Look Mom, I’m on the Home Page of Boarding Area and my Chicago FTU Advanced Review

Greetings Boarding Area readers! This week, Travel with Grant will be a featured blogger on the Boarding Area home page (thank you Randy for inviting me to be a Prior2Boarding blogger). If this is your first time reading my blog, this is all you need to know:

• I talk a lot about manufactured spend and have several detailed guides about Bluebird, Serve, and various money saving deals like AMEX Offers, Chime Card, and Staples Easy Rebates.
• I am very disloyal when it comes to airline and hotel “loyalty” programs, but I prefer the term “free agent” instead. I have airline miles in several frequent flyer programs and hotel points in several hotel reward programs.
• I fly economy 95% of the time and will redeem frequent flyer miles if award space is available *and* the cheapest paid ticket is more than I want to pay.
• I believe in “earning and burning,” rather than hoarding miles/points for aspiration international first class flights or $1,000+ hotel rooms. Spending fewer miles/points allows me to travel more often.
• Last but not least, I have 27 credit cards (link) and I am only 24 years old – pretty good credit card to age ratio, right? Credit cards are an amazing tool if used responsibly. To put it bluntly: if you pay interest or late fees on your credit cards, you are subsiding our travel lifestyle/hobby. Please don’t pay interest or late fees!

For those not familiar with FTU (Frequent Traveler University), they are small travel conferences held several times a year in various cities (conveniently located at airport hotels). FTU Advanced travel conferences are much smaller than regular FTU travel conferences (~200 attendees vs. 400+). With such a small group, I saw several familiar faces from previous travel conferences. If you go to travel conferences often, you can form some really good friendships. Forming good friendships is an important part of this hobby, since many travel/MS secrets are shared among close friends.

Due to the Friday morning fire at the Chicago Air Traffic Control Center, getting to Chicago from all over the country was a challenge for many. Luckily, most of the advanced travelers in attendance rose to the occasion and made their way by plane, train, and automobile without significant delay or headache. Luckily for me, my 5pm flight from Orange County, CA (SNA) was not affected, while the three earlier flights were all cancelled. After a short hotel shuttle ride to the Chicago Marriott O’Hare, I checked in and went to bed around midnight.

The FTU Advanced sessions began Saturday morning at 9am, with a light breakfast of hot beverages and small pastries provided in the conference room. The conference was broken up into various sessions lasting around an hour and a half. Most of the time, there were two sessions happening simultaneously in difference conference rooms, so attendees could chose the sessions that interested them the most.

Several of your favorite bloggers spoke at various sessions and were eager to answer any question that was asked. There were many sessions about Manufactured Spending, with Greg (Frequent Miler) sharing his years of wisdom and experience. There were also many award booking sessions led by Ben/Lucky (One Mile at a Time), which are always equally entertaining and enlightening. Last but not least, there were also sessions about obscure travel destinations (Rapid Travel Chai), tips on finding discount hotel rooms & airfare, and many opportunities to interact with others in attendance.

Throughout the conference, raffle tickets were sold to raise funds for a local charity and many people in attendance were hoping to win a travel souvenir. After Sunday’s lunch, the raffle winners were announced, but unfortunately, I was not one of them :(

I am a 5 time FTU attendee (LAX, DC, TPA, SEA, and ORD) and I’m going to FTU Advanced in Virginia/DC (December 5-7) and San Diego (March 6-8). Tickets might be sold out, but check FlyerTalk and MilePoint for people who have tickets that they can no longer use due to schedule issues. Here are my thoughts on FTU Advanced:

• FTU Advanced has better lunches than FTU events.
• FTU Advanced is smaller than FTU conferences, but cost more money to attend.
• FTU Advanced sessions cover more advanced topics and all the attendees seemed more experienced than other FTU conferences.

With that said, I always get questions as to whether the conference is worth the cost. That’s really subjective and depends on what you value more. If you read travel blogs, FlyerTalk, or MilePoint daily, you will probably not learn a whole lot. I don’t have much time to read FlyerTalk or MilePoint, but I am up to date on what is going on in the travel blogosphere. I always learn a few new tricks and pieces of info from the FTU conferences, but I don’t think the cost to attend would be worth it. I mainly go to listen to the speakers, learn from other bloggers, meet other attendees, and share travel secrets and stories. It is hard to put a price on the friendships I have made or the blog readers I have met. You meet the most interesting people at travel conferences and to me, it is always worth it to come – I have never left disappointed. With that said, if FTU or other travel conferences are nearby, I would definitely recommend attending once. What do you have to lose besides a few hundred dollars and a few hours on your weekend?

I hope to see you at Chicago Seminars next month or at a future travel conference. Let me know if you have any questions, have a great day everyone!

P.S. The indoor/outdoor pool at the Chicago Marriott O’Hare was very nice and heated!

P.P.S. I want to thank the 6 of you who joined me for dinner on Saturday night for my Meetup at Giordano’s.  It was great Chicago deep dish pizza!