Points and Miles: March

I didn't post anything on points and miles for February. The middle month of a quarter generally doesn't have much new happening and I had just returned from Florida and was posting about that. But things are beginning to heat up as we head into spring, so here are some offers you can use if you have a March break coming up.

Aeroplan

• Until April 30, when you link your Costco and Aeroplan numbers, you'll earn 50 bonus Aeroplan miles.
• Earn double Aeroplan miles at Esso stations. Until April 9.

Best Western Rewards: Best Western, Best Western Plus, Best Western Premier.

• Stay three separate times before April 8 and earn a free night plus 1000 Aeroplan miles. Register here.

Club Carlson: Radisson, Country Inns & Suites, Park Inn, Park Plaza.

• Until March 16, earn triple Club Carlson points on every stay, including food and beverage charges.
• Save up to 25% and earn 1500 bonus Club Carlson points per day with this offer from National Car Rental. Until June 15.

Hilton HHonors: Hilton, DoubleTree, Embassy Suites, Hilton Garden Inn, Hampton Inn, Homewood Suites.

• Register to earn a bonus of 1000 points per night or 5000 points per weekend. Valid until March 31.
• Hilton HHonors is unique in that you can set your earning preference to "double-dip": points plus points, or points plus miles in the airline program of your choice. Choose Delta SkyMiles and get 2012 bonus miles with any two-night stay. Choose American Airlines AAdvantage and earn double miles for any stay or US Airways and get triple Dividend Miles. All offers expire March 31.

Priority Club Rewards: Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites, Candlewood Suites.

• See the lists of bonus codes at these sites: Priority Club Insider,Rewards Canada, and flyertalk.
• Get up to 35% off a Hertz rental and earn double Priority Club points with these codes. Valid until June 30.
• Until April 30, earn double points on every qualifying stay, beginning with the second one. See the tip at the bottom of this post for a strategy to maximize this offer.

Starwood Preferred Guest: Sheraton, Four Points, Westin, W, Le Meridien, Aloft, Element, St. Regis.

• Through April 8, register here to earn a bonus of twice the Starpoints for stays of two nights, triple points for stays of three nights and longer.

Tip: If you'll be staying several nights at an IHG property (Holiday Inn, etc.) on your vacation, you'll want to earn the double points for that. So make that first stay a one-nighter. If you're flying, book a "Stay and Park" package at an airport location. If you're driving, make Holiday Inn your choice for an overnight stop on the road south. The same strategy will work with the "Stay three times, get a free night" offer from Best Western, if your third stay is at a Best Western on your return drive north.

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Points and Miles: October

All the major hotel chains have now launched their fourth quarter promotions. If you're planning a Thanksgiving getaway, or a cross-border shopping trip, you might also refer to Points and Miles: September for the chains that were first out of the gate with their offers last month.

Country Inn and Suites by Carlson offers a free night if you complete a two-night stay by December 1. Various terms and conditions apply, so read them carefully. And a car rental from Avis could get you 9K Club Carlson points. Here's the link with the code you'll need.

You're probably not familiar with Wyndham Rewards, but you may recognize many Wyndham Hotel brands: Ramada, Super 8, Days Inn, Howard Johnson, Travelodge. Every stay through November 18 earns double points or miles, and every second stay gets you a $20 VISA gift card. Registration is required via this link.

Priority Club is the loyalty program of Intercontinental Hotels (Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Hotel Indigo, Crowne Plaza). You earn 10 points for every dollar spent. To redeem for a free night at a Holiday Inn or Holiday Inn Express usually requires 15K points, but some hotels offer "Pointsbreaks" specials for only 5K points a night. Here's where to find hotels offering Pointsbreaks. Until December 31, Register to earn 500 bonus points per night. Your bonus will be doubled or tripled if you stay at more than one brand. There are lots of other bonuses available. Find them here. The bonuses can add up quickly: two paid nights at Holiday Inn can easily earn you a free night.

Unfortunately, there are few Hyatt Hotels in Canada. Until November 15, receive 5K bonus Hyatt Gold Passport points after every three nights you stay. Combined with the regular 5 points per dollar earned, that's enough for a free night at many Hyatt hotels.

The airline space presents a couple of interesting offers. If you're a Royal Bank customer and collect RBC Rewards points, until November 30, earn a 30% bonus when converting RBC Rewards points to American Airlines AAdvantage miles. And, only until November 15, RBC is offering up to $350 in WestJet dollars for signing up for its WestJet RBC MasterCard.

If you'd subscribe to the magazine anyway, and the price is right, Rogers magazine service is offering 250 Aeroplan miles when you add a magazine to your account. Gift subscriptions also qualify.

And finally, CIBC has taken over the Petro-Points MasterCard and is offering 15K as a sign-up bonus. Petro-Points aren't worth much: 15K points will get you a $10 gas card. You do save 2 cents a litre at the pump, earn points for your spending, and receive a monthly 5K ($3.33) bonus if you spend over $1,000.

The card is no-fee, and there is a calculator on the site to let figure out how you'd do. My own calculations show that I'd save about $4.00 a month on gas and earn a $10.00 gas card about every other month, giving the card a value of a about $120.00 per year, or a return of about 1%. That represents a lost opportunity of several hundred dollars compared to several other cards I know and use that offer a 2% return and whose points can sometimes be leveraged for even greater value.

If you spend a lot (over $25K per year), especially on gas, the 2 cent a litre discount could increase the card's value to the $250-$300 range. But there's still the lost opportunity cost to consider. If you're putting that much spending on a credit card, a travel rewards card that offers double points or miles for gas, grocery, drug store, and travel purchases could be worth your while, even if it comes with a fee.

It just goes to show that there's no one right rewards program for everyone. How much you spend, where you spend, and what kinds of rewards you're after all determine what's best for you.

You can now follow me on Twitter: @AeneasLane

Spring 2011 Travel and Points Offers

Lately there has been a raft of offers as the spring travel season approaches. Here are some of them.

Until December 31, you'll earn 100 bonus Aeroplan miles when you join Park 'n Fly Rewards. You'll also earn 50% more Aeroplan miles each time you use Park 'n Fly.

Most airline miles expire unless you have activity in the account every 12-24 months. Delta Airlines recently announced that it has eliminated mileage expiration. Good news for the casual traveler. And remember, you can earn up to 2,000 Delta miles for a three-night stay at most Hilton hotels until March 31. All the details are in my January 6 post.

And while I don't usually recommend exchanging miles using Points.com because of the steep commission they extract, it can be worthwhile, if for example you need to keep points in a program alive, need only a few points to reach an award level, or have points in an "orphan" program. Until March 31, exchanges for Delta SkyMiles get you 50% bonus miles, which makes the pain a little less. Some of the programs you can exchange with are Esso Extra, Hbc Rewards, and Priority Club.

You do intend to participate in Earth Hour don't you? This year, it's between 8:30-9:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 26. And you won't just turn off your lights, right? You'll put on a sweater (better yet, snuggle with a friend) and turn down the thermostat a degree or two? To reward you for your virtuous behaviour, Starwood Preferred Guest will give you 100 Starpoints.

Country inns and Suites by Carlson has a Spring Getaway offer good until April 30 at participating hotels in Canada and the U.S. Stay two or more nights and receive a certificate code provided via email post-stay to redeem online for a US$30 Amazon Gift Card* or a C$30 Amazon.ca gift certificate, a T.G.I. Friday's offer (US hotels only), and 3,000 bonus Gold Points.

Choice Hotels' offer to triple your points after the second stay continues until April 13. Find the details here.

Best Western has been on the move lately. Though the world’s largest hotel chain, it lacked a clear image in many travelers’ minds because, unlike all other major chains, there was no way to differentiate among different quality levels of its properties. That’s all changed. Best Western has now rebranded itself into three quality tiers: Best Western, Best Western Plus, and Best Western Premier.

Not a member of Best Western Rewards? Join by April 11 via this link and get 250 American Airline AAdvantage miles when you set your earnings preference to AA. Then earn up to 1,000 AA AAdvantage miles per stay. There’s a similar offer for Aeroplan members here. Or, register and stay three times by April 11 at any Best Western in Canada or the U.S. and earn a free night with this offer.

You can also earn Best Western Rewards with a no annual fee MasterCard from MBNA. You may need to quote the code CJ4A to get a 20,000 sign up bonus. You can apply here.

And finally, need a way to keep track of all your points and loyalty programs in one place? I use Award Wallet. The basic service is free, and it securely tracks all your program balances and will even warn you about point expiry for the first three programs. For a small fee, it will monitor the expiration dates of all your programs. It even creates a trip itinerary for you by linking the numbers of your airline, hotel, and car rental loyalty programs. Very neat.

Happy trails.

More Winter 2011 Points and Miles Offers

With Family Day long weekend and the March Break fast approaching, I thought I'd highlight some hotel and points offers that have come my way the last few weeks.

You can earn 250 American AAdvantage miles just for joining Best Western Rewards. The offer is valid until April 11, 2011.

Priority Club's (Holiday Inn, etc.) first promotion of 2011 lets you earn 3,000 bonus points for every three nights you stay, up to 30,000 bonus points for 30 nights. It's good for hotel stays from February 1 to April 30, 2011. You have to register via this link: Priority Club 2011-Q1 Bonus Points Promotion registration link.

Priority Club is also offering an easy 500 points for completing three simple surveys. Click this link to find the Flyertalk post with links to the surveys and anwers. Points post right away.

Until April 13, 2011 Choice Privileges (the loyalty program of Comfort Inn, EconoLodge, Clarion, Quality, and several others) is awarding triple points after your second stay. If you're planning a road trip south and back in the next few months, this is potentially a very valuable offer as these are generally budget properties common at Interstate exits. You can join and register for the offer via this link.

Carlson Hotels' Radisson chain is offering 10,000 bonus Goldpoints through February 28, 2011 for booking the "Experience the World of Radisson" promotion. Here's the link.

Air Canada's Winter Extravelganza lets Aeroplan members earn double miles and other bonuses if they register and fly selected routes between now and April 30, 2011. Details are available here.

Marriott Hotels Weekend Bonus offers a $100 Bonus Bucks coupon good toward a future two-night weekend getaway as well as up to $100 off airfare. Just spend a Friday or Saturday night at participating JW Marriott or Marriott Hotels & Resorts. Book by February 11, 2011, and stay from February 10 through March 27, 2011. Details are here.

I haven't written about Wyndham Rewards before. It's the loyalty program of such well-known chains as Ramada, Super 8, Howard Johnson, Travelodge, and Days Inn. Until April 30, 2011, members earn double points with their second stay, triple points with their third, and quadruple points with their fourth. Like the Choice Hotels offer, this one also has great potential for Florida-bound snowbirds, as these hotels are also common along the Interstates. You can join the program and register for the promotion here.

And for the truly adventurous, Hyatt is offering 2,000 bonus Gold Passport points for a stay at the Grand Hyatt Cairo. The offer is good until April 15, 2011. Details are available via this link.

Safe travels.

Points 3: Starwood Preferred Guest American Express Card

The problem with collecting Aeroplan miles is that millions of other Canadians do too. So when it comes time to redeem that flight on Air Canada or one of its Star Alliance partners, you're competing with a lot of other people for a few seats. Of course you can always pay more points for "extra access", but that could end up costing more than twice as much as a regular award.

However, few Canadians belong to the plans of the major U.S. airlines – American, Delta, United, and US Airways – so flights from Canadian cities are often readily available at the lowest rate, typically 25K points for a return economy class flight in North America.

That brings me to the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) American Express card. Starwood is the chain that includes Sheraton and Westin hotels, among others, and SPG is their loyalty program. You earn 2 SPG points for every dollar spent at Starwood hotels (bonus offers let you earn faster) and free nights start at 2,000 points, with most hotels in the 7-10K range. For example, both the Sheraton Centre and Westin Harbour Castle in Toronto are 7K points for a free night.

The SPG Amex card earns 1 SPG point for every dollar spent. MBNA used to be Starwood's partner, and the card was no-fee, which was a terrific deal, but early this year they switched to Amex and now their card costs $120 a year. Given Amex's limited acceptance and the less generous insurance benefits, it's generally not as good a deal as the Aeroplan bank cards.

Except SPG has one really big advantage: you can trade its points one for one with almost any airline's. And if you swap 20K points, they give you a 5K bonus, resulting in 25K airline miles. This amounts to 1¼ miles for dollar spent. So if you have the annual spending to justify a $120 annual fee card, the 25% extra miles and ability to redeem with virtually any airline might make this card worthwhile to you.

You can apply online, there's a 10K point sign-up bonus, and you'll be automatically enrolled in the SPG program.

I accepted the card last spring because Amex waived the annual fee for former MBNA card holders for the first year. They also offered an 11K point sign-up bonus and my wife got a card too. We recently swapped 20K of those points for 25K American Airlines Advantage miles for free return flights from Palm Springs to Toronto.

I plan to cancel the card next year unless Amex lowers the annual fee (in the U.S. it's only $65 a year) or offers a hefty renewal bonus. Otherwise, it won't be worth it to me. I'll bring the Club Sobeys MasterCard out of mothballs and focus on earning free Aeroplan miles with it.

The SPG card enables you to benefit from membership in a host of airline plans. In Points 301 I'll explain why you should join the plan of every hotel chain you stay at as well.