Update: This post contains outdated offers and should only be used for reference. Click the following link for the most up-to-date offers on my favorite travel hacking cards. -cg — Last week I flew to one of my favorite countries. Ever since I first got stuck in Australia after being denied boarding for Nauru, it…
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I didn't begin travel hacking until long after I began traveling. At first, I did what everyone else did—I had a couple of Frequent Flyer accounts, I looked online when buying tickets, I tried to comparison shop and get the best deal I could, but I didn't know much about the tricks of the trade.
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Over the course of ten years, I visited every country in the world, many of them several times. When I first started writing about the quest, the most common question I received was, “But how do you pay for that?” Since then I've tried to be very clear on how much it costs to travel—not just for me, but for anyone else. In this post, and in the follow-up on Thursday, I'll outline my general response to travel and money.
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On Sunday I went down to San Francisco, met up with my friend Stephanie and began preparing for the day-long CreativeLIVE workshop on travel hacking. The session was fun and intense! Comments and questions for the #travelhackLIVE hashtag were so numerous that the course began a trending topic on Twitter. Viewers crashed Stephanie’s website at…
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Tomorrow I'll be teaHappy Thanksgiving to everyone in Canada!
Tomorrow I'll be teaching a day-long workshop on Travel Hacking. You can enroll here and watch for FREE from anywhere in the world.
In preparation for teaching the course tomorrow, I thought I'd compile a few—okay, many—notes on the best current travel hacking opportunities. If you'd like to see the world, or at least travel without spending a lot of money, perhaps something in this extended post will be helpful to you. Enjoy!
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It's time for another round of the infamous Frequent Flyer Challenge, where I show readers how to earn hundreds of thousands of miles and points that can be exchanged for free travel everywhere.
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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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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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*Update: Looking for more recent travel hacking posts? They're over here. Last Tuesday night, I returned home from Australia, via Hong Kong and San Francisco. I was as jet lagged as ever, but I had an important travel hacking task to complete: the next day, I paid a trip to my local Office Depot, where I purchased $2,000 worth of gift cards that would eventually be deposited in a bank account. This purchase was an experiment. If all goes well, I'll be carefully making a number of additional purchases over the next few months, and perhaps even longer.
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Since posting the 2012 Frequent Flyer Challenge, I've fielded a ton of queries from people about how it works, which cards are best for their needs, and the occasional complaint from someone who feels like this information is too good to be shared. The short response is: it works very well. I'll be receiving more than 200,000 miles from my recent applications, in addition to several million miles over the past few years. These opportunities aren't going away anytime soon, so you might as well get in on them if you can.
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Last week I posted the Return of the Frequent Flyer Challenge—my latest plan to restock the miles I use to go all over the world for nearly-free. A few people said that 250,000 miles was not enough of a challenge ... so I've increased the goal. The new plan is to earn at least 400,000 miles or points in the next two weeks, and I'm now halfway there.
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Greetings from LHR Terminal 3, soon to be departing to San Francisco after a weekend in London for the U.K. launch of The $100 Startup. We've had a lot of new readers join our community over the past month (hi, everyone!) and I thought it would be good to provide an overview of travel hacking: the means of seeing the world in style while on a budget. For the past five years, I've been to at least 20 new countries a year on my quest to go everywhere. In addition to overland travel by bus or train, I get to many of them through a variety of paid and almost-free plane tickets ...
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A few weeks ago I mentioned I had created a page on the site that lists current airline mileage credit card bonuses. With just a couple of new cards, you can earn 100,000 miles or more—and then book round-trip plane tickets all over the world. Much to my surprise, card bonuses have continued to get better and better over the past couple of years. It's never been easier to earn a large stash of points or miles that you can quickly convert to plane tickets and hotel stays.
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Happy New Year!
On Sunday's long run, I pushed it to 12 miles in honor of 2012. I then tried to eat 12 pieces of nutella pie as a reward, but that plan fell through after piece #2.
As you're thinking about a new year, here's a free tip: forget resolutions; think about living intentionally instead.
What matters to you this year? Do that.
What do you hope to build in 2012? Work on that.
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Last Thursday afternoon, I approached the registration desk at a Radisson hotel near the airport in Portland, Oregon.
“Checking in, sir?” the clerk asked.
“Yes,” I said. “And checking out.”
I was there to take advantage of a new miles-and-points adventure: in this case, staying for one night (or at least checking in) in order to receive another night free. Why do that? Because my paid night cost $74, and I'll use the free night for a property that runs $300 or more.
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