Most Addictive Game

La Quinta has made a splash in the points/miles world. La Quinta is a hotel chain no one ever talks about. However, now La Quinta is getting major positive press. Why? They have introduced a game to earn free nights and/or points.

Click, Spin & Win is a slots game that can earn you, La Quinta Return Points.

You win points when you get three (3) matching symbols. After matching 3 symbols, you are able to earn more points by answering a trivia question and sharing your win on either Facebook or Twitter.

Important: Share Your Wins on Facebook & Twitter. When they post a win, it includes a link for others to join. When they join under you link, you earn 30,000 tokens.

1,000 tokens = 1 spin

Therefore, 1 referral = 30 spins.

In addition, the number of referrals and tokens you earn moves you up levels. Each level gives you a specific number of daily tokens and bonus spins:

Here is what a Facebook notification looks like:

My recommendation is to add a message encouraging people play. Similarly, change up the twitter message:

You can earn addition tokens for liking La Quinta on Facebook and Twitter:

La Quinta claims that they are giving away 80 free nights each day until January 31st. To win those free nights, you need to match three of the following symbols:

The question you might be asking is Why Play? I am never going to earn enough points for anything. You are wrong, with 31 days left, you have plenty of time to earn. Also, free nights start a 6,000 points:

If free nights are your thing, $25 gift certificates for over 75 different national chains only cost 7,500 points:

Still not your thing, 6,000 points can earn 1,000 miles on countless airlines:

My goal is enough points for 2 nights at the Manhattan La Quinta. Limited Credit Boy raves about doughnuts there...all he talks about is the free doughnuts:

Are you ready to play? Here is my referral link.

Please feel free to post your own referral link in the comments.

Now get in the game. You can't win, if you don't play.
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American Airline's Facebook Promotion

American Airlines has a promotion on Facebook celebrating their new Airbus A321 Transcontinental planes.

American Airlines would like to get 321,000 new "likes." Once they hit that number, they will award 25,000 miles to people who liked them. The teaser is that every minute the promotion is live, 100 gets deducted from the prize pool.

At 11:30 pm Eastern, on 11/18, the prize pool was down to

And they are short by

This is promotion is one that requires the community to come together. The more people that enter, the more prizes that will be offered. My guess is the final prize will be between 2.5 to 3 million miles or 100-120 winners.

As a reminder, go here to enter. Do it quickly and tell others....stop reading this and go here.

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 Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints! Have a question for me? E-mail me at jd@doitforthepoints.com

Six Months and Counting

On our Memorial Day weekend trip last year, an idea was tossed around to start a points’ blog. It was the type of idea friends throw out over beers: let’s start a band, let’s open a bar, let’s start a blog. Normally, those ideas don’t go anywhere.

Our idea to start this blog was headed in the same direction until a dinner in July. JD brought up the idea of starting a blog again. We agreed that the blog would be about best practices of earning and spending points, but also a place to document our travels and exploits. We would write about the trips we take, but more importantly how we earned the miles to pay for the trip.

Now 6 months into this experiment, looking back we have had some success, some failures, but through it all fun has been had. Writing Do It For The Points has been one of the best experience. Not only have we been able to contribute to the community that has given us so much, but it has made us even closer friends.

When we started our little blog we wanted it to be a place that we could talk about our travels, pass along some tips and tricks and throw out crazy ideas we have. We've done most of that so far and we can't wait to do more of it in the future. 

At first we figured that just our moms and a few of our friends would read us, but we have been overwhelmed with all of the support and new readers. You guys and gals are the best and you make this little project so much more fun. We would like to thank our readers for your support.

In the meantime....if you are on Twitter and you don't follow us...come on over, we want to chat with you! We are also launching our new Facebook page today, so if you aren't on Twitter but still want to keep up with us and chat, give us a "like." We also have new e-mail addresses, so if you have any questions, want to meet up in DC or just want to say hi give us a shout! (chris@doitforthepoints.com and jd@doitforthepoints.com). Thank you again and we look for to more friends, more posts and more travel.

PS - Stay tuned for a big 6 month giveaway later this morning!


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Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints! Have a question for us?
E-mail us at chris@doitforthepoints.com or jd@doitforthepoints.com

Upcoming Week & Social Media

With Chris on his trip to London for the next week, I will be in the driver's seat for the blog. Please check back every day, as I will not be putting Twitter notifications about blog posts. Chris is the social media guru of the two of us.

Honestly, I don't get Twitter. I don't have an account and I don't think I am interesting enough to post stuff everyday. Who would want to follow me? However, it seems that social media is becoming a very important part of the "game:"

• Airlines are releasing great fares only via Twitter. 

• Hotels are giving out points for "liking" them on Facebook or linking your accounts.

• Checking in on Facebook or Foursquare earned you 50 points at various travel partners.

• AMEX is constantly offering discounts and statement credits through Facebook and Foursquare

• Currently, you can get 250 points for checking on Foursquare when staying at a Starwood hotel

• Some of the best customer service can be found via twitter

Will you get point rich by doing some of these promotions? No, not really.

Will it help top off your accounts? Yes and open up opportunities to transfer points for promotions.

For example, Delta's New Member Promotion allows you to earn the 500 partner bonus by transferring hotel points into Delta Points. Club Carlson had a promotion in August that if you looked at a picture book, you would earn 100 Club Carlson points. The best part is the promotion last 6 weeks or a possible 4200 points. 2000 Club Carlson points can be transferred into 250 SkyMiles, triggering the 500 partner bonus for a total of 750 SkyMiles.

With hotels and airlines releasing their best promotions via email, tweets, and Facebook, it maybe time for me to join the bandwagon. Bandwagon jumping is not something I normally due, but as a points antic, I feel like I am losing out on points by ignoring the social media aspect.

Again, don't expect twitter posts with updates about the blog from me this week, but maybe shortly, you might see me in the twitter universe.

Happy Tweeting!