Back in December American announced a double elite qualifying miles promotion through January 31, 2012, which was pretty surprising to many of us. Unfortunately for me, all of my travel was planned for February onwards (including two trips to Spain and one trip to Japan), so I wouldn't benefit from it at all. I couldn't…
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^ Was just about to ask that :P. Did you forget? You said you would post it after the middle east report.
@ Michael @ Justin -- It's a 37 part trip report so I'm waiting till I have a travel gap in a few weeks to post it. It's a mess. Sorry!
Will you discuss how you were able to book this amazing routing to BCN? I'd love to learn how this can be done. Thanks.
am actually interested in the Westin SFO, as am staying there in July before my LAN trip to South America. Did you like it?
@ Jason -- I'll discuss the BCN routing when I get around to that trip report. 🙂
@ Carl -- Actually was a bit underwhelmed. They didn't seem to have Heavenly Beds, and frankly the hotel didn't in any way feel "Westin," if that makes sense. Perhaps only marginally better than the Crowne Plaza, though not at nice as the Hyatt, in my opinion.
@ Moesha -- So far behind on trip reports that I have to prioritize somewhere. Will keep it in mind for future reports, though. Thanks!
@ Josh -- I'll have a post on maximizing American routings for international travel soon.
I actually would like to hear what you thought of the Admiral club in Miami. I was there 2 months ago and thought it was very dissapointing.
When the mileage runs are at seriously minimal cost, I think the game can be fun. at $1,100+, it becomes an expensive hobby and one in support of otherwise unnecessary travel. I'm not sure where to draw the line, but I suspect that this trip was a serious waste of resources. What I missing? You gained 43+k EQM (not a huge haul) on an arline whose service sucks and is not likely to improve and at $1,100+ out of pocket, plus incidentals and some hotel expenses. You probably achieved some nice hotel discounts, but the real benefit of the trip was... [fill in]? The points & miles game was great fun at minimal expense for a few years. Most of the fun is now gone and it has become very expensive to chase the quickly vanishing benefits. Making a business out of assisting fussy pax is one thing - and I hope it works well for you, but the art and science of mileage runs to achieve genuine benefit is just about dead. Best wishes and Happy Landings.
@ Zach -- I tend to think both Admirals Clubs in Miami are pretty standard. As usual they have a limited snack selection (muffins in the morning, snack mix/cookies the rest of the day).
@ Cook -- Thanks for trying to be my financial advisor, though the benefit you're missing is that I got to vacation in one of my favorite cities for four days. Perhaps you'd like to put a dollar value to that as well, and then tell me what a waste it was?
But even purely from a mileage run perspective, this is a phenomenal deal. At this rate I would have earned EXP for $2,500, the benefits of which are well worth that amount. Furthermore, I earned over 50,000 redeemable miles for the trip (thanks to a further promotion). So actually a spectacular mileage run too, if you ask me.
I'd love to learn how to schedule a routing through 3+ US cities and still keep the costs so low. Amazaing . . .
Lucky, as a self-employed travel writer of sorts, can you deduct your out of pocket travel costs as unreimbursed business expenses? I believe a fair argument can be made that these costs are incurred as a consequence of running a blog and award booking service. If so (and depending on your tax bracket), a $1000 ticket paid to the airline may be a lot less in post-tax dollars.