Priority Club Last Minute Rewards

Looking for a last-minute getaway?  Priority Club offers last-minute reduced-points rewards the first weekend of every month.  Each month, 75+ hotels are available for booking at 50% fewer points, so a 40,000 point Intercontinental Resort will cost only 20,000 points…and some Holiday Inn Express are as low as 5,000 points!  These truly are last-minute deals: you book Tuesday-Thursday for a stay Friday-Sunday.  This month’s hotels are already listed, so book now for a stay February 3-5.  Check back each month for new offers (hotels are typically listed on the Tuesday preceding the first weekend of the month).

Since there’s not a lot of notice, you might want to stick to hotels within driving distance.  Last-minute airfare prices could definitely offset any savings on the hotel, although one exception might be if you have British Airways miles (which don’t come attached to last-minute booking fees on reward flights).  It’s worth perusing the list monthly in case something catches your eye.

Remember that Priority Club awards are cancellable/changeable at no fee, so if you had an existing reward reservation booked at a participating property, you can re-book at the lower points rate, thus saving 50% of the points you would have spent.

There are 120 hotels listed for this weekend.  Some of them aren’t very exciting – airport hotels or hotels out in the suburbs of cities like Chicago – but you could go golfing in Arizona, shopping at the Mall of America, or spend the weekend in luxury in San Francisco.  Want to head international?  The Intercontinental in Vienna caught my eye!

There’s nothing on my list this time around, but that’s okay…after a fun and busy weekend in Bethlehem, PA, I’m ready for a weekend at home!

A Few More Resources for Mileage Redemptions

To conclude my mini-series on free websites that might help with your travel planning, I have a few other sites to share in addition to PointHub and MileWise.

1) Milez.biz

I had never heard about Milez.biz until infamousdx posted about it, but I love it for it’s simplicity.  It offers exactly one feature: telling you how many miles it will cost you to fly from one city to another on different airline programs, and all you have to do is enter a city pair.

The website doesn’t check availability, routing options, or anything else you may need to actually book, but will very quickly show you the different amounts of miles you need to get to your destination.  It does this well, since it has embedded information from 45 different airlines ranging from the common (Delta, US Airways) to those you may not have ever used (Ethiopian Air, Avianca).  My search resulted in 21 different different redemption options, across all three alliances and a few airlines not affiliated with an alliance.

Among other options for flying between New York and Lima, you could fly on LAN Airlines booking with either LAN miles or American Airlines miles.  You could be on the exact same flights, but who you book with will result in different prices.  Pretend for a minute you don’t have miles with either airline but you do have Starwood Hotel points which can be transferred easily to either airline.  To get enough AA miles for your Lima flight would require a transfer of 30,000 Starwood points but to book the same flight directly through LAN would require only 20,000 Starwood points.  Knowing your options can save you miles and points in the long-run, especially in the case of transferable/convertible points (including AmEx Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards) where you have several partners to choose from.  And that’s in addition to looking at options for airline programs where you already have miles accumulated.

There are a few kinks still in the program – for example, British Airways Avios were not listed as an option, although they should have been.  Still, a handy tool to keep on your bookmarks list.

2) Frequent Flier Redemption Options

Created by blogger The Wandering Aramean, this tool covers the same premise: searching for how many miles you need to book that award.  His site offers a key extra that I appreciate: the extra columns for off-peak awards and premium economy seats (when applicable).  Dates aren’t listed for off-peak awards, so you’ll still have to do some cross-checking on that, but those savings can be significant if you have the option to use miles in those programs.

This tool also allows one-way searches.  Note in this case the results will only show results for airlines that actually allow one-way awards at a reduced price; for example, it would cost a full round-trip cost to book a Delta award even if I only booked one direction of travel, so the tool would leave off Delta from the results (rather than showing the round-trip cost).  Something to keep in mind.

If you want to take it one step farther, he has also built tools to search inventory on specific dates for select airlines.

With the right tools, effectively using your points and miles is just a little bit easier.  Happy Travels!

Priority Club PointBreaks Hotels through March 31

Awhile back, I talked about Priority Club’s PointBreaks hotels, where room awards are only 5,000 points per night.  Participating properties change quarterly and are quite limited, but when you find one that works in your plans, it’s a hugely valuable redemption.  These rooms would otherwise cost 15,000 – 50,000 points per night.  The current list includes the participating hotels, which are valid for booking through March 31.

Although the hotels are already listed, it doesn’t appear they are ready for booking yet.  Look around and see what might fit into your plans now so you can be ready to book soon; because of the huge discount, these rooms can fill up fast.  I’d expect online booking to be available within 24 hours.

Can you benefit from the current list of PointBreaks?

Another Resource: Milewise

Like Pointhub, Milewise will search your potential options for redeeming miles or points on awards on several different airlines.

Milewise also has a really easy to use interface with a few extras, including a flexible date search.

Using the flexible dates option, there seem to be lots of opportunities for low-level award space in the front of the plane.  And although only one rewards redemption is shown per date combination, clicking on your preferred dates will show you all of your choices.

Milewise also ranks your options, with a 100 signifying the best option.

Notice in this case, you have three options that all result in the exact same flights: either by transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards points, using United miles, or using Continental miles.  Chase takes the lead in this scenario because the monetary value that Milewise assigned to Chase makes this option cost the equivalent of $685 (they consider United and Continental miles more valuable, thus more expensive options).

It’s also convenient how Milewise spells out the taxes & fees required on an award ticket.  In this case, it’s minimal across all airlines.  If you choose to pay cash instead of redeeming an award, you’ll also quickly see how many miles you’ll earn.  Milewise will add in any elite bonuses you qualify for if you link your account numbers (similar to using Award Wallet)

Just like with Pointhub, not all airlines are covered right now.  American Airlines has specifically excluded itself from the results (a shame!) and other airlines just haven’t been built into the system yet.  No hotel searches are currently covered.

Overall, I think this is a great tool for domestic flights and a good starting point for international redemptions.  It’s important to realize these may not be your only options, so if you don’t find the exact flights you want online, give the airline a call.

Using PointHub for Award Searching

Searching for ways to get value from your miles and points can be a tedious task, especially if you have miles in numerous programs.  I currently have miles with American, United, and Delta, so searching once instead of three times can be a time saver.

PointHub is one of the free tools out there to help consolidate your searches.  It has a really easy to use interface with lots of customization and sorting options, making it a great starting point.  Basically, it searches on major airlines’ websites to show you what award seats there are (based only on what is loaded on the airline’s website, which may not include partner awards or other options only available by calling) and how many miles each option costs.

Because it seems to be limited to whatever reward availability is loaded directly onto an airline website, it generally does best with domestic awards.  It’s convenient to see multiple airlines all listed on one search tool, rather than seeking each airline’s options out individually.

Searching for an award flight to Billings, MT in August resulted in finding NO low-level (25,000 points) award space for the dates I wanted, but did show some options on multiple airlines.

PointHub will also recommend when to use miles versus when to pay with cash.  Essentially, it’s assigning a monetary value to each point and then doing a quick comparison to see if the total value of the miles is greater or less than the cost of the ticket in dollars.  Whether you ultimately decide to use miles or points should be based on how you value your miles (do the math!) and what your personal circumstances are, such as if you are short on cash or if you are saving your miles for a larger future trip.

While these are handy features, there is one main reason why I like PointHub.  I find it faster to check on mileage costs using a PointHub search than by going to each airline’s reward charts (some redemptions I know by heart, but many I have to look up).  Delta considers Morocco as part of “Europe” but American considers it part of Africa, making for two very different mileage requirements that are instantly seen on PointHub.  Plus, it includes some airlines where I might not consider checking since I don’t have miles (such as Air Canada’s Aeroplan).  The upside to this?  You might be able to transfer credit card points (such as AmEx Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards points) to these airlines even if you don’t normally collect miles through those airlines – giving you lots of options to redeem your points.

The biggest downfall to this website is that it doesn’t include any availability for rewards not shown on an airline’s website.  For example, I could use my American Airlines miles to fly on Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong, but since AA doesn’t hold Cathay Pacific reward inventory online (you have to call), it won’t show up on a PointHub search.  This is a significant issue because availability at a low-mileage level could exist for your desired itinerary even without showing up in your search results.

Another feature that I’d like to see is more participating airlines.  Currently, there’s no way to search for British Airways awards on PointHub, and that would be a great addition considering that you can transfer credit card points easily into the Avios program for award redemptions.

PointHub is also a great start when searching point for hotels.  In this scenario, their search function is much more complete since all award availability can typically be found online with no “hidden” inventory only accessible by phoning to book an award.  A few caveats: it only shows straight reward bookings (no point + cash options) and Hilton / Hyatt points are missing from their reward search (it will show cash purchase options but no rewards).  However, if you’re looking to decide between Priority Club, SPG, and Marriott, you’re all set.

I hope that PointHub strengthens its searching power to include more airlines and hotels in the future because I think they have a great start.