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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Summer 2011 Travel and Points Deals

Summer's finally here and I thought I'd present a round-up of the best travel and points offers available for July and August.

Choice Hotels has numerous low-cost locations across Canada and the U.S., often in small centres where other chains have no presence. Until August 11, if you stay twice, you can earn enough points for a free night in many of their hotels. Here's where to register and get all the details.

Best Western is another chain with many small town locations across North America, making it another excellent road trip option. Through August 14, you'll earn a bonus of 750 Aeroplan miles (in addition to the usual 250) for every stay. You must register through this link prior to your first stay and have your earnings preference (in your profile) set to earn Aeroplan miles.

You can also register to earn 1,500 Aeroplan miles for every $100 Best Western travel card you purchase before August 31. Combine these two offers for a five-night road trip at $100 per night and you'll earn 12,500 Aeroplan miles, halfway to a flight anywhere in North America. If you make your purchase with a credit card that gives you Aeroplan miles, you'll earn a minimum of another 500 miles.

If you'd rather have US Airways Dividend miles, Best Western has a less lucrative offer of 500 miles for each $100 card purchase. Register and purchase here. Make sure your earnings preference is set to US Airways Dividend Miles.

If you're staying at a Marriott before August 31, you can earn quadruple US Airways miles with each stay, starting with the second. Registration and full T&C's are here.

And, until June 30, you'll receive a 100% bonus when you buy US Airways miles, effectively making them half-price. Usually buying miles is not a good idea, but if you've ever wanted to fly to Europe or Asia in First or Business class, this can be a bargain way of doing it.

Hertz is not always the cheapest option when you're looking to rent a car, but I have used them on several occasions and have found their service to be better than some other companies (which I won't name here). Here's an offer for a 40% discount and a big bunch of Delta SkyMiles. Check it out to see if it's worth it for you.

Here's a site that I'm in the process of test driving for an upcoming trip. Several travel bloggers whose advice I trust have recommended it: AutoSlash. Basically, you enter the location and dates you wish to rent a car and AutoSlash gives you a list of vehicles available from various companies. If you make a booking, AutoSlash will continue to monitor rates and if they drop will notify you. If you wish to take advantage of the lower rate, you tell them. They'll cancel the previous reservation and make you a new one. There's no obligation on your part: unlike a hotel reservation, you don't provide your credit card. Here's what The Points Guy had to say about his recent experience with AutoSlash.

And finally, Great Canadian Hotels is offering a coupon for a free night if you stay two nights before September 5. Plus, if you book by June 30, they'll give you a $25 hotel credit. All the details are here.

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.