On our way back from Travelcon, Esther and I stopped by the Virgin America Loft at LAX for breakfast and refreshments t-shirt before our leg home to San Francisco. I have Virgin America (VX) Gold status from the Membership Rewards promo they are currently offering, so I get lounge access as a benefit of that status, but in any event, both of us have Priority Passes (me from my Amex Plat and she from her Citi Prestige), so we would be able to get free entry through that.
Author: Daniel Tahara
Before you go off writing 94 postcards…
Read this.
As many of you know, IHG just launched a sweepstakes that stacks on top of their Accelerate promotion. The sweepstakes offers 1,000 points after your first stay, and then a mystery prize for each subsequent stay. There have been plenty of posts on the promo, so I wonât go into detail about the prizes, but for more information, you can read here.
I ain’t about the G-money, money, money
Hopefully you were among those able to take advantage of the giftcards.com gravy train that was around until they eviscerated it last month.
Part of the deal was the fact that Visa Gift Cards (VGC) were eligible for giftcards.com’s G-money rewards program, which offered 1% back in credit to be used towards a future purchase. This allowed for us to effectively buy the gift cards at a net-zero cost basis.
The best money I spent in Bali
After jumping on a mistake fare to Indonesia in the spring (and convincing my friend Jacob to join), I finally got to live out my trip, spending five days in Bali followed by one in Singapore and another in Tokyo.
We spent a large portion of our Bali segment staying in Ubud, from which we had access to much of northern Bali (like Mt. Batur, an active volcano, shown above) as well as respite from the hordes of tourists typically crowding the beaches of Kuta (we did of course spend a day in Legian to take advantage of the beaches).
Status makes your points worth less
As many followers of Miles Per Day will know, Virgin America is offering a promotion where transferring 80,000 Membership Rewards points to the Virgin America (VX) Elevate program will grant you VX Gold status until February of 2017. For frequent VX flyers, this could be a great deal because it offers free Main Cabin Select upgrades (typically $50 a pop) and increased earnings on cash fares.
Strictly Speaking: Sometimes, there is a right answer
Last week, Esther and I were trying to figure out the best use of our points for an upcoming trip to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. I had initially covered four nights in Sydney with my IHG balance (140,000 points for 4 nights at the Holiday Inn Old Sydney), and we planned on redeeming Orbucks for our stay in New Zealand, so we were left trying to figure out what to do about Fiji.
After some research, Esther settled on the Intercontinental Fiji, and itâs not too hard to see why:
A theoretical travel hacker walks into a barâŠ.
A theoretical physicist walks into a barâŠ.
Oh wait, thatâs not right. In theoretical physics, everything happens inside a perfect vacuum.
No, I donât expect you to have taken college physics (or even high school physics, for that matter) to get something out of this post. All you need to know is this: in physics, a perfect vacuum is a space that doesnât have any external forces or influences so that when you do some sort of calculation (say, how far a meteor will travel in a given amount of time), you donât have to take into account things like friction, gravity, or air resistance. That is to say, you can calculate without making any other considerations.
New Resource: Best CC Offers
The wonderful folks at /r/churning on Reddit have compiled a list of best offers for credit cards as well as links to relevant Flyertalk threads and information about historical offers. This and FrequentMiler’s best offer list are likely to be most up-to-date, so start at either of these two places before you apply for a card.
We’ve added these to our Resources page for easy reference. Let us know if you’ve got anything better!
Using Southwest LUV vouchers on taxes and fees
This is fairly well-known among those that follow along on Flyertalk or the Saverocity forums, but I recently discovered the following hack that allows you to work around the restriction of these vouchers not being able to be applied to the taxes and fees of a flight:
Basically, what you need to do is to make a dummy reservation with the voucher (of value < voucher) and then immediately cancel that reservation. The voucher then gets converted into “Travel Funds” associated with the initial booking. These can then be applied to any portion of the booking you actually want to make (including the taxes and fees), and since you can add a LUV voucher as an additional form of payment, you can consume the rest of the voucher as part of your new booking.
Roomer has it: Orbitz + Masterpass + Roomer = Free Money
Update (9/18 4:30AM): Well, that was fun while it lasted. The promo code has been maxed out and is no longer valid.
When I first saw the $50 off $100 stay by using code MASTERPASS on Orbitz, I was really excited. I mean, I even went so far as to apply for the Orbitz Rewards Visa Card because it provides me significant value.
But then I saw the terms (bolding mine):
Offer is valid for a limited time only and is only available when displayed on www.orbitz.com. Available on desktop and mobile web where MasterPass is an available payment option. Â Book a qualifying standalone, pre-paid hotel stay (total cost $100 or more) with travel occurring between September 18, 2015 and September 30, 2015 Â via Orbitz using MasterPass as the payment method and promo code MASTERPASS, and receive $100 off your booking. Â Most major chains are excluded; to find participating hotels look for the “PROMO CODE ELIGIBLE” message on Orbitz.com hotel listings…