NOTE: Please read comments about potential eligibility requirements that are not officially listed on the promotion site. As with everything YMMV.
For any of you who follow the major blogs, you’ve heard by now that JetBlue is running a promotion where they will ‘match’ your Virgin America points balances after you send them an email with a screenshot of your Virgin America balance and fly a single round-trip flight with them by August 31.
UPDATE: if you used our referral links, could you please let us know? Apparently the referrals are not getting automatically tracked.
Hello everyone!
I’ve been getting bombarded for over a year by FoundersCard (referral link, see end of post for details) to join their program at a lifetime rate of $295/year. That wasn’t very appealing to me at the time, since I couldn’t justify how to get more than $295/year of value from the program. My friends Kenneth and Tonei were telling me about some of the great benefits. I’m going to rank them here as well as a few thoughts:
It occurred to me as I was writing some blog posts that as much as I talk about various individual hacks, I’ve never actually detailed a real set of redemptions I made, how I constructed a trip, and the final costs. I think it’s because they aren’t the most fun to write (because usually they’re not all that novel), but they can actually be pretty fun to read because they demonstrate what’s really possible with travel hacking.
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.
EDIT (4/20/2016): Hilton has updated the link to the status match page, the old one no longer works! You can access the new page here
EDIT: There seems to be more datapoints for successful matches from IHG Platinum vs. Hyatt Platinum. Please leave us your datapoints, either here or in the reddit thread!
Also, make sure you send in .JPG files for the match, otherwise Hilton will reject your request and you will have to followup to send it again, as the form won’t let you send another request.
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.
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.
I read a few days ago that the terms of Hyatt’s Best Rate Guarantee had changed for the worse to required a reservation before submitting a claim. This confused me, because the Best Rate Guarantee form on Hyatt’s page still asks you “Existing Reservation: Yes/No.” I also swear I had seen the terms to submit a claim form within 24 hours of your booking months ago, yet still had been able to make successful claims without first making a reservation.
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:
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.
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