 Delta Skymiles has been regular in doing flash sales where they discount the mileage cost of reward tickets to various destinations. We have wrote about this regular flash sales in the past and you can find one of our posts here. This time they are discounting flights to various Caribbean destinations and although they advertise the cost starting from 16k+ miles (plus taxes and fees) and certain restriction on dates / city pairs you can find deals from lot more cities and dates starting at 14k+ miles round trip! You can find the current set of deals listed here but "do not trust what you see" as you may be positively surprised when you do the actual search for your dates.  Snapshot of partial list of deals from West Coast Cities to Caribbean. For e.g. although not being listed as discounted cities you can find round trip tickets from San Jose (SJC) to Los Cabos (SJD) starting at 14k miles round trip. The best part is if you plan to leave on Friday/Saturday the mileage cost does not increase by much and you can have 4-5 days of short beach vacation!!  San Jose (SJC) to Los Cabos (SJD) round trip for just 14k miles + ~$99.57 in taxes and fees!  Example 4 days Itinerary for just 15k SkyPesos + $99.57! So, if you are looking for quick Caribbean vacation and have Delta Skymiles to spend do check out this flash sale.
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 Mastercard updated some of the benefits available to all U.S. Based consumer card holders of World and World Elite Mastercard back in April of 2019. The most common cards which are "World Elite" are Citi Premier, Citi Prestige and Barclay Arrival+. Below are few of the benefits added which are useful in today's world of ride shares, food delivery and cell phone services.
$10 of Lyft credit every month: Lyft ride sharing service has tied up with mastercard to provide "World Elite" cardholders $10 in credit each month in which you take 5 rides. The credit expires 30 days after it has been added to your lyft account. Simply add "World Elite" qualified mastercard to your lyft account and activate it in "promos" tab in the lyft App (You might need to update the lyft app to its latest). More details about this can be found here. $5 off Postmates order of $25+: Postmates food delivery service will give you $5 discount on every order of $25+ (before taxes and fees) when you pay using your "World" and "World Elite" mastercard. This is a useful and repeatable benefit for folks who are regular users of Postmates delivery service. More details about this can be found here. Up to $1,000 in Cell Phone Protection: "World Elite" mastercard holders who pay monthly cell phone bill with their card can claim up to $1,000 per year ($800 max per claim, 2 times a year) for any damage/repair to their phones or if their phone is stolen. The benefit is directly provided by mastercard but is secondary to any coverage already available. Apart from above there are other benefits such as 5% back in rewards with Boxed, identity theft protection, other travel benefits. Details about all the benefits available can be found here. 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.  City National Bank Visa Infinite is a unique card which comes with a special benefit of $100 Visa Infinite discount air benefit where you get $100 discount on purchase of between 2 and 5 U.S. domestic round trip coach tickets. The benefit is available only on select "Visa Infinite" credit cards in the United States. The terms and conditions of the benefit can be found here. One of the other card with similar $100 discount benefit is "Ritz Carlton Rewards Visa Card". The discount is applied per ticket purchase so if you have party of 2 travelling and you are looking to purchase tickets which are cheap then the discount can be substantial as the only requirement for the discount is that the total cost has to be more than $100 for the discount to be applied. Let's look at the example below for round trip flight from SJC-LAX-SJC for 2 persons.  SJC-LAX-SJC for $97 round trip per person  Total Cost of $93.20 after Visa CNB Infinite Discount As you can see from above 2 persons can travel for the cost of 1 person with this discount. Also both the passenger can earn redeemable as well as elite miles for the air travel. Another benefit is that the discount is available for unlimited number of trips throughout the year.
Also the benefit is available to the authorized users on the credit card. CNB Visa Infinite Card allows maximum of up to 3 authorized user on a credit card (No additional fees) and thus a family of up to 8 can easily maximize the benefit by booking in pairs of 2 tickets on each reservation. CNB Visa Infinite Card currently has sign up bonus of 30,000 points after spending $3,000 or more in first 90 days. These points can be redeemed for travel through their portal for minimum of $300 or can be redeemed for gift cards etc. Although the card is one of difficult one to get but it comes with amazing benefits out of which one is the $100 Visa Infinite travel discount. 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.  American Express has one of the common benefit across all credit cards which is called Amex Offers. These offers provide discount in the form of statement credit or membership rewards points for purchase at certain merchants. While some of these offers are targeted, most of them are available to all customers. The offers usually have rebate in the range of 10% to 25% depending on the merchant. American Express also provides "Amex Offers for travel". Below are some of the offers available as of now.     As you can see they are different offers available with hotels and airlines. For hotel offers, although you need to make booking online you can pay with the card enrolled in the offer at the time of check out. This also present's a nice stacking opportunity. For e.g. Hilton Honors Aspire Card provides $250 resort credit every year at participating resorts. This could easily stack with the $100 back on $500 spend on Hilton Brand Hotels in Europe if you have that offer added to your Hilton Credit Card and use it for paying at the participating resorts in Europe.
The other example of possible stack is if you have Delta Offer above of $40 back on $200 which can stack with the Companion ticket which comes with Platinum Delta Skymiles or Delta Reserve credit card. Since American Express only allows one Amex Offer of given type across all American Express card on person's name, it would be best to add the offer to the credit card where you can possibly stack. So, next time you see any travel Amex Offers do not forget to add it to the card where you can maximize it!! 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.  Alaska Airlines credit card is issued by Bank of America in U.S.A. Although the card has annual fees of $75, it does comes with a decent sign up bonus for 25k to 40k miles and a great companion fare ticket which you receive after the minimum spend requirement and then annually after paying the annual fees. The companion fare allows the purchase of companion ticket for $99+ taxes and fees (Or for $0+ taxes and fees for 1st year of companion certificate if you had hop on the promotion last year). Alaska Airlines maintains an FAQ for the companion fare, but the real incredible feature is not mentioned there. Below is the quick summary about the companion fare:
 2 passenger can fly from HNL-SJC-JFK-SJC-HNL all for $627.20! As you can see from above, you can fly from Honolulu to San Jose and to New York and back all in for a great price and stop at multiple locations for a good amount of time. That's a lot of flying. On top of it you can have open-jaw ticket flying in and out of different airport and thus you can maximize your companion fare further.  Total of 9,972 miles of flight time for ~$627 for 2 persons is a steal! Given that each passenger would also earn 1 mile for each mile flown, you would earn good amount of miles. Also Alaska Airlines partners with various international airlines such as Cathay Pacific, Emirates etc, so in addition to Alaska Airlines you can redeem your miles on these partner airlines as well. So, if you are on the sidelines but do plan to travel with your companion and stay close to Alaska Airlines flight destinations, you would definitely want to take a look at Alaska Airlines credit card!
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.  U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve Card is a premium version of credit card offered by U.S. Bank. One of the main feature of this card is capability of earning 3x points on all mobile payments spend (Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay etc) as well as certain travel spend. There are other compelling features such as Priority Pass Select, TSA Pre or Global Entry Credit of $100, $325 Annual travel credit for eligible travel reimbursement but the card comes with hefty annual fees of $400.
As per recent reports folks when ask for retention offer are offered 5,000 to 10,000 points retention offer after one year when 2nd year fees are billed or due on account. But what if you are not given that offer and you want to cancel or downgrade your card but have points available in your account? Below are you options.. 1. Transfer points to Spouse or a Friend: You can transfer points in any amount to your spouse or a friend who has either the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve Credit Card or the U.S. Bank Flexperks Credit Card. All you need is there credit card number (account number) and you can do the transfer olline.. 2. Real Time Mobile Redemption Rewards: The great thing is U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve Card has something called as Real Time Mobile Redemption Rewards where you can redeem each of your Altitude Reserve Points at 1.5 cent value as statement credit when you make a travel purchase directly with Airlines, Hotels, car rental companies, taxis, limousines, passenger trains, and cruise lines. This also includes rides with Uber and Lyft in United States. Although there are limits on minimum amount you need to spend of $250 for car rentals and $500 for lodging; for other categories you can redeem for as low as $10 of charges. So you can purchase airlines gift card (American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines sells gift card which can be purchased online) and redeem the real time mobile redemption at value of 1.5 cent/point. (The only requirement is that the charge has to be less than the available points value available for redemption for using Real Time Redemption Reward). You could also redeem them for airline ticket and subsequently cancel those ticket before 24 hours cancellation period and retain the statement credit for the same. This is the easiest way of always getting a value of 1.5 cent/point and redeeming all your points before you go ahead with your cancellation or downgrade of the credit card. So, go ahead and redeem those points for cash before you cancel your card. 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.  Aeroplan has current transfer bonus of 35% more miles when you convert your Marriott Bonvoy points to Aeroplan miles. Usually Marriott points transfer at ratio of 3:1. Transferring 30k Marriott points would yield 10k Aeroplan miles. The current transfer bonus offer of Aeroplan is set to expire on 06/26/2019. Below is one example of how the offer would work.   35% bonus Aeroplan miles when transferring from Marriott Bonvoy If you are planning to take advantage of this promotion, do remember to check the award space including the phantom space on Aeroplan website before you transfer any points as otherwise you might be out of luck. Below is an example search which shows availability for Singapore Airlines in Business Class.  Award Availability for Singapore Airlines Business Class Given above it might be easy to believe that award is available to book with Aeroplan miles. The important thing to remember is to click the "Book" button to see if it allows to go forward. Usually if it is phantom space as is the case above it will error out saying the space is not available. Alternatively you can call Aeroplan and confirm the availability with them before you transfer your points.
The above will ensure that your transferred miles are put to use as intended. Aeroplan miles expire after 1 year of no activity on the account so only transfer if you have immediate use and the award space is available. 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.  As Lyft expands its service in the United States it is also expanding the partnership where you can earn miles and points as well as cashback for the rides taken with them. You do need to link up your mileage or points earning account to earn miles and points. Below are the current partnership where lyft provides potential to earn miles/points.
JetBlue Lyft Partnership: JetBlue offers existing Lyft users opportunity to earn JetBlue points for rides to/from airport. You need to link your JetBlue account with lyft. For every ride taken you earn 30 JetBlue points. Although those are small amount of points they are free. More details can be found here. Delta Lyft Partnership: Delta Airlines has also partnered with Lyft where you earn 1 mile/$ for non-airport rides and 2 miles/$ for airport rides for exiting Lyft users. This has potential of earning variable amount of Delta Airlines miles depending on the cost of the ride you take. You need to link your Delta Airlines account with Lyft to start earning. More details can be found here. Hilton Lyft Parnership: Hilton Hotels has partnered with Lyft where you earn 2 points/$ on shared ride and 3 points/$ on all other Lyft rides. You can earn variable amount of Hilton Honor points based on the spend. You need to link your Hilton Honors account with Lyft to start earning. More details on this partnership can be found here. Earn Cashback with Ebates App: Although not a significant amount you can earn cashback for every ride you take with Lyft while launching the Lyft App from Ebates App and booking your ride. As of this writing Ebates is offering $0.25 per ride but in the past it has been as high as $1. So, if you have cashback account with Ebates it would be nice to earn cashback for the ride you are going to take anyway. More details can be found on this blog post. When linking the accounts make sure you enter the names correctly. For e.g. Delta Airlines webpage will throw error if you do not enter correct name as per your Delta Airlines Mileage account. So, get going and link your accounts today so you earn the miles/points on JetBlue, Delta and Hilton. Also do remember the cash back through Ebates App. 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.  Priority Club, International Hotels Group (IHG) have their popular PointsBreaks rewards now bookable for stay till Aug 31st 2019. IHG now has 3 tier of rewards bookable at 5k, 10k, and 15k IHG points. IHG also keeps selling the points with bonus points where the most recent offer which ended on June 8th, 2019 was with 100% bonus bringing the cost down to 0.5 cent/point. So, if you are interested in any of the PointsBreaks hotel but do not have enough points it might be worth to look into the purchase option for the points.  IHG most recent purchase points promotion with 100% bonus, getting the cost down to 0.5 cent/point. Below is the list of hotels available at the time of writing. You can find the current list here. Hotels Available for 5k points per night: United States: MONTANA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Sidney TEXAS Holiday Inn Express & Suites Corsicana I-45 Candlewood Suites Georgetown Candlewood Suites Dallas Plano East Richardson Candlewood Suites Wichita Falls @ Maurine St. Worldwide: ALBERTA, CANADA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Bonnyville Holiday Inn Express & Suites Drayton Valley URUGUAY Holiday Inn Montevideo GERMANY Holiday Inn Leipzig - Günthersdorf KAZAKHSTAN Holiday Inn Almaty TURKEY Holiday Inn Gebze - Istanbul Asia QATAR Holiday Inn Doha - The Business Park SOUTH AFRICA Holiday Inn Express Durban - Umhlanga Hotels Available for 10k points per night: United States: ARIZONA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Phoenix East - Gilbert Staybridge Suites Phoenix East - Gilbert Holiday Inn Express Sierra Vista ARKANSAS Staybridge Suites Hot Springs Crowne Plaza Little Rock Holiday Inn Express & Suites White Hall CALIFORNIA Holiday Inn Palmdale-Lancaster Holiday Inn Express & Suites Porterville Holiday Inn Express & Suites Twentynine Palms- Joshua Tree COLORADO Holiday Inn Express & Suites Grand Junction FLORIDA Staybridge Suites Gainesville I-75 Holiday Inn Tallahassee E Capitol - Univ GEORGIA Holiday Inn Express Atlanta W (I-20) Douglasville Holiday Inn Express & Suites Atlanta Airport NE - Hapeville Holiday Inn Express Atlanta SW - Newnan ILLINOIS Holiday Inn Express & Suites Bloomington - Normal INDIANA Staybridge Suites South Bend-University Area KENTUCKY Holiday Inn Express & Suites Ashland Staybridge Suites Lexington LOUISIANA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Lake Charles MARYLAND Holiday Inn Express & Suites Cumberland - La Vale Holiday Inn Express Waldorf MICHIGAN Crowne Plaza Auburn Hills Holiday Inn & Suites Farmington Hills - Detroit NW Holiday Inn Detroit Northwest - Livonia Holiday Inn & Suites Mount Pleasant Staybridge Suites Lansing-Okemos MISSOURI Holiday Inn Columbia-East NEW HAMPSHIRE Holiday Inn Express Keene NEW YORK Holiday Inn Express & Suites Batavia - Darien Lake Holiday Inn Express & Suites Malone OHIO Holiday Inn Express & Suites Ashland Crowne Plaza Dayton Holiday Inn Express & Suites Cleveland-Richfield OKLAHOMA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Blackwell Holiday Inn Express & Suites Jenks Staybridge Suites Oklahoma City - Downtown OREGON Holiday Inn Express & Suites Portland Airport PENNSYLVANIA Holiday Inn Express & Suites West Chester TENNESSEE Candlewood Suites Murfreesboro TEXAS Candlewood Suites Buda - Austin SW Candlewood Suites Galveston Holiday Inn Express & Suites McAllen - Medical Center Area Holiday Inn Express & Suites Fort Worth North - Northlake Holiday Inn Express & Suites San Antonio - Brooks City Base UTAH Holiday Inn Express Heber City WISCONSIN Holiday Inn Express Milwaukee-West Medical Center WYOMING Candlewood Suites Casper Worldwide: ALBERTA, CANADA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Edmonton South Holiday Inn Express & Suites Medicine Hat Transcanada Hwy 1 MÉXICO, MEXICO Crowne Plaza Mexico Norte Tlalnepantla NUEVO LEÓN, MEXICO Holiday Inn Express & Suites Monterrey Valle PUEBLA, MEXICO Crowne Plaza Puebla EL SALVADOR Crowne Plaza San Salvador-Conference Center PANAMA Holiday Inn Express Panama Distrito Financiero ARMENIA Holiday Inn Express Yerevan GERMANY Holiday Inn Express Essen - City Centre ITALY Holiday Inn Rome - Aurelia RUSSIA Holiday Inn Kaliningrad UNITED KINGDOM Holiday Inn Aberdeen - West Holiday Inn Ashford - Central Holiday Inn Basingstoke Holiday Inn Express London - Dartford Holiday Inn Express Dunstable Holiday Inn Express Manchester - East OMAN Crowne Plaza Sohar QATAR Crowne Plaza Doha - The Business Park SAUDI ARABIA Holiday Inn Al Khobar Holiday Inn Riyadh - Al Qasr INDIA Crowne Plaza Chennai Adyar Park Crowne Plaza Jaipur Tonk Road Crowne Plaza Kochi INDONESIA Holiday Inn & Suites Jakarta Gajah Mada LANZHOU, MAINLAND CHINA Holiday Inn & Suites Lanzhou Center TIANJIN, MAINLAND CHINA Holiday Inn Tianjin Xiqing Hotels Available for 15k points per night: United States: FLORIDA EVEN Hotel Miami - Airport GEORGIA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Augusta West - Ft Gordon Area INDIANA Holiday Inn Express Indianapolis - Southeast MARYLAND Crowne Plaza Greenbelt - Washington DC MICHIGAN Holiday Inn & Suites Ann Arbor Univ. Michigan Area Holiday Inn Ann Arbor-Near The Univ. Of Mi MINNESOTA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Minneapolis-Dwtn (Conv Ctr) NEBRASKA EVEN Hotel Omaha Downtown NEVADA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Carson City NORTH CAROLINA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Charlotte-Concord-I-85 PENNSYLVANIA Hotel Indigo Pittsburgh - Technology Center SOUTH CAROLINA Crowne Plaza North Augusta Holiday Inn Express & Suites Charleston Arpt-Conv Ctr Area TENNESSEE Holiday Inn Express & Suites Mt. Juliet-Nashville Area TEXAS Crowne Plaza Suites Arlington - Ballpark - Stadium Holiday Inn Express & Suites Seguin UTAH Holiday Inn Express & Suites Cedar City Holiday Inn Express & Suites Kanab WISCONSIN Holiday Inn & Suites Madison West Worldwide: FRANCE Crowne Plaza Lille - Euralille GERMANY Crowne Plaza Frankfurt Congress Hotel UNITED KINGDOM Crowne Plaza Birmingham City Centre The Met Hotel Leeds KENYA Crowne Plaza Nairobi Airport SAUDI ARABIA Crowne Plaza Riyadh Palace UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Crowne Plaza Abu Dhabi JIANGXI, MAINLAND CHINA Crowne Plaza Nanchang Wanli ZHEJIANG, MAINLAND CHINA Crowne Plaza Taizhou This list will shrink with time as hotels provide only limited capacity for PointBreaks promotion. So book your reward now if you are interested any any of the participating hotel rewards. 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.  IHG Rewards Club has their new promotion available starting May 1st 2019 for stays from May 1st 2019 to Aug 31st 2019. They are again naming this as Accelerate promotion and It is similar to their past promotion where they have targeted stay offers to various individual based on their past stay with IHG Rewards Club program. The terms of this promotion can be found here. Do note that some of the folks (including myself) are getting error message when trying to register for this promotion. It could either be some glitch in the roll out of the promotion or IHG has come up with new way of targeting this promotion :(. I was able to register one other family member account which I manage and below are the bonus offers on that account.  IHG Accelerate 2019 Promotion Offers Since the offers are targeted they would be different for different folks (Some might have less stay requirement which others might have more and would get different total amount of points). Based on the past promotions if your stay satisfies more than one task requirements you would earn points for both of them based on the total requirement.
For e.g. from above staying 4 separate nights where 3 nights are with different brands and 2 of those nights being booked with "bonus points package" would satisfy all the requirements of the offers for the targeted bonus promotion and can earn 30,800 IHG Rewards Points!! Also these points are in addition to the base points and any other promotions points which you would have registered for. The points can be used for one of the well known PointBreaks promotion where you can stay at participating hotels for either 5k, 10k or 15k IHG Rewards Points. You can read more of the regular PointBreaks promotion here. So if you have upcoming plans to stay with IHG Hotels do make sure you register for this promotion. 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. |
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