Points In the Bank



If you are a collector of rewards points or frequent flyer miles then you know the feeling of when those bonus points hit your account. It's a great rush and maybe it reinvigorates you to start collecting more.

 

IHG (Holiday Inn brand) usually offers about 60,000 points if you sign up for their credit card. Right now you get an extra 10,000 points (= 70,000) and then if you were targeted, which I was, you were offered 80,000 points if you spend $2,000 in 3 months. 80,000 was just too good for me to turn down.

 

Now this card has some bonuses that our trusty United card does not. It offers 2x the points for gas, groceries and restaurants and only costs $65 annually. United only offers 2x the points when you book airfare on their website and its $95 annually. For us, since we take a minimum one trip a year the $95 is worth it just to get the priority boarding and free checked bag.

 

Also, I didn't just go and get the IHG card because of the bonus; there is a plan to us those points. We are hoping to take a trip, just the two of us, to Yellowstone National Park sometime next year and there is a Holiday Inn on the outskirts. And we're hoping to take baby girl on her first beach trip to Florida at the end of the summer next year. We will be taking full advantage of these points for these two trips and hopefully we'll have enough by then where it will all be free!

 

 

 

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Hotel Rewards Credit Cards

If you have been a follower on here for a while then you know I LOVE my United MileagePlus credit card (how can you not when you can get tickets for two to Hawaii for $20?!?!) Well… we decided to take the plunge and get a hotel rewards credit card too. We went with the American Express SPG card; they are running a special (until June 30^th) where you can get an extra 10,000 rewards points for a total of 30,000 by spending $5,000 in 6 months…um, we can do that! And it works out that one of their many hotels is where we are going and only 10,000 points a night. So we’ll get 3 free nights! HOLLA! I am hoping this rate is still the same when we are ready to book and the points per night don’t increase.

{SPG Hotel Brands, source}

One of the perks to having this card is that they give you credit towards Elite Status; every year you’ll get credit for 5 nights and 2 stays to boost you closer to the Elite Status mark! Here is the breakdown on how many points will get you a free stay in any of their 1,100 hotel/resorts in over 100 countries.

{Source}

 Category 1: You will need 2,000 Starpoints® for a free weekend night and 3,000 Starpoints for a free night during the week at a Category 1 hotel

Category 2: You will need 3,000 Starpoints® for a free weekend night and 4,000 Starpoints for a free night during the week at a Category 2 hotel

Category 3: You will need 7,000 Starpoints® for a free night at a Category 3 hotel

Category 4: You will need 10,000 Starpoints® for a free night at a Category 4 hotel

Category 5: Depending on the season, you will need between 12,000 or 16,000 Starpoints® for a free night at a Category 5 hotel

Category 6: Depending on the season, you will need between 20,000 or 25,000 Starpoints® for a free night at a Category 6 hotel

Category 7: Depending on the season, you will need 30,000 or 35,000 Starpoints® per night for a free night in a standard room at a Category 7 hotel

Categories 5-7 have A LOT of exceptions and terms with how you’ll need to use your points so make sure you read them all!

If you wish to apply please click here. 

I’m interested to see how this will work with our new hotel points – Do any of you have a hotel rewards credit card? Where do you see the benefits? In the hotel points or airline points?

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Chillin' at the Holiday Inn Paris

We finally arrived back at our hotel around 2pm. When I booked this hotel I mainly picked it because it was close to a lot of things that I wanted to see and do that we wouldn't be getting on our Trafalgar Tour. We also decided that we would splurge for the night and book a room with an Eiffel Tower view. We were okay with spending the money since it was just for one night and who knows when we’ll be back in Paris?! When we checked-in initially I placed my AAA membership card and IHG Rewards card on the counter… I’m pretty sure they both helped us land this room. When we got to our room we realized that not only did we have an Eiffel Tower view but we were in the Executive Suite! OH MY WORD was this room nice! The décor was purple, my favorite color, it had a spa tub and it has its own roof top balcony! I kept thinking that this was too good to be true! Did they make a mistake?

{Holiday Inn Notre Dame}

We took in the views and then took advantage of the spa tub (we needed that after walking about 10 miles!). And we didn't leave the room for the rest of the day! We had plans to go out for dinner but I just didn't want to leave our view, especially since we had paid so much for it. So we decided to just order some room service and enjoy the beautiful weather and our balcony. It was the perfect night to end our time in Paris and in Europe.

{room service}

{view from the bed}

Have you ever been surprised by a free upgrade from a hotel or airline?

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Less than 24 hours in Amsterdam

For those that are new to the blog or missed a post, we took a Trafalgar tour for this trip.

We arrived at our hotel around 2 and decided to wash off all the travel and freshen up before we headed out for our tour of Amsterdam and canal dinner cruise. Once we all boarded the bus we headed out to the city center. BUT! Turns out there was some road closures so our tour was cut a bit short (after arriving home I found out that Euro Vision or something like that was there the same time we were). We were dropped off near the train station and walked to Dam Square. After that the tour director took some of the group to the red light district for the “hidden treasure” we opted not to check it out and just sort of walked around. There was a TON of people around and it just wasn't fun with all the crowds.

{Dam Square}

{Amsterdam Centraal Railway Station}

{The Dancing Ladies, famous for how much each one is leaning}

We went on our canal cruise which served us authentic Dutch food…for a second I thought I was going to have to find a burger but it ended up being good. On The cruise we saw a part of the red light district, the Weeping Tower, and the skinny bridge. Along with other popular bridges. And the cruise brought us right back to the hotel!

We were staying at the Mercure Hotel Amsterdam City; it was located further away from the center but still on the water. We really liked the hotel and it was the only one we had that had a king sized bed! 

We did notice how much they loved French fries with mayonnaise…. Gross!  Get some ketchup!

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9 Travel Companies that are Awesome

When making travel plans one can get overwhelmed. What airline do we take? What hotel should we stay in? Do we need a rental car and if so what company do we go with? See...told you, overwhelming! Well guess what, J.D. Power and Associates can help you out!

J.D. Power and Associates just came out with their list of America's Consumer Champions and nine travel companies made the list. So consider the following when booking your next travel.

{Top: (L) Ritz-Carlton, Lake Tahoe, source (R) JetBlue, source Bottom: Enterprise, source}

Hotels

The Ritz-Carlton

Four Seasons

Homewood Suites

Drury Hotels

Staybridge Suites

Airlines

Southwest

JetBlue

Car Rental companies

Enterprise

National

Have you used any of these companies? 

How was your experience with them? 

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Hotel Living

Good morning! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! We actually did some work on our new house this weekend - we waterproofed part of the fence. We're going to finish it next weekend.

We are about half way through our hotel stay and it hasn't been bad at all. We do get pretty bored on the weekends but we just kind of drive around and check things out in our new area. The hotel itself isn't that bad either. They have HBO and Showtime which is nice since we don't have that normally and they clean your room once a week. And the kitchenette has a full fridge and dishwasher which is SUPER nice! The rooms really do come with everything you need for an extended stay, from laundry basket to can opener, they got it for ya!

Weird stuff: 1) Calling the hotel "home" or "the house" 2) having to call the house we sold "the old house" I think I'll start calling it the Katy House since it was in Katy, TX 3) I feel like I have no clothes!

#CandlewoodSuites #IHGRewards #theSuiteLife #HotelLife

The Suite Life

Well we have been in the hotel for a week now; 7 days down, 34 more days to go! And as of right now I say we have a pretty suite deal (see what I did there :P).

We are staying at a Candlewood Suites off the Beltway near Bush Intercontinental Airport. So far it has not been bad, you can hear the highway and the planes. But I really don't mind the planes, I love watching them take-off. I mean how AMAZING are they?!?!?

We have had a few dramatic instances happen; someone burned a hot pocket down our hall and the fire department showed up. And this morning as we were walking to our car we saw the top of a palm tree had fallen off! It brushed up against someone's car but didn't land on it.

#candlewoodsuits #ihg #travelmiamor #thesuitelife