Category Archives: Trip Reports

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Hard Rock Rewards: Earn a Free Night After 5 Paid Nights

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(Hat Tip to my Hard Rock Rewards insider)

“In response to increased competition in the hospitality space and statistics showing that less than 40% of program members actually accrue points toward redemption, Hard Rock Hotels & Casinos has launched a consumer-friendly and widely competitive Free Night Stay program through Hard Rock Rewards — all without a points system, block dates or complicated terms and conditions.

The winning factor — SIMPLICITY. Please see below for a quick snapshot of the program’s stand-out features:

  • Rewards members who stay five nights at 12 participating Hotels & Casinos by June 5, 2015 will receive a certificate for a free return night, redeemable until December 2015 with no block dates.
  • Five nights to earn the free night do not have to be a consecutive stay and members can spend the night at more than one Hard Rock Hotel to count toward their five nights.”

Hard Rock Rewards Earn Free Night

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Guest Post: How to Make the Most of a Weekend Trip

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The other day, I was tweeting with my friend Josh @ FrugalHack.me and I asked him if he wanted to write a guest post for me.  I have been following Josh’s blog for a few months and I like his writing style and topics (he covers MS strategies and cash back deals).  If you like reading Travel with Grant, you will probably like reading FrugalHack.me as well.  With that said, take it away Josh…

There’s no doubt that my wife and I love weekend trips.  Truthfully, we’d like them to be longer, but we just don’t have the vacation time to use.  So, we just make do with what we have and it works, quite well actually.

These trips aren’t long, hence the “weekend” part, so there really needs to be a game plan in place to make sure the time off is well used.  I don’t want to brag, but now that we’ve taken quite a few of these weekend trips, we’re kind of experts at making the most of them.

Want to learn how to do it?  Of course you do! :)

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Travel Challenge: Could you MS During the Week to Pay for a Weekend Trip?

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Updated at 9:30am PST on 1/31/2015: the winners of the contest have been chosen.  Scroll to the bottom of this post to see who won.

This is an idea that came to me a few weeks ago, but I never gave it much thought until writing my recent tell-all MS posts (Part 1: My Manufactured Spend and Redbird Loading Strategy and Part 2: My Manufactured Spend Strategy with PayPal, Chime, Meetups, Reselling, and More!).  If you assumed the miles, points, or cash back posted right away (rather than when the statement closed), could you MS during the week to pay for a weekend trip?

The Rules

To make things more realistic, let’s ignore credit card sign up bonuses and only focus on using the credit cards and prepaid cards you currently have today.  Timing is everything, so let’s assume today is the first of the month and all your monthly MS limits have been reset (Bluebird, Serve, Redbird, PayPal, etc.).  Your net out of pocket expenses should be $100 or less.

cash

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Complete List of British Airways Avios Routes from the Bay Area (SFO, OAK, and SJC)

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Let me start off by saying that British Airways Avios are awesome.  If you fly short, non-stop flights, British Airways Avios cannot be beat.  I’ve written a few posts about British Airways Avios in the past:

With that said, I have been asked a few times about the current 40% Transfer Bonus to British Airways from American Express Membership Rewards that is ending on January 31.  To me, this is probably the best Membership Reward transfer bonus I have seen in the last 2 years.

MR British Airways 40 Percent Transfer Bonus

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OC Meetup and Bay Area Meetup Dates Set – Can you Join us?

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Good morning everyone, it’s been a while since my last Miles and Points Meetup so I wanted to get something on the schedule.  I am planning a meetup in Orange County and another meetup in the Bay Area.  I will be in Orange County for Super Bowl weekend, so I was hoping to meetup then (same place, same time).

OC Meetup:

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