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So, I had an awesome Memorial Day weekend trip planned to surprise McCown to St. Kitts & Nevis:
But, I learned that I had to cancel very last minute due to a family emergency. In the days of cheap flights, hotels and cheap awards, cancellation and change policies have been getting stricter and stricter. When I learned that I wouldn’t be able to go, I just knew that there was no hope of getting any of the reservations refunded because it was so close to the date of departure (as in 12 hours before we were set to depart). Despite my pessimism, I started making the calls to see if a phone rep might have a little mercy and help me out. All told, I expected to be [...]
Always make sure to set a few reminders to double check your hotel bookings to see if any specials have become available since you’ve booked.
On our recent trip to Europe, I made a booking using Starpoints a few months in advance for a stay at The Westin Europa & Regina in Venice, Italy. I determined the Starpoints Cash and Points redemption to be a great value:
I booked a “Deluxe Room” for 8,000 points + $150 USD instead of paying 451 euros (appx $631 USD) for the same room. This yielded a return of:
An amazing return of 6.01 cents/point!
Not satisfied with the hotel though, I kept checking SPG.com for an opening at either the Gritti [...]
I’ve prepared a handy map to see where in the world “X” number of Delta Skymiles will take you. This should help a lot in visualizing where in the world you can travel to with those miles you’ve been saving up over the years. You’ll find a few sweet spots that might help you save a few thousand Skymiles here or there, too, such as:
North America to Guyana is 35k miles, however, to travel to neighboring Suriname or Brazil will cost you 45k or 60k — so maybe explore the possibility of booking award travel to Guyana and then purchasing a cheap ticket to your final destination North America to Istanbul can be had for 60k Skymiles and might be a [...](this first part is a repeat if you’ve already read the Thailand with Delta Skymiles post)
Ok, so I picked an easy one for our 1st installment: Thailand.
Thailand can be an awesome honeymoon pick for a few reasons:
It is home to some of the most exotic beaches and landscape in the world. Gallery from our trip in 2011: #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 20%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: [...]So I recently discovered a loophole when flying Delta a few weeks ago and exploited the hell out of it.
The end result? Not only did I get a more desirable schedule, I was upgraded to First class on all 3 of my flights.
How to Get It / What I Did:
Wait for a change/delay in your flight schedule. This part is really just getting lucky. When Delta has a delay in excess of 15 mins (I know there is a threshold), a warning message pops up on its website/iPhone/Android app informing you of the change and asking you if you’d like to find alternate flights. a Select “View Alternates.” You should notice that it shows very clearly that the options include [...]Ok, so I picked an easy one for our 1st installment: Thailand.
Thailand can be an awesome honeymoon pick for a few reasons:
It is home to some of the most exotic beaches and landscape in the world. Gallery from our trip in 2011: #gallery-4 { margin: auto; } #gallery-4 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 20%; } #gallery-4 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-4 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php [...]Ok, so time to start planning the most fun part of getting married: The Honeymoon.
Just about everyone wants to get some place tropical complete with blue waters, whites sands and enough poolside fruity drinks to give you the [tippy title=”diabeetus”][/tippy]. So, to go domestic and still get your beach honeymoon on, you’ll be stuck with:
Daytona Beach, Florida Atlantic City (area), New Jersey Destin, Florida New Orleans, Louisiana Panama City Beach, Florida Key West, FloridaSo basically “Insert Girls Gone Wild Filming Location Here” honeymoon destinations.
Don’t get me wrong, the U.S. has its fair share of nice resorts that [...]
As of March 1, 2013, Delta and Starwood started a promotion, or rather a partnership, where you can link your SkyMiles account to your Starwood account and earn even more points.
Delta has already start posting some of the bonus to my SkyMiles account for staying at Starwood properties. Interestingly, they even included a stay on Feb 27, two days before the program officially began!
And, the points match the # of base Starpoints I received (the $ amount of the stay). So, it seems as if the system is up and running (although it’s still a little spotty) and it seems they’ll be posting in batches every few weeks.
We took advantage of an awesome secret Delta perk when we took a free “shuttle” between LaGuardia and JFK airports. The shuttle ended up being a voucher with a $73 face value providing Town Car service to JFK!
Update 1/5/14: This still works! We used this last week on our way back from The Maldives. We were provided a free taxi ride from Newark-EWR to LaGuardia-LGA.
How It Works:Delta has 2 hubs in the NYC area: LaGuardia and JFK. It is possible, based on flight schedules, that you’ll have to fly into one and out of the other. In most cases, the transfer is up to you and it’s not an easy one. If, however, you fly into Newark (EWR) or LaGuardia (LGA) and [...]
