 Lot of Airlines where you accrue miles have different mileage expiration policies. American Airlines miles expire after 18 months if there is no accrual or redemption activity on the mileage account. There are many ways on extending the expiration of American Airlines miles and you can see most of the partners here. But most of activity requires you to make some purchase either through AA Shopping mall or perform donation to participating partner non-profit.
You only need to earn 1 mile to extend the validity of your American Airlines miles by another 18 months and there is an easier way to do just that. You can register for AwardWallet service for tracking your miles (If you are not register, It is free to join with option of upgrade for a free. You can use my referral here) . After registering you can add your American Airlines account to your AwardWallet account (You can also add other users whose account you manage and whose American Airlines miles you wish to extend to this AwardWallet account). Once registered if you visit any of the blog posts they publish and comment you will earn 5 American Airline miles for 1 or more comment on unique blog posts published by them (Once the comment is approved and once per day). You need to be logged in your AwardWallet account and just before you submit the comment you can select the American Airlines (AA) account you wish to credit 5 miles. The miles usually gets deposited within 5 business days once the comment is approved. You can read more about this feature here. So, next time if you have American Airlines (AA) miles expiring and you want to extend them quickly you have AwardWallet to your rescue! 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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 Hilton Honors points expire after 12 months of inactivity (either earning or redeeming). To avoid the expiration you need to have activity on your account. There are many available ways to extend that expiration for another 12 months, but here we want to list the quick and easy ways to keep those points alive.
Shop with points with Amazon: Hilton provides an ability to redeem your points at Amazon. You can redeem 500 points for $1 spent on Amazon (which is a poor value if your sole purpose to use it for spending on Amazon). The good news is you can use this way to extend the expiration of your points. The best way is to purchase a $1 Amazon e-gift card sent to yourself or anyone you want to. Although Hilton advertises that you need to use minimum of 500 points, at the time of this writing you can pay partially as well by redeeming just 5 points for $0.01 on that purchase. The remaining $0.99 can be paid with any of your credit card. Hilton provides more details on this partnership here. Transfer points to your friends or family: Hilton allows points transfer free of cost. You can transfer up-to 500,000 points in a year to a single person in a year. That's a good amount of transfer without any cost. You can transfer the points to a person who has any recent Hilton Honors account activity (In last 12 months) or has various Amex Hilton Cards. More details can be found here. Transfer American Express Membership Reward Points: If you have any Amex Membership Reward Points earning card then you can use that to transfer 1,000 Membership Reward Points to 2,000 Hilton Honors points. This will extend your Hilton Honors points for another 12 months. Also, American Express occasionally has transfer bonuses as well such as current targeted bonus of 10% to 50% for points transfer to Hilton, but in any case you will need to transfer minimum of 1,000 Membership Reward points. You can begin your transfer here. So, above 3 are the quick ways to get your Hilton Honors points secured for another 12 months. 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 published the PointBreaks list on Feb 25th, 2019 for hotel reservations valid till May 31st, 2019. As IHG have moved from 1 tier of PointBreaks bookable at 5k points to 3 tier of PointBreaks bookable for 5k, 10k and 15k points there are more opportunity of getting discounted award at more participating hotels albeit at lesser percentage discount.
The issue with the PointBreaks list is that the participating hotels make available limited number of nights in this promotion which can get filled up pretty quickly if those are tourist destinations. So what's the best bet to get on this discount? The answer is speculative reward booking if you have available points and know the approximate dates you might use those reward nights. For e.g. below is current list of worldwide hotels (excluding United States) as of this writing which can be booked for 10,000 IHG reward points. ONTARIO, CANADA Holiday Inn & Suites Oakville @ Bronte SASKATCHEWAN, CANADA Holiday Inn Express & Suites Regina Downtown Holiday Inn Express & Suites Saskatoon Centre Staybridge Suites Saskatoon - University COAHUILA, MEXICO Holiday Inn Express Torreon GUANAJUATO, MEXICO Holiday Inn & Suites Leon Plaza Mayor Holiday Inn Express & Suites Silao Aeropuerto - Terminal GUERRERO, MEXICO Holiday Inn Chilpancingo JALISCO, MEXICO Staybridge Suites Guadalajara Expo NUEVO LEÓN, MEXICO Crowne Plaza Monterrey Aeropuerto PUEBLA, MEXICO InterContinental Presidente Puebla QUERETARO, MEXICO Crowne Plaza Queretaro SAN LUIS POTOSI , MEXICO Staybridge Suites San Luis Potosi VERACRUZ, MEXICO Crowne Plaza Tuxpan DOMINICAN REPUBLIC Crowne Plaza Santo Domingo EL SALVADOR InterContinental San Salvador-Metrocentro Mall BELGIUM Holiday Inn Express Gent ITALY Holiday Inn Express Rome - East RUSSIA Holiday Inn Express Moscow - Khovrino TURKEY Holiday Inn Bursa - City Centre Holiday Inn Istanbul - Tuzla Bay ALGERIA Holiday Inn Algiers - Cheraga Tower LEBANON Crowne Plaza Beirut INDIA Crowne Plaza New Delhi Rohini PHILIPPINES Holiday Inn Baguio City Centre As you can see there are quite a few hotels outside of United States as of this writing but the list dwindles down as more and more folks book these hotel reward nights. So, if you have any dates where you can potentially stay at these hotels, book the reward nights NOW!! Most of these hotels allow cancellation without penalty for reward night's if cancelled before 48 hours of intended stay date (do check the terms for the property as some of them might require earlier cancellation). If your plans change and you can no longer stay on those dates you can easily cancel your reservation without penalty but at the same time you can speculatively guarantee that those hotels are booked at PointBreaks reward rate. (Tip - If you do not know the exact dates, you can make separate 1 night reservation's so you can cancel the one's you don't need at the future date thus giving you some flexibility). So, go ahead and book the discounted reward nights at participating IHG hotels while available and use it hopefully! 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. Wells Fargo does not get lot of attraction in miles and points world but they do have various cards with $0 annual fee which earn cash back and reward points (Although the reward points cannot be transferred to any airlines or hotels).
Although both the cash back and rewards card look similar and have same earning rate, the biggest difference between the two is that that rewards card gives 50% more value when redeemed for airfare through Wells Fargo travel portal. The rewards card would have in advertisement the following line "50% more value when redeemed for airfare (for instance, 20,000 points is a $300 value toward airfare redemption or a $200 value toward cash redemption)". The best part is Wells Fargo allows to freely move points from all accounts to single account as well as allows transfer of points/cash-back from one individual to another (Important Note: There are various options to pool or transfer the points/ cash-back from one individual to other so be careful as selecting a wrong option may result in straight cash redemption at 1:1 ratio). So, which is the correct way to transfer the points? Below is the quick run down of steps to properly transfer the points.
 Drop down options for points transfer  Default highlighted option of Gift to friends and family  Gift to others option As you can see from above the correct option is hidden, but it would correctly transfer the points from one user account to other user account rather than going as a cashback gift.
The interesting part is Wells Fargo has a new $0 annual fee Wells Fargo Propel American Express card which earn's 30k points after $3k spend in 3 months and which earn 3x points on Travel, Dining and Streaming services. Since Propel card is an American Express card, it also has option to enroll in Amex Offers here (usually these are the less popular one's though). You can essentially make this 30k points a $450 airfare redemption by moving the points to Wells Fargo Rewards Card account. 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 Rewards Program allows you to redeem for free night at any of their hotels, homes and condo worldwide for just 15,000 points with their "Go Free Reward". This enables you to get a great redemption value when you redeem your free night at high end Wyndham Hotel or Resort, but what if you are looking for low to mid tier redemption? Wyndham does allow you to use 3,000 points + Cash for redemption using their "Go Fast Reward". The bad news is that not all hotels have "Go Fast Reward" available. You can also top up your account by purchasing up to maximum of 10,000 points per year at the rate of $13 per 1,000 points.
The bad news is that Wyndham Reward Points expire after 18 months unless you have any earning, redeeming or transfer activity. You can easily get pass this by either donating as low as 50 Wyndham Reward Points, or by earning points doing survey with their partner "Opinion Rewards Panel". Although you can get past this they have another layer of hard point expiration where the points expire 4 years after they are earn regardless of your activity with Wyndham Rewards. So, what happens when your points are reaching the 4 year hard expiration limit? One of the option which use to exist earlier was to redeem Wyndham Reward points for magazines but that option is no longer available with Wyndham Rewards. The other option is to redeem for gift card, but the gift card redemption starts at 7,500 points for $25 in value (Except the Restaurant.com gift card which you can get for 2,200 points and a worst value to begin with). Here is the good news though. Wyndham Hotels acquired La Quinta brand of hotels in 2018 and they allow 1:1 transfer of points between Wyndham Rewards and La Quinta Rewards. Although you can transfer in the increments of 1,000 points with a maximum of 24,000 points in single transaction, this transfer allows to move out the points which have 4 years hard expiration with Wyndham Rewards. La Quinta Returns allows you to use these points for hotel redemption with reward night starting at just 6,000 points only or you can redeem them for magazine subscription starting at just 300 points. Alternatively one of the best option would be to transfer these points back to Wyndham Rewards and they should get new expiration date! Do note that Wyndham Rewards is known to be notorious for changing the terms overnight and might take away or devalue this option at any time. So, hopefully the above technique (while it lasts) will allow you to get past the 4 year hard expiration limit that Wyndham Rewards has on its 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.  While we all like to collect miles and points to get great redemption or travel at discounted rate, what should we consider the real value in terms of time and effort?
The traditional way of collecting miles/points is through airline travel and hotel stays but due to deluge of credit card's which earn miles or points (flexible currency) and have various partners where you can transfer your earned miles/points, it is important to understand the difference between the real and the perceived value. Let's get this straight with few popular credit card examples. Chase Sapphire Reserve card enables points to be redeemed for travel at fix value of 50% more when you redeem through their travel portal. So, each Ultimate Reward Point can be redeemed for real value of 1.5 cent/$ but "only" when redeeming for travel through their travel portal. The annual fee for this card is $450 although you get $300 in travel credits each year. Amex Platinum for Schwab Card allows you to redeem your American Express Membership Reward Points for "cash" at real value of 1.25 cent/$. The annual fee for this card is $550 although you get $200 airline travel incidental (in your pre-selected choice of airline), Total of $180 in Uber credits (distributed over 12 months) and $100 in credits on Saks purchase ($50 each every 6 months). U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve card is similar to Chase Sapphire Reserve where you get fix value of 50% more when redeemed for travel through their travel portal but it does have an option of redeeming for travel directly through airlines, hotel, car rental companies using their real time reward option and get a redemption value of 1.5 cent/$ for each point. The annual fee for this card is $400 although you get $325 in travel credits each year. As you can see from above that although the fixed value of redemption for Chase Sapphire Reserve and U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve looks same the perceived value is different. At 1.25 cent/$ the Amex Platinum for Schwab might look weaker but do note this is hard "cash" redemption. So just looking at redemption value is not enough. All the above credit cards have different annual fees and provide different benefits. When you consider that into account the above real redemption rates becomes perceived value. This is because each person would have different valuation of those benefits based on the usage of the card and its benefits. So, always consider the total benefits of the card before you decide which of the card would be a long term keeper for you. 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.  We know all miles are not created equal and each mileage currency have some unique features. Virgin Atlantic is one such program which shines in certain areas where Delta Airlines might want to give you some hard time. Delta Airlines publish flash deals for using your miles to book tickets at a discount mileage, but some of these deals go unadvertised or last longer than what Delta Airlines make you believe. Since Delta no longer publishes a award chart you might not know if the price displayed is the actual price or a "flash deal" price. Also most of these flash deals are for round trip and so one-way trip will not necessary be half the miles of round trip ticket. Also Delta Airlines is known to add dynamic mileage pricing component and thus the price might be higher than what you should actually pay. Here is an example itinerary for Los Angeles (LAX), USA to Narita (NRT) / Haneda (HND), Japan in Delta One Suite. As you can see the round trip price is 120,000 Delta Skymiles for few dates but if you want to book just one way that price is 78,000 Delta Skymiles instead of half price of 60,000 miles.  Round Trip Award Fare from LAX to NRT/HND  One Way Award Fare from LAX to NRT/HND Here is where Virgin Atlantic miles would come handy. Virgin Atlantic is a Delta Airline partner and as of recent pass has started displaying award availability for Delta Airlines on its Virgin Atlantic website. The good news is Virgin Atlantic has access to same level of inventory as what Delta Airlines has and it does not add the dynamic pricing what Delta does. So, if you wanted to book just one-way ticket it would cost 60,000 Virgin Atlantic miles for the same award from Los Angeles (LAX) to Narita (NRT) / Haneda (HND) above.  Virgin Atlantic One Way Award for 60,000 miles on Delta Airlines Let's check another example where Delta applies Dynamic pricing. Here we are looking to fly from Delta non-stop flight from Portland (PDX) to Narita (NRT). Delta Airlines want to charge 125,000 miles for the below itinerary. Interestingly Virgin Atlantic still wants 60,000 miles only!  PDX to NRT Using Delta Skymiles  PDX to NRT using Virgin Atlantic Miles The other great thing about Virgin Atlantic miles is that they routinely have 30% transfer bonus when you want to transfer your American Express points to Virgin Atlantic miles so you end up getting better value than with Delta Skymiles.
So what is the downside of using Virgin Atlantic miles? Virgin Atlantic charges mileage cost based on segments, so adding segments would add up the price for the mileage redemption. Also if you enter source and destination which does not have direct route then Virgin Atlantic does not show any availability. But with all that quirks you get a great redemption value and yes, do not forget that Virgin Atlantic charges a reasonable change / cancellation fee of only $50! 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! It is a start of new year which means if you have credit cards which gives airline incidental credit on calendar year are available again to take advantage of. American Express Issued credit cards such as American Express Gold Card which provide incidental credits reset based on calendar year and are available for New Year from 01/01/2019. Also specifically for American Express, you do need to select the preferred airline and you get incidental reimbursement for only that airline.
Also not all credit card's give credit based on calendar year. Also some of the airline e-gift cards or award ticket taxes and fees might trigger the incidental credit. So do check this flyertalk thread for latest data points if you are looking to purchase gift cards. Below are the credit cards which provides airline incidental credit based on calendar year (Do note the list might not be complete).
There are other cards such as Chase Sapphire Reserve, U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve, Citi Prestige which provides credit for any charge made directly with airlines and other travel categories as defined by their terms and are per "card membership year". Since these are not limited to incidentals you can use them for airfare as well as incidentals. So, get going and redeem these incidental credits before your annual fees come due. 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.  Are you looking to fly during Christmas, New Year or during peak summer dates? Most of us would have this dilemma of using the holidays for travel but paying exorbitant prices. This could be due to the limited vacation time or kids school being shut during this times. If you are the one who cannot avoid peak dates travel then below tricks might help at times. Trick 1: Book two one-way tickets: At times of low season this might be a completely bad suggestion, but when you are looking to fly in high season, this might be a neat way to reduce your flight cost. The reason being that most 3rd party aggregates and booking sits such as Expedia would want to issue a single ticket for your round trip. The simple reason being booking two separate one-way tickets would require separate cancellation/change fees if any of your plan to fly changes. Although some times the 3rd party flight booking sites would display tickets as two one-way, the chances of that being efficient in time and cost is low. Below is an example of search with last minute peak season ticket where the round trip flight fare from SFO-DEL for low connection time jumps from ~$2095 to ~$2778.  SFO-DEL-SFO from Dec 25th to Jan 2nd. Below you can see what happens when we instead search above as two one-way tickets. The total fare for the round trip becomes ~$2160 which is much lower than booking a round trip ticket.  SFO-DEL Dec 25th one-way ticket  DEL-SFO Jan 2nd one-way ticket Trick 2: Book one-way + round-trip ticket (tagging a free / almost free one-way ticket): This is another neat trick which can help you get an additional one-way to the same original destination or if you are creative to the destination where you plan to visit in the future. The idea here is that instead of booking a round trip you book a one-way and add a round trip ticket from your destination to your source. For e.g. instead of booking "SFO-DEL-SFO" you can book "SFO-DEL" (one-way) + "DEL-SFO-DEL" (round trip). So for "SFO-DEL" one-way you would pay ~$931 and booking "DEL-SFO-DEL" round trip is just $1246 with Alitalia!!  DEL-SFO-DEL with Alitalia from Jan 2nd to Mar 18th. Search done using Momondo.com As you can see from above that although the flight from "DEL-SFO" is 2 stops and little longer you are getting a free one-way for future date ("SFO-DEL" in March) with just additional $15 compared to booking "DEL-SFO" one-way ticket.
So, the next time you plan to travel in peak times and are looking to purchase paid ticket do remember the above two tricks before you make your purchase. 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 folks would have heard about "hidden city ticketing". In short the idea behind hidden city ticketing is to book a ticket to a final destination which is cheaper then your actual destination by using your actual destination as a stopover. So for example you want to fly from Dallas to Los Angeles but the flight to Las Vegas from Dallas via Los Angeles is cheaper and so you book this ticket with intention of getting down at Los Angeles (The hidden city). So, how about extending this idea on international trip where your real destination is the "hidden city" but it is much cheaper to fly there as a stopover rather than a destination. This would allow you to not only visit your real destination cheaper but would also allow to visit additional city/country for less than the cost to your real destination. For example you want to fly non-stop Singapore Airlines flight from San Francisco to Singapore (hidden city) but booking a non-stop flight would be expensive. Instead of that you buy a ticket to a destination which Singapore Airline serves via Singapore and is much cheaper. This way you not only visit your real destination but as a bonus you visit an additional city or country at no additional cost. Let's see a real example here: San Francisco (SFO) to Toyko (NRT) roundtrip with Toyko as the real destination: Let's say you want to visit Tokyo from San Francisco in Feb 2019. The cheapest ticket to the destination for few dates in Feb 2018 for 10 to 15 days is shown below. As you can see the cheapest for this trip is $726 and that flight has long layover.  SFO to NRT roundtrip for 10 to 15 days  SFO to NRT rountrip from Feb 6th to Feb 18th How about changing few things here. Instead of flying to Tokyo as a destination how about flying there as a stopover. Let's look at an example by modifying the destination to be a cheaper place and using Tokyo as a stopover. Below is an example with search date used by few trial and error selections.  SFO to HKG via stopover in Tokyo (NRT)  SFO to HKG with stopover in Tokyo (NRT) As you can see from above the flight to Hong Kong (HKG) with return via Tokyo (NRT) is cheaper than the original flight. Although in the above case you need to spend 1 night in Hong Kong but you do get a non-stop flight from Tokyo (NRT) to San Francisco (SFO) during return journey from your trip and as a bonus you can visit Hong Kong for 1 night. In fact you can also extend the 1 night stay in Hong Kong to either 2 or 3 days and the cost would not change.
The above idea could be extended to any other destination you want to visit although it may not be available for all the dates. Also you would want to select an airline which has "hub" in your "real destination". One of the biggest "Con" of this is that you need to be careful of the made up destination as some of them might require a visa to visit but other than that this is perfect travel trick you can use for your next trip. 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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