If you follow any of the major blogs, you’ll know that U.S. Travel Association’s Daily Getaways are just around the corner. Daily Getaways is an annual event offering discounted rates on a variety of travel (typically hotels/attractions) related packages. I typically write these sorts of deals off because generally speaking, if there’s something that looks like a good deal, it either carries lots of weird restrictions, is overly specific (e.g. for a place I wouldn’t go), or is likely to go unused.
Author: Daniel Tahara
A Flight Booking Tip I Never Thought I’d Give
It’s pretty common knowledge that (at least among major airlines, excluding budget airlines and the likes of Southwest, Jet Blue, and Virgin America, which tend to charge by segment) that one-way flight bookings are usually more than half the cost of a round-trip. This is basic microeconomics: the one-ways are targeted at people who have some weird or unexpected plan that requires they be somewhere by a certain date or time but not necessarily back (or with a return from a different location).
Virgin Atlantic Awards for Fun and Profit
In the spirit of Travel is Free and my earlier compilation of an award chart for Virgin America, I decided it would be fun to document my findings for Virgin Atlantic (VS) to see if there was any good value to be had.
(For whatever reason, I spend a lot of time combining the Virgin award charts. I think I might be the equivalent of a travel-hacking hipster, playing with programs and credit cards because they’re explicitly not in vogue).
How we Hacked Fiji
Greetings from the Intercontinental Fiji! We can’t believe that we’ll be headed home in just a few short hours after our adventures (and misadventures!) in Sydney, Queenstown, Auckland, and now here. It’s been a blast traveling together, though, and we’ve gotten to work on a little surprise project going on that we’ll share with you in the coming weeks.
Before I go on, let me share with you exactly what I’m looking at right now:
Even We Make Mistakes Sometimes…
Hello from Queenstown, where you get to wake up to this every morning:
Unfortunately, it wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies getting here due to a snafu we had at the airport with our checked bags. To put it simply, we ended up shelling out $120/bag per person as the result of a series of mistakes we made.
Let’s start at the beginning. We purchased our tickets through Amex Travel, and we bought them for a Virgin Australia codeshare operated by Air New Zealand. At the time of ticketing, there was a notation saying that checked baggage fees were not charged at the time of booking, but as far as I’ve seen it says that for all tickets, and since it was an international flight, we assumed that a baggage allowance was included in a ticket. Furthermore, Michael has Star Alliance Gold status through a status match to Copa Airlines, which theoretically entitles him to an extra checked bag. So we were doubly good, right?
My First J: SFO-SYD on Qantas!
Greetings from Sydney!
At long last, the whole DEM Flyers crew is together in one place traveling for two weeks, and we could not be more excited. Unfortunately, Michael and I are still sitting on the tarmac at Sydney as we wait for a truck to tow our 747 the last 500 feet to the gate. So close, yet so far….
I don’t typically write trip reports, but I figured this occasion was significant enough to warrant it. And besides, I don’t have anything better to do ????
The Case Against Mileage Running
Now that I’m 24 hours removed from my mileage run to Dallas and have no further runs on the books, I figured it would be a reasonable time to reflect on my decision to do the runs in the first place, add some context where I omitted it, and decide if it makes sense to do again in the future.
For some context, see my post on The Case for Mileage Running, in which I outlined my initial rationale for spending three nights on a plane for no purpose other than to get on a plane in the opposite direction two hours later. For those new to travel hacking, also see here for a description of the difference between redeemable miles and elite qualifying miles.
The Case for Mileage Running
Hello from the Centurion Lounge at San Francisco International Airport, which has been my temporary home for three of the past four Tuesday nights before a series of mileage runs to Dallas!
Yep, you read that correctly (although despite the fancy shoes, mileage running has nothing to do with actual running).
I write a lot about how I approach travel hacking, which is largely based on evaluating the (opportunity) costs of taking advantage of a particular hack and comparing it to the rewards I reap from it. So it may come as a surprise to hear that I have (not once, not twice, but thrice) opted to pay money to take an overnight flight to Dallas only to turn right around once I get there and arrive in San Francisco before it’s time to head into work.
Step by Step Guide to Removing AU Cards from your Credit Reports
With the announcement of Chase extending their infamous “5/24 rule” to extend to all co-branded and business cards, there has been a lot of discussion about what to do in the interim before the rule takes effect and what to do after the hammer falls. For those who are unfamiliar, the 5/24 rule is that Chase will not approve you for a card if your credit report shows more than five new accounts in the last two years. This was designed to weed out applicants who ‘churn’ their cards for the signup bonuses without adding meaningful value to Chase as customers.
Some Tips for Saving Money on Airfare
Recently, a co-worker of mine asked for help booking his family’s summer travel to London. Searching for himself, his wife, and three kids, the price he had found (despite building in flexibility on both ends of the trip) was $14,000 for 5 people.
….for economy.
Summer travel to Europe is expensive. London travel is even worse, because it always has a steady flow of business travelers.
Given that my co-worker had a fairly tight set of constraints on his trip, the traditional sources of flexibility we look for — changing dates, changing locations — weren’t going to be sufficient in this situation. Add to that the fact that he needs five tickets, and we had a challenge on our hands.