Category Archives: Trip Reports

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Around the World in 24 Days: Preparing for Takeoff

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Buenos dias everyone, I’m getting ready to take off on my 24 day round-the-world trip for the SAS EuroBonus Millionaire promotion so I thought I’d share a few updates on the final planning stages.

Hotels

At this point, I have all of my hotels booked except for the very end of my trip (Taipei, Denver, and Boston). Since many of the destinations I’m traveling to are fairly inexpensive, I ended up doing a lot of cash bookings, but I do have points redemptions with three different hotel programs scattered throughout.

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Around the World in 24 Days: Becoming a SAS EuroBonus Millionaire

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Buenos días everyone! As you may know, a couple of weeks ago Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) announced a new promotion to celebrate their transition from Star Alliance to SkyTeam. For flights between October 8 and December 31, they will give you bonus miles for flying SAS and its new partner airlines, as follows:

  • Fly 5 airlines, get 10,000 bonus miles
  • Fly 10 airlines, get 100,000 bonus miles
  • Fly 15 airlines, get 1,000,000 bonus miles

As soon as this promotion was announced, I started talking with friends and quickly decided I had to do it. There are a couple of important caveats: not all SkyTeam members are eligible (ITA, MEA, and the near-defunct Czech Airlines are not SAS partners), flights have to either earn SAS miles or be booked with SAS miles, and although the promo technically goes until the end of December, they won’t accept retroactive mileage claims filed after December 20th if the flight doesn’t post automatically, and you have to wait 8 days after your flight to submit a claim – so really you want to have all your flights finished by December 12 at the latest.

I needed a couple of tries to get the dates and routing sorted out as I figured out all these pieces, but here’s what I ended up with:

An image from Great Circle Mapper showing Tonei's round-the-world flight path Continue reading →

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My 2 Ascend Hotel Collection Stays in Helsinki and Stockholm using Choice Points

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Good evening everyone.  In late June / early July, Laura and I spent 2 days in Helsinki, Finland, and 3 days in Stockholm, Sweden.  We stayed at 2 Ascend Hotel Collection properties that were bookable with Choice Hotels Points and I wanted to highlight these 2 hotels if you are looking for places to stay in either city.

Up first, we stayed 2 nights at the Hotel F6, Ascend Hotel Collection in Helsinki, Finland.  The hotel is named after the hotel’s address (Fabianinkatu 6).  Unfortunately, the reviews for Ascend Hotel Collection properties on Choice are pretty sparse, but don’t let that scare you.

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Midyear Review: My 2024 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions

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Good morning everyone, happy Friday!  I recently watched a Frequent Miler On The Air Podcast episode on YouTube where Greg and Nick reviewed their 2024 predictions, so I figured it would be fun to review My Overly Ambitious 2024 Airline, Hotel & Credit Card Predictions.  The original predictions are in black, correct predictions are in green, and incorrect predictions are in red.  Without further ado, here are my predictions for 2024:

My 2024 Airline Predictions

  • Alaska Airlines or Southwest Airlines will introduce a “family pooling” benefit for miles or travel credit. – Nope, but Southwest Airlines Wanna Get Away Plus fares do offer Transferable Flight Credit that can be used for other Rapid Rewards members.
  • American Airlines will allow Web Special awards to be changed online (currently, they can only be cancelled). – Nope, not yet, but I haven’t booked any AA Web Special awards recently.
  • British Airways will add another airline (besides Finnair) to the Avios family. – Nope, not yet, Qatar and Finnair were the most recent additions.
  • Delta will change their 15% SkyMiles discount for Delta credit cards holders. – Nope, not yet, I haven’t booked many Delta awards this year.
  • United will allow you to combine multiple travel bank funds and future flight credits for the same reservation. – Nope, not yet, I confirmed this a few days ago when I purchased a United Airlines flight.

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Calling All Readers, Help Me Reach 500 Email Newsletter Subscribers!

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Good afternoon everyone, I hope your weekend is going well.  I am trying to reach 500 email newsletter subscribers and I need your help.  I am currently at 476 subscriber and have added 10 new subscribers in the last 1.5 months.  My newsletter goes out everyday at 4pm PT, but only on days when I have a new blog post (usually 2-3 times per week).  For comparison, I have 4,790 followers on Twitter, 659 followers on Facebook, and 228 followers on Instagram (and I have never posted anything on Instagram).

I really appreciate my long time newsletter subscribers and I hope that I can add a few more subscribers to the team.

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