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.

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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.

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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!

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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.
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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