Author: Daniel Tahara

Orbitz Makes My Head Spin

January 9, 2016 / / 8 Comments

I’m about as close to an Orbitz fanboy as you can find on the internet. I even signed up for the Orbitz rewards credit card, and I continue to book with them even after they eviscerated their best price guarantee program. That’s why I was supremely annoyed to find this in my inbox as I was sitting down to enjoy a burger at my friend Grant’s ‘meat’-up this afternoon:

For context, AA has been running some $100.60 round trip fares to Dallas from San Francisco. After all the rewards I can get, it ends up costing me about $93 for each round trip, so I decided to book two back-to-back for next week to start padding my Alaska mileage account and re-qualify for elite status for 2017. Continue reading →

Elite Status Roundup: What I’ve earned, and what I’ve learned

January 5, 2016 / / 1 Comment

As 2015 was my first full year of travel/travel hacking, it was also the first year in which I achieved status with airline and hotel loyalty programs. In the spirit of being analytical in my decision-making, I figured it would be worth doing an accounting of the statuses I attained and the benefits that they ended up offering me in practice (I only have about three months of data since I qualified for most of these in October or November). So, without further ado: Continue reading →

Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

December 31, 2015 / / 1 Comment

A couple weeks ago, my friend challenged me to come up with a list of crazy things I could do with miles and points, or more specifically, a list of aspirational travel ideas with the restriction that they couldn’t have anything to do with luxury (which is what motivates many to begin travel hacking in the first place).

I tried for a while, but evidently I’m not creative enough to come up with a list without some other kind of inspiration (where’s my muse when I need one?). Instead, I decided to compile a list of all the (travel-related) adventures I’ve had this past year: Continue reading →

Why we write this blog…

December 26, 2015 / / 0 Comments

For conversations like this:

But seriously, Esther, Michael, and I are incredibly blessed to be able to travel as much as we do, and we hope it can be as (trans)formative for you as it is for us.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas, and as always, Happy Hacking!

(In case you were wondering, the $800 trick was this).

No detail is too small…

December 6, 2015 / / 0 Comments

This has been floating around the internet for the past couple of days, so I figured I would share it here for those who hadn’t seen it:

One of the things I love about traveling around the Pacific, and in particular what struck me when I was in Bali two months ago, is how different (Southeast) Asian cultures can be from that of the U.S. Like paying attention to detail for details own sake. Like treating everyone — including strangers — like family. Continue reading →

Great Customer Service from AA, and My First, First-class Flight!

December 1, 2015 / / 1 Comment

This ones going to be a short one, and fairly atypical of me for many reasons (primary of which is that it’s short 😛 ).

For starters, I booked my first, first-class ticket!! Although I wear my never-flown-a-premium-cabin badge with pride, Bangkok and Southeast Asia have been on my bucket list, and for just 60,750 AA miles (after the 10% rebate from my Citi AAdvantage Platinum card), it was worth the splurge (for what it’s worth, I will be flying Qantas and AA business class between now and this booking, but it will still have the honor of being my first flight in the front of the plane). Continue reading →

This hack was made by you and me…

November 29, 2015 / / 1 Comment

For my flight home for Thanksgiving, I booked an award flight on Virgin America (VX). As I had just completed the Membership Rewards 80,000 point transfer promotion, it would be my first flight as a VX Elevate Gold member. Although the benefits of Gold status aren’t the most amazing (since VX doesn’t offer complimentary F upgrades), I was able to take advantage of the free award cancellations to save $65 in points when three days before my flight the price randomly fell to $173 (the price jumped to $349 after immediately after I made my booking). Continue reading →

Love, AActually.

November 26, 2015 / / 1 Comment

Note: this post may contain unsolicited advertisements opinions. You don’t have to click on the links read them, but we appreciate when you do. Oh yeah, and lest we forget, the Chase Sapphire Preferred bonus is up to 50k.

Last Wednesday, 2pm EST marked the moment we had all feared. As if the Marriott acquisition of Starwood weren’t bad enough (although I actually haven’t decided how I feel about it yet), American Airlines (AA) delivered a huge blow to the last of the highly lucrative, ‘big 3’ airline award charts. Continue reading →

Hacking time-share presentations: Holiday Inn Club Vacations

November 21, 2015 / / 4 Comments

I’m not normally one for attending conferences (unless they’re academic/research-oriented ones), in particular those related to travel-hacking since so much information can be found online, but after a number of my internet-friends decided to attend TravelCon II, I figured that if nothing else, I’d have a great weekend hanging out with them in Vegas. However, I decided  to attend on one condition: I would have no out-of-pocket costs for my flight or accomodation. Continue reading →

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