Our favorite travel rewards of 2023 | Ep232 | 12-9-23
Frequent Miler on the Air
Frequent Miler
4.9 • 640 Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2023
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The year 2023 has seen our travels take us all over the world. This week, we look back and discuss our favorite award redemptions of the year 2023 and of all time.
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00:00 Intro
01:35 Giant Mailbag
04:10 Travel Talk
04:28 Alaska wants to buy Hawaiian Airlines
12:00 EU261 claim
14:33 Card Talk : Hawaiian Airlines credit cards
22:30 Award Talk: Avianca customer service might be better than its reputation suggests.
29:30 Main Event: Our favorite travel rewards of 2023
31:05 Special situation: Party of 5 (ANA First Class and LATAM Business Class)
35:34 Qatar QSuites (maybe)
37:06 British Airways Club World Suites
39:35 Air France business class
42:01 Turkish Airlines business class
47:24 Our all-time favorite flight awards
47:31 Etihad First Class Apartments
48:08 Old Singapore Suites / ANA First Class flight
50:29 Our favorite hotel redemptions of 2023
50:38 Eichert's Private Hotel in Queenstown, NZ (SLH via Hyatt)
52:11 Grand Hotel Victoria in Menaggio, Italy (on Lake Como) (SLH via Hyatt)
54:13 Kona Seaside Yacht Villa through Vacasa (Wyndham Rewards)
57:27 Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando, Florida
1:00:57 Greg honorable mentions: VIlla Copenhagen; Kimpton Fitzroy; Ventana Big Sur, Inn at Bay Harbor
1:02:57 Comfort Hotel Bolivar in Rome, Hyatt Regency Nice
1:04:44 Our all-time favorite hotel awards
1:05:48 Necker Island
1:09:36 St Regis Bora Bora
1:13:14 Non-flight or hotel rewards
1:13:30 BLADE helicopter flight
1:15:45 Cruising for free thanks to casino status matching
1:20:11 Which cards are worth getting in the hopes that they get grandfathered?
Music credit: Annie Yoder
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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 City this week? |
| 0:17.5 | It's time for mattress running the numbers. |
| 0:19.8 | Ready for the main event? The main event. |
| 0:21.6 | Frequent Miler on the air starts now. |
| 0:24.6 | Today's main event, our favorite travel rewards for 2023. |
| 0:31.6 | Nick and I are going to talk about all the travel we've done with points and miles and talk |
| 0:36.6 | in depth about our favorite ones. |
| 0:38.5 | What really changed for us, like what our best trips are and where did we get fantastic value? |
| 0:46.5 | Yeah, it was pretty amazing. |
| 0:47.4 | We both traveled quite a bit this year. |
| 0:49.1 | It's nice to be able to be back in that. |
| 0:51.2 | And I just often stop and look at what we're doing. In fact, I was just on vacation last week and several times. I was like, this is just amazing that we're able to do these things that I never would have even thought about doing, you know, if not for all of this fun that we have with miles of points. So we'll talk about some of our favorites from this year. But don't forget wherever you're watching the show, listening, et cetera, if you like it, don't forget to like it. Hit the like button, give us some feedback, leave a comment. All of those things are helpful for other people finding the show, too. And don't forget, we keep the timestamps in the show notes. So if you want to skip ahead to something or you want to return to something later on, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes, whether that's in the description on YouTube. If you're on a mobile phone on YouTube, it's a pain to find that description box, but you've got to expand it somewhere to find those. And whatever podcast platform you use, you should be able to find the show notes pretty easily. So don't forget to check out that stuff. Now, Greg, drag out this week's giant mailbag. |
| 1:46.1 | In today's giant mail, we've got three reviews from Apple Podcasts. |
| 1:51.4 | And they're all good. |
| 1:53.6 | I would say I had to pick the really good ones. |
| 1:56.4 | I was going to say, yeah, it sounded like you had to like weed through all of the negative |
| 1:59.7 | ones to be like, don't worry, they're okay. |
| 2:03.1 | Yeah, no, I mean, it's, we're very blessed that, that I couldn't even find a bad one if I tried really hard. |
| 2:10.9 | Although I think I read one that was slightly negative a long time ago on the show, but I don't know where that one went. |
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