Earn and Use Miles or Hotel Points Effectively

This article explains how to earn and use miles / hotel points efficiently.

Steps

  1. Sign up for an airline that provides transfer of points to a hotel rewards system(for stays). Make sure that you research which hotel is part of which hotel line, because some are not so obvious. For example, Embassy Suites is part of the Hilton family of hotels.
  2. Before you travel, make sure your frequent flyer number is on your airline confirmation and your hotel # is on your hotel reservation.
  3. After you travel, confirm that you received the miles / hotel points. This typically takes a few days.
  4. For airlines, know which airline alliance you traveled with as well as the alliance members. For example, if you are a member of United Mileage Plus, you will get miles if you fly with US Airways, Air China, Lufthansa, etc.
  5. If you're traveling frequently, make sure you know the difference between "qualifying miles" and "redeemable miles". Qualifying miles earn you status points whereas redeemable miles are miles you can spend. The biggest mistake people make is that they try to just earn redeemable miles without regard to the fact that the fastest way to earn redeemable miles is by first earning status. On most airlines, they have three tiers, some combination of silver, gold, platinum with the latter two tiers providing 100% bonus on miles. This is especially important if you're flying long hauls. For example, a trip from LAX to PEK is about {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}}. Round-trip its {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}}. If you are middle / top tier with an airline, you would get {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} because you would get a 100% bonus. If you're traveling business class, you would get 125% - 150% depending on the airline. There are other factors that come into play with how many redeemable miles and qualifying miles such as fare code, promotions and the like.
  6. If you have status and ever have a bad experience, complain and you will typically get compensated depending on the severity of the indiscretion of the hotel / airline.

Related Articles

References

Warnings

  • Don't complain too much because some people that abuse the complaint department have had miles / points subtracted instead of having miles/points added.

Don't use air miles in one place! Go different places!

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