travel hacking : The Art of Non-Conformity

Travel

Top Credit Card Signup Bonuses for Miles and Points: May 2015

Every year I earn well over one million Frequent Flyer miles and points. About 250,000 of them come through actual travel, and the rest come through travel hacking: the art of seeing the world on a budget.

One of the easiest ways to earn a lot of miles all at once is through credit card signup bonuses. This post contains the best current card offers as of Tuesday, May 5th. If getting every card from this post, you'd earn 215,000 points or miles. Happy travels!

Travel

“Make Your Dream Trip a Reality”: Week 1 Recap (With Photos + Prizes!)

Every day for six weeks, we’re teaching people how to “Make Their Dream Trip a Reality.” You can watch each lesson for free on the day it’s broadcast, or you can purchase the whole course and have access anytime.

This was our first week with the in-studio audience and the thousands of people who participated online.

Whew! We’re wiped out … but we got a lot accomplished, and we’ll be back next week with much more.

Travel

Live from Seattle: Today’s “Dream Trip” Kickoff Was Awesome!

Greetings from Seattle! This morning we kicked off the live broadcast for "Make Your Dream Trip a Reality"... and a ton of you were watching!

Creative Live is rebroadcasting the session throughout the day, so tune in over here and you can still catch the whole thing.

(If you’re reading this another day, we may be on to another session—but we have six weeks of them, so there's still plenty to go.)

Travel

“Dream Trip” Course Starts Tomorrow: Join Us Live Online at 9am Pacific!

Hey everyone, just a quick reminder: tomorrow morning we kick off our new “Make Your Dream Trip a Reality” course on Creative Live. You can watch for free starting at 9am Pacific time.

Link: RSVP (It’s Free) and Join In Here

Yesterday we went to the studio for a production meeting with the whole team. This is a big undertaking, and a bunch of people have been working on it for ~~weeks~~ (okay, months).

Oh, and we even got a sneak-peek of our awesome set featuring a “travel hacking hot seat” with First Class seats borrowed from the Seattle Museum of Flight. We're so excited!

Travel

5,000 Word Travel Hacking Resources Page Now Available

Over the past ten years I’ve used millions of Frequent Flyer Miles & Points to go everywhere—literally, everywhere.

I write a lot about travel hacking in the archives and also through our paid service, the Travel Hacking Cartel, which has served more than 16,000 members and counting.

I'm also co-teaching a brand-new bootcamp called Make Your Dream Trip a Reality, which you can watch for free every weekday morning for six weeks starting on April 26.

If that's not enough, we recently published a new page on the blog that includes 100+ links and a general overview of getting started in this world.

11 Travel Hacking Tips, Stories, and Ideas Combined into One Post

This post is a "greatest hits" mashup of travel hacking tips, stories and features. Take a look and see if anything might be helpful to you!

Travel

Fuel Dumping: A Little-Understood Trick to Save Hundreds of Dollars on Airfare

There’s a fun trick that can help you save hundreds of dollars on your next long flight—but it’s a little complicated and requires a bit of work.

Bloggers get hate mail over sharing this tip (I’m not kidding), presumably because some people feel entitled to keep secrets to themselves. In my opinion, the only reason this loophole hasn’t been closed has nothing to do with its public knowledge but rather that it takes effort and attention to benefit from it.

Basically, "fuel dumping" is a ticketing strategy to help you strip the fuel surcharges from certain international airfares by adding on an extra, unused segment to the end of the trip.

Travel

Can You Visit Bora Bora on a Budget? Sort of—Here’s How.

This is a free excerpt from Upgrade Unlocked: The Unconventional Guide to Luxury Travel on a Budget by Stephanie Zito.

Bora Bora is a dream destination smack in the middle of the South Pacific. The French Polynesian island is famous for its crystal waters in 50 shades of blue, and luxury accommodation in over-the-ocean bungalows that come complete with a private balcony stepping straight into the sea.

It’s a popular destination for honeymooners and just about anyone who likes to be pampered on an island while never being more than 10 steps away from tropical waters.

Profiles

Building a Global Community One Beach at a Time: On the Road with Mirva Lempiäinen

This is a traveler case study. (Read others or nominate yourself.)

Mirva Lempiäinen fell in love with beaches of all kinds during college. Her passion caused her to build a career and friend base that allows her to travel to sandy destinations almost as often as she'd like.

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a 33-year-old freelance journalist from Finland. I’ve been actively roaming the globe for almost 15 years, and have visited around 70 countries (so far). Currently, I’m spending the winter on the French island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean which suits me quite well.

I have a bad beach addiction: over the past decade I’ve spent months every year on tropical beaches around the world. You could say I’m perpetually in search of the perfect beach. I’m also a New Yorker now (and surprisingly to many, New York actually has some pretty nice beaches, too!).

Travel

Earn Ultimate Rewards Points By Educating Your Friends on Miles & Points

Here’s a fun thing: many of you already have the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. It’s a great card for a lot of reasons, and is usually my #1 recommendation when people are just starting to get into the world of miles and points.

If you have the card, you can now earn extra miles for referring your friends.

Here’s how it works:

You’ll earn 5,000 points for every successful referral
Your friends will receive the best offer currently available (the same one we have through our partner, Cards for Travel)
You can refer up to 10 friends for 50,000 points in total
The deadline is May 31, 2015

Travel

The Single Best Credit Card for Travelers: Earn 40,000 Points Now and More Everywhere You Go

Link: Chase Sapphire Preferred

Last year we had a celebration for Tyler, our Adventure Czar, when he came home from running a marathon on Antarctica. At the end of the night, I went to pay my tab, and the bartender said, “What is this card that all of you guys have?!”

It turned out that of the dozen or so folks that had an open tab at the bar that night, at least half of us were using the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

There’s a good reason for that! Our readers are smart. :)

Travel

AmEx Centurion Lounge: The Airport Oasis that Makes Domestic Flying Comfortable

Personal Link: The Platinum Card from American Express

Business Link: The Business Platinum Card from American Express

A couple of years ago, American Express made an unexpected move: they decided to create their own series of domestic airline lounges that are actually nice.

See, most lounges in the U.S. (and Canada, and honestly much of Europe as well) feature lounges that are better than being stuck in the terminal when your flight is delayed, but not by much. You often have a choice of stale cookies (American Airlines) or stale pretzels (United Airlines).

It wasn’t until I started travel hacking overseas that I discovered the lounges that are truly noteworthy, like the Lufthansa First Class Terminal, the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse in Heathrow, and others.

Some of these lounges are destinations, in the same way that Bora Bora is a dream trip. You’d go well out of your way to spend a morning or afternoon in one of these spots.

Travel

Mission Accomplished! The Full Report from the 2015 Dining Dash

We did it! As mentioned, last week my travel hacking colleagues and I took on a mini-quest of going to 12 specific restaurants in Portland in a single day, all in pursuit of miles and points.

On Friday morning, we set out at the crack of ~~dawn~~ 8:30am with an ambitious goal: To visit 12 restaurants throughout the city. We wanted to achieve all 12 of our qualifying “dines” (any purchase at the participating restaurants, no minimum) to earn VIP status with Rewards Network in a single day.

My friend Stephanie and I did this last year in a more limited (though still awesome) fashion. This time, we wanted to increase the challenge. We invited another friend, Tyler, to come along, and we also invited others to participate virtually.

At the end of the night we had a small celebration at the Triple Nickel, a hilarious—in the best of ways—pub in my Southeast Portland neighborhood. To recap, here are the rules of the challenge:

Travel

Top 5 Credit Card Signup Bonuses for Miles & Points: February

One of the easiest ways to earn a lot of miles all at once is through credit card signup bonuses. This post contains the best current card offers as of Wednesday, February 4. If getting every card from this post, you'd earn 215,000 points or miles. Happy travels!

In this edition:

Travel

Round-the-World Tickets Revisited: How a Single Ticket Can Take You to 16 Cities + Earn 40,000 Qualifying Miles

Long ago I wrote a post on Round-the-World tickets that continues to be one of the most trafficked posts on the whole site. It’s still mostly accurate, at least in terms of the broader principles.

I also still book and travel on at least one to two RTW tickets a year with itineraries similar to the one below:

JNB-DOH-CDG-DOH-LHR-LAX-MEX-DFW-JFK-LAX-SYD-PER-SIN-HKG-HND-HKG-JNB

RTW tickets can be split. For example, I did the first half of that trip (South Africa, Qatar, etc.), returned, and then did the second half (Australia!) one month later. There are two reasons why I especially like these kinds of tickets:

1. Flexibility

These tickets are highly flexible. I can change flight times whenever I want, for no cost or penalty, even on the same day. Changes are always subject to availability, but these tickets are booked in higher fare classes that don’t have the same restrictions as award tickets—meaning that availability is usually very good.

« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 … 8 Next »