Best Awards Currently Available
 

I want to get advice on the best awards currently available in the different frequent flyer and other hotel programs. Also, as you provide the advice - please also discuss the ease of accumulating miles in that particular program. It is great reminiscing about what awards were available but I think lot of the newer members will greatly benefit from the best value awards available currently and how best to work towards them.

Look forward to your responses!

Lots of stuff. Just read this forum and the forums for the programs you are interested in.

kat....why don't you start it off?....tell us what you know.....btw, are you planning to author something ?....

imho, the best awards are the 1's that go where you want to go and let you stay where you want to stay for the least out lay....

btw....welcome to ft....good luck...

There is TOO MUCH information on mileage and hotel award programs.

You need to be more specific... you can go by airlines, hotel, departure cities, destinations, etc...

R.

Are you perhaps in education? Your phrasing is similar to my high school literature teacher assigning homework "write a 5,000 word essay on "Catcher in the Rye" and discuss Salinger's use of imagery. Also, compare/contrast his use of language with Jane Austin's "Pride and Prejudice" ...

I'm not trying to discourage you but the best and easiest award for one person is useless or unattainable to another. I'm a relative novice to all this but I know the experts would tell you that you have to be more specific on what you want. Everything depends on where you live, your travel goals and your travel style (business vs personal).

If you want free airline tickets and/or upgrades, choose an airline that flies out of your local airport (and/or is part of an alliance that flies where you want to travel) and concentrate on that program.

Once you've decided, go the part of the forum devoted to that program and read the stickies that explain the ins and outs.

If you want hotel or car rental awards, decide which chains has hotels you enjoy staying in and go to that area. The credit card area can help you get cards that help your travel needs or give rebates.

And that's just the beginning. There are fora specific to vacation spots, technology, etc.

The experts spent the time to put together documents in the Stickies and in other threads for newcomers and I've found them enormously useful in attaining my goals (free international airline tickets). But you have to decide what you want and do research.

Every FTer sees "the best award" (or best use of miles/points) in her/his own way. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, there's no "ultimate" best awards.

Please define "best awards" and give examples so fellow FTers know how to comment on your thread to suit your need.

Looking forward to your clarification.

ETA:

In general, I say the best award is FT and visiting FT daily to harvest. :)

Heh - I thought the same thing. Perhaps someone could book an award flight in F and gift status to the OP as well?

kathuat,
No one is telling you anything useful, because you have esentually asked us to do all the work for you. You have not bothered to tell us your home airport, your flight frequency, your destinations, or your FFP goals (i.e., free flights, upgrades, otherelite status benefits). Nor is there any indication that you have read any of the many and varied stickies, faqs, or front pages on the critical forums that would answer many of these questions. I would start with this:
1. What is/are your home airports?
2. What is your flying frequency?
3. What are your primary anticipated desitnations?
4. What are your Frequent Flyer Plan goals?
5. Have you read the stickies on this page and those for the programs you are interested in?

After that, pretend you are not assigning us an essay in your class, heh.

osteomata is right....you have to do give us more information....but it would help you out a lot more if you checked out the master threads for the airlines & hotels you are interested in....there is a world of information available here....

Is there perhaps anywhere you can subscribe to get tipped off about things like the 100k BA Chase offer that I slept right through... ?

Really? It was in multiple news articles and on all the major forums.

Thanks for your encouraging and insightful comments on my request so far. I do understand and realize that each frequent flyer has different needs in terms of the program that best meets their needs. What I was hoping to accomplish is that we could brainstorm "best value for the miles" awards together. I know lot of the people use miles to obtain more of the aspirational awards. I was hoping that the discussion/ideas here would enlighten everyone and we would be able to customize the "best value" reward based on our personal situation. Makes sense? I was by no means requesting that we write an essay the poster above was suggesting. If this seems to be an unreasonable post - please ignore.

WOW!!! I saw this thread title and thought, GREAT IDEA!!! Guess I am the only one (other than the OP).

Maybe we should get this other thread deleted for the same reasons. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...-all-time.html :rolleyes:

Some of the better ones that come to me right off:

1) Marriott Travel packages
2) Hilton AXON, GLON, ALON awards
3) Hilton point stretchers
4) SouthWest Companion pass
5) Oneworld awards using American Airlines miles

(note: this probably is not the forum to discuss each of these in detail. If something sounds interesting to you, go to the appropriate forum and search there for tons of details :)

Will add more later. Hopefully, some other helpful FT'ers will add to this. I think it is a really cool way to welcome newbie FT'ers. Sort of undaunting to cruise thru 13,410,000 posts :)

I agree, this could at least be a fun discussion.

I certainly wouldn't claim to be an expert on the "best" awards currently available but I have studied enough and compiled enough information to know what awards are the best for my goals!

Just to preface, my general priorities are traveling cheaply and experiencing as many places as possible. As such, I have only ever redeemed for coach award seats. That said, a few of the best awards for me are:

1. Inter-island flight for 6,000 Flying Club miles: One of my next travel goals is to do camping trips to Maui, Kauai, and the Big Island and this award is especially good considering I could be spending 15,000 HA miles for the same award.

2. Round trip to HKG for 40,000 One Pass miles.

3. I also like BA's 35,000 miles required for a round trip to the mainland which works perfectly with my sudden influx of BA miles!

No matter what information were to be collected in a thread like this it would be best for beginners to do their own study of individual programs' awards charts to see what works best for their needs. I took the time to put together a spreadsheet of awards to and from Hawaii on most major carriers and it has really helped me to select awards that best meet my needs. By the way, one program I wish I could get a good chunk of miles with is BMI because of their 50k miles required from here to Australia!

ok, here are a few of my favourites....

hilton glon awards saves you 20%+ of your points depending on the lengh of your stay....

spg 5th night free if you redeem for the first 4 nights (not available at cat 1 & 2)....

jet airways 25% off redemption bookings whenever a new route is launched....

jet airways 50% off flights to hong kong till 31st march....

hilton 25% off visa offer, available till 31st march....

spg50, giving you 50% off the hotel's rack rate....