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.

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.