Hilton Q1 2012 Promos

I hope you can tell by my late update on Hilton's Q1 Promo that I'm not particularly excited about it. There's actually two on-going promos. The first is a free night for every 5 consecutive nights at a selected list of Hilton Resorts world wide. The list of participating hotels are limited and there is a maximum of 2 free nights that can be earned.

The second is a 1000 Bonus points for every week night plus a 5000 bonus points if the stay is through 2 weekend nights. Weekends are defined as Thursday to Sunday so the stay can either be on Thursday - Friday, Friday - Saturday or Saturday - Sunday to qualify for the 5000 bonus points.

Registration is required for both promos.

This promo is not exciting enough for me to do any mattress running unlike the Q4 Free Night Promo.

Our Travel Strategy (part 2)

After posting our “travel strategy”, a reader responded that it seems like the only way to get to earn miles to travel up front is to buy miles. While it wasn’t my intention to suggest that, I do seem to agree with that opinion, especially for those of us in Asia who don’t travel a lot for pleasure or business. 

However, if the miles are credited correctly, you can earn some pretty value albeit after some time.

I travel at least once or twice to the US for work where I stick to Star Alliance airlines. Most of my other paid travel is on Air Asia usually to visit family back in Kuching. We do occasionally find some good deals where we pay instead of burning miles. 

Since I try to travel on Star Alliance airlines, I could credit my flights to any one of the member airlines. It’s usually a misconception that you can only credit to the operating airline. I have many colleagues that credit only to Singapore Airlines since they travel on Singapore Airlines and get stuck with a bunch of miles that will expire before they earn enough to redeem anything.

One needs to consider the amount and class of travel one is taking and whether redemption or status is more important to them before deciding where to credit those miles to. Personally, I value my Gold Status when traveling since I only get to travel on economy for work. With Gold Status, I get to check-in in the business class lines, lounge access, priority boarding and extra luggage which makes sticking it in the back of the plane more bearable.

With my travel pattern, I credit my miles first to Asiana airlines since it takes only 40K miles in 2 years to earn Gold Status. Most other airlines require an average of 50K miles in a year to earn and maintain Gold Status. Another airline that’s good to credit to is Aegan Airlines since it also has a low threshold to hit Gold Status. However, the bad thing about Asiana airlines is the cost of any miles redemption. Their miles redemption is distance based and costs a lot more than other airlines.

Therefore, I credit any additional miles I earn after meeting and maintaining my Gold status to BMI since it offers some pretty good redemption. They offer cash + points redemptions which allows redemption for less miles. For those based in Asia, some good redemptions are 7.5K+cash for a one way South Asia redemption or 22.5K+cash for a return business class from South Asia to North Asia. Since BMI is going away after the purchase by IAG, I’m looking for another Star Alliance airline to credit to for redemption and I’m considering United since they have similar good redemptions for intra Asia travel.

In summary, there are many factors one needs to consider before crediting miles earn from travel. It will be different from people to people. If done correctly, you can earn some pretty good value like elite status or good flight redemptions.

Visa Signature Concierge Service

The complimentary concierge service offered by some credit cards was a service I overlooked in the past. On our recent trip to Beijing, we decided to use the concierge service offered by Visa Signature thanks to our Citibank PremierMiles card for the very first time to book a couple of meals in Beijing. Our biggest concern was trying to make sure we had some good dinner place to go for New Year Eve with our family who was traveling with us.

After signing up for the concierge service on website, all I needed to do was fill in a form with details on where and what we wanted for dinner. We were staying at the Hotel G Beijing and wanted a place nearby that we could we walk to since we were concern that getting cab on New Year Eve would be hard which turn out to be the case. We initially had wanted to get some Beijing Duck for dinner but we couldn’t get reservations at the time we wanted. The concierge patiently emailed us other options complete with reviews. 

We also did this for a couple more restaurants that we knew we wanted to try out in Beijing and the results were the same - efficient, courteous and outstanding service.

We were pleasantly surprised to find a new avenue for better travel experience through the concierge service. We would recommend using them when traveling on tasks like “I am at so and so city, please recommend somewhere for lunch” and getting reservations at hard to get places like the French Laundryin Napa as experienced by Marcela or on special occasions like New Year Eve in our case. 

Our Travel Strategy

I just got an email from a reader from Malaysia who wants to more know about our travel planning, mileage earning and redemption strategy. I specifically mention Malaysia since we don’t have as many mileage earning opportunities like the folks in the US have with the easier availability to credit card churning and mileage runs. This can be and has been somewhat frustrating when you hear of folks earning hundreds of thousands of miles by just getting a credit card. However, I still try to make the best of the situation and based on my travel patterns of 2011, it was still a pretty good travel year for me personally.

Lydia & my travel strategy can be summarized as follows:

• Allocating and prioritizing a travel budget
• Being as flexible as possible
• Buying miles when it makes sense
• Spending the miles smartly and
• Most importantly, put as much daily spending on a mileage earning credit card

 Lydia and I earn an “OK” salary from our day jobs. We’re not that rich and we prioritize travel on top of other luxuries. Instead of spending on a nice car or other toys, we set aside money that we spend on travel when good deals happen. We feel that enjoying flights and seeing the world much more fulfilling than sitting in an expensive car or stay at home and watch a movie on a huge TV.  We’ll watch that movie on a plane any day of the year.

We also try to be as flexible as possible. We’ve learned now to not overly plan our travels for the whole year but instead look out for good deals and being able to travel at a moment’s notice if needed. We must say that not everyone can do this and we’re lucky that we have jobs that are quite supportive of this.  We used to even book flights on Air Asia a year in advance when they do their yearly sale but we’ve stopped doing that. Instead, we just book our yearly “epic adventure” on miles and leave the rest of the year pretty open.

Part of being flexible also means looking for deals or mistakes in neighboring countries. Sure the US or Europe may get the bulk of attention on good deals on flyertalk but in 2011, there were a bunch of good deals from Asia. Some examples are the Qatar Oslo launch sale fare, Turkish HKG-IST-LAX fare and Turkish BKK-GRU mistake fare. I didn’t even have time to fly on some of those! The other good thing about being in Asia is the availability of cheap positioning flights thanks to Air Asia and other low cost airlines.

Even if you don’t fly, does not mean you can’t earn the miles. One of the best mileage opportunities for those of us in Asia is buying US Airways Dividend Miles or BMI Miles when there is a sale on-going, which is pretty often. On US Airways, you can fly to Europe from Malaysia in Business for ~2k USD. Similarly, on BMI a good deal is the availability to fly to Northern Asia from Malaysia in Business for ~~1K USD. It is important to note that BMI just bought up by British Airway’s parent company and folks expect BMI to stop existing in March 2012 so that opportunity is going to be gone pretty soon.

Another thing we do is to add interesting layovers or stops whenever possible on mileage redemption. BMI allows one stopover per one way booking so we usually try to stop somewhere we’ve never been before. For example on our China trip, instead of routing the trip back to Penang, we put in a “stopover” in Singapore before flying to Bali a couple of months later. To get back to Penang from the China trip, we just bought a cheap Air Asia flight from Singapore.

Mileage earning from credit cards isn’t as exciting in Malaysia as in the US but we still try to make the best of the situation. We primarily put spending on two credit cards namely the Krisflyer AmericanExpress and Citibank PremierMiles Card. The Krisflyer card earns 1 Krisflyer mile for each RM2 spent where as the PremierMiles card earns “1 PremierMile” for each RM3 spent. The PremierMile and be converted into Krisflyer, Cathay and Thai miles at a one to one rate and also Malaysia Enrich miles for a more than that. I would recommend the Krisflyer card as a way to top up miles for those who primarily credit to Krisflyer or the PremierMiles for those who want to flexibility on where to credit the earned miles to.  In addition, both credit cards provide access to Plaza Premium Lounges in Kuala Lumpur main and low cost terminal but the PremierMiles card provides complimentary Priority Pass membership which provides lounge access in most airports around the world.

I hope that long rant was helpful especially those in Malaysia. As usual, feel free to send an email if you guys have more specific questions.

What a great 2011!

This year has certainly been a year to remember. I don’t think I’ve traveled so much before in a year and more importantly, gotten the chance to try out some of the best premium airlines and hotels in the world. It was only recently that I would envy those who sat up front and would have never imagined that it would be possible for us to do so.

Trips done in 2011

We visited a bunch of places throughout the year with some pretty unexpected and unique. We started off the year with Moscow. Maldives continues to be Maldives, i.e. a dream destination and we were very happy we made the last minute decision to visit Oslo. Our most memorable trip however was the “epic trip” to Almaty. We looked back and sure there were some minor stuff that we would have done differently but overall, it was perfect.

 Some of our favorite pictures from the year:

Moscow

LH FRA FCT

On Emirates F

On Asiana F

Celebrating Calvin's birthday in Almaty

Almaty

Oslo

A big shout-out and thank you to those who made all this possible on flyertalk and milepoint! Thanks also to you guys who keep coming back to our humble blog and leaving comments/emails.

Here’s hoping to a wonderful 2012 and to more mistake fares/deals! We're starting off the new year with a trip to Beijing and Harbin (Trip Report to follow as usual). On a personal note, I’m hoping that my possible move to the US mid of next year goes through.  It’ll certainly open up a bunch of opportunities from a travel perspective.

Happy new year!!