Points and Miles: April

I held off publishing the monthly points and miles post last week because, with the first quarter just ended and Easter weekend approaching, most of the major chains and airlines had yet to announce their second quarter promotions.

While that's still partly true, here are the best offers to surface so far. I've listed the name of the hotel chain, its loyalty program and principal brands, followed by the current bonus offers. Click on the name of the loyalty program to sign up if you're not already a member, and click on the links to register for the offers.

Best Western Best Western Rewards:

• Stay three separate times before June 3, and get a $50 Best Western gift card. Aeroplan members also earn 4X Aeroplan miles. Register here.
  

Choice Hotels Choice Privileges: Comfort Inn, Quality, EconoLodge, Clarion, Rodeway.

• Until May 8, earn enough points with two stays for a free night at any of more than 1,500 hotels in the Choice chain. If you're not a Choice Privileges member, you can join at the same time you register for the promotion.
  

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

• Register to earn double points or double miles for stays before June 30.
  

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

• Buy or give Priority Club Rewards points by April 30 and receive up to 50% bonus points. Canadian residents must pay HST on purchases. See this post by The Loyalty Traveler for where the "sweet spots" are for getting the best value.
  

Petro-Canada Petro-Points

• You can donate your Petro-Points to the Canadian Cancer Society to help fight cancer.
  

VIA Rail VIA Préférence

• Seat Sale until April 17. 50% off economy class. Good for travel until August 29.

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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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AirMiles and Priority Club Devalue Their Programs

InterContinental Hotels Group's Priority Club Rewards program was the first hotel loyalty program I joined. That was about eight years ago, during a stay at a Holiday Inn in Montréal. Seeing that handful of points in my account made me wonder how I could earn enough for a free night, and that was the beginning of this little obsession of mine.

Like any loyalty program, Priority Club certainly has its flaws, but it also has two major strengths. The first is that with over 4,500 properties worldwide, including Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, and Hotel Indigo, there is almost always a hotel where you want to stay, whether to earn or redeem points. The second is that, in addition to the ten points earned per dollar spent on stays, bonus points are insanely easy to get.

In fact, there are several websites that list bonus codes: Priority Club Insider, this section of Rewards Canada, and this thread on flyertalk. The best strategy to follow is to register for as many bonuses as you think you might qualify for prior to your stay. You probably won't get them all, but you're likely to get some.

What this means is that a $150 stay at a Holiday Inn, instead of yielding 1,500 points, could earn 5-10K points. There's even a MasterCard available from Capital One that let's you earn Priority Club points for all your credit card spending.

But the bad news is that, effective January 18, Priority Club is increasing the number of points required to redeem for a free night. For example, previously, most Holiday Inns were 15K points; some will now cost 5-10K points more. Not all properties are going up; some are actually decreasing, but the increase amounts to a 40% jump in many cases, and that seriously devalues both the program and the credit card.

Which brings me to AirMiles.

I'm not a collector of AirMiles. Because there are few participating merchants where I live, there just isn't significant earning opportunity for me. In addition, miles are expensive to earn and have little value. I've also had difficulties with its customer service centre in the past. Recently, AirMiles announced it would confiscate members' unused points five years after they've been earned (you can read what I think about such policies here). There are other changes to the program that are explained here.

Basically, these changes highlight an essential truth about loyalty programs, especially free-standing ones like Aeroplan and AirMiles: they are loyal to their shareholders and merchant partners, not their members.

And that raises another truth: just because a points program and/or its credit card was right for you in the past, doesn't mean it is still the best program/card for you today. Programs change, and so do your spending patterns, so you need to monitor them both and be prepared to change if necessary.

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Getting the Most (Points) from Your Winter Vacation

A faithful blog reader recently gave me some feedback about my monthly posts of hotel and airline points and miles offers. Basically, she told me she found a long list of deals too daunting to be useful.

And that got me to thinking. So, look for January's roundup next week; today I'll offer some advice on how to find the best offers for your winter holiday.

Start your vacation planning by deciding where to go. And base your decision on your desire to go there. Our blog reader is correct: unless you're looking for a last-minute weekend getaway, it's too confusing to begin making travel plans based on this month's offers. For today, I'm going to ignore airlines and focus on hotels, mainly because airlines offer few incentives on flights to vacation hotspots during peak seasons.

Say you want to spend a week in the Orlando area. All the major hotel chains are represented there, so start by going to an online travel agency site like Expedia or Hotels.ca to see which hotels are available and what rates they are charging. These sites are also useful because they provide traveler ratings as well. All things being equal, the best price is your best deal.

However, sites like Expedia and Hotels.ca also have two major disadvantages: they don't list all hotels in an area, and you won't earn points if you book your hotel through them. No problem: you can always get the same rates at the hotel chains' websites. So earning points won't cost you extra and you'll also see all the properties the chains have in the area.

Once you've found a few hotels in the right location and price range, check this month's list of offers. An offer for bonus points, or a stay X nights, get Y nights free deal, could not only help you decide in favour of one hotel over another, but also earn points toward your next holiday.

Even if you don't think you'll ever use those hotel points, you can always elect to earn airline miles instead (if you belong to a frequent flyer plan). I explain how that works in this blog post.

And don't forget to double-dip by using a credit card that earns points or miles. Many cards even offer double points for travel-related charges, so check to see which of your cards offers you the biggest bang when you pay for your hotel, airfare, and car rental.

One final point: the major hotel chains have many brands in their portfolios. You may not know that you can earn Hilton HHonors points at a Hampton Inn or Doubletree, Wyndham Rewards at a Travelodge or Howard Johnson, Priority Club Rewards at a Crowne Plaza or Staybridge Suites. Check out your hotel's corporate website to see which chain and loyalty program it belongs to.

Next Thursday, I'll tell you about the offers the major hotel chains have for January-March, all specially geared to reward the winter leisure traveler.

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Points and Miles: November

It's the middle of the fourth quarter and that means it's been a quiet month in the world of points and miles. But there have been a few worthwhile offers that have come my way.

Hilton Hotels (which includes such brands as Hampton, Doubletree, and Embassy Suites) is offering the choice of a free night after four stays, or double points on all stays booked and completed by December 31. And if you select Delta Airlines as your double dip option, you'll receive an extra 250 Medallion Qualifying Miles via this offer.

If you'd like to give to earthquake relief in Turkey, Hilton HHonors will reward you with 10 points for every US$ donated.

A two-night stay at a Priority Club Rewards property (Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, etc.) in major North American cities (including Toronto), earns a 7,500 point bonus via this offer. Combined with the base points and other bonuses available (see current bonus offers at Priority Club Insider), you could easily earn the 15K points required for a free night at most Holiday Inn or Holiday Inn Express locations. Since many Priority Club bonus offers are stackable, my advice is to sign up for every offer and see what you get.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts (Sheraton, Westin, etc.) is offering a variety of discounts and special offers at properties in the Southern U.S. and Caribbean to CAA/AAA members. Good until December 31, all the information is here. And until December 15, the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express card comes with a 20K point sign-up bonus. That's enough for between 2 and 5 free nights, depending on the category of hotel. Or you can convert the 20K points to 25K airline miles for a free flight in North America. The card carries a $120 annual fee.

Until January 15, Hyatt Hotels is offering triple American Airlines AAdvantage miles with each stay – 1,500 instead of the usual 500. Up to 15K miles can be earned. And in other news, Hyatt is renaming its Summerfield Suites brand Hyatt House. Hyatt House will consist of the existing 38 Summerfield Suites locations and 16 Hotel Sierra properties that Hyatt recently acquired.

With this code, get special rates from Hertz and earn bonus Delta SkyMiles. There are various expiration dates.

And finally, Patrick Sojka, on his Rewards Canada blog, has recently posted reviews of the American Express Gold Rewards card, the RBC VISA Infinite Avion card, and the American Express AIR MILES Platinum card. If you're looking for a point-earning credit card, or just curious how your card stacks up, check them out.

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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.

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Early Summer Points and Travel Deals

Given the cool, wet weather here in Southern Ontario this spring, it may seem premature to be thinking about summer getaways, but the airlines and hotel chains have sent some tempting offers my way recently than you might want to factor into your coming vacation planning.

Choice Hotels is offering enough bonus points after two stays to provide you with a free night at over 1,500 of their lower tier properties. Registration is required, and be sure to read the terms and conditions. Stays between May 19 and August 11, 2011 qualify. Click here for details.

Like most hotel points programs, Choice Privileges points can be traded for airline miles, generally at a rate of 5:1; that is, 5K Choice points for 1K airline miles. But until June 6, 2011, if you transfer Choice points to United Mileage Plus, you get twice the miles. Here's a link.

So if you signed up for that no-fee Choice Privileges MasterCard I told you about last month, you could not only be turning your credit card spending into free hotel nights, but faster free flights as well. And since United is a Star Alliance partner with Air Canada, you can credit flights on Air Canada to Mileage Plus (and vice-versa) and use Mileage Plus miles to fly on Air Canada or any other Star Alliance partner airline.

Country Inn and Suites has extended its Spring Getaway Offer until May 31. Stay twice and be rewarded with a $30 Amazon.com or Amazon.ca gift card as well as 3,000 bonus Club Carlson points. U.S. hotels also throw in a $5 T.G.I. Friday's coupon. Country Inn and Suites offer reasonably priced accommodation and include free wireless and buffet breakfast. Most locations are in the U.S. To book this offer, click here.

From May 16 through August 15, 2011, Priority Club (Holiday Inn and associated brands) lets you earn double points starting with your second stay. You can register for this offer here.

Priority Club Insider maintains an extensive list of other bonus codes here. Registering for multiple offers has sometimes meant that I have earned almost enough points for a free night with just one paid stay at a Holiday Inn. It's always worth the effort.

And Priority Club also offers some "Pointsbreaks" properties at only 5K points, one-third the usual 15K points required for a free night. You can find the list here. Bookmark the site, because the eligible properties change every month or so.

The excellent Rewards Canada website has made its "Choosing a Travel Rewards Credit Card" comparison chart more extensive and much easier to use by splitting it up into five separate charts based on the type of card. If you're a Canadian looking for the best travel reward credit card for you, you need to start your shopping here.

Finally, did you know that you can earn Aeroplan miles for subscribing to your favourite magazines? Rogers Magazine Service offers 250 Aeroplan miles for each subscription if you go through their portal. The prices seem to be in line with other offers, but for comparison purposes, I value Aeroplan miles at about 1.5 cents each.

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 7: Priority Club

Priority Club is the hotel loyalty program of the Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) and includes such well-known brands as Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, and Staybridge Suites. As I mentioned in my last post, it was the program that got me started in the points game.

About six years ago, we were staying at a Holiday Inn in Montreal with a group of friends and one of them suggested that we join the program because we'd get a free continental breakfast. When I got home I checked my points total online and discovered I was a long way from a free night. I started searching for other ways to add points to my account and a points junkie was born.

I earn a lot of points with Starwood because of the credit card. Unfortunately, Priority Club doesn't offer an affiliated card to Canadians (they do in the U.S.); but I still collect their points for the occasional stay rather than crediting to an airline because Priority Club offers so many other ways to earn points.

To illustrate: I have only one stay at an IHG property this year, which netted me 1500 base points (10 points per dollar spent, room+dinner+bar tab), but I earned thousands more bonus points using codes I entered online prior to my stay. You can find a list of these codes at the Rewards Canada site. And I've earned thousands more, nearly 20K in all, through a variety of other ways, such as surveys and contests.

For example, right now Priority Club is running a contest called The Anywhere Challenge. Each week, you have to guess the mystery location based on a photo and word clues. A new challenge appears each Tuesday and awards 2,000 points to every person who guesses correctly the first day, declining to 500 points for the correct answer on Friday. You can enter by clicking the link, above. And if you're not a Priority Club member yet, you can join.

I won 3,000 points in the first two weeks (the contest runs for eight), but not because I'm a geographical genius. It's because there's a thread on a points hound website called flyertalk where people even more obsessive than I am quickly come up with the answer. Here's the link. Be sure to go to the last page for the latest discussion.

Free nights begin at 15K points, though occasional PointBreaks rates offer some hotels for only 5K. So my one stay, and persistent point-grubbing has earned me a free night. Not only that, because I've earned 20K points in a year, I've qualified for gold status, an elite level of membership (platinum is tops) that gets me preferential treatment, such as free room upgrades.

IHG (especially the Holiday Inn brand) is one of the biggest hotel chains, so there's almost always an HI where you want to stay, whether you're earning or redeeming. And with easy to earn bonuses, you don't have to stay a lot in order to earn status and free nights. So if you want to focus on only one hotel program, I'd recommend Priority Club.