Archive for the ‘Starpoints’ Category

JetBlue is offering a vacation to the Dominican Republic for $198 for two people incl. air!

TripAlertz is offering a week in Las Vegas at a 5-star resort for only $699!

Deals We Like posted that Affinia Hotels is offering rooms for $111.11/night for Sundays between Jan. 2 and Mar. 31. Affinia is a boutique hotel group that has hotels in NYC, Chicago and Wash. DC.

Starwood is also running a promotion for 11/11/11 and it can be found here! The Points guy does a nice job of outlining the promo, but for $11/night extra, you get either a) free night of parking, b) an upgrade, or c) free breakfast for two. SPG members also receive an extra 1,111 StarPoints!

Last Chance This Link Will Disappear this Evening and You’ll Miss Two FREE FLIGHTS $833 Value

Because of my one-month delay in churning in June, we will only get three churns in this year, but will still easily cross one million miles and points between us for the year. A recent thread on Flyertalk asks about the possibility of earning 500,000 miles in a year per individual. Katy and I can report a resounding “Yes” — if you take care of your credit.

Five hundred thousand miles per individual per year is only 125,000 miles per quarter. Two 50K offers and a 25K offer every three months? That would be one per credit reporting agency per 90 days. We try to find two per agency. We never make it, but we seldom do only three cards each per quarter. And we have not run out of new cards yet. The standard offers now are 35K to 50K and up. Be sure you want a 25K offer before wasting an inquiry on 25K. I’ll gladly do a smaller offer if it is checked by Transunion for my South Carolina residence.

Think about one million miles per year from card sign-ups. It will easily fund two nice trips. Here is an example of using credit card sign-ups to fund your travel:

Two Business Class Round Trip tickets to Europe: 2 x 100,000 miles each = 200,000 miles

Two Business Class Round Trip Tickets to Asia: 2 x 140,000 miles each = 280,000 miles

That leaves 520K miles and points for hotels and car rentals. At a conservative value of one cent per mile or point, you’ve still got over $5000 for hotel rooms. Many airline programs now allow me to redeem miles for hotel stays and car rentals. At $200 per night (which we can certainly do better than), that’s 21 nights minimum. Plug in the tricks we all know –  Priceline, Expedia Best Rate Guarantee, Priority Club PointsBreak redemptions — and this goal is easily do-able.

While I advocate using credit card sign-ups to fund your travel, there are pitfalls. Poor record keeping misses bonus spend deadlines. Late payments ruin credit. Paying interest is a no no. (You must pay in full each month.) And poorly planned out churns eat into your credit score without maximizing your return.

For those of you with poor or fair credit, consider what it takes to improve it.

With these sign-up bonuses and opportunities, good credit alone can be the cornerstone of free travel anywhere in the world. Keep up the good work or try just a little harder to do the next right thing regarding your credit.

Lucky posted on the One Mile At A Time blog possible changes to the Elite program for the merged United Continental Airlines for 2012. Link

At some point in time, the airlines had to tie revenue to status. It just makes sense that those spending the bucks get the upgrades and bennies. If the rumor is true, I would expect all the other players to institute similar guidelines no later than January 2013.

Although I don’t begrudge them for the long overdue change, I will not be participating in the annual revenue requirements for the goodies. With a decent stash of miles and 11+ years of experience earning them, I will continue with my plan of losing my Elite status and flying on award tickets, premium ones at that, if I’m going to spend over three hours in the air.

By participating in the awards programs of all the majors — airlines and hotels — I can generate enough miles and points to meet my travel desires. The airlines and hotels earn enough from me by selling miles to vendors I frequent, who then, in turn, award points to me. There is no free lunch. My vendors (card companies, restaurants with Idine, rental car companies, banks, etc.) factor into their pricing the cost of buying the miles they then award me.

For this leisure traveler, status will become a thing of the past, at least with United if the rumors hold true. It means I will buy lounge access or redeem some of my miles stash for the privilege.

with Shannon

The Readers Have Spoken:  I wanted to say Thank You all for the comments this week about Rookie Fridays. I found them very constructive and I will be modifying posts accordingly. You can look forward to shorter, more informative Rookie Fridays!

Last weeks winning travel tip goes to Joshua, who submitted his tip via email (Thanks, Joshua)

Another way to maximize your SPG points is to take advantage of their 5th Night Free Offer.

You redeem points at  Category 3 through 7 hotels for four nights and the fifth night is included for free. The free fifth night must be the fifth night of a five consecutive-night stay for which the reward was redeemed and you get no credit or refund for any unused portion of your stay.

Fifth Night Free Total Points needed by category in general:
3 – 28,000 or 5600 per night
4 – 40,000 or 8000 per night
5 – 48,000-64,000 or 9600-12,800 per night
6 – 80,000-100,000 or 16,000-20,000 per night
7 – 120,000-140,000 or 24,000-28,000 per night

Points needed to redeem one free night per room in general by category:
3 – 7,000
4 – 10,000
5 – 12,000-16,000
6 – 20,000-25,000
7 – 30,000-35,000

Using the fifth night free deal can save you some real points on your vacation.

Kinkaku-ji Temple, Kyoto, Japan, photo by Andrew Ingersoll

I searched for some hotels in Hawaii since that’s always a great vacation. I found the Category 5 Sheraton Maui Resort and Spa in September for 12,000 Starpoints a night. That’s a total of 48,000 Starpoints for five nights or 9600 points per night. The standard room goes for $279 US per night, giving your Starpoints a value of three cents. At the regular rate, your hotel costs for five nights here would be $1395. And at the regular points per night redemption, it would have cost you 60,000-80,000 points. So by using the fifth night option in this case, you save anywhere from 12,000-32,000 points.

Another good one I found was the SLS hotel in Beverly Hills, a Thursday through Monday stay in May. This is a Category 5 hotel for 12,000 points per night or a total of 48,000 points. Each night of the five-night stay would be 9600 points. The standard room rate is $489, placing a value of five cents on each Starpoint. Fifth night free again could save you between 12,000 and 32,000 points on these redemptions.

Peak seasons affect room rates as well as points required per room. To maximize your award, search for travel off-season. Each location, hotel, and vacation are different so you must go onto SPG’s website and do some digging to really individualize how you are going to stretch your points, but this is a great start.

Happy Hacking!

– The Rookie, Shannon

New Starwood 30,000 Point Offer Here Limited Time Offer

Bert, thanks for the effort. Why didn’t we think of that? It’s back to the grocery store service counter for us, trying to buy money orders with a can of coke, using our credit cards.

Tons of emails coming in on how to meet card minimum spends. Bert L gives us this suggestion|

Hi Rick,

There’s a new site called myhabit.com that’s run by Amazon. It offers clothes, shoes, etc., with free shipping and free return shipping. The value of anything returned gets credited to one’s Amazon account rather than refunded. Thus, it’s like using a credit card to buy Amazon credit. Not a bad move for someone who needs to meet a minimum spend and who uses Amazon a lot.


Best,

Last Friday while I was waiting in Traverse City for my flights to Reno, I ran into Christine, aka TC Fly Girl. We ended up talking about Katy’s experience with the Chinese lavatories in public tourist areas. Christine reminded me of a magazine piece she did previously, re: her experiences with something we take for granted. Here is her article:

I would venture to say that most of us take our American toilet for granted. We can thank the English for this sacred invention; initially with a crude model back in the late 1500s and the more modern flushable version a couple hundred years later. I just want to thank the English publicly for this indispensable invention.

You see, most people in the world lack the convenience of a modern toilet like ours. I remember the day, the exact day, that I first became aware of this fact and personally experienced this cold reality. I was traveling in Africa in the back of a pickup truck when nature yelled at me, “You need a bathroom FAST!”

The truck pulled over and I was immediately escorted to a strange wooden “room” in the back of a very modest restaurant we might in America refer to as a roadside shack. I’m sure the cuisine was exceptional as the “bathroom” was certainly a room with a view — a 4 ft x 4 ft stall with a hole in the back wall right at eye level where you could see the mountains or, conveniently enough, the mountains could see you. The jagged hole in the wood was strange enough, but as I instantly scanned the micro stall, I could find no suitable, let me rephrase that, no freaking place to sit whatsoever. No time to ponder the circumstances however, I needed to grasp the situation quickly and get down to business.

Now, I’m a fairly limber person but the gyrations needed to navigate this toilet were more than demanding. There were two porcelain foot markers, which I brilliantly determined were where my feet should be placed although, inconveniently, they were not marked as to which foot should be placed where. Continuing to be puzzled, I asked myself: Do I stand facing the mountain-view hole or facing the door? Both positions seemed so very wrong, yet each had its logical and compelling reason for being right. One thing was for sure: Squatting was going to be required, very deep squatting.

There was a lovely, although smelly, hole situated between the two foot markers, dug, I presume, for the very purpose I was there for, and somewhat familiar as I have used an outhouse before. Holding my purse firmly in my teeth and clutching my clothing with both hands, I squatted the best I could and as you can imagine (but I beg you not to), I was soon in need of toilet paper. It didn’t take long to realize there was none to be had. Perhaps there was some in my purse as I pride myself in anticipating these sorts of situations. But it might as well have been on the shelf at Wal-Mart as there was no way I could reach it without something touching the floor, and for many wet, fragrant, and regrettable reasons, it would not be prudent to let that happen.

Scanning my surroundings, I noticed a bucket of water in the corner which I guessed was for “flushing,” but do you use the whole bucket or just a little? Or do you pour a small amount on your hand, I wondered. Yeah, like that’s possible in my current contortionist position. If I used the whole bucket, would people who peed there the rest of the day be without? Would I be the subject of African conversation for weeks to come — “the stupid American used the whole damn bucket of water; what was she thinking?” Is it possible that you would dip your hand in the bucket and then….oh gosh no, that couldn’t be right! And why aren’t there instructions written on the wall in several languages? This isn’t like riding a bike, for gosh sakes. Then I see it — a sliver of tissue sticking out of my pants pocket. But how do I reach it? Let’s just say something got wet. Something always seems to end up getting wet, doesn’t it?

This was my virgin experience with a toilet unlike our American toilet. But whether it was a bidet in Europe (what are those prissy things for anyway?!) or a squat toilet in China, I have realized over the years that we are blessed to have indoor plumbing, a toilet that flushes, and the modern facilities we do. I feel like kissing the American toilet every time I return home.