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Swim Meets In St. Petersburg
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Worcester For A Maze
Free JetBlue Flights Again For Jessie’s 2016 Swim Meet And A Savings Of $600
Posted 8/9/2015
Once again we plan to travel to St. Petersburg, Florida for Jessie’s swim meet. Once again, I booked flights on JetBlue using TrueBlue points. The flights I booked were 19,400 TrueBlue points per ticket.
And once again, you may be wondering how I always have so many TrueBlue points to book all of these tickets. Well guess what, I don’t.
When I went to book these flights, I had about 3,000 TrueBlue points in my account and I needed 38,900 (19,400 x 2). To make up the difference, I transfer points to my TrueBlue account from my American Express Membership Rewards account. JetBlue is an American Express Membership Rewards travel partner. However, unfortunately, the transfer ratio is not 1:1. At the time of this post, 250 American Express Membership Rewards points equal 200 TrueBlue points. I transferred 45,000 American Express points to yield me 36,000 JetBlue TrueBlue points.
These flights would have cost about $600. To me, it was worth the 45,000 Membership Rewards points to save $600. (really $573 keep reading). Don’t forget, we easily earn a lot of Amex points because of Rob’s American Express Business Gold Rewards Card.
There was a small federal tax offset fee of $0.0006 per point of $27 that I needed to pay. There is always a fee charged when Membership Rewards points are transferred to a domestic airline frequent flyer program, with a maximum fee of $99. Amex charges this fee to offset the federal excise tax that they must pay on point transfers.
At Hotels, If A Reward Redemption Is Not Available, Try Each Date Separately
Posted 8/9/2015
Much of the inventory that you can book through hotel loyalty programs with points is for standard rooms. It follows, that you can run into a problem when booking with points if standard rooms at the hotel are sold out.
However, don’t be so quickly discouraged when you are looking to book a hotel stay with reward points, and your search results come up as “the room is not available on points. ” It is possible that only one night during your range is not available on points (i.e. because the standard room is sold out) and that is what makes the entire stay unavailable on a given hotel loyalty program website.
Check each night individually online or call up the rewards program and inquire about each night. (Don’t forget, generally I always recommend calling if you can’t get what you want online anyway.) If it turns out just 1 or 2 nights during your stay are unavailable on points, you likely have the option of booking those nights that are available on points and the other nights with $. The phone representative can usually link the bookings so that you are booking just one room. I just did this when I booked my Marriott hotel in St. Petersburg for Jessie’s 2016 swim meet.
You can frequently check back online or via phone to see if those dates open up on points. That is what I plan to do with the St. Pete stay!
Hoping All Four Nights Become Available On Marriott Rewards Points For Jessie’s Swim Meet Next April
Once again, Jessie has a swim meet next year in St. Peterburg, Florida. We always stay at
The Vinoy Renaissance St. Petersburg Resort & Golf Club. (Marriott Rewards Category 7). I just went to book 4 nights for the meet next April and my search came back as the room was unavailable on points. Hmm…I decided to try calling Marriott Rewards instead. What I learned when I called, was that for a standard room on points, 2 of the 4 nights that I wanted were completely sold out and therefore my entire stay online was coming up as unavailable. (Remember, I told you this could happen.) I also learned that the only rooms that were available for the entire stay at the hotel were Bay View rooms. Bay View rooms are not available on points (just standard rooms are).
So right now, I have a Bay View room booked on $. It is expensive, $1600 for the four nights. I also booked the 2 available standard nights with points and plan on frequently (like everyday) checking back to see if those other 2 nights for the standard room become available and therefore bookable on points. I really don’t want to spend $1,600! (Nor do I want to switch rooms during our stay for the 2 free nights). The nights I booked with points cost me 35,000 Marriott Rewards points per night, the redemption rate for a category 7 hotel.
In case you were wondering how I have the Marriott points to even book the 2 nights, don’t forget, I had Rob get the Marriott Rewards Premier Credit Card because of a 70,000 bonus point offer. We also earned a ton of points when we stayed at the Atlantis and because we used our Marriott Rewards card for our stay. Not to mention, I just Got The Chase Marriott Card Again Along With 80,000 Bonus Points! I have plenty of points to book those other 2 nights if they become available. Fingers crossed!
A Last Free Night In Vancouver And A Savings Of About $250
Posted 8/8/2015
As a trade off for our really low redemptions for our Air Canada flights, I booked us a 6:40 am flight home. We will need to be at the airport at about 4:30 am. Ugh! Because our flights are so early and we will not be able to really enjoy the hotel anyway, I wanted a hotel very close to the airport. So, I booked us for that night at the Westin Wall Centre Vancouver airport for 7,000 SPG points for the night. The hotel room would have cost about $250 per night, so I saved $250 using Starpoints. We may very well miss our Vancouver, Four Seasons hotel rooms for this one night, but we will be happy when we can sleep just a tiny bit later because we are so close to the airport!
