TopGuest is an easy way for people to get extra points for “checking-in” at various locations around the world. Generally, these locations are hotels that have an affiliation with a chain’s rewards program such as IHG’s Priority Rewards, or Hilton’s HHonors, meaning that many of them are places we will be staying at anyways. Even better, you don’t have to be staying at the hotel to check-in! Even if you’re just grabbing a drink or dinner at the hotel bar or restaurant, you can still check-in. Moreover, luckily for us, TopGuest makes it really easy to check-in to the hotels so that we can earn bonus points with little effort.
Right now, only a few programs are participating in TopGuest’s program. Some of the bigger ones are Hilton, Priority Rewards, and Virgin America. Hopefully, they will add more programs over time, but the program is still worth using with just these three major ones. Although they have almost 18,000 locations, it’s clear that they have a long way to go. Looking just at New York City, they don’t have the New York Hilton listed as a location, even though that’s one of the more popular hotels in the Hilton Collection in New York. Meanwhile, they have almost 10 different DoubleTree locations listed just in the Times Square area even though there’s only one actual DoubleTree location in Times Square. It’s clear just by this example that they need to work on adding locations and determining which locations are duplicates.
TopGuest works in conjunction with several social networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, Four Square, and Instagram. All you have to do is connect your account on each of those services with your TopGuest account and start checking-in. Each service has its own quirks, but the process is similar for all of them. Whenever you visit a location, pull up your preferred app and tell it where you are. In the case of Instagram, you take a photo of the hotel and tell it where you are. Just for doing that, you can get an easy 25-50 points, depending on the location. You can check-in to multiple hotels in one day, but they generally can’t be within the same hotel group. For instance, you can’t check-in to two Doubletree hotels, but you could check-in to a Doubletree and a Best Western, earning you double the points. On top of checking in at multiple hotels, you can also check-in with an airline such as Virgin America. They will have more locations at airports, but if you find one on your way to work or around home, it’s a great way to top off your Virgin America account.
All-in-all the TopGuest program is still young and growing. While it is certainly a great program now, as more reward programs participate and more locations are added over time, it will become even more valuable. Learning how to use it while it’s still young will mean reaping great benefits in the future as it begins to realize its potential.
This is an easy way to rack up some points every day or every travel day without having to go / do / spend anything you’re not already doing; free points.
Deal of the Day
For today’s Deal of the Day FlyerTalk is giving away A FlyerTalk Luggage Tag & Hoodie combo for the best overall travel deal submitted. A great mileage run, mistake fare, partner promo, new card sign-up offer, or the special twist you figured out on a deal today. Add it to the comments section of this post (with your First Name, Last Initial, and 3 letter airport code) or this afternoon’s Deal of the Day post to be eligible to win.
