Are you sitting on a Marriott Travel Package certificate and wondering what to do with it? This week on Frequent Miler on the Air, I tell Greg which of his ideas are not likely to work (and which one I think is pretty good!). From there, hear us discuss his first class booking mistake (don’t cry too many tears — it still ends with 22 hours of first class bliss for him!) and this week’s juicy finds. Watch, listen or read: here’s what’s on our mind this week.
FM on the Air Podcast
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On to our weekend recap of the week’s top stories:
In using miles and points:
A LifeMiles deal that reminds me to expect the unexpected
Avianca LifeMiles has some random pricing anomalies and this find was a reminder to keep an eye out for them. Ordinarily, I’d have searched United, seen availability, and assumed that Aeroplan were my best bet if I’d have been looking for this award. I’d have been wrong to the tune of 20K miles per passenger were it not for JuicyMiles. I said it in the video discussion above and I’ll say it again: JuicyMiles isn’t something that makes sense for most people from a monthly perspective, but I was glad I used it in this spot.
How to book Delta flights with Virgin Atlantic miles (2020 Edition)
The best way to book a nonstop award ticket on Delta is usually via Virgin Atlantic. Not sure how that works or what you need to do? See this post for full details on how to put your transferable points to use to spend what could at times be as much as hundreds of thousands of miles less for Delta flights.
R.I.P. Or Just Farewell? IHG Not Releasing New PointBreaks List (Yet?)
Imagine owning a business where you offer a promotion and every time you do it inspires people to write negative pieces about the poor value your promotion offers. Looking back, I’m not that surprised to see PointBreaks take a break. One would assume that a promotion is meant to promote, but I don’t think I’ve seen anyone cover PointBreaks with enthusiasm in recent years. IHG was probably finding that the promo wasn’t doing much to drive loyalty or interest and decided to put this on hiatus. I’m a little disappointed….but only a little.
In this week’s nuggets of wisdom to file away for a rainy day
Have an old Marriott travel package you can’t use? You might be able to get points for it.
If you booked a Marriott Travel package before the merger in August 2018 and you are nearing expiration without a use in mind, you’ll want to read this post and the linked post at Dan’s Deals. It turns out you probably can get a refund of the hotel portion despite what you may have been told. Using it for a stay is still a much better value, but you do have options — if you can find someone who knows how to help.
Bottom Line Reviews
I can freely admit that brevity is not my strong suit; Greg’s motivation behind this change was likely in part to get me to shorten something to less than two thousand words. I jest: Greg created a new short-format review template and put it into use this week to create reviews of several places he recently stayed that readers hopefully find useful when planning trips of their own. This post introduces the format and will continuously contain links and snippets for the most recent bottom line reviews we’ve written. This is one to bookmark so you can check back to see what’s new.
Accor Live Limitless (ALL) Complete Guide
I haven’t stayed at ALL that many Accor hotels, but Greg takes a deep dive into the loyalty program looking for the best values.
The best 2-card combos for travel to Asia
A friend was looking to travel to Asia and wanted to know how she could save some money on airfare. I figured I could easily recommend a card or maybe two to get here there, but there wasn’t one clear answer. Here are the possible combinations that I put together. What would you recommend?
That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Check back soon for our week in review around the web and this week’s last chance deals.
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Maybe Greg will do an FM to go while he’s in Florida 😉
This post was from February 1st. Greg was in Florida in January. Unless he finds a deal on a DeLorean, it will be hard for him to do one while he’s in Florida :-).
I thought Greg said that he just booked a Ritz Carlton in Florida for his 7 night certificate for some date in the future. I understand that he might cancel it, but I’m saying that if he doesn’t he should do an FM to go while he’s here!