American Express (Amex) recently sent out new set of Amex Offers where you get $200 or 20,000 Membership Reward Points for spending $1k+ directly with KLM or Air France. There were two separate offers for both the airlines but they were widely available to Amex Card holders.

The 20,000 Membership Rewards Points offers were as below.

The offer expires on 07/31/2018 but you can book flights far out till the airline schedule allows. Also note that you can have more than 1 passenger on the itinerary as long as the total price is more than $1000. Also booking through Air France can have other operating carriers such as Delta, KLM, Jet Airways etc and the same is true for booking through KLM. As long as the marketing and ticketing carrier is the one for which you have the Amex Offer (KLM or Air France) you will receive the Amex Offer credit.

Again, there are great fares loaded for both Air France and KLM to various European destinations which are just above $500 and if you are more than one person travelling you can easily maximize this amex offer.

So, before you book your next destination flight do remember to see if there are comparable fares on Air France / KLM which would make your tickets further cheaper.

​Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.

Starting 04/23/18 we will be in week 3 of Daily Getaway. Most of the partners on Daily Getaways are same as the one we had last year. Also, while all deals are not equal there are opportunities to get great value out of certain deals. There are two deals this week which look interesting. While one can definitely fetch great value the value from other might be a gamble. Do note that the deals go live at 1 p.m. EST, so grab the one you want before it sells out.

Mon (April 23rd): Alamo Car Rental $50 certificate for $25. 
While on the face this might seem not much of a value given the car rentals companies routinely have discount codes or coupons which reduces the rental cost from face value; this one can fetch great returns. Here are few reasons:

1. You can combine 3 certificates together for a longer rental period although you will need to call for this one.
   
2. Although the terms state that you cannot combine this with other promotion and discount codes in the past you can use the certificate as a $50 off coupon and combine with other rate codes to reduce the price when you book it online using a single certificate.
3. Since the $50 certificate works as a coupon your effective taxes/fees if calculated as a percentage get significantly reduced specially in expensive tax locations such as Airports.
4. You can earn airlines miles / hotel points for your car rental.
5. The certificate act as a coupon code so you can still use the CDW/LDW insurance provided by your credit card.
6. The certificate does not have any expiration date.

​You can find all the terms and conditions at the link here. So if you have any car rental coming up and Alamo is present at that location with competitive pricing then you might want to definitely take advantage of this deal.

Thu (April 26th): Best Western 10,000 points for $55.
Best Western has quite a few budget hotels  and few high end hotels in the USA. The issue being the points required for the award night usually correlate with the revenue pricing so it is hard to get a great value out of their points. That being said they ran a great promotion last year where all the hotels in North America charged 10,000 Best Western (BW) points for 1 night award stay. So, assuming you are willing to take a gamble buying 10,000 points for $55 could potentially fetch a 1 night stay. Below are few other reasons their points might be useful

1. Best Western points do not expire.
2. You can redeem their points for gift cards although at less than 1 cent/point value so you will most probably will not be stuck with no use of points
3. The Reward night starts at 8,000 points so worst case you might be able to redeem at one of their lowest tier hotel for free night stay.

Although there are other Daily Getaway deals this week, the above two seems to be the interesting one's with value to be had.

​Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.

Marriott allows points transfer between accounts from 1,000 points to maximum of 50,000 points in a year. But if you are not a Gold or Platinum elite member they charge $10 for the transfer. In 2016 Marriott bought Starwood Hotels & Resorts and both the programs still operate independently although you can link your Marriott Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) program and transfer points easily between them with 1 SPG point equaling 3 Marriott Rewards points. 

Marriott Rewards started social media campaign in 2017 where if you link your social media account such as twitter, facebook and instagram account with your Marriott rewards account and participate in promotions which become available for limited time; you earn Marriott Rewards points. So, all of your family member can participate in this promo and earn Marriott Rewards points. Since you can transfer Marriott Reward points between accounts you can move all the Marriott rewards points to one account and use it for or hotel reward redemption.

Still better is that you can move all these combined points to SPG program (Minimum of 1,000 Marriott Reward Points required for SPG transfer). As we know SPG points transfer to most airlines at 1:1 ratio you can get good value if you are looking to top a participating airline account for redemption.

One other advantage of SPG points transfer from one SPG account to another is that you do not have to pay the $10 fee charged by Marriott for transfers of points. But both the members participating in SPG transfer has to reside at the same address for 30 days prior to transfer. Also a minimum of 1,000 SPG points are required for transfer to happen.

Here is the gist of how can you combine all the points fee free without status and do it online:

• Assuming none of the member are Marriott Gold or Platinum elite and each of the member has 3,000 Marriott Reward Points or more then transfer in increments of 3,000 points to SPG points at a ratio of 3:1 in their respective accounts. You need to link your rewards program before you can transfer points and you can do that by visiting this page and following the instructions.
• Once all the family members have SPG points available and they have same home address for last 30 days on their SPG accounts they can transfer the points to the family member who needs to make SPG redemption or wants to top off participating airline miles. 
• You can even transfer the combined SPG points back to the corresponding member Marriott Rewards account thus avoiding $10 Marriott Reward points transfer fee.

One other awesome aspect of Marriott Rewards Program is you can make reward reservation from your account even if you do not have sufficient Marriott Rewards points balance. So, you can make the reservation while the above transfer process is happening.

Alternatively if you are short on certain amount of points for your redemption and another family member has those points you can call in and book a specific redemption and request Marriott to take points from any other Marriott Reward member for free given they are willing to share their points. Of course this requires some paper work to be completed by both members and requires calling in.

So do connect with Marriott Rewards Points program on Social Media and collect points whenever available on all the family member accounts and combine them fee free to get to your reward redemption faster.

Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.

Etihad Airways and Jet Airways are close partners for earning and redemption of miles on each other. One of the overlooked value is on the Indian domestic flights on Jet Airways. Although the domestic flights in India can be quite inexpensive, the last minute tickets can become expensive. In addition the cancellation fees for domestic fares in India are quite high (almost the entire fare is usually forfeited). Also if you plan to travel in premium cabin the prices can be quite high. Below is an example of Mumbai to Goa flight where you can see the ticket cost along with change and cancellation fees.

Let me state this outright that I am averse to any interaction which would make private information public. Although social media is all about sharing it is also a boon to getting your issues resolved without picking up the phone or hunting for that email or chat option. So why twitter among all the social media?

Twitter has nice feature called "Messages" which you can use to send Direct Messages to anyone on twitter. The way it works is below:

• You need to search for the "handle" which represents the airline or bank or any other merchant you want to interact with. Its like a twitter account representing the business.
• Once you find the handle you need to follow them
• After following them send them a public twitter using their "handle" and stating your issue in general form with no specific details
• They will follow you in turn and once that happens the direct private messaging channel (Messages) opens up for one to one communication. Note: You still should keep your credit card etc details private but you can provide details on the flights record locator etc so that they can help you. For illustration shown below the handle is "@AmericanAir". Once you follow them, the blue bar on right will show "following". Once the brand follows you back you can see that on left just besides the brand handle.

• Now you can use the "Messages" to communicate with brand and get your issue resolved.
• The airlines might want to call you sometimes if they need more info or specifics on your transaction and that helps to close on your issue quickly.

You can resolve all kinds of issues relating to flight change, compensation for any service issue, miles not credited etc. For other merchants you can also resolve your account or order issues. The reason it works so effectively is you can make comments publicly with their twitter "handle" and no brand likes a bad publicity/comments and would work to resolve it immediately. 

So, next time you have issue with your flights, hotels do use this option as an effective way of getting your issues resolved. 

Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.

Wyndham Hotels group has more than 8,000 properties in 66+ countries. Their loyalty program Wyndham Rewards gives free night for 15,000 points (Go Free) or you can redeem for points+cash rate starting at just 3,000 points (Go Fast). So why bother about Wyndham Rewards Program?

You can reap great value from their redemption scheme of 3,000 or 15,000 points. (Note: Wyndham has been known to make changes without notice so do know that investing a lot in this program has its own risks). Below are few quick reasons why you should give a thought to their rewards program:

• ​They have hotels which usually fall in budget to mid-range and few on the high end side so it is easy to earn points in this program.
• You earn at least 1,000 points or 10 points/$ spend which ever is more for qualified stay which involves booking directly through Wyndham Hotels and paying a minimum per night rate of $25 (before taxes and fees).
• They have been expanding their brand presence like the recent addition of AmericInn hotels for earning and redemption.
• They have been running various promotions of late where just two separate one night stay (qualified stays) can earn 15,000 bonus Wyndham points (Good for 1 "Go Free" award or 5 "Go Fast" award nights). For e.g. here is the link for current promotion to earn 15,000 bonus points and you need to sign up for promotion before your stay (limit of 1 bonus point promotion per user).
• A "Go Free" award for 15,000 points can be redeemed for 1 free night at any Wyndham Hotel worldwide and thus can represent a great value. You can redeem for high end Dolce or TRYP brand hotels for the same 15,000 points.

They do have few important "cons" to consider though:

• Wyndham reward points expire after 4 years regardless of activity on the reward account but otherwise you can keep extending the life of your points up to 18 months as long as you have any activity on your account.
  
• "Go Fast" award redemption for cash+points starting at 3,000 Wyndham reward points are not available for all the hotels.
• They change their Wyndham reward program terms without any notice.

That being said below are couple of example of value from Wyndham Rewards program.

Go Free night stay at Silverado Resort and Spa, Napa for 15,000 points:
This is one of nice vacation location and the weekend nights do not come cheap. The room rates can easily run $250+/night and thus represents a great value for just 15,000 Wyndham Reward points.

Go Fast Stay at Howard Johnson Long Island City for 3,000 points:
Although not a high end hotel but still it would save you some dollars at this nice location in Long Island in lieu of 3,000 Wyndham reward points.

So, next time you are planning short 1 or 2 night stays do look at the Wyndham rewards program as you can use them for good value redemption. 

​Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.

Most of the airlines tickets today are non-refundable or carry hefty cancellation and change fees unless you are willing to shell out 2x or 3x the fare for refundable ticket. The same is not true for hotels but sometimes non-refundable hotels reservations might save you 10% or more than the refundable reservations.

So what to do when you booked that awesome flights for a great price but cannot take the flight? Or you had found a great deal on a hotel and booked it despite it being non-refundable? Getting refunded for that non-refundable hotel booking or flight reservation depends on the reason why you are looking to cancel. Below are few times you may be eligible to get refunded for a non-refundable flight ticket or hotel reservation.

Refunding non-refundable Airline fares:

Airline Schedule change:
Since all airlines like to have near full utilization on their flights they might change the schedule of the flights to align with their flight utilization capacity. This may lead to changing the schedule of the flights (very often) or cancelling them altogether (rare). What it does is opens up an opportunity for you to use it as a reason to ask for the involuntary refund without any penalty given the schedule would not meet your travel needs. 

Lot of airlines has various rules on what changes would qualify for involuntary refund but still there is a good chance you can get the entire paid fare refunded or credited for future travel without any penalty.

Medical Emergency:
Most of the airlines would refund your fare or provide credit for future use without any penalty when a medical emergency occurs to you or your close family member. While some airlines limit the refund only to the case where passenger travelling gets in to medical emergency in all cases it requires documentation from your Doctor to prove the kind of emergency to determine the eligibility for full refund.

Another situation is if you happen to book the flight ticket with a credit card that provides complimentary travel insurance in case of medical emergency. Even if you do not meet the airline criteria for refund under their rules you would still be eligible to get refund for your tickets from your credit card company in case of medical emergency. So, do check which credit cards provides this complimentary insurance and use them for your non-refundable flight reservation whenever possible.

Refunding non-refundable hotel reservation:

Ask Nicely:
Hotels are operated by either the big chains such as IHG or Marriott or they could be independently operated and that opens up gates for negotiation. You can talk to the customer specialist for big chain hotels and be ready to go higher up to supervisor and see if they can make this happen. Alternatively for independent hotels it is best to reach out to the hotel directly and explain your situation and see if they can refund your reservation.

While there is no guarantee this would always work there is a good chance it might. Also most hotels are more willing to accommodate if you are looking to change the dates rather than outright cancellation. So, if that works for you do ask for it as well.

Medical Emergency:
Similar to Airlines; hotels do consider medical emergency situation and provide full refund provided you can present proof of medical emergency. Again each big chain hotels and independent hotels are different and might have different rules on what constitutes a proof for allowing you to get full refund on your reservation.

Alternatively as stated earlier if your credit card covers you for refunding your travel expenses in medical emergency you can always approach them and get the refund for your hotel.


So, next time you are unable to travel do keep in mind you might still be able to get refunds for either all or some of your travels.

​Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.

Whenever we travel by flights using paid revenue tickets we always look for the best options available including the airlines, ticket cost and flight routing. I would suggest adding one more dimension to this which is "alternate airports".

Checking alternate airports is useful as there are market forces which would create competition at a given airport and thus bringing down the ticket costs at certain time while another airport would be much more expensive. This applies to alternate airports from your "Source" as well as your "Destination" airport (Do note that we are not talking about flying the budget airline). Also the same airlines which might fly non-stop from your close in airport might be relatively cheaper when they become one-stop from airport which is not in your vicinity or one-stop away from your actual destination. 

Here are few tips you can do to check if you have selected best option:

• Check the source vicinity airports.
• Check the destination vicinity airports.
• Check alternate airports at the source which might be a short flight away, assuming you are fine with that.
• Check airports which are served by your destination airport as alternative destination airports with routing through your destination. Do check if it would be "OK" to board if the alternative destination is in 3rd country (Make sure you do not check-in your luggage in this case..)

Let's look at an example here:
You are looking to fly from SFO to ZRH one way on June, 9th 2018 with maximum one stop and prefer Swiss Airlines:  
Let's use Google Flights for this search and make sure we use the close in airports at the source in the search, which in this case is OAK and SJC. Below are the one-stop options available as per google flights:​

As you can see from above the cheapest option is Icelandair followed by Turkish Airlines and both going from our preferred airport of SFO to ZRH. You can also see that there are two expensive non-stop options on United Airlines and Swiss Airlines.

Let's use some of the tips and make some changes to our search for destination airport in 3rd country and see what happens. Here I am changing the airline to "Swiss" only and changing my destination to HKG (Hong Kong) which provides an on arrival visa to most nationals and thus would avoid any boarding issue from SFO.

As you can see from above, you are looking at Swiss Airlines with a reasonable cost of $844 serving non-stop between your intended source (SFO) and destination (ZRH). And by the way do check out for any smart tips suggested by Google Flight tool, such as above where it suggests you can get the flight for just $452 if you want to fly on June, 10th, 2018.

So in short you are just paying ~$235 more than the cheapest flight on Icelandair and are able to travel on your preferred Swiss Airlines for your preferred date and time. So, next time you are out to book flights do not discard options which might look far fetched.

​Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.

If you are looking for hotel stays at any of your upcoming trip, do not forget checking out IHG PointBreaks list. IHG made changes to the PointBreaks to have three categories of redemption instead of just having one redemption at 5k IHG points. The New Redemption has hotels at 5k points, 10k points and 15k points. Although it might look like devaluation of PointBreaks program but having more hotels are different lower cost tiers is better than few hotels at one low tier of 5k points.

IHG Points can be easily earned or bought at about ~0.5 cents/points to ~0.7 cents/points based on various promotions so even if you are short of points it would be worth buying them if the stay on points is working out cheaper than paying for the hotel in cash. Do remember that staying at hotel on revenue rate would also add taxes/fees which otherwise is not present on award nights so that also adds to the saving.

Alternatively IHG runs promotion for accelerated earning of points every 4 months. Here is the one for Jan 1st to April 30th 2018. It might be useful to register and check your points earning offer as you might earn bunch of points for a cheap stay and occasionally 500 points just for downloading and logging in from IHG App. These points can certainly make PointBreaks stay cheaper.  Here is an example of how the promotional offer looks like.

The current PointBreaks list is valid from January 29th to April 30th and most of the reward stays have reasonable cancellation policy till almost a day or two before the stay. So even if you have tentative plans, check the cancellation policy and based on your comfort book those PointBreaks award as these awards are limited by hotels and the hotels may be removed from the PointBreaks list any time before the promotion ends.

They are about ~150+ hotels in the list so go ahead and see if any of those fit your current travel plans and save some money on those stays.

Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.

Lot of us who use miles/points for travel gets obsessed with it and collect miles/points which due to our constraints are lying idle without being used. We wait on using certain miles/points for the time when it would give the best value forgetting that while they are lying idle they have zero value and there is always a chance they will expire without we even using them. 

So here is my plan for this year. I am going to Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) so that while I still enjoy the miles/points I have, I do not drain lot of energy and time in preserving them. Here are few of the things I plan to do this year:

Redeem Miles/Points in airline / hotel programs which are not my primary usage programs:
All of us who collect miles/points would have invested in airline/ hotel programs due to one off flights which we can credit only on specific program to get good value. If we are not an active person in this program we would scramble to get any value out of these programs. Worst case we do not use the miles at all. So here is what I plan to do:

• See if I have enough miles to redeem for any flights this year? If yes, use it even though I might just get 1 cent/point or lesser value.
• If I do not have enough miles in the program for flights, I will check the next best options like gift cards (which I can use or cash out), hotel reservations at stand alone hotels, or any activity redemption which I can use. 

Maintain Miles/Points in programs with looks great value with regards to my future travel destinations:
I usually know which are the places I want to visit in future. At least the one's within the next one year. Here is what are I am going to do.

• Maintain enough points I think I would need in specific programs without going overboard in collecting them. For e.g. crediting my flight miles to program which I am going to use even at 50% earning rate is better than crediting to program which would earn 100% miles but I have no plans of using it. 
• Earn points in program which either Do Not Expire or I am an active elite member so I know that I am not going to spend lot of time on worrying about their usage or expiration.

Maximize collection of flexible point currencies:
If you are able to get credit cards in U.S.A or which ever country you are in which collects flexible points transferable to airline miles or hotel points or can be used for directly booking flights/hotels then those are the golden in these times. Here is my plan for flexible points.

• Use credit cards which provide flexible points earning. These include Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards, Citi Thankyou points, SPG Points.
• Use credit cards which earn points that can be redeemed for revenue airlines tickets or hotels or car rental directly such as US Bank Altitude Reserve Card, Barclays Arrival+ etc.

So, lets have another great year of travel and maximize our time and life experiences while worrying less about all those expiring miles and points!

​Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.