Also, be sure to pay attention to which program has properties convenient to destinations you plan to travel to. Not all programs have properties everywhere.

So, look into each program for Seattle and New England (and anywhere else you plan to go) and see what is available. Make sure they are properties you are willing to stay at. If they are really expensive (or really lousy looking) you might want to consider a different program that maybe has more options near your intended destinations.

Obviously there is a lot more availability in most programs domestically, but still worth looking into. This made a big difference for me when I was picking a program.

Thanks for the advice.
The other couple we are going to New England with will be getting the Chase Hyatt deal, so we have 2 rooms for 2 nights at the Regency Hyatt Boston ($150 for a $1,200 hotel bill is nice savings).

I think my wife and I will sign up for the Chase Hyatt deal after this spring, we might go to London or NYC next spring.

Only reason Hilton points are attractive is because of the flexibility in some of these areas we are traveling, and the ability to acquire A LOT of them for low spends, plus it saves on Chase cards (I still want to try and get the Sapphire card). If you can do a churn with the BoH 35k (70k) hilton points, BoA VS Amex (90k hilton points), Citi 40k hilton points, that's 200k hilton points for a relatively low spend and I've saved the ability to get the more "valuable" chase cards.

I would also like one of us to get a SPG card, but since we did the Delta Gold deal for some easy miles, they won't approve another application for at least 30 days (i applied and was denied, but told to apply again after 90 days).

I'm a novice, and I didn't churn my cards all on the same day the first time through. Going forward, I'm going to be more coordinated and less reactionary. My wife is still somewhat dubious of having all of these credit cards open, so it has been hard to convince her to apply for some of these.

Also, I think I'll just book cancellable hotel reservations for these next trips, try for the hilton points and if I don't get them, use priceline to name my price and see if I can swing some deals.

You can do even more than that! Citi has a "quiet" 50k offer:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...nors-visa.html

Read the first post and then the last few pages (you can skip most of the middle zillion pages).

And per a post someone made in the last couple days, it's churnable all my its little self!

And you left out HHonors Amex, which comes in a fee-free version which still earns a decent amount of points (though some of those only if you do a few stays, I think). In any case, the HH Amex earns you a bonus on every paid stay, and earns extra points on gas/grocery/drug/cable, so it's the one worth keeping IMHO (while the Citi version is only worth it for the signup bonus).

We are in the middle of planning the honeymoon, and I am looking to keep the travel cost as low as possible. Flights are booked (Business/First with miles and a nominal $ cost), and now I turn to hotels.

I have about 36000 UR points at the moment, and about 72,000 Marriott points (mostly from the card). She has about 12k Marriott points.

The current plan is for her to get a Marriott card as well (with a 70k link) and that should be close enough for us to get 6 or 7 nights in one of the cities. We are heading to Munich (7 nights) and London (6 nights).

Does anyone have any suggestions on a the most efficient way to build up points for the second city?

I am probably maxed out on what Chase will give me at the moment. I could probably cancel something by then and apply for new around the new year. I am concerned about the signup offers going down in the meantime. Both of our credit scores are great, so I am sure I can get something from another bank.

First of all, there are no Marriott properties in Munich, and the ones in London will cost lots of points. You could use a Cat 4 free night certificate at the London Gatwick Courtyard, (it and the other cat 4's near London are too inconvenient for sightseeing) and you can combine points between spouses at the same address at the time of redemption with Marriott, I would guess they would let you combine points for a honeymoon. You get the 5th night free with a Marrriott reward. It looks like the central London hotels are cat 8, 40,000 points a night, there is a cat 7 in Kensington, which is well connected by the tube but feels like you are way out in suburbia when you are actually there, and a cat 6 in Regent's Park.

If you are avoiding Chase, look for cards with Amex, B of A, and Citibank. Which means Hilton or SPG points. Do your research, figure out which hotel option you want in Munich, then we can advise on how to earn those points.

It is always good to look up hotel options in the cities you want to visit before picking a hotel loyalty program.

Consider using Priceline for hotels. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/onlin...ng-primer.html. You will save quite a bit. You might be able to use your points for some nights but based on what you said, you probably can't get more than a few nights total. Even with your current Marriott points plus new credit cards, at 40K points/night you won't get a lot of nights at properties you want to be at.

I know you said you are maxed out on Chase, which is unfortunate. The Chase Hyatt card gives 2 free nights at any Hyatt, and the Sapphire Preferred gives 40K points, which when transferred to Hyatt gives basically 2 more nights. So just on signup bonuses you could pretty much get 8 nights at any Hyatt. (Highest Hyatt award is 22K points/night.)

I'd agree with this, also with both SPG and Hilton you should look at leveraging their extended stay offerings. SPG has buy 4 get one free night (including points redemption) and Hilton has AXON/GLON bookings that will reduce your costs. AXON7, for the top Hilton would mean 4 nights for 145K miles instead of 200K in a top Cat 7 hotel.

SPG miles are harder to come by, best strategy would be you get a card, then introduce your wife via the Amex website by sending a referral link. At the moment bonus for this card is 25K (rumor of 30K coming soon) and then 5K more for the referral of your wife. That would net you 55K-65K SPG which would be a start, though you would need some more...

Hilton... get the Surpass card, Citi card (no fee for 40K) possibly also the Citi hilton with fee for 2x free weekend nights and some cards that txf to hilton for 1:2 pts like the BOA Virgin.

If you don't have enough points for aspirational stays, I would focus on Priceline.

European cities tend to have far fewer rebid zones than a lot of big US cities do (Dallas and LA, for example, are a bidder's dream) but you can still do pretty well.

I would suggest focusing on 3.5* and 4* properties on Priceline to ensure that you don't get stuck with a bad place for your honeymoon.

Alternatively, if you don't want to take the risk on Priceline, you can use Hotwire and use BetterBidding.com to get a good feel for which property you are getting.

Please take what I say with a grain of salt as you are talking to a guy who books 20 - 30 nights/year on Priceline but didn't use it for his own honeymoon.

I have not stayed in a London hotel in a long while, but if you are referring to the hotel at 147 Cromwell Road SW5 0TH, I think it's a convenient location, though it depends on one's interests. Anything within the Circle Line is central and that hotel is within easy walking distance of the museums on Exhibition Road (Natural History Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Science Museum) and Kensington High Street.

http://www.marriott.com/hotels/trave...arriott-hotel/ ??


I already have the Sapphire Preferred (and used a few of those points to up the class on our flights). I am likely going to cancel the Marriott card (and likely another Chase card) after 6 months and could probably get the Hyatt at that point.

I realize the hotels will likely be the hardest part, hence my doing the flights first. Easy part done, now its crunch time. I'm not opposed to spending money, I would just rather avoid it if I can.

We're not really looking into super-luxurious suites or anything like that, just a reasonable room.

I agree with SmilingandDialing.

Priceline does not give you the option of upgraded rooms or anything like that. Also, when looking at these properties in prime real estate, there tends to be a fairly small difference in points required between an ordinary hotel and a top-quality one - using New York as an example, between the Hilton Garden Inn and the Waldorf-Astoria.

In my case, I have booked almost every hotel stay for the past 7 years on Priceline, but for my own honeymoon (next month) I accumulated a pile of Hyatt points to stay at the Park Hyatt Vendome in Paris (partly on points, partly on Hyatt card nights). But I could have gotten a 4-star hotel in the same areas of Paris for $175 a night.

If you don't want to cope with the bidding process on Priceline, you can use Hotwire for an easier process but a somewhat higher cost, but still (usually) significant savings.

I apologize for my error, I searched the Marriott website for Munich and for Germany hotels last night and found no Munich hotels, yet you are right, today they are there.

Priceline is a good option. But you do still have time to earn hotel points. However, there are lots of differing opinions on what type of hotel to stay in. I usually try to stretch my hotel points to get the most free nights possible, but have often regretted not staying closer to the center of the city. It is so nice to be able to return to your room in the middle of the day to relax for an hour, without having to trek a long ways to get there. Location is a big factor in deciding where to stay, and ultimately, only you can decide which hotels would meet your criteria.

I recommend you research hotels for Mariott, Hilton, and SPG in both London and Munich, pick the one hotel you would prefer to stay at for each chain in each city, and write down how many points it would cost. Decide which city is best to use your Marriott points. Then consider what it would take to meet the goal points in the other city with another hotel chain. For Hilton, consider the VIP award charts (this one or this one) since the Amex and Citi Hilton credit cards will give you silver or gold status, allowing you to use them. The Hilton Amex also lets you redeem discounted 4 night stays, called AXON awards.

There are lots of cards to earn Hilton points with, from Amex, Citi, and Bank of America/Bank of Hawaii (because Hawaiin miles and Virgin miles transfer to Hilton 1:2, 5,000 miles = 10,000 points). With SPG, you can earn them from the SPG Amex personal, SPG Amex business, and your partner can apply for the same. I did refer my spouse for the SPG Amex a couple months ago, and the 5,000 point referral bonus posted several days after his application. Rumor is that the SPG Amex bonus will go up to 30,000 points in a couple weeks. SPG cash + points redemptions are a great value when you can find them.

Priority Club and Hyatt are also good for European hotels, but they require a Chase application. I have found that Chase will approve us for a new card about every 95 days without having to talk to the reconsideration line (not always instant, but the card comes in the mail within 10 days). I do periodically close a card or two, even though the common advice here is to wait until you open a new account so you have something to negotiate with to open the new account. Other people have succeeded in opening more accounts in a short period of time, but this is what has worked for me without needing to call.

Well, then, have you considering paying for an affordable indie hotel for some nights?

I find that more practical than Priceline if that's all I'm looking for. Priceline tends to lower luxury hotels to affordable prices, but luxury hotels tend to nickel & dime you. For the same price booked without any tricks you can often find an indie hotel which will provide lots of stuff for free that a luxury hotel will nichel & dime you on.

There are affordable indie hotels in many cities.

The thing I do, when I don't find a hotel in a European city that I can get on points that I want to get (ie, sometimes I have the points but the hotels on points are just too poor a value), I'll go to www.tripadvisor.com, look at the hotels in the order they give (by order of recommendations), but visually scan the "typical price" they show for most hotels and look for the ones with reasonable prices. Then I look at the reviews and see it the hotel itself seems reasonable. Then I click on show prices (I personally tend to use only booking.com because it doesn't tend to charge me upfront and usually has very reasonable cancellation policies) and see what actual prices are available for the dates you need.

On a trip I'm planning to eastern Switzerland and western Austria, I just used this technique to find very affordable (in most cases much less than $100 a night for a single, though a double might have been a bit more in some cases) hotels with free breakfast and free internet in Appenzell, Switzerland (where there are no hotels on points at all) and in Zell am See, Austria (where again there are no hotels on points at all).

But you could use this same technique in bigger cities, too. (There's just a whole lot more hotels to sort through in a huge city like London than in a small town! )

Alternately, you could use guidebooks such as Rick Steves or Lonely Planet for indie affordable indie hotel recommandations.

I am surprised nobody suggests IHG properties?

The 80K PC card could get you 160K PC pts if both of you apply. It is worth it to swap a card with Chase in order to get the PC cards since the 80K is after 1st purchase, give you a PLAT status (not a lot but still may help occasionally) and 10% rebate on your point redemption. On top of that, you can use points + cash to stretch your points.

There are some quite acceptable IHG properties in London such as the Crowne Plaza at St. James Park, or even the HI at Mayfair, not to mention the IC at Park Lane. All are good for the tourist thing. You can also stay in the City.

Haven't looked at MUC but I feel you may find IHG properties there as well.

You might also look at maxing out cards like Hyatt or the new Citi Hilton card which offer the signing bonus in nights, instead of points. For Hyatt, stay certificates are also a useful way of controlling costs in expensive cities. Both properties in London, for instance, accept $249/night "Elite" certificates.