August 25-27, 2012
25th and 26th $53.50 (private twin room) $38.41 (shared mixed room)
Prices are per person per night. Breakfast is included
Crete Greece,  Nakli B&B April 25th-28th 2012
$41.06 per person, per night
A private apartment with double bed, AC, full kitchen and private bathroom, cleaned daily.
Located in the middle of Crete
Hotel:
Hotel D’Amiens Paris, France  August 25-27, 2012
25th and 26th $45.95 ( double bed/private).
Prices per person per night. Breakfast is included.
These are just some of the many places I looked at while learning to navigate the site. I am excited to try some hostels and B&B’s out on our future trips. Have you had any experiences with these properties or any advice on them?
Shannon, The Rookie.
30,000 Delta Miles No First Year Fee

Just for grins I thought I’d lay out a potential 2012 churning schedule for someone who is new to the game of applying for credit cards. As I start this post, I have no idea how many points I’ll come up with or if I can find enough cards for a whole year. Remember, this is mythical as the card offers will certainly change. If you can’t find two or three cards out of this list to put in your wallet permanently, you are not studying the products. Chase, Amex and CitI have some great card offers available. Ready? Let’s go:

January 1, 2012

Chase Sapphire^SM Preferred Card, 50,000 points
Citi ThankYou^SM Premier Card – $500 in Gift Cards, 50,000 points
Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express, 25,000 points (look for the 30K link as well, but I think it expired on 12/12)
Bank of America Hawaiian Airlines card, 35,000 points
Barclays US Airways Premier World Mastercard, 40,000 points

This is the churn I am currently recommending:

April 2, 2012

ALL-NEW United MileagePlus® Explorer Card, 40,000 and maybe more if it gets bumped up first quarter.
Citi AA Amex and Visa cards, 50,000 miles each using the two browser trick.
Citi® Platinum Select® / AAdvantage® Visa Signature® Card – 50,000 American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles
Citi® Platinum Select® / AAdvantage® World MasterCard®
Gold Delta SkyMiles® Credit Card from American Express, 30,000 miles.
Bank of America Alaska Airlines for 20,000 points. (Let’s hope the 40K comes back.)
Barclays Spirit Airlines, 15,000 points.

July 2, 2012

Marriott Rewards® Credit Card, 50,000 points. (The 70k offer may still be around. Watch for it.)
Citi Preferred Thank You Points, 25,000 points.
American Express(R) Premier Rewards Gold Card, 15,000 points.
Bank of America Virgin Atlantic, 20,000 miles.
Pentagon Federal CU Premier Rewards Card, 20,000 points.

Things getting thin yet? Running out of offers yet?

October 4 (my birthday — don’t forget!), 2012

Chase Priority Club Visa for 60,000 points, or alternatively Hyatt card for two free nights.
Citi Hilton Honors Visa card (Yep) American Express and Citi each have Hilton cards, 40,000 points.
American Express Hilton Honors card, 40,000 points sometimes more, and then the Surpass card.
Bank of America Asiana Airlines, 5000 miles and add the biz card as well for another 10K.
Oops: I ran out of personal cards? Naw, Barclays Choice Privileges card, 16,000 points.

So there you go — a mythical 2012 churn. Five cards each 90 days. The mythical points total is =

646,000 miles and points per person per year.

Disclaimer; Some of these cards I get a referral on. Some I don’t. I just picked cards based on the issuers to prove to you and myself that I could easily get to 20 cards in one year. Admittedly, the Asiana card and Spirit card may not work for all of you, so substitute something else or just skip it for that churn.

Some of these offers will change throughout the year. Some will increase, some decrease, and some will disappear, although I don’t think many will.

Oh, by the way — We haven’t even taken into account the currently available business cards. Read my blog post of August 13, 2008, and we’ll do a mythological business card edition in the near future. Below is a typical business card offer. Plug that into your January churn if you choose. Chase will allow one business and one personal card every 30 days.

Queenstown, New Zealand, photo by Andrew Ingersoll

Myself, Katy and Rick, Forbidden City, Beijing, China

The Kauai Grand Hyatt, photo by Andrew

30,000 Delta Miles No First Year Fee

You can get 2,00 free miles from Jet Airways by signing up for an account here. Thanks Gary

Gary has a great post about getting huge bonuses by signing up for brokerage accounts. These have been around for a while so this is mainly just a reminder in case you had forgotten about them.

You can get 18 AA miles/$ at Restaurant.com by buying GCs at 90% off!

Starwood has a new promotion for Q1 (Jan. 9-Apr. that offers 2x and 3x points for two- and three-night stays respectively.

You can still get $5 of TripAlertz credit for every person that you invite. You can join with my link or use one of the links in the comments.

30,000 Delta Miles No First Year Fee

After our vacation and Christmas weekend, I’m back at my old reliable Sheraton for my final (business) trip of 2011. My last day up in the air will be on the 29th when we head up to New York for New Year’s. I’ll finish the year up with 310,328 MQMs (Member Qualifying Miles) on Delta, needing only 64,672 MQM by December 31,  2013, to re-qualify for Diamond through February 28, 2015. Perhaps it is time to share my business with another airline. I dunno.

Starwood properties took care of me with 71 stays and 146 nights.Thank God for those comfortable beds. Add a few nights at other properties and I’ve spent over 40% of my time in hotels, away from home, working. I think predicting a travel schedule is probably like trying to predict the stock market. You plan for one thing, everything points in a certain direction, and the next thing you know your plans are all up in the air — literally!

Don’t forget to register for the SPG (Starwood Preferred Guest) promo running through the first quarter: SPG Better by the Night. With every stay from January 9 through April 8, 2012, at over 750 participating hotels and resorts in North and Latin America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East (Asia is NOT included), you’ll earn:

• Double Starpoints on two-night stays
• Triple Starpoints on stays of three nights or longer

Click here for properties that are NOT participating in the promotion.

This is a great way for SPG to stop people from hotel hopping. Because we never know what travel lies ahead, we business travelers usually want to re-qualify for our status as soon as possible. Mileage runs and mattress runs aren’t something to look forward to. My plan for January / February was to hop every night until I hit 25 stays and to then go back to the normal routine of checking in and out once per trip. That said, with this promo I’ve got to rethink my strategy. My normal Sheraton also participates in Make a Green Choice, which allows me to forgo a daily visit from housekeeping in exchange for a $5 food and beverage voucher or 500 points. Yeah, I take the points.

My 2012 Resolutions are pretty straightforward, and I’ve got three of them:

1. Diversify, diversify, diversify. I need to find a way to diversify my travel so I can achieve top tier status within two airline alliances, and two hotel loyalty programs.
2. Complete at least three successful churns. If I can’t complete resolution number one, this is a way I can at least travel in style with my leisure travel on almost any airline. You can bet I’ll be asking Rick for some advice and will carefully plan out a way to rack up at least 1,000,000 miles and points this year.
3. Spend more time helping my family and friends enjoying this amazing world through travel like all of us do.

I’d love to hear what your travel resolutions are. For everyone who posts a comment by next week’s “Not On My Dime” post, I’ll pick one random person to receive a $10 Starbucks gift card that I have leftover. It isn’t much, but a free coffee for you and someone else ain’t that bad. Let me know!

Travel Tip: Carry Cash

I go back and forth on cash. I don’t earn any points with it, and if I lose it I’m toast. That said, when I need a few bucks to tip someone, or if I’m at a local market, cash is king. I always have a few singles for the shuttle bus driver at my hotel when I’m at the office. On vacation, I’ve found $100 is my threshold for being able to be flexible with currency — even with USD, which is what I did this past week.

Packing Tip: If it fits, it ships

Last week I mentioned that you should pack a bag when you travel to carry necessities while out for your day trips. But what about for everything you buy?

Our trip to Hawai’i included purchasing several pounds of coffee that just wasn’t going to make it in our bags. Thankfully the USPS has flat rate shipping for boxes that coffee fits into quite well. $14.95 later, I’ve got 10 pounds of java on its way to me and out of our carry-on.

50,000 American Airline Miles!

With the year coming to a close, it seems appropriate to look at what has happened in my travel world, and what I expect to be different in the year to come…

Like many of you, my miles acquisition strategy has moved to primarily credit card sign-up bonuses. Katy and I generated 1,170,000 miles in points in 2011 with this strategy and each of us maintained our good credit ratings. The rewards are massive if played well, but really not very exciting. The term “churning” comes to mind. Applying for and receiving card bonuses is about as exciting as “churning” butter.


We each added 100,000 miles to our little-used US Airways accounts by purchasing miles before the price increase. Again, not much jazz in that one, either. The opportunity arose and we took advantage.

The most fun I had was the US Airways Grand Slam promo, which netted me 80,000 miles at a relatively cheap price per mile. I was not organized, didn’t avail myself of a couple of the more time consuming “hits,” and only gave myself a B- grade at best.

We participated in only one mistake rate: the Hyatt Grand Cypress in Orlando at $29.50 per night. But that was actually booked in 2010 so not really a “hit” in 2011, either.

We each did a 100% bonus transfer or two with Delta, again a laid-back affair. I recall transferring a few Amex points as well when a bonus transfer opportunity showed up — I think to Continental, but can’t really recall.


China, the island of Kos, Greece, Turkey, Croatia, Bosnia, and Amsterdam provided two outstanding adventures and we loved, as usual, our trip to Hawaii this past spring and again this December. My sons hadn’t seen one another is quite some time. (Aaron, the youngest, has accepted two positions in Young Artist Programs in Opera for 2012. He is making a career of it and Dad is, well, relieved, to say the least. Watch for his budding career at an Opera House near you.)

I never got bumped in 2011, nor do I recall doing any massive mileage running. I lost my United 1K status and am in the process of earning Executive Platinum status on American. The 2 ½ hour regional jet ride to Dallas is not exciting, but will shorten trips to the west coast considerably instead of connecting in Chicago or Dulles. The jury is still out if I made the right decision switching.

The only consumer play I was involved in was the Catera Commerce disaster with the AA shopping mall. That was hardly a heart-stopper either and provided little satisfaction to any of us.

All in all, I’m giving the past year’s travel and overall game playing a B- as well. China was a unique experience. Croatia beautiful but something was missing and I know what it was: That heart pounding, pulse racing feeling of a mistake fare, and a great one at that, kept the year out of the “A” range. I am an “addict” and never got my fix this year.

Maybe it is because the coach “mistakes” don’t excite me anymore and the premium fare ones were just not there. Maybe I’m being excluded from the “private groups” because I’m a “blogger” (I actually know that to be true). Or maybe I’m not reading Flyertalk and Milepoint as much as I used to?

In any event, I want some jazz is 2012 in the form of a fantastic mistake fare or some sort of promo that we all can score big on. If it’s all about credit cards again, “churning butter” is a boring way to go.

50,000 American Airline Miles, No first year fee!

Kauai’s Na Pali Coast, photo by Andrew

Rick,

I first met you at the LaGuardia DO in April. Until that day, I thought I was a savvy world traveler. Then I listened (dumbfounded) to you and the other speakers and felt like a recluse in comparison. Since April, I have earned over 700,000 miles/points through the advice you’ve given and the links on your blog (Mommypoints, Pointsguy, Milespoint, etc.), and by attending the October Chicago Seminar (which was awesome!).

Here’s what I did just last week alone and why I love American Express:

*Used American Express Membership Rewards to book a 7630-mile ticket for a mileage run that pushed me well into A Platinum. I’ve never achieved more than silver.

*Booked three more mileage runs through December for an additional 18,000 miles that will get me to 100K for the UA/CO merger. Unbelievable!!! Last year I had to buy EQMs to get to Silver!

*I used vouchers and points from my credit card churns. Total out of pocket all in was $220. Sleeping on planes and lots of Exec Lounge cheese meals. A few longer layovers planned for yummy meals in Seattle and San Diego.

*While on a layover in LAX, I called Amex to ask for a retention bonus on my Platinum card. They offered me $100 off my annual fee or 15,000 miles. Guess what I took? If you don’t ask, you’ll never get.

*With some time to spare, I asked them to transfer me to the Starwood Preferred Guest card account. I had opened that with a 25,000 sign-on bonus after a $15,000 spend in six months. Wow, that was a lot of dough. I called to confirm that I met the spend and to gripe a bit about the 30,000 card with a $5000 spend that I could have gotten a few weeks later. Well, to my amazement, I had NOT satisfied the spend. I was $1200 short and the six months was up last week. I had previously called and was told I DID meet the spend. After a few reiterations of my surprise, disappointment, and offers to buy $1200 in gift cards on the spot, a manager awarded me 15,000 miles for my trouble and waived any additional spending requirements on my part.

Two phone calls yielded 30,000 MR points and $1200 in savings.

2012 will find me traveling in style to places I’ve dreamed about. I’m going on more of the DOs (KIVA, Austin, yours) and have met great traveling buds at the ones I have attended (including the Star Mega DO). My family thinks I joined a cult, and my friends think I’ve won the lottery. In a way, both are true.

On a professor’s salary, my take-home pay hardly takes me home. This new hobby takes me everywhere else.

Thanks for giving my wings more lift.


– Kathy
 
It is these emails and success stories that make blogging so much fun for all of us. We have helped change Kathy’s life in a positive way. What better Christmas gift could anyone receive?
 
To all my fellow bloggers and Frugal Travel Guy readers, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and thanks for the opportunity.
 
New Ink Bold  with Ultimate Rewards Card- see the link below

•50,000 bonus points after you spend $5,000 in 3 months – that’s $500 in rewards of your choice, or $625 towards airfare when you redeem online through our Ultimate Rewards booking tool
•No limit to the number of points you can earn – and points do not expire
•5X points per dollar on the first $50,000 spent annually on eligible business purchases
•No foreign transaction fees and Free Employee Cards
•No interest or over limit fees
•No Annual Fee in the first year – that’s a $95 savings

We hit the resort on the 13th and stayed through the 17th of December. Occupancy was about 30%. I love Hawaii before Christmas rush. No crowds.

The advertised rate was at $159 per night plus resort fee or 10,000 points per night. I paid the $$$ rate as I value my points considerably higher than 1.6 cents each. Valet parking was $6 per night plus the resort fee. As a Gold member of the Starwood program, high speed Internet was free (although NOT very high speed).

The views from the common areas were nice, the rooms were clean and spacious. We were upgraded to a partial ocean-view room (Gold Status and low occupancy) with a balcony. The room was a good size but nothing special.

Overall the hotel layout was the most confusing I have ever seen. I never got my bearings with our room on the third floor, lobby on second, and pool and restaurants on the first. Seems simple to say but wasn’t in practicality.

There were two large pools and slides and ample places to sit, sun, or enjoy the shade. I love the contrast of the blue water with the black volcanic rocky shoreline. There was no place for ocean swimming on site. In the evening several boats would pull up in front of the resort to view the manta rays feeding on plankton. The resort has two lights directed into the water until 11 p.m., which attracts the plankton and, behind them, the huge manta rays. There were kayaking and snorkeling with the rays excursions as well. The rays on the Big Island are much larger than the stingrays in the Caymans.

The food was resort expensive but good. The morning breakfast buffet was $23 and the lunch menu had sufficient choices at $17 each plus drinks. You are some distances from other eateries so a car is a must if you want to eat offsite. We laid by the pool day one (too cold for me), went to the Greenlawn Coffee Plantation tour, (10 minutes south) on the second day, and went deep sea fishing on day three for marlin, tuna, or whatever. NO fish. It was about $600 for the boat ride including tip for four of us, which included lunch, bait, and tackle for a three-quarter-day trip.

My overall impression of the resort was a B-, but at $159 per night, a good value, I think, and the weather was fantastic. I wonder what I could have gotten it for by using Priceline?

Citi Thank You Premier Card, 50,000 Thank You Points!