Request: Frequent Travel, How to maximize the programs
 

I started weekly travel due to consulting and flying every week, for now lets say IAD to DTW. Stying 3 nights a week in a hotel and booking car 4 days a week.
Given my time on road, I wonder how i can best use my stay/travel/car so that i can rackup the rewards.

Current Status:
1) All the flight and hotel and food expense is currently booked on Penfed AMEX (5 X points)
2) Everything else is booked on CapitalOne Venture Card (2X points)
3) All my stays are currently booked at Marriott and fly is on Delta. I get Mariott rewards for stays and Delta skymiles for the flight.
4) I haven't seen any benefit or a good program to stick to a single car rental. Currently i am booking randomly on Expedia
5) While i am at 20 nights this year at Marriott, i am still long way to go to Gold or Platinum to get extra points

Current Milege:
Have around 75k on Delta. But to me it appears accumulation of skymiles is very slow and nothing that i can expect out of it any soon.
My ultimate goal is to book some roundtrip tickets to Asia for my family next year.

With the goal of getting 2 adult and 2 child rountd trip tickets to asia next summer, i wonder how best i can use my travel situation.
Apart from Delta skymiles, i have around 90k CapitaOne miles. Ofcourse my PenFed points are accumulating at a good pace but how would i consolidate all these different to get ticekts for family on a single airline.

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"Stying 3 nights a week in a hotel."

For starters, insist on better accommodations. :)

If the fares are comparable and you do not mind traveling on regional jets, I would fly UA rather than DL. I think that you're more likely to get more bang for your mile with UA rather than DL.

If you can stay at Hilton-family properties rather than Marriotts, I would do so to double dip: Hilton lets you earn both points and miles on the same stay. And if you can change hotels once or twice on each trip, you can opt for the 500-mile minimum for each stay at a different, full-service Hilton-family property. (I'm not sure if United is one of Hilton's airline partners, but even if it's not, I'm sure that there is some United/Star Alliance airline partner that Hilton will credit to.)

Crediting car rentals to domestic airline programs is generally not very rewarding unless there is a significant bonus promotion being offered. When offered, you can usually find discussion of these offers right here in MilesBuzz! Absent a promotion, I usually credit my Hertz and Avis rentals to Virgin Atlantic: most rates earn 1,000 miles per rental (even a one-day rental), and there is no frequent-flyer surcharge when you credit the miles to Virgin Atlantic. Virgin Atlantic miles can be redeemed for travel on a number of airlines, including CO and US.

All of that said, I think that your best chance of getting enough miles for four tickets to Asia next year is to exploit the various credit-card bonus offers. If you can get approved for the Citi/AA Visa and Amex cards, you can get 150,000 bonus miles pretty easily. If you decide to concentrate on AA miles, credit your Hilton stays to AA, and save your UA miles for something else.

Good luck!

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And welcome to FlyerTalk.

Car rentals can be very lucrative. Check out Evan!'s thread with bonuses.

There's no reason you need to concentrate in the same program you fly. Right now, you can earn 3k on Continental or 1800 points ($30 worth) on Southwest for each rental.

I travel for work too (way more than I like to) and have some methods that I use for my travel.

Just because you get 5 X points doesn't mean Penfed is good. Did you actually see the rewards and know what you want. I have 200k+ on Penfed and there is hardly anything I want apart from the low cost airline tickets (they usually discount by 15-20% taking 1point=1cent)

For car rentals, search for the thread Q2 car rental promo (Q3 will be there when we are closer to Q3). You will see different promotions for car rentals. I usually book Avis (for miles on some airlines usually 3k) or Hertz (for points to get car rentals and status).

Other than that, for hotels too I chase the promotions. I usually get the Hilton status in the beginning of the year and then chase the promotions (unless a promotion is sweet enough for me not to stay at hilton).

In the end use cashback sites (I can refer to you. PM me). I end up getting around 100-150 each quarter using the sites (I forget to go through the cash back site most of the times since I am booking at the last minute and there's so much to do)

I recommend hotel hoping to get you more “stays”. You’ll achieve status much faster. If you hop among Hilton brands you’ll also earn airline miles through the hotel reward system (in addition to hotel points).

Bald Army Guy

Thank you all. Very useful info

Appreciate your inputs. Do you suggest a different credit card?

another card to consider is the chase aarp card. right now 5% cash back for 6 months. the card normally has 3% cash back on travel (and many have reported that the bonus stacks). since it's chase, you can redeem for statement credits in $25 increments.