Strategy for London and Ireland
 

I'm relatively new to this and just wrapping up my first (limited) app spree. I had no travel goals when I started a couple of months ago and so did the Starwood Amex (30k points) and Citi Premier 2-browser (50K TY points each). In addition wife has about 30k Hilton and 30K Marriot rewards points.

To the point..we'd like to shoot for a trip to London for a week and then over to Ireland for a week for sometime in 2014 (so we have a while).

Where should we start? I saw in another thread that for Ireland, it's best to focus on airlines due to limited chain hotel availability. What about London? I'm thinking that even if we get the flights to/from London and maybe some of the hotel costs for that week taken care of, we can swing the Ireland part on our own if needed. Of course, if we don't have to, even better.

Any advice on where to start with the next CC spree (probably her turn in about a month)?

If Hyatt is still offering the 2 nights anywhere in the world cc offer, I'd grab that. Just returned from doing our own Ireland London trip and found the Andaz Liverpool street to be excellent. If both of you get it, that would be four nights taken care of and the card provides platinum status at Hyatt.

The other chains have more availability in terms of the number of hotels, but I like Hyatts offer of nights instead of a set number of points.

The Hyatt deal sounds great. Too bad they have to be used within a a year. I'll definitely keep an eye on it when we get within a year of the date. What about in the meantime?

My suggestion would be to focus on the airline points. In my personal opinion, you're better off staying at boutique properties - and, in Ireland, B&Bs - rather than chain hotels. The prices for the local properties are generally quite reasonable, particularly in this economic environment, and they tend to have much more character than a chain.

Also, in Ireland once you get outside Dublin, you'll be hard pressed to find an international chain hotel anyway. And, trust me - you want to get out of Dublin.

On the logistics front, if you're thinking of doing Ireland and London, I'd suggest you check fares from the US to Dublin and think about hitting Ireland before London. The fares to Dublin in my recent experience have been several hundred dollars less than to London, largely because Aer Lingus (EI) has really cheap fares. To get between Ireland and Britain then is extremely easy and relatively cheap, either by air or ferry.

Aer Lingus/BA Question
 

M60_to_LGA - does the following sound like a viable strategy?

Wife and I merge Executive Club accounts into a household account so we can pool Avios. then we each sign up for the Chase British Air card and get the 50k Avios each. We then redeem those Avios for Aer Lingus flights. this is the part I'm not clear on. We just book those partner flights through British Air like we would any reward flights? No problem using the pooled Household Avios for that?

No guarantees on this, but since you're relatively new to FlyerTalk, you should be aware that Chase has run 100K promos on its BA card the last several springs. Might not happen in 2013, but since you have time on your hands, I would consider structuring your strategy for other cards while waiting to see if Chase runs the promo again. If not, the standard offer outside of the 100K promos has been 50K.

BA and Aer Lingus are airline partners, and as a result, you can redeem Avios for Aer Lingus flights. Because BA runs a distance-based (as well as segment-based) award chart and because Dublin and Boston fall just within one of the dividing lines for redemption, a BOS-DUB roundtrip coach ticket will run 25K Avios plus about $130 in cash while a roundtrip business class ticket will run 50K Avios plus cash for the same route. JFK-DUB or ORD-DUB fall into the next level of redemption, meaning that you'll pay 40K RT for coach and 80K RT for business. The farther from the East Coast you begin your flights, the higher possibly the redemption requirement will be--both because of the increase in distance and the likelihood that you'll have several segments to your trip, each priced according to its distance.

Keep in mind that AA, UA, and BA all allow one-way redemptions while DL and US do not. This can be very helpful in that you can get sets of two different airline cards and book your way to Europe on one airline (with AA, for example) and then come back on another (say, UA). That approach might help you get more than sufficient miles for you and your wife to do roundtrips.

London has many representatives of the chains that offer hotel points in the US. Dublin does as well, but as soon as you leave Dublin, the options drop dramatically. While I think Dublin is worth a visit for several days, I agree that you'll want to go around the rest of the countryside, and that's difficult to do if you only have four or five days.

I have done two trips to Ireland, with two more coming in the next nine months. Even in Dublin, I've found B&Bs a reasonable alternative, but once you leave Dublin, I think they're a better option along with some independent country house hotels. I'd note that in Ireland (as in England and Scotland), there is a wide range of prices offered by B&Bs, including some very modestly priced accommodations. That contrasts with the US where B&Bs have the reputation of costing as much or more than top level hotels.

Thank you very much. This is very helpful. I think we'll take a look at other airline cards and maybe some hotel ones while keeping the BA offer in our back pocket for another year to see if they offer the 100k again.

Now I'm just worried that a week in Ireland will not be enough :rolleyes: