Airline Elite Status via Hotel Stays | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep289 | 1-10-25
Frequent Miler on the Air
Frequent Miler
4.9 • 640 Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2025
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There are a few ways now where you can earn elite status on airlines entirely through hotel stays! This is sort of a new development that we're excited to discuss in today's podcast.
(01:32) - Whoops: Forgot United offers elite earnings on award tickets (UA flights only)
(04:09) - IHG Choice Benefit annual lounge membership trick worked this year
(05:58) - One reader finds a way to get an offer to upgrade back to Amex Platinum for 50K bonus points after 2K spend.
(08:03) - Alaska Biz Card 70K offer is back: 70K miles and Companion Fare™
Learn more about the Alaska Business card here.
(09:27) - Costco card goes up to 5% at Costco Gas on 1/19/25. All other gas/EV will stay at 4%
(12:32) - US Bank Altitude Go: beginning on April 15, 2025, cardholders will be limited to earning 4x on the first $2,000 in dining, takeout and restaurant delivery purchases each quarter. Learn more about that update here
(13:45) - Sonesta credit card taking a siesta
Learn more about the Sonesta siesta here
(15:34) - Pay1040 fees up, down, all around
(21:42) - Hyatt promo: Earn double elite night credits for stays at Under Canvas properties Read more about that Hyatt promo here
(28:21) - Marriott Choice Benefit 40K expiry
(33:30) - BA goes revenue-based (Read more about that change here
(34:45) - Daily Getaways Dead: The program has been discontinued
(36:29) - Marriott ->> United Premier Silver AND Air Canada Aeroplan 25K Read more about that here
(40:59) - Hyatt ->> American Airlines Read more about this option here
(50:49) - Hyatt Explorist/Globalist elite members can trade Hyatt points for status for a day
(53:33) - Not as many shortcuts with Hyatt as with Marriott Read more about this here
(1:03:00) - Should I mattress run with Advantage Hotels the rest of my way to AA Executive Platinum status?
(1:06:14) - How do you value your time, for example when an hour of effort will save you a small chunk of change?
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a Voyescape podcast. |
| 0:03.9 | You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. |
| 0:10.7 | Let's get into the giant mailbag. |
| 0:13.5 | What crazy thing did? |
| 0:15.9 | City this week. |
| 0:17.4 | It's time for mattress running the numbers. |
| 0:19.8 | Ready for the main event? |
| 0:21.0 | The main event. |
| 0:22.3 | Frequent Miller on the air starts now. |
| 0:27.1 | Today's main event, airline elite status via hotel stays. |
| 0:31.8 | It's the beginning of the year for us, and that means that it's time to either renew our elite statuses in different programs |
| 0:41.5 | or decide we're not going to do it, or maybe just wait and see what naturally happens and then |
| 0:46.4 | follow our lead that way. Either way, it's worth knowing that there's a few ways now where you can |
| 0:53.8 | earn elite status on airlines entirely |
| 0:57.8 | through hotel stays. It's kind of a neat development and we'll get into that in today's |
| 1:03.2 | main event. Yeah, I'm actually looking forward to this discussion because I haven't really |
| 1:07.4 | decided on my own elite status strategy for this year. It's still early in the |
| 1:12.6 | year. I've been thinking about it a little bit. And maybe this will influence my decisions in terms of |
| 1:17.6 | what I kind of go after. So I'll be curious to find out what Greg talks me into here. And if you want to |
| 1:23.6 | come back and listen to it again, don't forget, you can find the timestamps in the show notes. Just expand the description box to find links to those timestamps and, of course, links to more information about some of the stuff that we talk about throughout the course of the show. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give this a like, give us a thumbs up, leave a comment or feedback. We appreciate all of those things. Now we need to drag out this week's giant mailback. |
| 1:45.2 | All right. |
| 1:45.8 | Today's giant mail. |
... |
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