Deals Of The Week

I’ve never been one to write about every single deal that comes out. After all, most deals are 20% off a rate that’s 20% more. In other words, most deals are useless. But if there are good deals, I still want to let you know about them. And my compromise is two fold: I only post ones I think are good, and I post them in one big post.

If you want to sort through things, this is what I’ll be talking about it:

• Credit card deals I’m going after
• Hotel promotions I’m going after
• 10 free Lyft rides in certain cities
• Southwest Companion Pass in 3 flights
• Airline Status Matching?

Credit Card Promotions

I’ve already posted about the hidden credit card offers for the IHG card and Amtrak credit card. Besides these hidden offers, we also jumped on these temporary offers for the Hilton and United card. So I’ll discuss the credit card stuff and then . .. . . .

 

United Business 50,000 Miles

United has for the past while targeted people on United.com who don’t already have the card for a similar offer. But when I got the personal card I stopped being able to see the offer for a while. Either way, targeted or not, the card is here and available to everyone.

You get 50,000 miles after spending $2,000. And I’m not sure how long the offer will be around, so if you’re interested and looking to apply for cards, might as well work it in. We did.

 

Hilton Surpass 80,000 Points

This card is around through the 28th and this card has been tempting me for a couple of reasons. But I’ll quick share the details. You get 80,000 points for signing up and spending $3,000 in the first 4 months. The down side is that the annual fee of $75 is not waived for the first year.

The reason I’m itching for this card is two fold:

1) 80,000 points would get me 16 nights in many of the category 1 Hiltons.

But if you recall my post on the 15 different credit cards that earn Hilton HHonors points, this isn’t the biggest bonus if you count the Virgin Atlantic card. But you can get both.

Besides the fact that this is as good a time as any to get that card, it has a long term ability to earn more points… point 2.

2) 6 points per dollar at supermarkets, and gas stations.

If I wanted to generate some points at scale this would be the card to do it with.

That being said, I did apply for the Virgin card too. I did bash it earlier, but I recently realized that it could transfer 1:1.5 to Hilton and couldn’t help but think of the card as 22+ nights at a hotel.

 

Hotel Promotions

There are two hotel promotions I find worthy of actually paying for hotels instead of using points. Not surprising that it’s Club Carlson and IHG again – the hotel chains I stay in the most (46 IHG hotels and 14 Club Carlson hotels in 2014).

 

IHG Set Your Sights

I wrote about IHG’s latest promotions here. Personally I think the hotel promotion is great, but slightly over shadowed by the last IHG promo.

For anyone signing up for this promotion you could potentially get 50,000 bonus points in 3 paid nights. I say bonus points because one could theoretically earn IHG points other ways too. So it’s at least 50,000 IHG points for 3 nights.

On IHG’s PointBreaks (a sale of hotels for 5,000 points a night) that could be 10 nights. Assuming I spend $100 a night, that’s $300. $300 for 13 nights (10 free and 3 paid)… that’s a great deal. And considering that there are tons of IHG hotels that are way cheaper in Spain, Mexico, basically all over Asia… you could do better than $300.

I will complete this promotion. Click here to enroll in the promo.

 

Club Carlson 20k/30k bonus

This is a good promotion that I would complete if I needed a hotel and the price was right. It gives 20k points for 2 night stays, and 30k points for 3 night stays… that is until March 29.

Click here to enroll in the 30k bonus.

Club Carlson 10k (per night) MegaBonus

This could be twice as good if your three nights were booked at a hotel offering 10,000 points per night. The thing I don’t like about the MegaBonus is that they jack up the rate a ton. So a $100 hotel might be $130 a night, which is worse when they are offering a sale below the $100, or a good AAA rate. But let’s say you find a rate that’s similar and about $100 a night.

Now you do a 3 night stay at a MegaBonus and enroll in the 30k promo… that’s 60,000 points from free nights. Assuming that you could get it for $100 a night, that’s $300 for 60,000 points. Might be a big assumption with MegaBonus but certainly possible!

Consider that the Radisson Blu Budapest (which gave me a very huge but odd suite recently) is only 15,000 points a night. And with the Club Carlson credit card giving 2 for 1 award nights. At this hotel that’s 8 free nights. You can do better with 9k hotels, or get nicer hotels for 50k… but the math can work out no matter what your goal is.

We just spent 4 nights at the Rad Blu in Budapest, so with this promo we could have gotten 8 nights. 8 nights + 3 paid nights = 11 nights for ~$300.

Click here to see the MegaBonus hotels.

 

Atlanta Southwest Companion Pass from 3 Paid Flights

The best airline promotion I’ve heard in a while is that Southwest is giving Atlanta registered southwest members the chance to earn a companion pass in three roundtrip flights by May 17. Details here.

This may sound crazy, but I was honestly thinking of flying to Atlanta to complete the promo. I’m seriously curious what would happen… See Carrie already has the Southwest Companion Pass from the credit card, so I would already fly for free. But what would happen if I had it too… could someone fly with me also? Could we get two free tickets from Carrie’s one ticket?

Anyways, I’m not doing it because we don’t often travel with a third person, but I am almost curious enough that if good roundtrip prices came up, and I was bored… I just might.

 

Airline Status Matches

Gary Leff just posted that Qantas is offering Gold Elite status for those who have Qantas accounts registered to New Zealand. Which is interesting because Etihad is also offering a status match (here).

Personally, I don’t see much benefit in the Etihad status, but Qantas status could allow you to get into the business class lounges while on a OneWorld ticket. But then again, status matching can work out in ways unforeseen and can help prolong being an elite… when you don’t do any paid flying. Trust me on that.

 

10 Free Lyft Rides in certain cities

Lyft is offering 10 free rides in certain cities as long as they are $20 each. According to the Reward Boss the promotion is now in the following cities: Miami, Brooklyn, Atlanta, San Diego, Dallas/DFW, Austin, Nashville, Silicon Valley, Denver, Boston, DC, Chicago, NYC, Philly.

I haven’t done this yet, but you better believe that if I am in one of these cities I’ll be using Lyft instead of my usual Uber bonus.