April 22, 2014

Cheap Under $500 Flights to Israel! Will not last long!

Per Million Mile Secrets, there are flights from all over the US to Israel for under $500 round trip!

This is an outstanding deal as flights to Isarel are very expensive and rare to see under $1,000.

To book you need to use a European travel website called Wideroe. They are most likely not calculating taxes or fuel surcharges properly since these fares are not available elsewhere. They had a similar mistake in January I believe for flights to Italy that were pricing at $284 round trip!

Availability is best through June 2014 but keep looking and cheaper dates are scattered the rest of the year.

(HT MMS)

April 21, 2014

Free Hyatt Platinum Status! Sign up Now!

UPDATED: Offer is dead – Hyatt seems to have taken down the page.

The past few weeks we’ve seen offers for free miles but now we have an offer for free elite status, as Hyatt is giving away Platinum status! Hyatt Platinum status normally comes after 5 stays or 15 nights in a calendar year or for having the Hyatt credit card – but now for a click of a button, you can have it too!

The following are the benefits of Hyatt Platinum status:

  • 15% Bonus on Points earned on Hotel Stays
  • Room Upgrades to Preferred or Larger rooms, Based on Availability
  • Free Internet Access
  • 2pm Late Checkout
  • Confirmed Bed Type at Check-in
  • Dedicated Check-in Lines for Elite Members

I think the most valuable benefit is the free internet access which can easily cost $10 per night at most Hyatt hotels. And the opportunity to get upgraded while earning a nice 15% bonus isn’t too shabby either.

Now the landing page for this offer does say it is targeted towards Microsoft employees but many people have already reported it working as there is no restriction to stop anyone from signing up for this offer.

All of those benefits for taking 10 seconds to signup? Ya, I say this qualifies as a #GoodDealAlert.

(h/t Points, Miles & Martinis)

April 21, 2014

If You Had an American Express Card Before and Want It Again, Apply Before 5/1

American Express has recently announced that as of May 1st, if you’ve previously had an American Express card (and that card is now closed), you will no longer be able to signup for that card again and get the signup bonus. 

As I’ve discussed in the past, the biggest perk of signing up for credit cards is the big, initial signup bonus the banks give you, say 50,000 points or miles for spending a certain amount of money on that credit card. With certain banks, like American Express and Bank of America, you could signup for a credit card, get that large 50,000 signup bonus and cancel it before the next year’s annual fee was up. Then in a few months, signup  for that same credit card again and get that large 50,000 signup bonus. Rinse, repeat and this is the definition of credit card churning.

However, with these new rules by Amex, this will effectively end credit churning for all American Express cards. Once you get a credit card from American Express, that will be the only time you’ll be able to obtain that signup bonus. This has two important ramifications:

 1. Consider applying for any American Express Card that you had previously NOW.  For example, if you previously had the Delta Gold Skymiles card but closed it last April, you should consider signing up for it again for the current signup bonus, which on that card is 35,000 miles. After 5/1, you will not be able to earn those 35,000 miles on that card.

2. Be more selective on when you apply for American Express credit cards. Now that you can only get the signup bonus once per card, you obviously want to time your application for the card when the signup bonus is the highest for the card. This might be difficult to predict but certain cards like the Platinum Card has seen 75,000 to 100,000 targeted offers and the Starwood (SPG) card typically increases to a 30,000 point signup bonus in August. In those situations, it might be best to wait for one of those offers to come along.

Lastly, the wording on American Express applications have already changed and seem to indicate this rule is already in effect. Per Dan’s Deal and others on Flyertalk, those rules still don’t effect until May 1st. I’ve pasted in the wording from the Starwood application as it stands now but until 5/1, you should still get the signup bonus but there is some risk and YMMV (your mileage may vary). And to be more clear, the application has to be approved by 5/1 so you should apply before 5/1 to allow time for your application to be approved.

 

That last paragraph is Bad News Bears

That last paragraph is Bad News Bears

There is some risk you may not get the signup bonus – be prepared to accept that risk.This is not for everyone.

I recently completed a mini App-O-Rama for Andrea & I based on this Amex news – stay tuned for the next post on how we dealt with this news.

April 17, 2014

Good Deal Alert: $300 Flights to the Caribbean! Will not last!

Via the Flight Deal, there is a fare war right now on American and US airways offering $300 flights to the Caribbean, including Aruba, Cayman Islands, The Bahamas, Turks & Caicos, Punta Cana and much more.

The best part is most of these deals are good for travel this summer/fall in addition to over long weekends like Labor Day, MLK day and President’s Day. If your from NY you remember how bad the winters were this year – book your escape for next year now!

Another key benefit to book now and think later: American Airlines offers a 24 hour free hold on tickets while US Airways allows you to cancel for free within 24 hours.

These flights are usually a lot more especially around the long holiday weekends closer to $500-$600 if not more! You lock in cheap flights today, then book the hotel rooms later. In fact, if your flying to Aruba for example, you could pick up a Club Carlson or Hyatt Credit card and get 2 nights free there!

Aruba Palm Beach

Aruba Palm Beach

 

April 17, 2014

Award Trip Breakdown: Maui Wowie!

*This will be an irregular series on some of the free (or almost free) trips I’ve booked. I’ve posted short summaries of these trips on this page but this series will go more in depth and I’ll breakdown how I booked this trip.

Andrea and I just got back from Maui on our 2nd Honeymoon and it was an absolute blast – the perfect balance between a nice relaxing vacation on the beach sprinkled in with some activities such as a rainforest hike to waterfalls and a canoe outrigger experience.  Fortunately points and miles made this 2nd Honeymoon a reality and in this post, I’m gonna breakdown exactly how I booked the trip with points and miles and how I acquired the points and miles needed for a trip like this.

Flights:

Departing: Hawaiian Airlines JFK-HNL-OGG for a cost of 17,500 miles plus $5 in taxes per person.
Return: Hawaiian Airlines OGG-HNL-JFK for a cost of 17,500 miles plus $5 in taxes per person.

Once I saw Hawaiian Airlines offered a direct flight from NY to Honolulu, I wanted to book this flight for our Hawaiian getaway to avoid stopping in LA or SF. There are two basically two main ways to acquire Hawaiian Airline miles – 1) Hawaiian Airlines credit card from Barclays or 2) Transferring American Express Membership Rewards points to Hawaiian Airlines.

Andrea and I decided to each open a Hawaiian Airlines credit card (though it was from Bank of America a year ago) as the credit card offered a signup bonus of 35,000 miles for spending $1,000 in three months. The annual fee of $79 was not waived. The minimum spend was pretty easy to accomplish based on our normal level of spending so it wasn’t long before we had 36,000 miles each (35,000 bonus miles + 1,000 miles for spending $1,000).

Hawaiian Airlines charges 40,000 miles roundtrip from the mainland US to Hawaii but as a cardholder, you were entitled to a 5,000 mile discount on award flights, reducing the cost per person to 35,000 miles plus $10 for taxes roundtrip! So for paying an annual fee of $79 each, we got our flights to Hawaii covered. Compared to the retail cost of these flights of about $1,000 each, we got a deal!

Hotels:

Grand Wailea (a Waldorf Astoria Resort) – 2 Nights

Grand Wailea

Grand Wailea

Back in early 2013, I applied for the Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve credit card which offered a signup bonus of 2 free weekend nights at ANY Hilton Hotel for spending $2,500 in 4 months . The annual fee of $95 was not waived. The Hilton family includes Conrad, Hilton, Hilton Garden Inn, Waldorf Astoria, etc. so to make sure I maximized the value of the free nights, I made sure to use them at a Conrad or Waldorf Astoria. Additionally, this credit card grants you Hilton Gold status which gives you free breakfast, room upgrades and other benefits when staying at Hilton Hotels. This is a HUGE perk!

With the flights booked to Maui, I booked our first two nights in Maui at the Grand Wailea. In addition to getting the nights for free, by using points we avoided the $25 daily resort fee, so our bill would have literally been $0.00 if we didn’t have a rental car which we had to pay for parking. Nights here can go for $300-$600 depending on the time of year, so we easily got $600-$1,200 in value.

Andaz Maui at Wailea

Andaz Maui

Andaz Maui

The Andaz Maui is a brand new hotel that opened in fall 2013 so of course I wanted to stay there on our trip. The Andaz Maui costs 22,000 points per night or you could use half the amount of points per night, 12,500, plus a co-pay of $150 per night. I opted to use 12,500 points + $150 per night but you could easily use all points to make the stay free. I did this because by paying a small co-pay per night, I could apply a suite upgrade certificate I received from opening the Hyatt credit card (more on this in a future post).

To acquire Hyatt points, I transferred points from my Chase Ultimate Rewards account. In the past I signed up for several Chase Ultimate Rewards cards, including the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the Chase Freedom. The beauty of Chase Ultimate Rewards points is they can transfer to many different airlines and hotels including United, Southwest, British Airways, Marriott, Hyatt etc. so you can use them as needed. I had over 150k Chase Ultimate Rewards points from signup bonuses, everyday spending and other small promotions so I transferred 75k Chase Ultimate Rewards points to Hyatt to book the stay.

My total cost was 75,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points plus $900 which might seem steep until you consider this hotel routinely goes for almost $600 a night for a standard room and a $1,000 for a suite, which we stayed in! For 6 nights in our suite, it would have cost $6,000 (which I simply couldn’t afford) so paying $900 represents a pretty nice discount!!

From good flights on Hawaiian Airlines to a great stay at the Grand Wailea to an AMAZING stay at the new Andaz Maui at Wailea, Andrea and I can’t wait to return to Maui.

Remember, this can be you and I’d be happy to help you get there!