Luxury Hotels In San Diego|"Plan B: Use Frequent Flier Miles For Hotels & Cars"

Source         :     blogs.wsj.com
Category     :    Luxury Hotels In San Diego
By               :    Scott McCartney
Posted By   :    Hotels in Virginia Beach North Courtyard

Luxury Hotels In San Diego

It’s time to book your vacation and you’re frustrated: You can find any award seats to buy with your frequent flier miles. Plan B: Use your miles for the hotel and car rental and pay for the plane tickets. This week’s Middle Seat shows how airlines are using new technology to let customers use miles to book hotel rooms, rental cars and vacation packages without the hassle of phone calls, certificates or exchanges. Just put in your destination and dates and offers come flying priced in miles instead of dollars. While the value you get for the miles isn’t great, it is improving and can be good if you hit on a promotion or special. Elite-level frequent fliers get offered significantly better prices, too. A room at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando, Fla., over Labor Day weekend was priced by American Airlines at 8,150 miles a night for platinum-level frequent fliers, a 50% discount off what American offered regular members of its AAdvantage program. For platinum members, that’s descent value for the miles: 1.7 cents per mile for the room priced at $139 a night on Hotels.com.

One penny per mile is about the average value for car rentals and hotels using airline miles, according to a study by IdeaWorks Co., a loyalty program consulting firm. One cent also turns out to be close to the average value people get for their frequent flier miles when they use them for standard domestic coach trips. Experienced frequent fliers know the best way to maximize dollars for your mile is to use them for long-haul international business-class tickets and upgrades. But those can be hard to book, especially at reduced “saver’’ mileage levels. For people with plenty of miles in accounts, defraying the cost of hotels and car rentals with their miles can be prudent. “It’s replacement for Ben Franklin and George Washington,’’ said mileage expert Randy Petersen, president of publisher Frequent Flyer Services. “Most people have more miles than money, and these deals actually hold great value since they replace money.’’

American, United, jetBlue, Southwest and others have interesting offerings in hotels, car rentals and packages. In general, click on redeem miles/points on the airline web site and then look for hotels or car rentals. If you have elite status, you may have to log in again to have it recognized since many airlines use Switchfly Inc. to handle these bookings on a separate site customized to look like one of the airline’s pages. Check out the deals next time you can’t find the free ticket you need, and shop frequently. Airlines are experimenting with promotions and sales in this area.

Source : blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2013/08/15/plan-b-use-frequent-flier-miles-for-hotels-and-cars/