A colleague told me yesterday that she's flown Europe-Australia 3 times in the last two years and doesn't have a single mile to her name. I thought I was going to faint... :eek:

[shameless plug]
How did we get on that topic? She saw the FlyerTalk luggage tag on my laptop bag...
[/shameless plug]

My wife's sister and husband went to Hawaii last year, and want to go again. I suggest one or both of them sign up for the Hawaiian airlines credit card, and use the 10,000 bonus miles for two inter-island tickets when they went back next year.

I tried to explain for 10 minutes... After a while I just gave up :(

People tend to be scared to sign up for a credit card. Some feel it will ruin their credit score; some feel they will end up using it when they can't afford the extra credit limit; some think they will get in trouble for signing up for a card just for miles and never using the card more than once or twice.

Sounds nice--which property please?

How does one attain Goldness from the AMEX card?

This is very, very sad. Oh the miles! :eek:

Are these comparable?
There is great deal of risk for that reward in the property market. Property is not a very liquid investment and real estate prices were never guaranteed to increase. Not signing up for a FF program is leaving money on the table. It's yours for the taking, you have already paid for it.

These elite deals are not guaranteed either, however. The Economist keeps writing that FF miles are the most over valued currency in the world, so there is a risk of devaluation but you are never going to go upside down on your mileage mortgage......

You could mention to him that he could buy airline frequent flyer miles or points with the Choice hotel points.

Hotel reward programs can be useful for a few reasons even if one does not anticipate the hotel points being too useful:

a. Collect airline frequent flyer miles or points.
b. Sometimes, hotels give you perks for being a member, even if you have no elite status (e.g. I got breakfast coupons at a Hilton once for having a HHonors account with no status).
c. Some have claimed that hotel reward program members are less likely to be sent to a different hotel in an overbooking situation.

Personally, I don't find any single airline (or alliance) to always be the best for any given trip (schedule convenience, fewest stops, price). So my flying habits tend to use a lot of different airlines.

However, I do collect frequent flyer miles and points on those flights, concentrating them on a smaller number of airline programs based on alliances and partnerships[*]. That has still managed to produce some award tickets, despite not concentrating on any given airline.
[*] Basically, I have UA to cover Star Alliance airlines, AS to cover a bunch of other airlines including AA, CO, NW, and DL, and WN for itself.

Devaluation can occur by having very tight capacity controls on "saver" awards. You may have enough miles for an award, but there may never be seats available for such awards when you want to go somewhere.

$20K/year spend on the card -- automatic Hilton Gold for next year.

Plus, you will have at least 60,000 points, maybe as many as 100,000. Get 25,000 more and you can get an AXON award, good for 4 nights at a cat 6 hotel (think Paris, Rome, New York) and, especially overseas, your Gold will be treated rather well.

Agreed. And I do the same thing. Although I tend to concentrate more on various airlines within one alliance, in my case Star. However, in my friend's case, he is just all over the place with airlines and hotels and doesn't care much to sign up for any frequent flyer/stay program. So I figured I could maybe introduce some discipline to his flying habits and have him start accumulating something and watch it grow. Hopefully that will result in motivation for him to sign up with other airlines and partners.

i believe one cause of this is that many assume that frequent flier miles are free and as such are easy to waste

in reality there is a cost to the airlines to provide frequent flier miles and that cost is reflected in the ticket price

if the cost of the airline ticket was broken out, and people realized that around 10% of the fare is going to run ffm programs, the attitdes might change

and then there are some people are just wasteful and dont care

This is interesting. I never really got into the economics of fares and miles. So in effect what you're saying is that each person who pays for an airline ticket, regardless of whether he or she is a frequent flyer member with that airline, shares the cost of supporting that airline's FF program?

The income derived from all tickets goes to pay proportionately for all expenses incurred by the airline. FF program is just one of many expenses that are funded by the ticket revenue stream. In short--Yes.

The miles are free. They are only a representation of a possible cost to an airline if a ticket or other merchandise is actually reedemed. If the miles are never used there is no cost involved.

Regardless of usage there are still fixed costs associated with the administration of the program. The miles are also carried as a liability on the balance sheet. There can be costs associated with carrying liabilties on a balance sheet such as being viewed as more of a credit risk which implies the cost of borrowing goes up.

Consider this:

#1. You go to the grocery store. You buy $100 worth of food. You give the cashier $100. Net result -- you get $100 worth of food and you're out $100. End of story.

#2. You go to the grocery store. You buy $100 worth of food. You whip out your credit card and pay for it. At the next billing cycle, you pay the $100 cc bill. Net result -- you get $100 worth of food and you're out $100 (which you paid at your convenience) and you got 100 miles or 500 hotel points or whatever.

Who pays for those miles/points? The customer that pays cash, that's who. The store's agreement precludes them from offering a cash discount, so in effect your mileage-earning is subsidized by the cash customers.

i agree 100%

who pays for the mailings to frequent flier members?
who pays for the additional ticket agents to help customers convert miles to tickets?
who pays for the website modifications that allows you to track and/or redeem miles online?
who pays for the whole set of airline employees associated with maintaining and running a frequent flier program

all of these costs must be covered and are in effect added to the price of the airplane ticket

regardless of whether or not any individual chooses to collect frequent flier miles and regardless of if they are ever redeeemed or not

the net effect is that those who dont collect or redeem their miles assist in paying for those who do

here is a another example
food and grocery store coupons
literally billions are spend each year on printing and distributing them
only 5% are ever redeemed
but the cost of the whole pogram is included in the price you pay at the counter
those who dont redeem pay an average higher price than those who do

I will agree with that. I didn't mean to imply that the administration of the program or the cost of the software, etc was not incurred. I actually started to add to my original reply with that disclaimer but I changed my mind. Oh well. :o

Yes there is a cost. There are few marketing strategies that do not cost money. FF miles are a marketing expense. My airline gets more business than they would without a FF program. Television, radio, print, naming arenas, etc. all add to the cost of doing business which has to be paid in some way.

My co-workers all fly at least as much, if not more, than I do - and yet none of them bother to collect miles or anything. :confused:

On the other hand, when I first got hired, my boss asked me for my frequent flyer numbers - "so we can make sure you get credit!" He's an AA 4 Million Miler, thanks largely to charging everything to his corporate AAdvantage MasterCard ;)

It could be that they, like many other people, are not aware of alliances and partnerships that allow concentrating miles and points. Many people may think that they are going on a business trip on an airline that they will never use again (or not use enough to collect mileage for an award or status), so they don't bother with collecting the miles or points. They may become more interested if you tell them about airline alliances and partnerships that allow concentrating the miles and points so that they have a good chance of getting an award or status.

For example, I have flown or will fly in the near future nine different airlines, but seven of them combine into two frequent flyer programs, both of which have yielded awards that I would not have gotten otherwise (I also got an award on one of the other two).

Sometimes, mere membership in a frequent flyer program can be useful, even without status. Holding a Southwest Rapid Rewards card when flying Southwest out of PDX lets you use the "elite" security line.

Also, a lot of people are not aware of hotel loyalty programs that can be useful even if you don't stay there enough to get awards or status at the hotel. I got a free breakfast coupon at a Hilton once just for having a Hilton HHonors account with zero points in it (those without HHonors accounts did not get the coupon).

Yeah, if I had a dime (or 100 miles) for every time a coworker or friend told me "I don't fly airline XYZ often enough to get anything."

I made a huge point of this when a good friend came out to visit last year, on a NW ticket. She didn't have any FF#s at all, so I signed her up for NW WP. I also made sure to tell her that she should use the same number when flying on Delta or Continental.

Sure enough, she just made a trip to NJ on CO and proudly told me she signed up for OnePass! Brilliant (not). People either don't sign up, or they spread their miles all over even within an alliance.

Horse. Water. Drink.

Amazingly, these folks are sometimes the same people who'll be seriously into store rebates and coupon deals, but don't get it about FF and Hotel loyalty programs.

I've pretty muched stopped proselytizing about the benefits of miles and points.

Of the several people that I work with, all who travel more then me, only one took the FT idea to heart. He recently took a two weeks vacation to Scotland and England, free airfare and free hotel. That was after a year accumulating miles/points during business travel. He doesn't even visit FT, he just checks the the websites of the programs he is in and will ask me every once in awhile if I have heard of any new promos.

The rest are too busy (but you can spend an hour on the phone with your mother talking about cousin so and so) or it is too complicated (I've told you I would forward on all the good promotions, you just need to sign up) or you don't travel enough (wait, I just barely make SE on NW and you travel at least three times as much as me) for those people that can't be bothered, I figure they are too lazy to help themselves so I am not going to go out of my way.

I am partially Ok with those who choose not to partake... it means more for me. Although I am still saddened by their lack of interest for a couple reasons.
1) The lack of initiative many times translates into other areas of their life... like work for instance.
2) Some seem to actually have a fear of travelling, not the flying but going someplace new, risk of putting themselves in a situation that they might have to expand their mind to deal with another culture.

I think the second reason is the saddest.

That girlfriend has the right idea. On occasion, I also do hotel-hopping. She could easily turn into a FT convert. As with the other posters, there are many out there that would rather read only the first page of the book. My relatives DO NOT travel and could care less. I signed up my niece for her first flight and dumped thousands of additional miles in her account without her knowledge. I could access her account online and one day saw most of the miles gone. Can you imagine my disappointment when she told me she cashed in for a bunch of magazine subscriptions because she didn't see a need for those accumlated miles?

Borrowing from Stephen Covey, if our relatives and friends are at our wake, let them speak well of the world traveler that lies before them, not of the greedy, obsessed collector of miles and points. Keeping quiet may decide which camp you are in.

-outoftown

Are the nunneries still open? :)

He's back ... and he's still blind!
 

My friend, who I described in this thread, is back again, and he's staying at the same Quality Inn as me.

So, inasmuch as he collects AA miles ("I've got a credit card!"), I suggested the following: Choice hotels is currently running a triple miles program. You don't have to join up, you don't need to get another credit card, just tell them at the front desk to credit your account to AA. Easy money. By the end of April you'll have another 6000 miles or so.

So he said, "Nah."

So I gave up again.

How frustrating. You can't win 'em all.

Why are you still friends with this person?

Mike

He's good to his kids. <shrug>

Hey! There's more to life than miles and points.






Did I just say that? :)

One more comment like that and I'm going to have to report your inappropriate language to the moderators. That's a clear violation of the TOS. :D

Mike

I have merged the old thread with the update, to improve housekeeping.

We must keep our of miles in the closet.:p

Aren't we missing the obvious here?
 

You seem to be missing the obvious. Book the room for two people, add your AA number, and you get the miles! Simple as pie.

I had the same challenges when I ran a Japanese office of a US-based company. Most mid and senior staff would fly to the US once a quarter, and couldn't be bothered to sign up with CO or UA because they just didn't get it. So I had the office manager sign everyone up for both programs and made sure the travel agency had these. Less than a year later, they were all qualifying for Gold or Platinum or 1P left and right, typically finding out about this when they checked in and were given lounge privileges and in one case an OpUp. Now they're enjoying free vacations and the other perks we all take for granted.

Sometimes you have to force people to help themselves :-)

*GASP!*
Please do not ever again say something like that ! I am too young to have a heart attack.

That's what I say. I'm always willing to help a person who wants knowledge, but people that put up a fuss a and think it's too much work or too complicated for them I just leave be.

This person is sick.

The woman who cuts my hair (she's not a "stylist") only travels 3-4 times a year to visit her grandchildren to stay at a motel near their home that has a pool and waterslide that the kids like. I told her to sign up for any airline or hotel program she could, and she whipped out her Choice credit card and told me how wonderful it was and how many free nights she'd earned and that I should get one right away. She really gets it even though her travel is extremely limited.

We live in a blind world
 

You know what? Most people out there are blind. And I guess those of use who know how to work the system just see the mitigating waste and shake our head. However, if everyone played the system like we did, you'd never be able to redeem a reward, since the plane would be full of mileage runners.