Hi again!
Let's talk miles, points and deals. :)
This is only a short overview - we'll go into details in later posts.
MILES:
You know the problem - you want to travel and see new places but the flight fare is just too much to bear. There's no other option but flying there but you get discouraged or don't want to wait for the fares to "possibly/maybe" drop. This blog will get you to those exotic, far-away places, all it needs is a bit of planning.
Nowadays, every national and international airline has some form of loyalty reward program. The point of these programs is to ensure repeat business ($) from previous passengers. Since the competition in the skies has only increased in recent years, the fight for returning customers has intensified. First let's look at the top 3 players (legacy carriers=have been around the block for a while) in the US skies: UNITED, AMERICAN and DELTA.
United's loyalty program is called United Mileage Plus and it's a great system if you work/live and travel in the United States. United is part of the Star Alliance (an alliance of 20+ airlines around the world). What does this mean to you? When you earn United miles for flying/shopping!!!!/dining!!!!, etc.. you can use those miles to fly practically anywhere in the world, either with United or with one of their partner airlines. How many miles you need per flight depends on the distance traveled. Currently 25000miles gets you a domestic ticket in the US, 55000 gets you to Europe, Mainland US to Hawaii takes 40000 miles and so on.... The amounts may vary depending on the airline you choose and if you are able to get the "cheapest" award seat. More on that later....
United Mileage Plus is one of our favorite programs, not only because we are based in San Francisco, a hub for United, but also because of the strong partnership between United and Lufthansa. We travel to Europe a lot and appreciate Lufthansa's extensive destination list.
American's loyalty program is called AAdvantage and it is currently the best system to get lots and lots of miles fast (more on that later as well - look for our "Credit Card" section!). American is part of the One World Alliance of airline carriers. Members include British Airways, Quantas and many more....
AAdvantage miles got us to our Honeymoon destination, St. Lucia this year for FREE. The flight, as you can imagine, would have been quite pricey so we were happy to spend that money on a nice luxury, all-inclusive resort hotel instead! ;)
Delta's loyalty program is called Skymiles. Delta has an extensive international destination list - espcially with its latest merger with Northwest Airlines. Delta is part of Skyteam and partner airlines include among others: Air France (Paris anyone?), Alitalia (all roads lead to Rome, vero?) and Aeroflot (Winter in Moscow?). We mentioned the merger with Northwest Airlines - well, it's still not done, so if you can, take advantage of earning in both loyalty programs until they are merged into one. We have successfully created a Northwest Airlines Worldperks account, earned miles and transferred them, completely free now, to Delta. We'll show you how in a later post.
There are many more airline loyalty programs and we encourage you to sign up for them all! Some programs give you sign-up bonuses - we will post links for these bonuses shortly.
POINTS:
After following our advice (signing up for airline loyalty programs, shop for miles, dine for miles, etc...), you arrive at your destination only to be confronted with expensive and out-of-this world hotel room prices. Fear not fellow travelbandit, we got your back! :) You see, not only are there loyalty programs for airline passengers but there are also many, many programs for Hotels, rental cars, train travel....you name it....
The biggest money saver are of course the hotel loyalty programs. There's Hilton's HHonors, Starwood's Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG - Sheraton, W, Westin,etc..), Marriot's Marriott Rewards, Priority Club (Intercontinental, Holiday Inn,etc...), Choice Privileges (Comfort Inn), Best Western, etc...
There are, frankly, too many to list. Once you have stayed at a variety of hotels, you probably have a favorite "brand" of hotels that offer all the amenities you look for. We personally prefer Hilton, Starwood, Marriott and Priority Club but preferences for you may vary.
Points are earned the same way as for airline miles. You have to use their services or be a bandit and earn points for free (tip: credit cards - more to come). There are also various tricks in order to get "STATUS" in a hotel program. A certain memberhsip level or STATUS makes you eligible for extra goodies such as more points earned, late check-out, free newspaper, free water or gifts, etc... It helps to have status, it's nice to be special! :)
DEALS:
A lot of websites claim that they will provide you Travel deals. One of the best, that doesn't clog your email inbox with unnecessary messages is TRAVELZOO. Sign up for their email alerts - it's worth it. Just put in the destination and receive special deals from Hotels and flights to the destination in your inbox every Tuesday. It has saved us a lot of money so far.
As far as searching for flights/hotels: KAYAK has our vote. Sometimes VAYAMA can give good results too. BING,which is heavily advertised currently, is ok and we appreciate the fare price prediction function, formerly known as Farecast.com.
We never had much use for Priceline since we try to get things for free but it comes in handy sometimes for rental car deals.
We'll go into more detail later.
So there you have it- our "short" introduction to the world of travel loyalty programs. Of course, it's completely missing a lot of programs, Amtrak or rental car programs for example. But we will highlight these programs if there are special deals to be had! :)
In the meantime, please visit two great websites (FRUGALTRAVELGUY.COM and FreeFrequentFlierMiles.com) This is were we got our free/frugal Travel schooling! :)
More on HOW to earn many, many free and/or easy miles to come!! Check back soon!
