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How to See the World

Earlier we talked about it we had a whole introduction of travel hacking we talked about some things you can do to take action right away just helping orients people and we had this like big session all about credit cards are big credit cards, you know, throw down with like thirty credit cards here on the table and had lots of questions I know some more questions are still coming, so we'll do that in this session we're going to talk about how to see the world so actually return to your seats. The afternoon session is about to take off we really like that slide we wanted to hi, wait, that was like twenty minutes on that one slide last night how to see the world we're going to talk about elite status we're going to talk about booking round the world tickets we'll show you how to pack like a travel hacker perhaps we'll tell you how to stay in great hotels all over the world and finally we'll have a couple of other special guests we have one special guest in the studio is going to talk abo...

ut family trouble and we're gonna have a special guest two special guests coming in from afar talk about planning their honeymoon travel hacking style so that's going to be fun that's all in this one segment so it's going to be action packed here's our overview becoming elite hotel hacks around the world ticket tricks I forgot to mention that earlier packing for hacking frequently asked questions a few things about visas and logistics that have come up on then as I mentioned the family traveling party on party of two travel so when most people think about elite status are most people would think about frequent flying, they tend to think of elite status they think about becoming platinum or executive platinum or diamond or whatever that you know, whatever that thing is that gives you benefits that allows you to board the plane first that allows you to be on the list for upgrades to check your bag for free if you want to do that if something goes wrong, you know elites are prioritized and that's what most people think about so stephanie I think is going on take the lead on that section and the next one and then I'll be back and forth with her. So I get to talk about elite status at the travel hacker because up until a couple weeks ago I actually did not have any elite status, so the point here is that you can get a lot of elite benefits without actually having to fly a whole lot of miles to get it really elite status you have to get by actually flying on planes, chris flies a lot more than me I think you will remember this slide lounge access is for the savvy status is for the savvy disclaimer I do have a status challenge right now for our elite status on american airlines, which has been really nice but I've had to be really creative in getting some lounge access in the last couple years someone share some of my tricks with you the first one is what we just talked about the entire last session cards for travel um ah couple cards that will get you into airline lounges this is the big one the american express platinum card it actually gives you uh annual membership to priority pass it's about a four hundred dollar value annual fee on this card is crazy it's a four hundred fifty dollars annual fees right however you get a priority pass for a year you get a two hundred dollars am airline credit every year and you also get reimbursed for global entry. So if you are going to travel a lot, it actually pays for itself. Yeah, a little entry for people that might not know little countries the u s program that allows you to have expedited border entry eso if you're coming back from the states and there's this long crazy line for immigration there's also a very, very short line this has global entry and you go over there and you just scan your passport and you're done basically, and you walk through the line it's a fast track process on three other fun thing about global entry, which actually even better than just, you know, the, you know, returning from abroad is it qualifies you for the pre and that is the fast track status that you can use whenever you're flying anywhere, basically any airport that has it which is increasingly being rolled out across the u s so then you go through a fast track security line, you have to take your laptop out of the bag just threw all the bags on. There you go, you take your jacket off, you don't take your shoes off, you go through a metal detector, but it's like a much slower sensitivity, you know, device so that that is the main benefit of global entry for me. That's awesome and ryan s too says global entry rules. I've been seat to curb in ten minutes ago. So tell us again what was the card for the global interconnects pressed platinum? Alright, that gives you a reimbursement for global entry for global interest. I pull out of washington d c the other day and I was wishing that I was pre check, because even in the priority line, I was waiting really long. And then the other sorry again the other card that you had for was that for any prayer last yeah it's not funny lounge it's a network of lounges I don't know how many they have thousands or tens of thousands around the world they're especially good internationally. Most major airports around the world will have a third party lounge that allow his priority past access and then also some domestic us launches as well. This will get you into the alaska airlines lounge, for example, and you don't even have to be flying alaska to use that you could be flying any airline that so that's that's good. I just want to say one other thing about the statement credit because toby and I were talking about that before on the american express platinum so it has this this big ass key foreigner fifty dollars, right? But you get a two hundred dollar statement credit on the airline like stephanie mentioned the way they intend not to be used is for like your checked baggage fee or for your like in flight purchases or stuff like that. In other words, like most people don't actually use the full value of that statement credit over the year it's like a benefit that they offer but most people don't do it but what you can do is you can use that statement credit to purchase gift cards from the airline directly right so you choose an airline you have to choose one and designated each calendar year so I designated my airline partners american in this case with the american express platinum card and then when that statement when they count calendar year rolls around early january I go in purchase two hundred dollars of gift cards from the american airlines website using this card and at two hundred dollars has been credited so it definitely lower is that we think as an advanced half khun verify if this is still true but as you said it's an annual tooth out two hundred dollars credit and when you get the car you get the credit so now if you get it and it's october you'll get the two hundred dollars credit for twenty thirteen and you'll get it for twenty fourteen and two months from now so you could actually get four hundred dollars in credit in the next four months question is global entry something thatyou khun you would have to buy without the card and if so how much does it it always has a fee and it's reimbursed if you use this card to pay for it I forget it's a donut or something like that yeah he always have to tell you but then no one is credited back to other there's actually three other credit cards that are good to get you in the lounge is the chase inc bold and the change in plus cards they are part of a lounge program, and they will get you into a lounge two times in a year city of both cards, it's four lounge passes the mileageplus explorer card, which I actually don't have with me today, that that card will get you to united club passes per year. If you get the us airways card from barclays, that one will get you one past a year and then there's this card, which I used to have the mileage plus explore car, but I traded it for this one because this card the mileage plus club card it has a three hundred ninety five dollars fee, I think. But if you apply for the card in a chase bank, not online there's no annual fee for the first year, and it gives you a year of united club lounge access, which is really nice if you're flying in america and you don't actually have to be flying on united. So I flew through dallas a couple weeks ago at a little extra time took the train over to terminal e going out in the united lounge between my american fight great free wifi free drinks so credit cards can get you into lounges, okay, special promotions will get you into airline lounges. These come and go as well, just like mileage promotions for airlines, but recently there was one from clout that if you had a clout score of above a certain number, you could register for a cloud park and get admirals club path and I did that and used it was great spent a couple hours and one in dallas redemptions can get you into airline lounges. There are two lounges that I know of in the world that have bathtubs. This looks like a sink, but it's, actually a bathtub and how you get into those lounges is by booking award travel on business or first class trips, so even without the status even without status. So, like earlier, when I showed a hundred thousand mileage point mileage balance that I got for us airways where it's like zero miles flown eight hundred thousand, you know from that crazy promotion, you know, I'm no using those miles to both business class, you know, words all over the world, and then I'm treated like one of the airline's best customers, you know, even though I've never plumb you know, with them, even though I don't purchase a lot of travel on star alliance and because I had this points and use it, then I got tax is the first class terminal and all the different lounges around the world, another frequent traveler warning all lounges are not created equal believe this picture is from the pen airline lounge and there's not much there very basic lounge typically offer like quiet seating are nice receding then that would be standard in an airport wireless usually they offer some kind of food or beverage very basic lounges in america will typically offer water maybe some fruit coffee, coffee in some places in america you have to purchase other beverages all the way through basic lounge is outside of the u s there's usually a bar alcohol of some sort usually some kind of small sanders food usually wifi all the way up to super incredibly fancies lounges like the lounge I showed you one of the largest with the bathtub there's isn't hong kong there's a noodle bar there's coffee bar there's espresso bar there's free magazines there's free newspapers there's wifi there's outlets there's everything is pretty so there's no charge for you there it's an experience there's the kind of lounge is that you want to make sure you actually booked a really long layover to enjoy so there's nothing worse than getting to a lounge that has a bathtub in between long flights not being able to take a bath um hacking international status so in america, when you have status on one of the airlines, you actually don't have status teo use a lounge, so for example even if I have status with united airlines on star alliance that doesn't give me permission to use the united club, because in america, it's, a member, its membership based I have to have something like a membership or the credit card to get into the lounge. So even if I'm flying on united, I'm a great, frequent flier, I can't get into ballout, however there's a loophole if you are, if you have status on an international carrier in that same alliance, you can get into lounges in america. So, for example, turkish airlines is part of star alliance, the same alliance that united is in if I have status on turkish airways the same status I could have on united airways. If it's on an international airline like turkish, I'm able to use lounges in america. If I'm flying on a star lines ticket and you can get you can get status on an international airline a couple different ways. One of them is by actually flying by opening an award account and then crediting you're miles to an account. So, for example, aegean airlines, which is based in greece, they have one of the lowest qualifying status levels, I think it's like thirty thousand miles or something for their for their main status, which is equivalent to united airlines, a star gold starlight status so if you credit you're miles to a gin, you can have gold alliance, a gold star alliance status, then you can use the lounges in america where you can do that if you were using united the other way that you can get status is through a status match and it's a little bit like a status challenge, but periodically, airlines will say we want we want to get business from other airlines, so if you have status on another airline and you're willing to fly, our airline will match the status that you have. So turkish airlines just for the last year, I'm not sure if they're actually doing it at the moment, but they had a promotion where you, if you had a high level status on any other airline, you could send a proof of your status and they would match the status so you could automatically get a star alliance status even if you only have ever flown american and it works for different alliances. Sky team there's, a air alina's, argentina's in argentina, they have their sky team and they were matching status for a long time so I could be flying american and but I'm going to fly delta, I don't have any delta status, I could match my status to this other airline and then get the elite benefits of that off that carrier our travel I e make sure you understand these points because because it really is a big thing it's like basically awaiting teo to get something that would take so much more work to qualify you know, if you it's the same flights right you have star alliance flights if you're flying united or us airways or air canada or whatever you know if you're crediting into those programs than the quality kit qualification tears so much higher right? Where is it credit them tio turkish you know in this in this case origin the star alliance also think so then then you can reach that star line school in a much lower barrier of entry and as she said the beginning like you also get the lounge access in the us which you don't get otherwise any questions on that a little bit complicated I was going to ask is there is there a negative there is we just talked about all the positives of doing that are their downsides to having all your miles and points with yeah that's a good point that's a good thing I would say I mean don't you think I would say that negative is maybe it's not so easy always to deal with the d n a or turkish airways or something like that it's always so easy to deal with american airlines either but that was just the person I think I would say I think it depends what your goal is and part of it what I would consider it the award chart of that airline because you would want to be able to redeem those points that you're putting in that airline so if you're putting them in a g n air is it are you? How many points does it take to redeem something on a jian versus united and how are you going to actually be ableto book that ticket and because you would have access to the same flights to book it just might cost you more points, but sometimes it could cost you less for example, we'll talk about this more but there's regional based awards and there's distance based awards, so I was looking at a ticket last year and I had the option to use american miles or guitar miles and I was flying between the middle east and just right middle, middle eastern africa but it was like two countries next door to each other like from jordan to egypt on a on a distance based award chart it's a very small amount of miles that you need to use, however, on a regional based award chart like a lot of the american ones are that you're paying to fly from europe to africa, which is a really big award so there could actually be other benefits when you look at those award charts but it could also be more difficult to redeem your redeem your miles, and I'd also consider what partners the credit cards you have are with those other airlines because you could also, if you if it's an airline that you khun transfer miles too, then you would be ableto use this miles easier to get a reward. I think it also comes down to a question of risk as well. I think we might address in upcoming thing, but you said you said something about what you want to keep, like tons of miles in those accounts, I don't think I would personally, I think the idea of, like, crediting thirty thousand miles or wherever to any of these programs, I would absolutely do what I want to have, like half a million points in one of these programs probably not depends on what I'm doing. I think in this case, like I would be happy to do it to get the status and then use the status, and then I'm done basically, you know, but if it were like a bigger balances, I'd probably want to keep them into bigger programs. The question is just a brief one. Teo was interesting to hear your example of how you can use international airline elite status in the lounge is here. I found through some trip a couple years ago that I could use my star alliance gold status I didn't really even know that existed. It was a little thing on my united card, and when I was flying with tons in europe, it let me get into their lounges even though I wouldn't have been able to do it with united, so it sounds like it's a similar thing, but reverse you can't take that out of the u s and he suddenly is worth more out of the u s than here. Yeah, so when we started earlier today, we're talking about alliances, and the question was like what's, the whole point of alliances and and that's that's probably the biggest point is like if you're in the status and one carrier than it's supposed to be recognised across the alliance and whenever you travel let's get going. Another warning advanced hacking is not for the faint of heart there's always a risk when you purchase in a thousand dollars refundable ticket. Chris is going to tell a couple of stories about this actually all turned out fine and like a catastrophe has just done there's a couple of different things that you know, I told you about the hair loss story it's about the gold coins with stickers you know, there was one time when there was a deal where you could you could whenever you purchased a ticket there was like an upset they came up like after in the process and upset always feel like maximize your miles to, like, boost your miles right? And so normally as we talked about earlier like buying miles is not usually good idea but with some exceptions so like to simplify like the way to purchase the maximized miles was a really good deal you know what? You had to purchase the ticket first so there are a couple things I think I found a ticket first class ticket to israel like departing from like los angeles connecting in philadelphia in london a bunch of other places and it came to like eight thousand dollars or something on it was fully refundable and so I purchased the eight thousand dollars fully refundable ticket and then I received upsell which may allow me to like triple you know, triple the miles that I would receive on the trip or something and I purchased them you know, for a low amount of money I forget exactly what it was but then I refunded ticket because it was totally, you know, refundable, so I guess the risk was I was like, well, it says it's refundable right? But you know, like, is there going to be a problem like what's gonna happen? You know, I'm putting a thousand dollars and mike credit line and and it was totally fine, you know, it was great. It was it was as I expected, but it's like you never know what's like something could go wrong. I think it is important to, like, be aware that a similar story one time I was stuck in an airport without launch access. I think it was in hong kong and I was traveling on airasia budget airline and I was just supposed to be connecting, like, really quickly. But the flight was super super crazy delayed like two hours, four hours, six up to eight hours sitting there and I was like, I don't have any launch access, but meanwhile, like one of the greatest lounges in the world is like, right here, the pacific, you know, england is so frustrating because, like, I love that lounge, but can't going so I'm not traveling, you know, I got the pacific and you can't you can't even just purchase you no access to it. It's on ly for travelers and it was like, I remember buying a refundable ticket. I remember I remember the thing that I had done for the ticket to israel that I didn't use I remember I thought, what if I buy another ticket? What if I go online and buy a refundable ticket from hong kong to somewhere like, who cares where right? And I used the ticket you know, to gain entry to the lounge right? And then I can cancel that ticket later and so that's what I did, I bought tickets, you know? And I went in and like there was a bathtub it was good champagne bar on all that stuff interesting people think is a bad story, but I just thought I'd be honest with you, andi I was able to refund the ticket and I didn't feel too bad about it because I've given cathay pacific a lot of business and I have the highest status in one world, but that was the way that I was able to kind of resolve that situation and have a relaxing experience that's kind of advanced advanced try blocking for you that there's always a risk, but for me I was like totally, you know really worth it where we going from here hotel talking we're gonna move on to our next little fiction about hotel hacking and I love what's, hofer said earlier about wanting to not sleep on the floor in airport we do chris and I both sleep on the floor in airports probably far too often and we should at our age at this point but I think when we talk about hotel hacking and when you talk about traveling on a budget there's a couple different ways that you can look at hotels the first is probably what we think when you think about traveling on a budget and where are you going to sleep this I think was hostile chris stayed in in uganda but bet on a budget you want to sleep somewhere it doesn't matter where you sleep it needs to just be the cheapest possible safe hopefully clean place right? So how do you find those different places? We're going to look at a couple budget hotel tools if that's the kind of accommodation you're looking for and then we're going to look at how you confined nice accommodation as well for cheap priceline dot com we'll talk about this how many of you have used priceline show of hands it's about how it was like almost a whole studio audience beside me I don't like priceline I like you so much so follow up question is and you may not know the answer to this but when you have used priceline have you used the name your own price option or something different have you used it in your own price option okay most of you that's oh no you didn't okay it scares me because I want to know where I'm gonna land okay? So what if you could know what if you know so the whole advantage of priceline is they have all this information that they don't share with you the consumer right and that's why you're taking a risk right? And you're going to save some money but you're taking a risk is you don't know like one you don't know where the hotels are, but the second thing is you don't know how much to bid right? Because it's just like what's your bid, you know, and you're like, I you know, I don't know and they might give you a suggested number, but obviously the suggested numbers probably, you know, something that benefits them because that's their business model so those of you who used the name your own price, how did you know I would love to hear a little story? We have a microphone, but how did you decide what the price should be? Guest tofu and go for anybody have a story about this but there's there's there's something you could do very specific that will help you, but I know a strategy I just low just one of those super low, low price I think I've only succeeded with it once sort of maybe the three times that I tried cool, great so basically you just kind of guessed right that's what most people do so that's their entire business model right? The tyre business model of priceline is they have all the information and you don't write the consumer doesn't, and it still can be a good idea can be a good deal like you may be able to guess something in very fine, but they're a couple of websites out there now one is called booking buddy dot com one is called bidding for travel dot com there's probably some others out there, and if you're going to use priceline and you want to do the name your own price, which I would definitely recommend otherwise, if you just go to priceline it's just kind of an aggregator it's not really going to get a deal if you don't do the name your own price, if you go to these websites, they're essentially forums and the forums are organized geographically based on state or providence country cities. You look at where you're going to stay and then in the forms that will list all of the hotels that have been reported as as priceline hotels and everyone's recent experience in bidding for them so it's like a crowd source tool. So basically what it is, it takes all of the information away from priceline and gives it to you, the consumer. It shares the information at least so that then you have access and you can see exactly what other people have paid and so if you're going if you're going to new york or something and you're like, well, I want to stay in new york but you know it if I if I'm in this region, what property will I get you a look and see what the most common properties you know, according to starr starr level category level and then you'll see what the successful bids have been, so we don't tell you where you're likely to stay and how much you should bid so it will give you the information on two fronts one you may or may not want to pursue it and two if you do pursue it, you know what two bit no disrespect tio and the hotel pool the links for the hotel tools are on travel hacking dot org's creative live just as a reminder another these air two sides both of these are fairly new our people like cannon myself who want to know where we're sleeping might like the sight's better they're very simple, very it's just a very standard search for your area but what I like about both of these two sites is that in addition to being a budget hotel, they give you airline miles in your choice of carrier when you look through them and one of the other things about point town I like I'm always a little bit leery about looking through third parties because I'm always trying if I'm staying at somewhere nice, I want to get the credit for the stay at a hotel so it counts towards my status and a lot of hotel chains won't count the steak credit if you book it through a third party however point town I'm not sure for often, miles says, but point town does give you an option when you're looking at a chain property if you want if you want the state accountant towards your credit usually cost a couple of dollars more but they do have that option hotels dot com standard one that's out there just looking for just generic budget accommodations good for comparison it's good to go in like okay, here's what you know on expedia dot com is another aggregator or online travel agency and one fun thing about expedia is they have ah best best price guarantee on dh so basically if you find the same property later I don't know exactly how it works but they credit to the difference I think they give you like a whole three stay or something so there's a best rate, best price guarantee blawg you can follow I think we have the linkup on travel lacking dot org's slashed creative life and that actually tracks discrepancies so you can look and see, ok, is there actually discrepancy somewhere between the publish rate and you know, something else I can see later? And then you go and book that, and then you received the guarantee, and this is one of my favorites, and maybe for our friend in vietnam was looking for options a goethe it's great when you're traveling around asia pacific, australia, what I like about this is all so pretty a straightforward hotel aggregator, but if you have a membership, you earn credits and then after time you khun reading your credits for free hotel stays so it's great for living in a place where you might not be able to stay in like chain hotels that would give you this types of benefits or if you don't like to stay in chain hotels, there's lots of options to find nicer boutique places, so action item for this one register at point townsend rocket miles, because those are the ones that give you extra airline points. The links for those air travel hacking dot org's great for life, another suggestion and I don't know if you have used this one is better bidding dot com when we're having that conversation with another one of the same kind of priceline we'll see we'll keep looking for questions wait okay, so now if you don't want budget accommodation for cheese cheapest possible and you prefer to have fancy for free, we're goingto look at travel hacking using different methods with some of the major hotel lines is this is a sign from when chris arrived at the sheraton djibouti, but here we have some of the main hotel alliances we've starwood starwood is the west in the w the st regis, sheraton, sheraton, four points, then we have the hilton everything from the conrad and waldorf historia down to the hampton inn, the hyatt grand hyatt park hyatt, hyatt place again, whole gamut of more mid range to high end hotels. Marriott I think they run from the courtyard in the fair failed in all the way up to the jw carlson hotels. Carlson is the radisson family. They're nicer hotels air the radisson blue properties. Kimpton, I think, is almost all boutique, more boutique hotels, but also very family property in the us I g or priority club that's, the intercon and the holiday inn. Um, and then a club or a core called that was actually pretty popular in in europe and in australia. That's you're so patel your best year anyway, so we have these different chains and kind of using the same principle as the airline alliances, you know, they a whole bunch of hotel belong to the same corporation and you can stay at the different hotels and really come up with a strategy in order to get points and to redeem points in these different properties um speaking of status for hotels you can this is an offer a lot of times you have to actually stay to get status or you can use credit cards to get status in hotels every once in a while there'd be a promotion this one is for I g again intercon crowne plaza holiday inn and this is a current this's a current promotion and it is online the link is online in trouble hacking dot org's last creative live and if you complete this first you've to sign up for an account but if you put your number in and you stay at one of any of these properties then you get automatic status until december thirty one until december thirty one I believe this one is a great example of how fast promotions come and go because this wass and offer for status at the core the club hotels however the link is no longer working so yesterday was working it was working yesterday today it's not so things come and go when you see things you have to jump on them you have to jump on them quickly so just thinking about that long list of the hotel properties what you want to do just like the airlines when you want to get miles for the hotel properties, you want to get hotel point and then you can use them for different things action item sign up for a couple status is sometimes hotels offer those status matches as well, so if something comes up and you have a free status in a club that you got because you've registered for account online, you might be able to use that to match it to a status in another hotel property that you stay at. I think chris actually has kimpton status that's a really nice high level status that he got as a match for a status that he already had that maybe from a credit card or something and I had never actually stayed in a hotel when I received the status I received like their highest level of status that you have to stay twenty five times a year and they just competent to me because I asked it and they're really good about that captain has a really fun community as well and in the sense that a lot of these hotels like if you have the highest level of status, especially around the world, like when you check in, they will offer you like a bottle of wine or like a cheese plate or something or maybe extra point, so they have some kind of thing, but you don't really usually get toe like choose what it is it's just whatever they give you rights a gift but kenton has a fun thing where if you have the the the untouched membership like the status, then you can choose anything you want for immunity and that's literally how they describe it like I'm there on your profile it says, what would you like your men it needed to be and you could be like, I want like, talking to cookies and milk, you know, I want like, corn ships, you know, I want like, I don't know whatever you want, so vaccine, my biggest problem has always been to being indecisive because I'm like, I don't know like that's just too broad, like narrow it down for me, so I think most people actually just choose like I want the bottle of wine or I want the free lot or whatever, but you can have anything you want, so this is like, again, this is something that I received just because I had another status, right? I wasn't loyal to kempton even though I think they're a great comic great chain, you know, I just they just gave that to me because I had the status match and just a quick to jump in about status before we talk about actually getting hotel points a lot of the credit cards the hotel co branded credit cards will either offer you automatic status at a gold level, which is usually the second tier level or the offer you credits for nights or stays which helps you get towards that much faster. So example, the starwood cards I believe they offer to state credits and you need ten state credits to get gold status. But if you have these two cards you have this in the business cards and you have four credits without ever even staying at a hotel and that that star would get you for internet it gets you usually a free drink when you check in usually gets you an upgraded room the hilton honors card get you hilton simon status uh sorry building gold status and again free internet breakfast with hilton record yeah um hyatt the same you get their second tier status believe thea their platinum status and you get free internet and the thing is, you know a lot of times and budget hotels you get for internet now. But when you go to these fancy hotels internet cost about twenty dollars today. So it's actually a great benefit and the mileage plus club card also ofyou hyatt uh platinum status and again, you could use these statuses to upgrade it's also easier to move from one level of status to another and kind of like lounges all statuses aren't created equal or all hotels aren't created equal if you have you know platinum status in america and you go to the hilton you might get you know your amenity might be a bag of potato chips. However, if you go with platinum status too a similar type of hotel in asia you might get a bottle of wine so it's very different what you get across the board but that's usually typically related to the property but having status never hurt so actually getting hotel points there's pretty much three ways to get them first of all buy credit card, which you probably imagine and that is usually by using the co branded credit cards that you see as well as some of the flexible reward partners that chris mentioned earlier like the chase preferred card the sapphire preferred card you can transfer points too high it so if you wanted to stay at a hyatt property, you could get high a card or you get the chase sapphire hard um you khun in some places you can get hotel points or stays by by actually redeeming and awards day are using spending money while you're staying at a property on dh then actually staying and paying at the property will get you points if you happen to do that, sometimes we actually do that but there is a principle on that and that is sleep where it's cheap and pay when it's cheap but half when the price is high so example, getting hotel stays if you have a you need a night to qualify fear status for hilton you don't want to pay to stay at the conrad you want to stay it pay to stay at the hampton inn these are this is actually how much it cost tonight sleep at the hampton inn in florida between seventy one in ninety eight dollars right versus another hilton property that might be four hundred six hundred dollars a night. This credit counts the exact same amount it counts as one day chris was talking about his help kimpton amenities that is actually his kimpton amenity. A picture of it, I believe, from a hotel in miami, so using hotel points, you know, just to reward me from all my loyalty to kempton in my zero stays not not too shabby, huh? Using hotel point awards states actually using your points the value of redeeming award is usually based on different levels, so the knights of the hotel is the more points it takes to stay there but actually using redeeming your points, too to stay at a hotel, cashin points chris mentioned earlier it's when you pay part of the hotel room in points and part of it in cash, so for example, to stay at a oh if you stayed at the western in san francisco it would probably cost you twenty thousand starwood points for one night or you could probably pay ten thousand starwood points and one hundred and twenty dollars or something so that stretches your points farther and still gives you discounted rates at really nice hotels and then the other way you can use hotel points if you don't actually want to stay in nice hotels and there's some reason there's places I go where I don't want to stay in a nice hotel I actually want to be a part of the culture of the place where I where I'm in you know and I sometimes when you go to relieve some countries like you get treated differently if you're staying in a nice hotel I'd rather be staying in more of a village hotel so I might use a budget stay option there but if you aren't going to use your hotel points you can transfer them to partners in most cases airline partners and used them for other things so just to go back to our principal this is a place that you pay and this is a place where you stay this is the park hyatt in uh sample and the sweet actually come with its own turkish bath inside of it very nice any questions before you move onto that way actually have some questions I don't have any in the studio audience first do you guys ever on airbnb I don't actually myself I think they're great I think you're being music great company and I often hear from my readers who used to say in different places but I don't personally I have looked on airbnb to stay places I haven't but I do stay with a lot of friends free version of airbnb ru ru fan you're fan of airbnb I've never used it uh and I've just been curious who likes a international travel you know any experiences you haven't experienced it I think you're I think they're great I always hear good experiences I typically seen hostiles I travel alone meet people but I met up with a girlfriend in peru and she's a huge airbnb fan and we stayed with super nice people like local people um you know, we're spain spending twenty dollars night instead of my seven that I was you know but very lovely people the only thing about airbnb is you kind of have to plan ahead a little bit so you make an inquiry and you wait for them to get back but that's the only thing well go out and mention to you one second to mention couch surfing as well catch nothing don't work definitely great resource to stay for free all over the world you know and and I've always heard great stories from friends and readers who have used that so I don't usually do that myself I had a really good luck with airbnb, including person, family vacations and as a way to stay in a place where I could get the whole family in and it's sort of out of the way, especially being out of the country. I kind of like to be out of an american hotel and there's something more local and stay in a local persons place that they went out is a lot of fun. Yep, I also add, I know a lot of my family uses of the r b o vacation rental by owner same concept has a great experience, and we're going to talk a little bit more about that kind of accommodation when we have ah, talk about family travel in one of our next sessions. Um, I'm shaz lake and patricia from oregon, I asked, how do you manage all of your credit cards? And the end these cards for the hotel stays without having slip ups? It must be easy to lose track of them and is asking, do you have a software or any kind of program to manage all of these? Never. I use a very fancy program called a table, and every note there actually is a I'll have to look it up during the break, but there actually is a an app in a program that does manage credit card. Credit card awards have you had to slip up and they were like going probably I'm sure I have time I actually did forget to cancel my mileage plus explorer card this year before it expired and I called them and they it was like the month after and they they rewarded me my my annual fee and I just canceled the car. You know what? We're on the subject of tracking? We should give a shout out to award wallet dot com the word well, it dot com is a great way to track all of your myles and points across many different balances, and you basically register once I think they even have a free option if it's not it's a very low cost option and for the premium version and basically kind of put in earlier information and it tracks all different miles and points balances and you kind of log in whenever you want a log and you'll see like everything all at once and they have some email alerts and they're great people. I think it's a great company, I don't need a warden wallet, but I I also use on my phone I found it really helpful when I'm travelling I just keeping all my frequent flyer numbers in a note on my phone and then when I get up to the desk and I'm flying a crazy airline that I don't normally fly. I'm like, oh, here's, my, you know, it's, a hot number. I need to use this down and it's just in my phone. And I also track. I find it helpful to track all my hotels and my mileage accounts in every note, because very often, when I'm registering for promotions, I can just you have to put your number in all the time. And, you know, you won't be looking for a car door. And so I can just copy and paste it, ever note into whatever promotion I'm registering for.