Down To One Last Hotel Program

Posted on December 29, 2015 by Tara

Although technically I have accounts with about 8 hotel chain programs, they have all fallen by the wayside as being not worth the effort. I really hate being limited to a chain hotel’s offering in any given location and prefer being able to choose from a wide variety of hotels. For this reason, I have been concentrating on programs like Rocketmiles & Pointshound which earn airline miles and jump on social media games that offer free points in programs such as Expedia & Orbitz. We each gained $100 vouchers in Expedia over a mistake they made with a promo back in March, then more recently we each gained $110 in Orbucks during the August-Sept photo competition in which Orbucks were given out for uploading summer themed photos (I wish they would do this every year)! I’ve put these to good use for next year’s trip to Ecuador, Colombia & the Caribbean.

Club Carlson ditched the bogo free award night so I ditched their program after using up all existing points for next year’s trip. So now it’s down to one program – IHG Rewards. The main attraction here is the benefits from the Chase IHG Rewards credit card. The $49 annual fee gets us a free night at any IHG hotel worldwide and I have gotten some amazing usage out of this at places like Intercontinental JNB Airport, Intercontinental Moorea, and have the Intercontinental San Juan booked for next year. There always seems to be at least one place where I can use the certificate, usually at an airport hotel so the card is excellent value! Knock wood, I hope this benefit never goes away!

A Few Interesting IHG Pointbreaks For Eco-tourists

Posted on October 27, 2015 by Tara

IHG Rewards has announced next quarter’s Pointbreaks, redeemable from 26 October to 31 January for 5000 points a night. First I’ll embed the map that shows the worldwide Pointbreaks, then point out the ones that can work for eco-tourists.

AUSTRALASIA

A big fat zero for Australia which is par for the course. If you’re birding West Papua or elsewhere in Indonesia you might want to chill out in Bali for a couple days although Benoa is not the best location.

AFRICA

Most people visiting any country in Southern Africa will be transiting JNB on either Comair or South African Airways so the Holiday Inn JNB Airport could come in handy.

SOUTH AMERICA

We have a couple interesting options in Brazil. Both Manaus and Rio Branco are in good staging points for birding adventures. Cucuta in Colombia isn’t super convenient to the Perija area but could be a stop-over. San Jose, Costa Rica and Panama City are also good gateways to the more attractive birding hotspots in Costa Rica and Panama.

A complete list is available so have a look and see if anything works for you!

A Couple Good IHG Pointbreaks For Eco-tourists

Posted on May 27, 2015 by Tara

The latest IHG Pointbreaks list which offers specified hotels for a bargain 5000 points was less than inspiring. Oceana & Africa missed out completely. The complete list can be found here. The best options are for people doing USA road trips. This list is valid for bookings through 31 July.

Consider these possibilities if you are headed to South America. Cuiaba is the gateway to the Pantanal. The hotel is pretty nice although not the best location if you are going for an early start. We did this trip in 2012 before I started this blog so I don’t have posts yet but I will be blogging my past trips as soon as I finish the current trips.

BRAZIL
HOLIDAY INN CUIABA

Although this hotel is a city property, Panama City’s small size means it’s not such a long drive to Soberania National Park. Get yourself an award ticket to PTY, a rental car and book a few nights for a long weekend of birding!

PANAMA
CROWNE PLAZA PANAMA

Hotel Review: Accra Holiday Inn

Posted on April 4, 2015 by Tara

It was good enough for POTUS Barack Obama so I figured it would be good enough for us!

The Accra Holiday Inn near Ghana’s Kotoka Airport has the best meet & greet ever – a private lounge for their guests to relax and have coffee while they wait for the shuttle! First we passed through the immigration which didn’t take long as we had obtained tourist visas at the Ghanaian Embassy in Canberra.

Then we made our way to the lounge. We didn’t have to wait long until the mini-bus showed up and took us to the hotel.

It was getting late but the spotless lobby with African decor made a great first impression.

The room was what you expect from a Holiday Inn – clean, basic and good free wifi. By this time it was around 11pm so all we wanted was a shower and a good night’s sleep.

I did find the placement of the glass screen a bit awkward, you can’t move it and it makes that shell-like thing on the bathtub hard to clamber over.

The next morning we got a better look at the hotel – still a garden-variety Holiday Inn from the outside. This first night was only a layover as we were keen to get to Kakum National Park.

After visiting the park, we had 2 more nights here. We spent one morning at Shai Hills Reserve, using a taxi to get out there. There is a car booking service in the lobby, you can negotiate them down if they aren’t busy.

The pool is huge, great for a refreshing swim after a birding day trip or going to the craft market.

We had a few meals in La Cabana by the pool as the food was really good and it was nice to eat outdoors.

As you can see, we really treated ourselves!

The breakfast buffet was excellent with a nice variety of western and Ghanian items and omelets made to order.

This is a great hotel to use points on as it goes for 20k per night whereas a paid booking will run between $250-300! Hotels do run on the expensive side in Ghana so you really do want to have enough points to cover your stay. This is also one of the few places in the world where you can use points for a night and have a great place for birding within an easy day trip – Shai Hills Reserve!

Any Value In Daily Getaways For Eco-Tourists?

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Tara

Longtime miles & points junkies will be familiar with the annual US Daily Getaways Program. In the golden days, it was once possible to leverage cheap Wyndham Rewards points to cheap airline miles and I must admit to taking full advantage in years past. That all came to a halt last year when Wyndham devalued their transfer ratio and the Daily Getaways put up their price.

This year the promo will run 23 March to 24 April and the first 3 weeks have already been posted. Since there is no longer any value in airline transfers unless you just need a couple 1000 as a top up, the best reason to buy these points is to use them for hotels. I know all the miles/points/travel blogs will be covering the best deals in a general sense so I will only address the best deals specifically for eco-tourists who want to use points to stay cheaply some place within a day trip of a good bird watching location.

In all of the examples below, you need to determine if it represents a good value to you. You need to check if the chain hotel is where you really want to be or would you prefer to just pay for a night in a non-chain hotel. For myself, I have decided that I will not pay money to stay in chain hotels but I will stay in them if I get an extremely good deal from a credit card. The only credit cards I deem useful to me are the IHG Rewards & Club Carlson Visa. I have no interest in any other hotel chain credit cards.

Daily Getaways Week 1

WEEK 1

3 major chains have points on offer, – IHG, Club Carlson & Hilton

IHG does have some good properties in places like Accra, Ghana (day trip to Shai Hills, my review coming soon), Tahiti (between hops to Rimatara & the Marquesas), Panama (day trip to Soberania NP) & Puerto Rico (day trip to El Yunque). Historically these points won’t sell out quickly as you can buy IHG Rewards using the book & cancel method.

Club Carlson also has a property in Puerto Rico and Panama suitable as above. I also used the Radisson Blu to good advantage for a day trip to Birds of Eden, Tahiti on a layover and a pre-flight stay in San Jose, Costa Rica. These points will go moderately fast as they are very useful to anyone who has the Club Carlson Visa card and gets a free night for at least one night booked on points.

The Hilton packages don’t seem to be that great of a value and I don’t see them selling out. While we did enjoy our stay in Mauritius last year which cost 80,000 points for 2 nights, there is no way I would have spent $500 to purchase 100,000 points for those 2 nights. We got those points by doing social media games which are no longer running for free. If we hadn’t had the points, we would have used Pointshound to book something cheap and earn miles.

Daily Getaways Week 2

WEEK 2

Nothing here to interest eco-tourists. The Choice points on Friday are excellent value when used in Europe but that’s out of scope for this blog. Here is a good example of a blogger who is making excellent use of this promo for his trip to Europe. Last year, we used 10,000 Choice Rewards to stay in Venice at a hotel that would have cost over $300! They are the only thing I see going fast so if you want some you will have to be ready to go right at 1:00 pm ET. (US time zone as in New York if you need a converter).

Daily Getaways Week 3

WEEK 3

Once again, nothing of interest to eco-tourists. The Hyatt packages will go extremely fast because people who want to stay in luxury hotels will snap them up but Hyatt doesn’t have any properties in places that also have good birding.

WHAT AM I DOING?

Sitting out this year! Since I am a good advance planner, I have already determined that I have enough hotel points for our needs for the next 3 years. Most of our stays will be at independent properties, I just like them much better and I like having more choice. Nothing worse than being stuck in a bad location because that’s where your points hotel is!

Using Points To Stay In Mauritius

Posted on February 8, 2015 by Tara

Any way you look at it, Mauritius is not a cheap place to stay, even on points! Only 4 hotel chains are represented here so you don’t have a lot of options. If you have gotten hotel points via credit cards, these could be a great use of the points as cash rates are very high. For the examples below, I did a quote for 1 night Saturday 9 May.

ACCOR LE CLUB

With Accor, every 2,000 points acquired results in €40 off your bill. If you have enough points your stay could be free, or simply pay the remaining balance using your credit card. For the first hotel you would need 24,000 Le Club points and 12,000 points for the 2nd one. You have to add taxes to the rates below.

HILTON HONORS

There is only one Hilton property in Mauritius and if you can snag a capacity controlled cash&points award this can be a really good deal! IHG REWARDS

The Intercontinental would be an excellent use of a Chase free night certificate! They also have a new hotel near the airport which could be a good idea if you have an early flight out. The traffic can be horrendous!

SPG

Cash & Points looks like a pretty good deal!

BOOK NON-CHAIN HOTEL & EARN MILES

If you don’t have enough hotel points or prefer to pay cash, there are lots of options on both Pointshound & Rocket Miles that allow you to earn in a wide choice of airline programs. If you use the links I posted, you and I both get a bonus after you complete your first booking. This is currently 1000 miles!

Hotel Review: InterContinental Johannesburg O.R Tambo Airport

Posted on January 31, 2015 by Tara

Odds are that either arriving or departing, you will need an overnight stay near JNB airport. Fortunately for the miles & points savvy travelers, the best option by far is the InterContinental Johannesburg O.R Tambo Airport…………….and it is readily available on IHG points! Whether you use IHG points or a Chase Free night as we did, you will be getting a huge bargain as this hotel generally goes for over $300 a night!

We got there pretty late at night, probably around 9pm as I am always very thorough about returning a car. I want to watch them check it in and make sure they don’t have any problems with it and preferably get a written document that all is well. The nice thing is that this hotel is right next to the garage where you return your car and right across the street from the airport. You can’t get anymore convenient than that!

The rooms are beautifully furnished. I am not sure if we were upgraded, I was too tired to bother asking. We just wanted a shower and to get some sleep! I did spend some time on the wifi which was pretty good. I tried the complimentary wine but didn’t like it, it was too sweet.

Airport view out the window.

In the morning while checking out, I could appreciate the beautiful waterfall decor. This really is a nice hotel, I was sorry we didn’t have more time here to check out the facilities………….but Mauritius beckoned and we had an early flight!

A Major Weedout Of Hotel Programs

Posted on December 29, 2014 by Tara

If you saw yesterday’s post about the Radisson Blu in Port Elizabeth, you got a general idea of how having the right credit card can save you lots of money on accomodation. Mainstream travelers who mostly visit cities have a huge advantage over eco-tourists because they tend to stay in one city for a couple days at least. Maximizing the Club Carlson Visa assumes you want to stay in one hotel for at least 2 days. There are a few places around the world where there are good birding sites within a short drive of a Club Carlson property so you can take advantage of the freebies and not waste your time in a city when you would rather be in a rainforest lodge. The example of Port Elizabeth with the day trip to Birds of Eden is one such example, Panama City is another and I really saved a bundle in Tahiti when we had to wait 2 days for the next flight to Rimatara to see the beautiful Rimatara Lorikeets. We also made good use of the “get one night free” during our travels in Israel & Europe before we went to Tenerife for the World Parrot Conference at Loro Parque.

WHY DID I HAVE ALL THESE HOTEL POINTS ANYWAY?

Although I am by nature a “free agent” and prefer to choose hotels by location and convenience, not because of loyalty to one chain; between 2009-2011 I found myself a member of just about every hotel program in the book. Why? Because I wanted “hits” in the US Airways Grand Slam promo. This was the cheapest way to get a large number of miles with very little extra cost over what I would normally pay for something. I did direct a lot of our discretionary stays to these programs to get these “hits”.

Fast forward to 2012. Everyone in the miles & points community was expecting Grand Slam to happen again in the usual time of Sept-Nov. We painstakingly did surveys, played Facebook games and did Foursquare “check-ins” to get free hotel points. Well guess what? 2012 came and went and no Grand Slam. 2013 came and went, still no Grand Slam. And now US and AA are merging so there won’t ever be a Grand Slam again. I had all these hotel points and had to do something with them.

Since we usually stay in small eco-lodges in remote locations, we have very little use for hotel points other than what has been mentioned above. Mostly we use them at airports before or after a flight. After several devaluations were announced, I knew I had to spend these points asap before they were totally worthless.

2014 was my year for massive burning of hotel points. 100,000’s of Club Carlson were used as above. 100,000’s of IHG Rewards were burned in French Polynesia, Israel & Africa (actually this includes the annual Chase free night certificate). I used E-Rewards to top up Hilton just enough to get us 2 free nights in Mauritius and used Choice for one night pre-cruise at the Comfort Inn Diana in Venice, then sent the remaining points to United Airlines. Now here I am at the end of 2014 and the only hotel points I have left are about 25k in Club Carlson, 30k in IHG and about 12k in La Quinta from the Facebook game last year.

MAKING THE DECISION – WHO STAYS AND WHO GOES

Looking to 2015 and beyond, I now need to assess which hotel programs (if any) I will keep. I also need to know which hotel credit cards to get rid of. To do this, I used two maps made by Drew at Travel is Free. One for Club Carlson and one for IHG.

1. IHG is a keeper for the long run. The $49 for the card which gets a free night certificate is easily worth it. In any given year, we would need at least one stay at an airport hotel and IHG serves this market well. They have properties at most of the gateway cities we would be transiting to get to eco-lodges.

2. La Quinta is easy, there is one near my Mom’s house so I know what to do with them.

3. Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, Choice, Best Western & Wyndham are either zeroed out or have a few orphaned points (less than 1000) and we won’t be needing any of these chains for the foreseeable future.

4. SPG is more valuable for airline transfers into otherwise difficult programs such as Flying Blue. I have the credit card because of the bonus but never use it because they have no category bonuses and they charge forex fees. Plus I can use my Aussie Amex to transfer into SPG so this card can go, but I will keep my SPG account active.

5. My Club Carlson Visa also comes up for renewal next month – $50 since I only have the basic card (silver status) not the more expensive one that gets gold status. Using Drew’s maps, I can easily see that the only places I want to go to that have Club Carlson properties are Puerto Rico and Trinidad. I can see spending 2 nights at the Puerto Rico one as it is within easy driving distance of El Yunque National Forest and the value of 2 nights is easily more than the $50 fee. This trip is planned for mid 2016 so will be bookable in Oct this year. In Trinidad, a trip planned for 2018, I would much prefer to stay at the Asa Wright Centre’s Lodge for the superb birding, even though it costs more than paying the card fee for 2 more years would cost. So the verdict is keep this card one more year, then cancel it.

SO WHERE WILL I BE BOOKING HOTELS?

By the end of next year, I will be down to only one program – IHG for the annual Chase certificate. SPG doesn’t count as it will be used for airline miles, not hotels. The best thing for me to do moving forward is use the hotel booking engines that GIVE airline miles, not COST hotel points. No more being stuck at inconvenient locations just to get a free night! On the plus side, many eco-lodges also can be booked with these engines.

POINTSHOUND – I use it for AA or Flying Blue miles. Has a wider variety of hotels than Rocketmiles and cheaper options. Using my referral link gets us both 250-1000 miles depending on what promo they are running.

ROCKETMILES – larger miles payouts but limited selection and sometimes hotels cost more so check carefully. Good for United or Flying Blue miles. Using my referral link gets us both a 1000 miles bonus.

HOTELS.COM – used if I would rather get 10 nights for one free night (value is average expenditure for the 10 paid nights). For example if we have 5 nights at a $150 hotel, 3 nights at a $50 hotel and 2 nights at a $100 hotel the total we spent for the 10 nights is $1100. The average for the 10 nights is $110 so that is the maximum value of my free night. It’s best to get as close as possible to that maximum value as you don’t get any left over value. If you choose a $125 hotel you pay the difference of $15. If you choose a $95 hotel, you forfeit the balance of the free night value of $15. You can always maximize by booking a larger/better room or a bed & breakfast rate. Sometimes they have good 5x bonuses in the Chase Ultimate Rewards Mall or Shop with Chase as they call it now. I haven’t seen a referral program for this company.

BOTTOM LINE

Having a good idea of where you want to travel in the next few years or even having a bucket list of ALL the places you want to go if you either get the miles or win the lottery helps you make wise choices in which hotel programs (if any) to participate in.

Just Returned From Africa – Exhausted But Exhilirated

Posted on December 1, 2014 by Tara

This trip has been in the works for over a year and was originally planned for late 2015 and referred to as “The Mother of all African Adventures“. I decided to bring it forward to Nov 2014 because it relied heavily on United Mileage Plus and I had concerns that a devaluation could either make the trip impossible or knock us back to economy and since these flights were really long I wanted business class. I was also afraid that a change to United’s generous routing rules (better explained by Drew at Travel is Free) would kill my planned stopovers. This routing required both an open jaw and a stop-over and cost 320,000 miles in J class for both tickets.

United redemption on BR, CA, SA, ET & TG

I used British Airways Avios for some local routes on their South African partner, Comair.

Avios redemptions

The only paid ticket was Air Austral from MRU to TNR. The only way to get this route with miles is Flying Blue on Air Mauritius but the taxes make it poor value since it is not easy to get Flying Blue miles. Also, they didn’t fly on a Monday and I had no flexibility as I had specific places to go birding in Madagascar. I could have flown Air Madagascar but they have had so many problems with flight cancellations and long delays, I chose not to take the risk and went with Air Austral via Reunion.

Air Austral route

I did make great use of Flying Blue miles on Kenya Airways to get from Madagascar to Ghana, 35,000 for both of us!

Flying Blue redemption on KQ

HOTELS

Although most of the accommodation was in birding or safari lodges, I did burn through a bunch of hotel points in cities to keep costs down.

Port Elizabeth – Radisson Blu 38,000 points for 2 nights

JNB Airport – Intercontinental used Chase annual free night

Mauritius – Used Hilton Honors 40,000 points from each of our accounts for 2 nights at this newly renovated property.

Accra – Used IHG Rewards 20,000 per night for 1 night upon arrival and 2 nights post birding in Kakum for a birding day trip to Shai Hills.

Of course I will be blogging in detail about the travel and the fabulous birds we saw over the next couple months!

Recently Returned From Tenerife & The VIII International Parrot Convention

Posted on October 18, 2014 by Tara

You probably didn’t notice because I had pre-written posts scheduled to appear daily on this blog, but I was away for over a month. The main focus of the trip was to attend the world’s top parrot conservation conference in Loro Parque, Tenerife – VIII International Parrot Convention. This amazing conference is held every 4 years and I had been to the 2010 one and loved it! For readers coming from the miles & points community think of it as FTU on steroids with people coming from all over the world!

Since we were traveling all the way from Australia to Europe in business class, I wanted to maximize the time we were over there so I had a pretty convoluted flight schedule booked. I wanted to visit Israel since I hadn’t been there since the mid-80’s and my husband had never been there. Since most of our trips are birding/eco-tourism type trips, I wanted to do something different so we took a Mediterranean cruise after the conference. Since the cruise didn’t stop in Monaco, I used miles to slot in a 2 day stop-over in Nice before the conference. None of this would have been possible without the extensive use of miles and hotel points!

I will be elaborating in further detail on how I booked everything and how I maximized my miles and points after my Tasmania series is finished but for now, here is a synopsis of the trip. Since the Israel, Europe & cruise parts are off-topic for this blog, I won’t be elaborating on what we did and saw there but just covering the parts that pertain to miles and points as it shows how you can take a business trip and maximize it.

BNE-BKK-IST-TLV business class – outbound leg of US Airways award before they left Star Alliance for OneWorld.

2 nights Crowne Plaza Jerusalem – IHG points

2 nights Park Plaza Orchid, Tel Aviv – Club Carlson points with 2nd night free

TLV-IST-NCE economy class – one way award using United Mileage Plus

2 nights Radisson Blu Nice – Club Carlson points with 2nd night free

NCE-MAD-TFN economy class – one way award booked with Iberia Avios

5 nights at Hotel Botanico, Tenerife as part of conference package, paid cash (actually Chase Ink)

TFN-MAD-VCE economy class – one way award booked with Iberia Avios

1 night Comfort Inn Diana – Choice Rewards points

12 Day Grand Mediterranean NCL cruise – booked with United Cruises to earn points, also some minor manufactured spending is possible on cruise ships.

BCN-ZRH-FCO-PEK-SIN-BNE business class – return leg of afore-mentioned US Airways award) This one got pretty convoluted as it was hard to find space in business class and I was trying to get a 12 hour layover in Beijing on the return for a quick trip to the Great Wall.

As one might expect with any trip booked so far in advance (I was pretty much right on top of it at the 330 days mark), there were dramas, schedule changes and world events that threatened to wreak havoc on my carefully planned trip. Did all go as planned? Tune in after a month or so when I start blogging this trip in detail!

Miles To The Wild

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