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Conrad Tokyo – a review

April 10, 2016 / / 2 Comments

On my most recent trip to Japan, Esther, her husband, and I stayed at the Conrad Tokyo for 2 nights, which I booked using the 2 free weekend night certificates from the signup bonus of the Citi Hilton Reserve card. Given the points rate of 95,000 HHonors points per night or the cash rate of ~¥100,000 a night during cherry blossom season, this was a great deal!

The Conrad is right at the Shiodome Tokyo Metro stop. If you have a JR Pass and don’t want to pay extra to take the subway, you can go to the JR Shinbashi station and take a short 5-8 minute walk on either the overhead sky bridges, or through several underground plazas. I recommend the overhead sky bridges, which you can access from the Karasumori exit, as they are less complicated and faster due to less staircases and people. Continue reading →

Couple of Hyatt tips and tricks

March 30, 2016 / / 4 Comments

I’ve collected a couple of Hyatt tips, tricks, and notes recently that I wanted to share.

Hyatt Points + Cash is a great way to get a better redemption value out of your Hyatt points, while earning elite stay credit and allowing DSUs. Obviously you can find cash rates and availability easily, and it’s pretty easy also to find points availability and rates when searching over all hotels in an area. However, if you’re looking for Points + Cash availability for multiple hotels, you normally need to click into a specific hotel to see whether Points + Cash is available. Continue reading →

Virgin Atlantic Awards for Fun and Profit

March 24, 2016 / / 15 Comments

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). Continue reading →

Quick news you can use: TopCashback bonus, Alitalia status match, Shyp + eBay and American award availability

January 28, 2016 / / 0 Comments

TopCashback is offering bonus cashback on your next purchase by 2/5/2016, with minimum purchase of the bonus cashback amount. eBay is included. I’m personally going to buy some AirBnB gift cards through PayPal Digital Gifts as that’s a great way to get a discount on AirBnB stays. This offer is targeted and may vary by person. I personally was offered $10 cashback.

Via The Points Guy, Alitalia is currently offering a status match from Oneworld, Star Alliance, and other carriers like Alaska through January 31, 2016. Just send an email to StatusMatchMilleMiglia@alitalia.com with your full name, MilleMiglia number and a copy of your frequent flyer card that you are matching from. Your new status will be active until March 31, 2016, unless your status was valid through then, then your status will be valid until March 31, 2017.Unfortunately, I seem to be unable to register a MilleMiglia account right now as their site is erroring out. 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 →

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