I travel a lot from San Diego to the TOLA area (Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas) and that coverage is expected to increase next year to include the southeast as well. I also do a few trips to south and central america a year. I travel 40+ weeks out of the year and can for the most part select any airline and hotel. Right now I'm Marriott platinum and American Airlines Platinum and have the southwest Companion Pass (all from flights) and also have gold status from united left over from last year (had to do a lot of Canada travel last year) but that will expire at the end of this year.

I feel like I should be getting more out of my points, and was hoping for some good feedback. Another thing to add is I was looking into using points to go to Greece with my wife next year and cashing in 200,000 points on american will cost us at least $1000 in taxes and fees because they partner with British airlines and that's who we would be flying from San Diego. I checked how much it would cost on United, and it was like $175 total. I also have had my wife upgraded to first class on a trip from Paris to Toronto on Air Canada on a flight I had purchased for her using points. So I feel like united may reward their customers better when it comes time to redeem.

Anyway, I'm wondering which status I should go for next year. There are so many people in the AA exec plat range in the tola area that I rarely get an upgrade as a platinum. I will be renewing my southwest, but planning to just pick up a credit card to get me the first 50k points and then get the remaining 50k whenever. Marriott points are great when promos are running, but lousy the rest of the time, and I've never once been upgraded at a marriott hotel. Also it costs so many points to cash in anywhere decent. I also rent cars through hertz, but am thinking I should just convert those points to another program when they have a multiplier bonus since they don't seem to do much for me as hertz rewards.

to sum up, which programs are you planning to go for next year and why?

Thanks!

I'm relying in promotions, mainly. Status is great, but as long as hotels and airlines keep giving incentives to switch to use them, I will keep doing so.

Do you use your southwest companion pass? I don't fly southwest but it seems like hands-down the best dollar value benefit if you use it frequently. Plus I believe that southwest has the most non-stop flight destinations out of SAN. But AA & UA fly into more regional airports if you do that often.

If you were to accumulate more points/miles for future flights---how do you see yourself redeeming them?

I was just checking the Southwest routes out of San Diego. It's right there on the web site. Not a ton of non-stops, but lot of flights with one connection.

Out of SAN, there are not many options to Europe, but the AA program does offer AirBerlin, AA, Iberia and FinnAir flights, too, with no YQ (fuel surcharges). I recently flew BA to LHR out of SAN, and it was worth it to me to be up front in the plane and not have to hassle going to LA. I don't know what routes will be opening up with the merger.

I do use the companion pass frequently. Well, 5 times so far this year, but that has been well over 100,000 points that I would have had to have spent otherwise.

I would use these points for travel to South America or Europe to vacation.

So does that mean you go for whichever hotel/airline is currently giving out the best reward?