Category: hotels

How to find and book Japanese ryokan (Japanese style inns)

February 19, 2016 / / 0 Comments

Tip 1: Be able to read Japanese

Okay, that’s not good advice. Let’s try again.

Tip 2: Have family or friends that can read Japanese

Okay, say you don’t have that either. What if you don’t know Japanese and would still like to experience an authentic Japanese ryokan experience?

The different types of Japanese style lodging

First of all, there are a couple of types of Japanese style lodgings. Ryokan are the full blown traditional Japanese style inn experience with Japanese style rooms. They will typically include dinner and breakfast. Often they will have either a private or shared bath (onsen.) Ryokan will usually be in the price range of 6,000 to 30,000 yen per person. Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: Choice Hotels

January 23, 2016 / / 1 Comment

This is the sixth in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.

Choice Hotels wasn’t in my initial list of chains to review because of how weird and restrictive their loyalty program is, but given their large footprint and a few requests for a writeup, I realized it would probably be useful to look at. So, without further ado… Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: Starwood

January 21, 2016 / / 1 Comment

This is the last in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.

Today we will be looking at the last major hotel rewards program, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG), which will hopefully remain in tact through the end of 2016 but may not be long for this world due to the merger finalized earlier this year. Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: Marriott

January 20, 2016 / / 3 Comments

This is the fourth in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.

The Details

Marriott Rewards is actually two programs in disguise, offering rewards for both the standard set of Marriott branded properties as well as the hyper-luxurious Ritz Carlton portfolio. Because of this, it has fourteen separate categories for its hotels — nine for Marriott and five for Ritz Carlton. It’s award charts are as follows: Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: Hilton

January 19, 2016 / / 1 Comment

This is the third in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.

The Nuts and Bolts

Disclaimer: This is a big fat dud. Tomorrow’s on Marriott should be interesting, though, as there are a couple of angles from which to approach the hack.

I’m somewhat loathe to talk about Hilton hotels, since their HHonors program is one of the worst around in terms of redemption rates, and that’s if you can actually find award availability in the first place. That said, it is one of the largest chains in the world, and there is some value to be had if you look hard enough, so here it is. Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: IHG

January 17, 2016 / / 3 Comments

This is the second in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.

The Nuts and Bolts

IHG Rewards Club is a slightly special snowflake since they offer two ways of buy points from them. Since there have been plenty of posts giving detailed explanations (see here for a good one), I won’t go into detail on how to purchase the points, other than to say that that the second method utilizes the points and cash option on bookings and IHG’s unique mechanism of refunding the total points cost if you cancel your booking. In practice, the purchase costs are: Continue reading →

The Most You Should Pay for a Hotel: Hyatt

January 15, 2016 / / 13 Comments

Generating miles and points at low cost takes time and organization, and most people have neither the time nor ability to juggle tens of credit cards. Unfortunately, a lot of travel hacking is targeted at the minority who can, leaving behind those who are just looking to save money on their twice-a-year family vacations.

So, what about those casual travelers? Can you still use miles and points to your advantage? Or more generally, when your points balances are limited, can you still save money without compromising on comfort? 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 →

Hilton HHonors status match and MLife status match from Hyatt

November 25, 2015 / / 4 Comments

Via an official HHonors representative on FlyerTalk, Hilton HHonors has a status match program. Email a request to HHonorMyStatus@hilton.com with your HHonors and something showing your elite status in another program, and see what happens! Send your request by January 11, 2016 and you’ll have the matched status through March 2017.

Since you can automatically get either HHonors Silver from credit cards like the Hilton HHonors American Express or the Citi Hilton HHonors Visa Signature, or HHonors Gold from credit cards like the Hilton HHonors Surpass American Express or Citi Hilton Reserve card, I would say it’s only worth it to match to Diamond or possibly Gold if you have neither credit card. 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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