Originally Posted by michaelr
1. Disposable Miles/Points
The true frequent traveler (20+ trips a year) or big credit card spender earns so many rewards that entry level ones become meaningless. A big reward can mean two seats in F or six seats in Y for a family.
2. Disposable Income.
The richer you are, the more likely you are to save for the big awards because you'd otherwise outright buy them.
3. Disposable Time
The less time you have, the more likely you are to spend big.
4. "Disposable" Age
The older you are, the more likely you are to appreciate comfort over travel frequency and therefore go for C/F, luxury collection hotels.
The behavior to *earn* miles/points is entirely driven by the way you anticipate spending them.
I don't agree:
1. You seem to imply that because someone earns a lot of miles, they don't care about getting additional miles or are not interested in redeeming your basic 25K domestic coach award. Nothing could be further from the truth. I care about every mile I earn (even though I have 3 million banked) and will redeem 25K awards if the fare is too high to justify purchase.
2. I'm fairly well off, but would never buy a business or first class ticket to Australia. That's what miles are for. I don't necessarily buy every domestic coach ticket either. As in #1, if the fare is too high, I will use a 25K award.
3. No correlation that I can see between my time and spending miles on big awards.
4. A bit of truth to this one. I like comfort AND I like to travel frequently. But again, I'll only spend miles/points if the value is there. I'll almost never redeem miles for a first class domestic ticket, but prefer F/BC for overseas trips. Less picky about hotels and will usually opt for best deal. If I am staying for more than one night, may opt for a nicer hotel.
I think your "fresh look" needs, well, another look.
