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.

There are certain sweet spots on various award charts and if you are taking domestic flights in Japan then you might want to surely check these sweet spot award redemption for flying on ANA Airlines using United Airlines miles or Japan Airlines (JAL) using British Airways Avios. 

Using United Airlines Miles:
United Airlines charges only 5,000 miles for an award flight for a distance of 800 miles or less when travelling solely within Japan. For more than distance of 800 miles it charges only 8,000 miles. Also the pricing is based on distance between source and destination on not "segment" based. This is a steal if there is award availability.

ANA Airlines also charges 5,000 miles for one way award for a distance of 600 miles or less but it's distance calculation is based on segments and thus may not be as useful as United Airlines redemption. Also ANA pricing varies based on the season where as United has a fixed pricing.

See the sample availability for Osaka (ITM) to Haneda (HND) airport and you will see amazing price of just 5k miles for the award although the cash price might be upwards of $100+. Also it is easy to book the flights online on United Airlines website and taxes are $0+.

Using British Airways Avios:
British Airways Avios charges only 4,500 miles for distance of 650 miles or less and there is minimal taxes and fees (~$2-$3) when booking flights on Japan Airlines (JAL). For distance of 651 miles to 1150 miles it charges 7,500 miles.

Japan Airlines has zone based redemption for domestic travel as well. Here is the award chart. Also the redemption starts at 5,000 miles (during promotion period) and is based on zone of travel. British Airways Avios is much easier to accumulate through multiple transfer partners such as Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards, SPG, Citi ThankYou Points and Diner's club where as Japan Airlines only transfer partner in USA is SPG.

You can see the sample availability for Osaka (ITM) to Haneda (HND) airport which you can book for just 4,500 British Airways Avios. Also it is easy to book the flights online and taxes are ~$2+.

So if you are travelling to Japan make sure you use this options to get around Japan rather then spending $100+ for short haul flights.

​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.

Happy New Year to all the folks who are reading this. Today I want to highlight something which is easily overlooked by all of us while looking to purchase our flight tickets. There are times where you would be looking to just purchase a one-way flight ticket. This could be because you are able to secure the other one-way ticket using miles in premium class or you were able to get on the myriad sale where the other one way ticket was awesomely cheap. In the miles and points world you do end up buying flight tickets with cash lot of times and below info would be useful when you do your next flight search.

Buying two one-way tickets on different carrier can be cheaper in peak season:
If you have ever tried to purchase a flight travelling out of USA during summer break or Christmas/ New Year you would know what I am talking about. Everyone is travelling during these times and the airlines know it and thus prices can be exorbitant. Most 3rd party aggregation sites would give preference over a round trip ticket booked as one ticket then two separate one-way tickets and this is where it would be useful to search for separate "one-way tickets" which at times would be cheaper than a single round trip ticket. Make sure you check the price on the regional website where you plan to return from and you might be in for a surprise.

Converting a return one-way ticket to a multi-city ticket for future use:
This is where it gets interesting. As we all know during non-peak times round trip tickets are almost always cheaper than one-way tickets. So, why not convert a one-way return trip into a round trip? Let's assume you want to travel from San Francisco, CA to Amman, Jordan in Christmas and return back in January. For the purpose of this demo I will use Google Flights as my go to tool. Below is what it looks like booking one-way return trip today for Jan, 15th, 2018:

As you can say that most folks are planning to return from their vacation during early January the one-way tickets are still a tad bit higher. So, what if you tag along a future one way trip and make it a round trip? How about booking a future one-way trip to completely different destination which you might have in your visit list? Check out below for example.

As you can see, changing the search to "multi-city" and putting a destination which you might already be planning to visit in future is just ~$300 more than the original one way ticket you were looking to purchase anyway. 

So, the next time you plan to travel in peak travel periods do not forget to change your search criteria and you might be in for the unexpected discount on your travel.

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 is out with their accelerate promotion for Q1 2018 which runs from Jan 01 to April 30. Here is the link to register for the offer. As earlier quarter offers the baseline offer is to earn 30,000 IHG points by completing various stay challenges/activities. Below is the snap shot of the baseline offer.

As you can see the standard baseline offer requires minimum of 4 night stay to earn 30,000 bonus IHG points. Interestingly, if you notice you can earn easy 500 bonus IHG points by just downloading and logging in the IHG App on your mobile device. This is good enough for extending the validity of your IHG points without any stay activity on your account. 

Alternatively folks have been targeted with much better promotional offer based on their stay pattern and thus can earn much higher amount of bonus IHG points.  IHG routinely lists certain properties for redemption for just 5k points. Here is the last list being published.  So you can certainly score some cheap stays. Also IHG has points+cash feature which can be useful for generating points at ~0.5 cents/points. You can find more details on a very old post here.

So, go ahead and register for this offer even if you do not plan to stay and see if there are any easy bonus IHG points available for grabs.

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.

 United recently updated the award chart redemption values for travel to various destination. One of upside of that "devaluation" was introduction of short distance award redemption on partners for just 8,000 united miles. Although the new redemption value is not applicable in North America (U.S.A and Canada) you can get good value out of it for the places where the short distance flights are really expensive. Below are the requirements for getting the redemption for 8,000 united miles:

• The travel should be within one region outside North America.
• The flight should be non-stop flight.
• The flight distance should be less than 800 miles.

As long as the partner flights you are looking at meet above rules you can get your flight reward for just 8,000 miles. An interesting use of this is to travel to tourist destination by travelling from near by non-tourist destination. Below are few examples of where this can be useful.

Bangalore (BLR), India to Male (MLE), Maldives on Air India:
Air India has non-stop flight from Bangalore, India to Male, Maldives which is a distance of ~682 miles. You can fly this route for just 8,000 United Miles + taxes which otherwise would cost $150+.

Cairo (CAI), Egypt to Amman (AMM), Jordan:
Cairo in Egypt and Petra in Jordan are tourist places of interest although due to recent conflicts in the region they might not be in everyone's list of to-go places. Still they are at a distance of just ~294 miles they might still set you back by $150+ each way. Getting between them for 8,000 United miles + taxes would give a good redemption value.

Above are just two example but there are many more to be had and a good value if you are looking for short distance redemption less than 800 miles.

​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 Airlines is out with another shopping promotion where you can earn up to 1500 AAdvantage bonus miles for shopping. The promotion is valid from 12/01 to 12/17 and has tiered earning for the bonus miles which are on top of the miles you would earn at a participating shopping merchant.

The earning of miles is as follows:

• 500 bonus miles when you spend $150
• 1500 bonus miles when you spend $300

So if you still have some shopping left or have Amex offers for the merchants where purchasing gift card trigger the AAdvantage Portal miles payout then make sure to remember about this promotion when deciding which portal to use for cash back or miles.

​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 we get in to the holiday shopping season various major airlines are promoting their shopping portals by providing shopping bonus points/miles. I wrote about United MileagePlus bonus here. Below are the shopping bonus details for Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards program and American Airlines AAdvantage program.

​Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards earn up to 3000 bonus points:
As with United Airlines this is a tier promotion as well. Earn bonus Southwest Rapid Rewards points for shopping from 10/30/2017 to 11/20/2017. You earn points based on tier spending as below.

• Tier 1 bonus: 500 bonus points for qualifying purchases of at least $150 - $499.99
• Tier 2 bonus: 1,000 bonus points for qualifying purchases of at least $500 - $999.99
• Tier 3 bonus: 3,000 bonus points for qualifying purchases of $1,000 or more

The first 5000 bonus miles:
United MileagePlus has a promotion where you can earn up to 5000 miles for tier spent through MileagePlus shopping portal between 10/30/17 to 11/19/2017. Here is the link for the promotion. Below is the tier earning details:

• Tier 1 bonus: 500 miles for qualifying purchases of at least $150
• Tier 2 bonus: 2,500 miles for qualifying purchases of at least $750
• Tier 3 bonus: 5,000 miles for qualifying purchases of $1,500 

Note that the miles are not cumulative. So if you spent $1,500+ you would earn only 5,000 bonus miles.

The next 500 miles:
Apart from that United Airlines has sent out mailers (link here) where you can earn bonus 500 miles by doing activity as shown below.

The last 1,000 bonus miles (YMMV):
If you are United MileagePlus Credit card member and shop using that card then you are in luck for another 1,000 bonus miles although the terms are not clear if this bonus is only for new members of MileagePlus Shopping or it applies to existing members as well. Here is the link for the promotion banner.

​So, if you are looking to shop within the next 2 weeks you can take advantage of this promotion. As always do not forget to compare the earning rates for various merchants through aggregation sites such as Ca$hback Monitor.

​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.

Groupon recently announced loyalty program partnership where you can earn Airlines miles or Hotel points with participating airlines and hotels by using a airline/hotel specific promo code. The current earning for Airlines and Hotels are as below:
Airlines

• New customer bonus for local purchase of $30 or more = 1,000 miles
• Local = 5 miles/dollar spent
• Getaways = 4 miles/dollar spent
• Goods = 3 miles /dollar spent

Hotels

• New customer bonus for local purchase of $30 or more = 2,000 points
• Local = 10 points/dollar spent
• Getaways = 8 points/dollar spent
• Goods = 6 points /dollar spent

Below are the current participating partners:

• Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan
• American Airlines AAdvantage
• United MileagePlus
• JetBlue True Blue
• Choice Privileges
• IHG Rewards Club
• LaQuinta Returns

When you click the link here you need to login and select the partner program in which you need to earn miles/points as and enter your membership number on the screen as shown below:

After confirming your membership number you will be given the airline/hotel specific promo code. For e.g. below is what you would see for Alaska Airlines.