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We’ve just got great travel tips and tools flying at you guys these days (Great Travel Tool: Get a Credit Card with a Chip, Credit Score Crash Course etc…). Next up is the litmus test for that question of: “should I book with points or pay with cash?” or “should I transfer AMEX points or use AMEX travel for my booking?” I created this for my own personal use as I was tired of pulling out the calculator every time I needed to run the calculation.
Here is the calculation going on behind the scenes:
First you’re finding a suitable award ticket and noting the price of the award and the taxes/fees you’re [...]
We just started getting our replacement cards from Chase with the “Smart Chips” embedded in them:
Hello new Chase Sapphire Preferred, you’re about to make my traveling life so much easier….
What’s a “Smart Chip”The “Smart Chip”, “Chip and Signature,” “EMV” or simply “chip” technology can be a live saver when traveling. While just now being introduced in the US, the payment technology is widespread throughout Europe and Asia.
Most retailers abroad have the option to use the chip or swipe with the antiquated magnetic strip, [...]
British Airways flies a surprisingly large number of routes within the Caribbean–this can save hundreds of dollars if you’re interested in doing some island hopping and really opens up your vacation possibilities. Here are the destinations served:
Legend: Red = British Airways operated flights (confirmed bookable with Avios)Green = Codeshare American Airlines, operated by Seaborne Airlines (confirmed bookable with AA miles, not positive about Avios)
As stated in the caption, any flight in Red on the map or with a designation of BA in the [...]
Until about 10 minutes ago, I had absolutely no idea that Costco has a Hyatt discount code for members.
Now, this is not to be confused with “Costco Travel,” which is basically just an online travel agency no different than Orbitz or Expedia:
The Deal
Using Costco’s discount code can save you big when booking Hyatt hotels. A few samples:
Grand Hyatt New York (Dec 13-14): AAA $495 vs Costco $425 (14% cheaper than AAA) Hyatt Chicago Magnificent Mile (Oct 23-35): AAA $200 vs Costco $206 (3% higher than AAA) Grand Hyatt Seattle (Oct 23-25): AAA $267 vs Costco $240 (10% cheaper than AAA) Grand Hyatt Seattle [...]The Deal
Back in June, Hyatt and MGM announced a partnership that extends reciprocal benefits to the members of each other’s loyalty programs. In practice, this means that Hyatt Gold Passport Members will earn Hyatt points in addition to M life points aka “tier credits” when staying at any of the 12 MGM properties in Las Vegas. Similarly, MGM M life members will be able to earn M “tier credits” when staying at any Hyatt property worldwide.
How to Qualify for M life/Hyatt Gold Passport Status
Hyatt Member <–> M life Sapphire Hyatt Platinum <–> M life Gold Hyatt Diamond <–> M life [...]Delta SkyMiles is notoriously one of the worst frequent flyer programs to use for award travel. The seat availability for award travel is slim, their website is buggy/broken and it’s difficult to book seats on SkyTeam partner airlines with Delta SkyMiles. These things said, it’s not at all impossible to book award travel on Delta–it just takes longer and requires you to have more flexibility. This series will help you understand how to squeeze the most amount of value out of your Delta SkyMiles.
Searching for award availabilityThe list goes in order of Delta hub size and therefore, number of flights offered. I recommend starting with the hubs first because [...]
Pros: RailEurope.com is a good resource for researching entire rail network in Europe and is the only place to book a multiday rail pass that covers numerous countries and service providers
Cons: If just booking a simple roundtrip or one-way ticket, it can cost 20-40% more than going direct to the train website
When planning our France trip, we needed to book about 3 train tickets to get us from CDG-Bordeaux, Bordeaux-Nantes and then Nantes-Paris. So, when trying to research the best way to book, we checked out all the venues, starting with RailEurope.com.
We were looking at taking the 11h05 [...]
