I am canceling my American Express® Premier Rewards Gold Card. The fees is due and $175 seems steep, given the recent changes in my card strategy (more on that in a later post). Furthermore, canceling the card makes me (more?) eligible for other sign-up bonuses from American Express, including (fingers crossed) the elusive, by invitation only 100,000 point Platinum card. Don’t get me wrong, the American Express® Premier Rewards Gold Card is an absolutely fabulous card with great features. (The current offer for a new card is 25,000 Membership Rewards …

I logged into United.com this morning and saw my lifetimes miles total – 500,024. I am half-way to become a Million Miler! For United MileagePlus, One Million Miles is a significant milestone (no pun intended). It gives you and a significant other Gold Status for life! No matter how many miles you fly in a year henceforth!
Most airlines and some hotel programs have a Lifetime Miles reward. It is their way of rewarding customers who have been loyal over an extended period of time. For airlines, it is typically at …

For all of us who are mileage junkies, getting the best value for the hard earned miles/points is of premium importance. I am of that camp too. But, when it comes to spending money, I work much harder to make a living than I do to earn miles. So, when I posted my recent article describing how to redeem American Express Membership Rewards points for airline tickets, the backlash I got was surprising. I gave my own example of how I redeemed 35,000 Membership Rewards Points for a $350 airline …

TopGuest is a very unique program. I have blogged about it before.(Please read carefully my second post explaining how not to misuse TopGuest). For those who came in late, it gives you points of miles in some of your favorite programs for ‘checking-in’, even if you don’t actually check-in for a paid transaction. So, visiting a hotel for a meeting (which I do regularly) or even stopping by a hotel lobby to pick up a Starbucks, allows you to ‘Check-in’ and earn points.
I have been doing this for a while …

I am one of the few people who values hotel points more than airline miles. For airlines I care more about status and the perks I get – like upgrades and lounge access, but for hotels it’s about the free stays. While airline miles can add up real fast and get free flights all over the world, the flights are never ever actually free. There are taxes, fuel surcharges, sometime booking fees and whatnot. Hotel awards are really free! I just stayed at a Marriott recently and there was NO …

I am not into churning credit cards for points. I get my fair share every year, but limit to very good deals (like the recently ended 100,000 Avios card). But when I do see a good deal, I apply and get it. The new Citi® Hilton HHonors™ Reserve Card is one such good deal. Instead of awarding Hilton HHonors points, like such cards typically do, this cards initial offer is two weekend night certificates (after $2,500 spend)! This is, in my opinion a great deal, as pints have more restrictions …

Early last week, I stayed at Hilton Grand Vacation’s newest property – Elara, in Las Vagas. The building itself is fairly new, but it very recently became a Hilton. I am told that the Hilton Grand Vacation sign was just put up a few days ago. Before that it used to be a part of Planet Hollywood. It is a Hilton Grand Vacation resort, which means you can buy up suites there, but also a hotel, which is how I ended up staying there.
The hotel is beautiful and its location …

As I blogged a couple of weeks ago, I just redeemed 480,000 United miles for four business class tickets to India. My mileage balance has now fallen below 200,000 miles. This has left a deep desire in my mind to ramp up some miles! With the large balance I had, I had started taking it easy and had been focussed on other programs and credit cards with points like Chase Sapphire. It is back to getting UNited miles now.
Here is what I have been doing:
Applied for the new United MileagePlus® …

The BoardingArea.com homepage stopped updating for some time over the last couple of days. If you are like me, you probably go to the homepage to see what all the wonderful bloggers at BoardingArea are writing, instead of visiting their individual blogs. It is a wonderful single page view of all the people who matter in the Airline Mile and Hotel Point Blogoshpere. When it came back up yesterday, it of course picked up in real time and all the wonderful posts for two days were missed. I had been …

Yes! We have our two winners for the Hyatt Gold Passport 44,000 points giveaway! We had 6304 entries in all. I used random.org to find the two winners and they are:
Winner #1:

Michael D, with the entry Andaz Wall Street.
Winner #2:

Jenn J, with the entry Hyatt Place Nashville/Opryland, Tennessee.

CONGRATULATIONS to both winners. Please reply ASAP to the emails I have sent you to verify your email IDs. You will be contacted then by Hyatt to get your points. You will receive 22,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points each.
Thank you to …