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Around the World in 24 Days: Rolling with the Punches

Buenos dias everyone, I just wanted to share a quick update with you about a few developments on my way to becoming a SAS EuroBonus Millionaire.

A Dramatic Schedule Change

A week ago, I got a phone call and email from Trip.com that my Kenya Airways flight from Bangkok to Guangzhou had been canceled and rescheduled for the next day. Fortunately, I’d carefully planned my itinerary to allow for something to go wrong with this particular flight.  Since it was only scheduled to operate 4 days a week, I intentionally booked for a Tuesday knowing that there was a flight on Wednesday, and I gave myself two nights in Guangzhou before my Xiamen flight.

So I just switched my hotel bookings around.  I added a second night at my hotel in Bangkok, canceled my hotel and food tour in Guangzhou, and booked a $13 room near the Guangzhou airport since now I just have a 14 hour overnight layover, so I don’t think it’s worth trying to go into the city.

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Around the World in 24 Days: Preparing for Takeoff

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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3 Buy Miles / Points Promos Ending Soon: JetBlue (125%), Choice Hotels (50%) & Hawaiian Airlines (100%)

Good afternoon everyone, happy Friday! I was working on my Buy Miles & Points Page and found 3 offers that end in the next week.  Always check the math to make sure that buying miles & points makes sense for you.  Do not buy miles & points speculatively unless you have a use in mind.  With that said, here are 3 offers that end soon.

Up first, JetBlue is offering up to a 125% bonus, depending on the number of JetBlue TrueBlue Points you purchase. This offer expires today – November 8.

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My Journey to Redeem Orphaned Caesars Reward Credits with Caesars Racebook App

Good afternoon everyone, I hope you had a great weekend and are excited for Halloween later this week.  For better or worse, I am the kind of person that hates to let airline miles, hotel points, free night certificates, and companion fares expire.  I can now add casino rewards to that list.

Over the last month, I have tried to figure out the “most efficient way” to redeem my 1,816 Caesars Reward Credits (worth ~$18) without going to Las Vegas.  Laura and I were in Las Vegas for Memorial Day Weekend to complete a few casino status matches and watch 2 Cirque Du Soleil shows.  For that trip, I transferred 60,000 Wyndham Rewards Points into 60,000 Caesars Reward Credits and redeemed 58,678 points to cover the $586.78 room charge (read this post).  The remaining 1,816 Caesars Reward Credits were set to expire 6 months later on December 2, 2024.

In this post, I will share the journey I went on to redeem or extend these 1,816 orphaned Caesars Reward Credits along with some helpful tips for anyone in the same situation.

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Theory: Expedia One Key Program Changes Coming in February 2025

Good morning everyone, I hope your weekend is going well.  I wanted to share my theory about upcoming changes to the Expedia One Key program, but I wanted to preface this post with the fact that I don’t have any information other than the email I received last night and the upcoming changes to the terms and conditions page.  Please take this post with a grain of salt.

I received this boring looking email from Expedia on Friday night after 11pm PT with the super boring subject line “We’re changing our terms.”  I almost deleted the email a few seconds after opening it, but thought I would take a minute to read the email and see what terms were changing.  The email says, “we’re changing our One Key™ terms and conditions. In relation to section 10 ‘Changes to these Terms and Conditions’, we’ll be updating the notification period from 90 days to a period of reasonable notice.”  I always get suspicious when concrete numbers change to an abstract “reasonable” term.  Everyone’s interpretation of what is reasonable is different.  I clicked the link in the email and went further down the rabbit hole.

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