Win 50,000 Wyndham Points or a Trip

Wyndham hotels and X-Men have teamed up for a contest.

Enter to win 1 of 2 Grand Prizes of round-trip airfare, 5 nights in a hotel, 2 tickets to the Premiere of X-Men: Days of Future and a $2,500 prepaid credit card. 5 weekly winners will win 50,000 Wyndham points.

Enter here daily until 4/4/14.

Didn't know that there was a new X-Men movie coming out!



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Earning United Miles Through Hotel Stays

If you are traveling on United and earning miles that way there is a good chance that you might be staying at a hotel in the process. Many of the major hotel brands offer earning options for some combination of United miles and their hotel points. United has a page that shows all of the hotel partners that they have that you can earn United miles on. Often they will have specials for specific hotel chains that can be great to use if you are traveling and need a hotel. In my case I stay often at Hilton branded hotels and Hilton has an option to earn both points in their HHonors program as well as miles in an airline program, in my case United.

Hotels

Earn award miles with partners such as Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and many more.

Learn more 

View hotel offers 

There are also ways to transfer hotel points TO airline points, but this is most often not a great value. For example you can transfer SPG points to United, but at a 2:1 ratio which kills all of the transfer value as you automatically loose half of the points you are transferring. But the option is out there if you need to consider it as a way to earn points, just tread carefully, do your research and make sure it's actually a good deal for you.


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Earning My Southwest Companion Pass

In my most credit card churn, see here, I got both the Southwest Personal and Business credit cards. Both cards earn 50,000 miles after spending $2,000 in three months. The reason I got both cards is to get the Southwest's Companion Pass. You can learn all about the Companion Pass on Southwest's website here. In short, the companion pass allows your chosen person to fly with you free on any purchase or free Southwest flight.

One can earn the Southwest Companion Pass by earning 110,000 miles in one calender year. The key term here is "earn." One does not need to earn the miles by flying alone.

Therefore getting the two Southwest Cards puts be almost 95% the way to a companion pass:

50,000 Point Sign-Up Bonus for Personal Card
2,000 Earned by Spending $2,000 on the Personal Card
50,000 Point Sigh-Up Bonus for Business Card
2,000 Earned by Spending $2,000 on the Business Card

So far, I have earned 104,000 Southwest Miles leaving me 6,000 miles short of the Companion Pass. I could spend $6,000 more on either or both cards and be finished, but that will divert my spending ability from other cards that I value more. Therefore, I need to find other ways of earning 6,000 Rapid Reward Miles and quickly.

Here is my plan (so far):

1,000 Filing taxes through TurboTax (Southwest Merchant Portal here)
2,000 eRewards Transfer ($100 eRewards = $2,000 Points)

I have no plan for the last 3,000 Rapid Rewards. Here are some of my ideas:

1) Transfer 5,000 Choice Privilege Points = 1,800 Rapid Reward Points
2) Transfer 5,000 Hyatt Points = 2,400 Rapid Reward Points
3) Sign Up for Southwest Dining Rewards and spend $25 = 300 Rapid Reward Points
4) Stay at a Wyndham Hotel =1,200 Rapid Reward Points

As you can see,there aren't really any cheap slam dunk ideas to get that last 3,000 points. These 3,000 points are very violable. The sooner I earn them the sooner I earn the Companion Pass.

After looking at my options, I might need to just spend the extra $3,000 on the credit cards. Not what I want to do, but what I may need to do.

Am I missing some great way of earning 3,000 Rapid Reward Points asap and cheaply?




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E-mail us at chris@doitforthepoints.com or jd@doitforthepoints.com

Trip Report: Cancun

I've never been a beach person. I grew up in Kansas, so I never had trips to the beach during the summer and I never understood why people would go and just sit on hot sand all day long. That was until Kelsey took me to Cancun for the first time last summer. She had to drag me down the first time, but this year when she asked if I wanted to go back, I couldn't wait to book the trip.

We had previously been to an all-inclusive resort in Cancun and it was amazing. The resort was beautiful, the food delicious and the staff so hospitable. So we knew that we wanted to do the same this time.

The benefits of an all-inclusive is that you don't have to worry about a thing! You can lock your wallet, phone and worries away in the room safe and be on your way. The hotel takes care of everything and you can drink your cares away with a little umbrella and a drink that looks like the sun you're sitting under.

To get to Cancun we wanted to try and find a direct flight from the Washington, D.C. area to avoid a connection and to avoid our experience last time when we had a 6 hour layover in the Spirit Airlines terminal in Ft. Lauderdale. We did our research and discovered that there was a direct flight from BWI to Cancun on AirTran that was just over 3 hours, and it left early enough that we would be on the beach by 2 pm.

What was even better was Kelsey had recently been voluntarily bumped off an AirTran flight and had a voucher for a free roundtrip ticket in Business Class!!!  She also had enough Southwest Rapid Rewards points to get a round-trip ticket for me. Since AirTran and Southwest recently merged, we were able to transfer the award ticket between the programs. I then paid $200 to upgrade to Business Class so we could sit together.

For a hotel, we had recently both purchased 50,000 Wyndham Rewards points as a part of the "Weekly Getaway" promotion for $143 each. We applied those points for three free nights at the all-inclusive Viva Wyndham Maya in Playa del Carmen in a "Garden View Room." We purchased the last night at a rate of $180.

Our trip down went swimmingly. The AirTran "Business Class" was nothing to write home about. It was very nice to get the Premium Access at the airport and in the security line, but the crew aboard the plane couldn't be bothered to do anything. Anytime you asked them for a drink or a snack they did not seem happy to oblige.

We were the first off the plane and one of the first through customs. If you have never been to Cancun you want to make sure you have a ride from the airport taken care of. Your hotel can usually set you up with a transfer for around $70-100. It is important to set something up in advance because as soon as you get out of the doors through the airport you are bombarded by people offering you a ride and claiming they know exactly where you need to go. Some also pretended to be affiliated with the company scheduled to pick us up, even though they did not have a sign with our name on it. Fortunately we knew to avoid these people. We found our driver, and he quickly took us toward Playa del Carmen, which is about a 40 min drive from the Cancun Airport.

We arrived at the resort and our bags were quickly taken and put with the other guests who had just arrived. We went to the check-in desk and were informed that we had been upgraded to an "Ocean View Room." The woman at the front desk assured us, "You're going to like this room!" We got our room key as well as two towel keys to be used to get beach towels for the pool or beach.

The resort is situated in a V formation with a line of rooms on either side. Each room has a balcony with most overlooking the gardens around the resort. When you travel all the way to Cancun, you really want to be able to see the water, so I think we would have been pretty disappointed if we were in one of these rooms. We got lucky, though!

After walking through the resort, we finally got to our room which was at the very end of the building. We opened the door and both said "WHOA" at the same time. The room was amazing. When you walked in there was a king bed and a bathroom with marble counters and a rain head shower. But the real attraction was the two (yes TWO) balconies on either side of the room. The first balcony was smaller and had two lawn chairs that overlooked the pool area and was covered from the sun. The second balcony was much bigger with two deck chairs and a private hot/cold tub that overlooked the ocean. We quickly realized that there were only six rooms like this in the whole resort and felt really really lucky that we would get to enjoy this room for five days.

 

The resort itself was nice. It had three full service bars that would make us whatever drink we wanted, including alcoholic drinks. For dining we could go to the main "all you can eat" buffet style restaurant as much as we wanted and could also visit the pool side snack bar for a quick snack. We also received one reservation at one of the four a la carte restaurants at the resort. This dining policy was a little different than other all-inclusives, which usually let you go to the a la carte restaurants as many times as you want. While we prefer not having a limit, the buffet was okay for us.

The food itself was pretty basic, a mixture of different cuisines with a different "international cuisine" every night. My favorite was the fresh fruit and fruit juice you could get at every meal. I have never had mango juice that tasted like it had just been squeezed. Overall, though, the food didn't live up to the variety and quality of our trip last year.

We spent most of our days lounging around on the balcony and switching from the deck chairs to the hot tub. We also enjoyed the resort's two pools. The main pool has a swim up bar, and the second is an "adults only" pool that also has a bar on site. The only problem was on our second to last day the main pool was closed all afternoon due to an "accident" in the pool and the kids were allowed to swim in the "adults only" pool. But....in that case, what can you really do? :)

We also took a day trip to visit Xel-Ha which as they put it so well on their website is....

"Xel-Ha, one of the amazing attractions in Cancun, Riviera Maya, Mexico, a natural aquarium park considered the largest aquarium in the world, the perfect place to perform activities in Riviera Maya. If you love nature, there is no better place than Xel-Ha to practice snorkeling and water activities like swimming with dolphins, Snuba® (combination of snorkeling and diving) or Sea Trek® (walking under water)."

The trip to Xel-Ha with transportation and all you can eat/drink at the four on-site restaurants was $99 per person for a full day from 9 AM-6 PM adventure. It was one of the highlights of our trip, and we had a great time snorkeling and exploring the huge park. We saw hundreds of fish right in front of us, as well as dolphins and manatees in separate areas and lots of wildlife. I highly recommend it to anyone visiting Rivera Maya!

So...what was our final cost for this trip....

Airfare
2 Business Class Seats on AirTran
Total Cost: $200 for the upgrade to business class 

Hotel
4 Nights at the Viva Wyndham Maya
Total Cost: $180 for the fourth night 

Transfer from the Airport 
$94 for two passengers

Xel-Ha Park 

Total Cost: $198

Total Cost: $672