stevekoe

Collective audience,

In all of your years of experience, when have you noticed the best fall travel deals start to come around? My travel planning is quite seasonal due to the nature of my job. I do a ton of travel in the fall (gone from home almost entirely from Labor Day to Thanksgiving -- nearly three months) and a good bit in the spring. However, summer travel, where there seem to be a few decent deals that I would take advantage of, is usually reserved for my personal travel -- and for that, I try to go way cheap -- that is, use up the accumulation of points and miles from my work travel.

My fall travel is limited to MCO to NYC/ISP and some locales in TX (DFW/AUS/SAT). I do one trip out to the west coast (PDX/SEA?) and some scattered stuff that I might cover for anyone else in the office.

I would like to start planning my travel -- perhaps take advantage of summer fare sales that trickle into the end of September? But, I also don't want to miss out on any really good promos. I mostly fly whoever is cheapest, have no elite status with any airlines, but if I were to state a preference, it would be with WN. I know the advantages there are they are not likely to have any specific promotions beyond their current bonus point for r/t, and if I book a fare and it goes on sale, they will credit me back the difference for future travel. But, if another airline offers a fast-track elite promo, I might consider it. In anyone else's experiences, does this happen?

As far as hotels go, I had been loyal to Hilton HHonors for a few years, earning my Diamond status by butt in bed nights. I was a little disappointed and asked Marriott and Starwood to match status, which they both promptly did. I will likely maintain Plat in *wood, and earn silver/gold with MR and silver/gold with HH for next year. Historically, have their been significant promos with hotel chains in the fall. I know Hyatt's FFN ends before it would become relevant to me. I seem to recall MR running a non-targetted 2x points promo last year, but was not in a position to take advantage. Is this a regular promo like FFN?

I guess if I had one, final, bottom line question, it would be to ask when the best fall promos -- ones that would offer bonus miles, elite challenges, bonus points, free nights, etc. seem to come around? For instance, it seemed like a lot of the summer promos started to come out AFTER the previous spring bonuses ended (i.e. FFN from Hyatt, Fly Free Faster from NW, *Wood's 6k airline promos and their targetted -- 3 stays/3k bonus, 5 stays/5k bonus promos). That might help me make my decision as to when to start the booking process.

Any help or information would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Stevekoe

flipside

Hi stevekoe,

This doesn't really appear to have any specific miles or points type questions, so I'm going to move this over to TravelBuzz!

Regards,

Flipside

doglover

I suspect that once the so called summer-fare sales going on right now are over that fall specials will start to creep out.

The current crop of summer fare sales are laughable because they only include travel for the first 10 days of "summer".

richard

moving back to Milesbuzz! See you there

--richard, moderator

pinniped

I would suspect that it'll probably be midsummer before the fall promotions roll out. I do all of my leisure travel in the spring and fall, except for one trip out to LA in midsummer for which I got a cheap WN nonstop. I have three or four trips tentatively planned for Sept-Dec, but I'm not seeing any good fares yet.

If you do not pursue any elite status, then WN is your best bet. (YX is a good bet too, but I don't know if they fly to MCO.) WN and YX don't have an extensive, entrenched concept of elite status that results in substandard airport treatment of non-elites. (They have an elite level in their FF programs, but they don't use it as a weapon to make your life miserable at the airport.)

If you do decide to pursue an elite status, use AA for your Texas and California trips, and you should be able to complete either the Gold or Platinum Challenge, depending on how many trips you have planned.

magic111

wrong answer for the question

Stefan Daystrom

Last question first: Very often bonus of various types aren't announced until about a month or so before they start. And you're right about often not being announced until the previous one ends: One reason for that is that they don't want to confuse people about which bonus is current and which is future (besides all the other reasons you can think of ).

As to hotels, historically there have been promos from hotels in the fall, just not necessarily in the hotel programs you mentioned! Priority Club (Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, Candlewood, etc) typically does a promo every season which works out to roughly double points or double miles (although the methodology is typically different every season). The "lower midscale" hotel programs like Choice and Best Western are likely (but not guarnateed) to do a fall promo which might amount to double for them (but since they start at 250 miles, double for them is normal for several of the chains you mentioned , except that of course rooms tend to be cheaper at Choice and Best Western).

Meanwhile, HHonors didn't even have a signficant promo OF THEIR OWN in later spring. (Only Jan thru Mar.) As one collecting Northwest miles (mostly through bonuses, flying them only occasionally), it was Northwest's ultragenerous (triple miles starting with the fourth stay) that made $80ish/night HGI stays earn 1500 miles EACH for me through most of spring; there was no bonus on the HHonors side after the end of March. (I don't participate in Starwood or Marriott so can't speak as to their history, and gave up on Hyatt a couple years ago after I got a couple FFN rewards that I was never able to use due to the limitations of weekends only [for short stays] and very few locations nationwide [none at ALL in Portland OR, for example].)

As to airlines: The problem is that you may have to book well in advance to get the best fares (on packed routes, anyway), but you won't know about promos well in advance. Also, these days more and more of the airline promos seem to be focused on particular city pairs only, or on doing lots of flights in a very short time (like a month!). And of course, since airline miles aren't as transfereable around as hotel points are, it doesn't help to get promo miles from a different airline every time if you don't ever accumulate enough in each to add up to anything.

However, you mentioned elite "fast track" challenges: The one at AA is ongoing. (Search the AA forum for "challenge" and you'll find a lot about it.) Fly 10k miles (or even less if "full fare" economy or higher) in a 90-day window and you'll be Platinum (and if that window starts after June 15, Platinum until early 2006 and then Gold for another year after that), or fly 5k miles in the same 90day window and you'll be Gold until early 2006. (But obviously only worth it if flying AA after that would be worth it to you. Except you can get a bonus 6000 miles a year into AAdvantage once you're elite just by dining out at 3 iDine/Rewards Network restaurants each month!)

But of course you don't want to move to other airlines SO much that you dip below 16 Southwest credits in 12 months, because otherwise those RR credits will start expiring...

stevekoe

I didn't know about the AA promo. I don't usually frequent AA, and don't read their board much, but I would be willing to give that one a go. I could just as easily transfer some business their way. Especially since I have one cross-country round trip, I can easily attain the 5K level, and with a little effort, could make 10K. Do you know if I have to declare which challenge I am attempting? Or, could one try to make the Platinum, and "settle" for gold. Or, rather, try to attain gold, and then earn more and get Platinum?

Let me guess -- I should hit the AA forum, huh?

Thanks again,
Stevekoe

pinniped

Yes, you must declare which challenge you want to do. If you miss on the Plat, you don't get Gold. So take a look at your confirmed trips and make the right call. (Out of FL, you can always go a cheap mileage run to bump up to the Plat Challenge if you need to. )

There are pros and cons to both. AFAIK, they do not let you do both challenges simultaneously, although there are reports on the AA board that people have done that.

When I started flying AA, I knew I was going to be flying a ton of short segments. MCI-ORD, MCI-DFW, some ORD-East Coast, etc. To me, the ultimate goal was to minimize the painful non-elite cycles through the airport. So I did Gold first, then Plat. It cost me a couple thousand FF miles in the long run, but meant that I had basic elite privileges more quickly.

If I had just a couple of transcons or int'l trips planned, I might have opted to go straight for the Plat, especially if that final segment was a long one. (The segment that pushes you over the top gets the bonus miles.)

stevekoe

But, if you go for GOLD, and complete 10K miles, would you then get PLATINUM? I still think I may be able to complete a gold challenge like that for this fall, but I don't think that my travel patterns would allow me to keep gold after next year. But, it might be fun to try...and AA usually offers pretty competetive fares from MCO.

Stevekoe

Stefan Daystrom

Let me make an important correction to what I said before: you need 5k Q-points for the Gold challenge and 10k Q-points for Platinum challenge. Miles are irrelevant to the challenge (even though actual flight miles are an alternate way of acheiving elite through non-challenge means).

See this chart:

http://www.aa.com/content/AAdvantage...irements.jhtml

for how flown miles convert to Q-points depending on the fare bucket the ticket is bought in.

So if you buy the very cheapest economy seats on all your flights, you'll need 10k miles for Gold challenge and 20k miles for Platinum challenge.

If you buy "full fare" economy seats on all your flights, you'll need only 3334 miles for Gold challenge and 6667 miles for Platinum challenge.

You have to book "non-deeply" discounted economy seats to be in the stiuation where 5k miles makes the Gold challenge and 10k miles makes the Platinum challenge.

You can use the Fare Explorer at Travelocity:

http://dps1.travelocity.com/lognlogi...tr_module=FARE

to look into the cost of H, K, M, L, W, and V, but you often can't book them online. (They MAY come up online if it's close enough to the date of the flight that the cheaper optoins are no longer available, or if the cheapest fares have sold out.) But you can call up AA and ask them to book you a fare in whichever of those 6 classes is cheapest. (I plan to complete a Platinum challenge no later than through an LAX-JFK-BRU-ORD-LAX flight in late summer, and I was able to get a $1203 V fare over the phone whlie the "deep discount" fare on the web showed was only a couple hundred less at the time. On that one roundtrip V fare is the difference between earning over 10k Q-points versus only a bit over 5k Q-points, and thus the difference between making a Platinum challenge or only a Gold challenge.

One additional advantage to making a Platinum challenge: Word is that AA usually drops you only one elite level a year (if you don't requalify). So if you start a challenge Jun 16 or later and complete it successfully, if it's Gold it'll "only" be good until early 2006, but if it's Platinum you'll be Platinum tihru early 2006 but then should be gold still through early 2007! So in this case $200ish extra for a flight means an extra year of elite (in addition to being one level higher up of elite the first year and a half).

pinniped

I don't think so: I think you have to ask AA to put you into the challenge and, as soon as you complete it, it's over and you are at that level.

The bit about manipulating your fare-bucket might end up being important for your challenge as Stefan writes. I had just assumed that since these were business trips, they would be done in full-Y or close, thus earning 1 Q-point per mile. But...as Stefan's link shows, some of your travels might actually be earning 1.5 Points per mile, thus making the challenges easier. Conversely, a pure-leisure traveler would need to understand AA's definition of Deep Discount vs. Discount fares (and possibly call to make sure they are on the desired one) before making assumptions about the challenge.

AA redid a lot of these rules this year, so make sure you read some of the most up-to-date (2004) Challenge threads on the AA board.

stevekoe

Thanks for the heads-up. I will do plenty of research before I jump in on the challenge. I am planning business travel, but I usually try to book inexpensive fares when possible. I may not be able to alter my travel plans/budget to fit the challenge, but I will see what I can find out.

Best regards,
Stevekoe