help planning trip to europe
 

i have 150,000 starwood points plus 100,00 aa miles ( wife has 25,000) plus 50,000 amex membership rewards. I was wondering if anybody can help me out to find availibilty for a trip from new york to italy and france with these points. I would like to go mid august for 10 days. i would love to fly business but up to coach as to use the rest of points for hotel stays. thsi trip is for 2 people. I would love if someone can help me.

I did open an ana account but its a little difficult to use . thank you so so much

It's a pretty general request, and I doubt you'll get too many responses. I've been trying to understand the ins and outs of star alliance booking using the ana tool and really have only scratched the surface after about a month of trying to figure it out.

With 150k starwood points, you should be in pretty good shape if you're booking far enough out, although I think August might be tough for France and Italy.

Of the top of my head, the most promising lead I would think would be using your 150k starwood points for USAir points and then booking on a *A partner. If you were to convert all of those points right now (you'd have to do it in multiple transactions, because I think 79.99k is the most you can do at once) you could parlay them into nearly 280,000 US Airways miles. (You get a transfer of 5:4 when you transfer SPG to USAir -- so that's 185,000 miles for 150,000 starwood points; plus you can register for the U.S. 50 percen bonus right now.) There's an awful lot you can do with 280k USAir. I think it's enough for 2 tickets in F to Europe with a stop over and 30k miles to spare.

if there was any way any body can check on availiblity for flights during that period that would be the greatest help.

also should i use my aa points for flights and just use the starwood points for hotel stays as i would to business but i wouldnt want to pay for all the hotels then. thank you so so much

I'm curious, why don't you check the flights? If you want to start with AA for flights, go to aa.com and check the box towards the top right that says "Redeem miles." You can plug in different dates to see what is available.

For hotels, check spg.com to see which hotels might be of interest to you in Italy and France. Remember that when using points for award stays you get the 5th night free (when staying 5 consecutive nights at the same hotel)...so if you can try and stay (at least) 5 nights at each hotel.

i did start checking but the question is if i should use my spg points for flights bec of better availability than aa?

Since you already have aa miles, I would start by seeing if I could use those for this trip. Check the online award reservation search, or call aa and have an agent help you. That beats having to transfer Starpoints to a different carrier, which would leave you less points available for hotels. If you can't find anything going the aa route then look at other options.

Gotta decide first how important it is to you to fly business. If it is, your 100k AA miles probably won't be enough for August travel. You might get lucky and find a saver award depending how flexible you are on travel dates. You also might consider going coach one way and business the other to make it work in your miles budget. Go play around on aa's web site. It's one of the easiest there is for finding awards.

Otherwise, you'll need some combination of your amex points and your SPG points transferred to aa to get enough miles for a business award.

That still, though, should leave you with enough SPG points for a really nice hotel stay. You also might be able to take advantage of points plus cash stays with SPG, which are a nice deal.

Edit: Oops. Forgot you're looking for 2 tickets. Sorry, even with a saver, you're looking at 200k miles on aa. You might, though, be able to find savers on aa that would require 80k miles for 2 tickets in coach.

I recently returned from europe doing exactly what you want to do. I used AA miles to fly to Rome and return from Paris. In coach, that would be 50,000 miles per person in low season. You want travel in high season. The saver award will be 60,000 each The only problem I see is that this August will be saver awards or any other awards may be non existent. I planned the air portion almost 10 months in advance and traveled in early May. Remember you can book one way awards with AA. JFK>FCO, CDG>JFK
We traveled from Rome to Paris with EasyJet. We booked and paid again almost 10 months in advance. The service wasn't that bad and was actually quite reasonable.

As far as the hotel accommodations, we also used Starwood points and stayed at The Hotel Eden in Rome and The Westin Paris. Both were wonderful and in great locations to site see. Starwood hotels are 20,000 per night so you would be able to eek out 7 nights with your 150,000 Starwood points. Starwood also has a Points and Cash program, which is 8,000 points and $150 per night. If you want to stretch your points this maybe an alternative for you. But once again at this late juncture, rooms may not be available for this August. Good Luck!

Cheers!

There isn't better availability using spg points. The spg points would have to be converted to AA miles before you could use them with AA or any One World partner.

Cheers!

AA Saver award tickets in August 60K each or 120K for 2.

Cheers!

You can check a month at a time on aa.com using the flexible dates option. It will tell you what level redemption is available.

I think I might have some info. PM me.

Oh right -- thanks. Plus, it's travel during the period when the British are on holiday; between air and hotels this could be tough to plan at this late date.

He could convert them to a star alliance carrier though. So they are more likely to provide availability because there are multiple partners.

I think your best bet will be to find an AA flight to LHR and then connect to BA from there. JFK-LHR looks wide open in coach with a few dates in business.