October has been a busy week here with some great travel stories – here’s a recap of what you may have missed from Points With a Crew in October
As always, if you’ve enjoyed some of these posts, you can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or sign up for our our once-daily email
Featured stories
Last weekend was the Family Travel for Real Life (#FT4RL) conference. I live-blogged the entire conference in case you missed it
We had presentations on maximizing low-level hotel destinations, maximizing earning your points through manufactured spending and reselling
Also presentations on travel hacking Disney, family destinations in Asia, and getting the most out of your miles
Here’s what you missed if you weren’t able to attend – look for the next #FT4RL conference in spring
eBay can be a good way to buy good deals to resell, manufacture spending and otherwise meet minimum spend on credit cards.
Last week they send me (and several other people) an email claiming we were in violation of their “site interference” policy
Of course, then they can’t seem to make up their minds about what they want me to do?!!?
IHG Point Breaks are one of the best travel deals out there
Every few months, they release a list of hotels that are bookable for only 5000 points / night.
The IHG PointBreaks list for November 2015, December 2015 and January 2016 was just released! Here’s a map and sortable table of the 180 IHG PointBreaks hotels
There was a mega fare sale by British Airways where you could get a transatlantic BUSINESS CLASS fare for as low as $266 out of pocket
It’s dead now (it lasted the good part of a day), but if you missed the deal, here are 4 steps to get you ready for the next great deal
Later in the month, British Airways announced the end of the 4500 Avios short-haul flight (one of the best travel deals out there!)
So are Avios now “worthless”? Or just “worth less”? Now if I can just get BA to refund my 50,000 Avios…
Earlier this year, the government announced the introduction of the Every Kid in a Park program
EKIAP said that families with a 4th grader would get free entry into all National Parks
That sounded great… until I found the “loophole” where certain parks aren’t free at all!
Citibank and American Airlines have a great program where you can get reduced mileage awards
There are currently 62 airports that you can fly from to get a roundtrip ticket for only 17,500 miles!
AND you then get a 10% rebate on those miles, making one-ways only 7,875 miles each!
Here are the rest of this month’s stories:
Family Travel
- When we were in Europe last month, 2 hotels charged us a hotel city tax of several Euros – is this a legitimate expense, or a hotel extortion attempt?
- Submitting an EU261 compensation claim for a delayed or cancelled flight
- If you’re traveling from Rome Airport to the city center, you have a few different options
- Back in September, I broke the Internet by suggesting that in an airplane emergency, I was going to TAKE my bags with me. After reading some of the comments, suggestions and flames, I decided to revisit my actions in case of an emergency.
- I booked a one way car rental for only $7.99 / day! Of course, if that’s not a good enough deal for you – you might try some FREE one way car rentals!
- There’s some blatant hidden city ticketing going on at Southwest right now!
- I need one more stay to complete my IHG Accelerate promotion – what would you do?
- How I saved my friend 37% on airfare (but could have done more)
- Dollar Rent-a-Car DCA…. Blech
CC license via Flickr
Miles, Points and Credit cards
- You’ve started seeing them more and more – but what are the new chip and PIN credit cards all about?
- 12,500 Southwest or 15,000 Amtrak points for switching energy providers
- One of the great perks of the American Express Platinum® card is free roadside assistance – find out how to use it
- 300 free La Quinta points in about 10 seconds
- There’s a new way to get Hilton Gold status (the best mid-tier hotel status out there!)
- Making sense of United’s mixed cabin award partner prices
- October also saw the end of debit card loads at Target – which was bad timing given the introduction of $500 Visa and Mastercard cards at Office Max!
- How opening a new BoA checking account TOTALLY screwed me!
- Marriott Rewards changes (but it’s not bad?!?)
- 12 free GoGo in-flight wifi passes with the US Bank FlexPerks Visa card
News and Notes
- 150,000 bonus mile analysis, the worst decisions on a cruise, and annoying airplane habits
- Well at least I’ve never lost a kid in a foreign country…
- Single women taxi trouble, hilarious hotel requests, inaugural flights, selfie sticks, and a new beta program
- Might there be a new longest flight in the world?
- Reselling tutorial, hiking with kids, the Island Hopper, #familytravel and more
- The best cities to take kids, what your credit card junk mail says about you, and more
- Road tripping in the “age of Instagram” (barf!) and other great travel news
This site is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as thepointsguy.com. This may impact how and where links appear on this site. Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers and that compensation may impact on how and where card products appear on the site. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own, and have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by my advertising partners and I do not include all card companies, or all available card offers. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers and other offers and benefits listed on this page. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more. Other links on this page may also pay me a commission - as always, thanks for your support if you use them
User Generated Content Disclosure: Points With a Crew encourages constructive discussions, comments, and questions. Responses are not provided by or commissioned by any bank advertisers. These responses have not been reviewed, approved, or endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the responsibility of the bank advertiser to respond to comments.
Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Recent Comments