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The other day I took on a mini-quest with my friend and fellow traveler Stephanie. We went to ten restaurants, cafes, and food carts in six hours as part of a challenge to earn dining miles. Here's how it went down.
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In more than a decade of frequent travel, I’ve stayed everywhere from five-star hotels to sleeping on the ground—and I don’t mean camping, I mean sleeping on the ground with my bags next to me. As I roamed the planet during my quest to visit every country, I had all sorts of difficulties—especially with visas—but…
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Someone wrote in to say he had earned more than 400,000 Frequent Flyer Miles from learning about travel hacking in the past few months.
"That's amazing!" I said. "Great work!"
He had a question on how to earn even more miles and points.
Well, we can talk about that, I told him. There are always new strategies to practice, new opportunities to pursue.
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Every year when the calendar rolls around to January 1, it's time for me to get back out on the road. I love travel and I love doing events—I've been in eight cities in the past ten days—but I also have to get back to work on requalifying my elite status with all my favorite airlines and hotels.
Last year I hit the mark for the highest status with American Airlines, Hyatt, and Hilton hotels. This year I'm hoping to requalify for each, with the addition of more Starwood stays to earn the highest status with them as well.
Why bother? Because it makes my traveling life easier, and also because it's fun.
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I recently received a notice from American Airlines, letting me know I had achieved million-miler status. I've been working on this for about two years, but the real goal is two million miles—then I get lifetime Platinum status.
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As regular readers know, I use Frequent Flyer miles to go all over the world several times a year. I've written before about how to earn miles without flying, and how you can become your own travel ninja through mass mileage accrual. Once you earn miles, however, you need to make a plan for using them. One of the saddest facts in the Frequent Flyer world is that every year, millions of miles go to waste. Help stamp out mileage expiration! Use your miles ... but use them wisely. Here's how.
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I lived in Seattle from 2006-2008 without a car, which worked well about 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time, I spent a lot of time waiting on street corners for the bus to arrive. It was frequently late, but once in a while, I'd get to the bus stop right when the bus was pulling up. My friends and I called this “good bus karma” which we ascribed to previous 40-minute waits when we had just missed it.
Last month during the British Airways strike, I walked around a deserted Heathrow airport terminal with departure signs reading CANCELLED. Meanwhile, my flight went out as planned, albeit on a chartered “EuroAtlantic” flight where the meal consisted of a paper bag filled with bananas (seriously) and half a bottle of one-euro red wine. I was grateful for the bananas, but mostly for the flight.
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Last fall I wrote about a special promotion where you could earn an enormous Frequent Flyer bonus by buying a large quantity of useless stickers.
True story, as odd as it sounds. It was one of the best travel hacking opportunities I've been a part of yet.
As I result of the promotion, I woke up yesterday to an influx of new miles in my US Air account. How many? Well, I had already earned about 280,000 a few months ago ... but this morning the new deposit read: 808,185 miles.
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Greetings from vacation-land, where I've just arrived. I'm looking forward to sharing my 2009 Annual Review with you. But first, some big news in the travel hacking world has come up –-
Yesterday I spent a little over $2,000 on stickers I don't expect to use. On March 1, 2010, I expect to receive at least 280,000 new Star Alliance Frequent Flyer Miles in one of my mileage accounts as a result of the purchase. This is a case study in travel hacking, and in this example, something I call mileage arbitrage.
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Updates: See more recent posts on the Frequent Flyer Challenge or visit our companion site for the latest card offers. *** On November 5th I’ll release my final Unconventional Guide of 2009. The goal of the project is to democratize free travel. As part of the preparations, I wanted to take you behind the scenes ...
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Earlier this week I published an article for Business Week on How to Negate the Competition by Owning Your Space. I always appreciate the chance to write for traditional magazines and newspapers, and I wish them well in their transition to the world of the social web.
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This is the true story of how I've earned more than 300,000 Frequent Flyer miles in the past five weeks thanks to mileage bonuses from new credit cards. If you’re up for it, you can do this too – and if you’d prefer a more conservative strategy, you may still be able to earn at least 50,000 new miles.
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Six weeks ago, I went to downtown Seattle for an appointment at a big office building. The receptionist asked me to fill out a short medical history, which included questions about my self-esteem and physical appearance. After 10 minutes of waiting, I was ushered back into a small clinic down the hall.
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