In continuation to my ever popular post on 10 Reasons why Starwood is the Best Loyalty Program, here are 10 more reasons:

Ability to book Airline Award tickets even when award inventory is not available. Airlines treat tickets booked via Starwood as revenue tickets and not award tickets.
Earn airline miles on award tickets booked via Starwood. As I mentioned above, airlines treat these as regular revenue tickets.
Ability to book one-way airline award tickets.
They did not raise their redemption rates like Hilton did in 2010!

Award hotel stays are actually free! There are …

Why do I have to pay for my ‘Free’ Award Ticket?
One unique feature about the Free awards airlines give is that they are not really ‘Free’. While Hotels give absolutely free stays when they give awards, airlines charge you when redeeming Airline Miles.

The cost of redeeming miles should be taken into consideration when one is planning to redeem miles for free awards.
Here are a few:
Taxes:
Yes, Uncle Sam and all the other uncles, aunts and second cousins twice removed, who represent governments all around the world; want their cut when you …

In the first three parts of this series on the Economics of Airline Miles I discussed: The Value of Airline Miles (Part I), The Value of Elite Status (Part II) and How to Maximize Airline Miles Earnings (Part III). In this fourth part of this ongoing series, I will go into the topic of how to effectively redeem your airline miles. Once you have earned all the miles by focussing your earnings, the eventual goal is to redeem these miles for rewards and awards from the airlines.
Remember, at the end …