Loyalty
Sign up for all loyalty programs. It does not matter how often you travel. We are not talking about signup for airlines or hotel credit cards to get special introductory miles, but you can. In fact there is an entire sub-culture all about ways to get bonus miles by transferring between this bank or hotel to airline.
What we are saying is everything adds up. If you take a flight, signup and download the airlines app. Sign up for the hotels loyalty program and you may get a room upgrade, a welcome cocktail or free bottled water during your stay. This step can in short enhance your trip and get you free upgrades and even free trips.
You do not have to be loyal to any particular brand or travel much to get great benefits. Just make sure you enter your loyalty number before you travel.
We are members of United, AA, Delta, and several more airline reward programs. We are also members with Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt ….We value price and the timing of the flight or location of the hotel to make our decisions. With this said here is an example of how we used points and miles to book flights for our upcoming trip. We used reward miles from our credit card to book a United flight to Phoenix and used United miles for a seat upgrade. We then booked the return flights on American with just reward miles from American. We then did pay for seat upgrades, but the total cost for both ways for 2 people was $145.
Since most of these airline points do not expire or have a long time before they do, it just makes sense to join. Your miles add up and then one day you decide to check and, well you get an upgrade, or a free flight.
If you are worried with keeping up with all those reward numbers, that is what you have a travel agent for.😎