The Best (Miles/Points) Page On The Internet

The goal behind what I’m about to share is this: anyone who cares about miles and points at all needs to only bookmark this one page.

This page will be the best page on the internet. The page I’m talking about is the “Resources” page and tab up above. From now on I will refer to this page as both the “resource page” and “best page on the internet”. If you see either phrase it will be referring to the same page/tab.

I personally now use it all the time. For example, AA has switched out their award chart for a crappy one, but I kept the better one on the “Complete List of Airline Award Charts“. This is what I actually do: I go to travelisfree.com, click Resources in the top right, and then click the little award chart picture. And I use this page for so many things, especially when researching posts, like my “cheapest miles to…” series.

And that’s the idea of this page. A bunch of pages that I use on a regular basis that basically tell me everything I need to know about miles and points, or have incredible tools. Speaking of tools, let me tell you the kind of things we have on this page, then let me explain how everything is here.

Top Resources/Tools

At the top, little icons will guide you to a few other key pages on the internet. Complete Maps, List of Stopover Rules, Complete List of Airline Award Charts, Master Chart to finding Award Availability, Airline Award Calculator, Master Chart of Avoiding Fuel Surcharges, Cheapest Miles To Series, United Stopover and Routing Rule Secrets.

But I just want to say that while most of the links likely go to pages I’ve built, I’m not only including pages I’ve built. Really this is including all the pages I actually use. Plus, I want to keep it complete. Again, it’s a bookmarked page full of bookmarkable pages. Go to the Resource page and you will find everything from Complete Hotel Maps, to posts on which credit cards earn which kinds of miles and points. Everything is here (or will be soon if it isn’t already).

Miles Calculator

Click here to see the Airline Award Calculator.

On the Resource Page you can click the calculator looking one and it will take you to a tool a friend made that is freakin’ awesome.

Just type in the airport code you’re traveling from and where you’d like to go and bam, it shows you a list of prices sorted by cheapest prices first. For example, if I try searching Chicago (ORD) to Rome (FCO), it will give AA off-peak and Alaska miles’ AA  off-peak at the top, for 20,000 miles. But it will go all the way down the major programs giving all the options.

You could also scroll down and see the first “Business” fare to show up under the “Class” column. Sick tool that’s one click away from the Resource page. Check out my friend’s Award Calculator Tool Here!

There are no other tools like this.

Hotel Hustle

The equivalent in the hotel world would be Hotel Hustle. This is a specific search for a city and date of your choice, and the tool will display all the points options available on that date, and the prices (and you can de-select the ones you don’t want).

If you’re just getting ideas for burning a specific set of points you can use my Complete Map series. But functionally, it’s very different. Hotel Hustle searches one city, and shows availability for all chains. My “Complete Hotel Maps” are for a single hotel chain, this way you can search globally or regionally for a particular set of hotel categories. Good for brain storming (I actually use these all the time for my own booking).

For deciding on which points to use in a city, you can’t beat Hotel Hustle. And more incredible is that you can set alerts for award availability if your hotel isn’t available. If signed in, all you really have to do is click to set an alert. So easy. (I’ll try to review the tool at some point, still testing it, but needless to say I like it enough to include it on the best page on the internet).

Let’s talk A to Z for a second

While there are many different resources on the page, let me give you an idea of how this would work, starting from the the very beginning.

1. My Master Post of Earning Miles and Points from Credit Cards post tells you which cards earn which miles. The very basics.
2. There’s a link to a post on which credit cards you can get (and if the bonus is up or down)
3. There’s an MS section of Complete Guides by Frequent Miler to meet minimum spend requirements.
4. For Airlines: The airline award calculator searches for cheapest flights in miles. My Cheapest Miles To series is a more in depth look at discounts, routes, rules stopovers, etc… Either way, you should be able to find the cheapest way to use miles here.
5. For Airlines: Then check out the Master Chart to to find Award Availability. This shows where to search for availability for the airline you want.
6. For Airlines: Then also check out Avoiding Fuel Surcharges, and Complete List Of Airline Stopovers.
7. For Hotels: I have a collection of Hotel Complete Maps sorted by hotel categories, this will give global ideas on how to spend your points.
8. For Hotels: There’s a tool that searches hotel award availability (called Hotel Hustle by Wandr.me). Not only does it show all award availability for a specific date, and give prices for all points hotels in a city, but it allows you to set alerts for award availability for a specific hotel.

No matter what part of the miles earning and burning process you are at, you should be able to go to this page and click on a tool or resource that will make your process easier and quicker. Searching for awards, hotels, prices, avoiding fuel surcharges, etc…

The first few sections are resources. Things I or you might wan to check over and over during a booking or earning process. It’s a really nice looking, well organized, and constantly updated bookmark.

The second goal is about navigation. I’m trying to collect my most recent “Best Use” posts. These are thorough posts and good reads for learning about a topic. Actually, right before will be FrequentMiler’s “complete guide” posts on different topics related to MS. So if you’re interested in learning about earning miles you can read at length about the different methods. And when you’re ready to burn, you can read at length about the “best uses” relating to the miles you’ve earned.

Then below are the main sections that show up on all the pages, my “Complete Guide” section and “InfoGraphics“. While we didn’t actually have to put these on this page, it seems to fit. Complete Guides are the best way to learn about earning, burning, status, etc… with any given program.

Conclusion

The resource page doesn’t actually have a comment box, so if you have suggestions, comments, feedback, etc… please comment here. I’m not really looking for more things to add, so if you have a tool… please don’t solicit me with your own tools. This is about the things I think are awesome, not a project to promote friends.

I asked Greg about things he thought were resources on his site, because his site handles the other side of the miles/points coin (earning miles) and his blogging has been innovative (and he focuses on resources). He’s got a ton of resources and I might have missed some good ones, but I’ll continue to update this page.

For my sake, try using the page for a little bit and come back to give some feedback. Have you been finding it an easy way to get to good resources? Is it helping you plan your trip? Is it organized intuitively?

And one thing that you could comment on about it at first glance, is whether or not I missed any of my own best posts. Because, again, it’s also about navigating TravelisFree. If there is a post you have bookmarked and use all the time, but hasn’t made the resource page, please let me know! Check out the Resource page here, and let me know if it’s the best page on the internet… yet. :-p

Thanks much ya’ll,

Drew