From Miles to Smiles Stylish travel for professionals seeking luxury at affordable prices
AVIOS half year update 2017
Well it’s time to share the results of my hard work travel hacking. I have been adopting a slightly more diversified strategy this year as I have so many airmiles, I cannot accumulate the companion vouchers quickly enough to use them. Why pay double when I can get a two for the price of one right?
So here is what my travel hacking efforts have produced in the way of rewards.
Hotels
| Hotel | Points | Qualifying nights | Notes |
| IHG | 78,237 | 11 | Redeemed four reward nights |
| Hilton | 1870 | 0 | Redeemed two reward nights |
| Marriott | 7950 | 5 | |
| Accor | 271 | 1 | |
| SPG | 14,941 | 1 | Mainly achieved through credit card sign up bonus and spend – one free reward night |
| Total |
Well, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that my allegiance is firmly focussed on IHG this year. I have discovered their Accelerate offers and am finding these to be not only fun (sorry, I am a geek at heart!) but very lucrative. Plus, their beds are so much comfier than the Hilton’s beds!
I have also dabbled with SPG and really like the design of some of their properties, but there are only a few options in the UK. It is possible however to transfer these points to Marriott although i may go check out the Abode in Liverpool before giving up the SPG ghost!
Airmiles
So how have we been doing on the airmile front? Well it is not too shabby for a UK hacker, as this tally of our points earned in 2017 shows.
| Spend type | Avios | Lufthansa |
| Agoda | 530 | |
| AVIOS | 4758 | |
| British Airways | 2000 | |
| Credit card | 78616 | |
| IHG | 1203 | |
| Referral | 9000 | |
| Shell | 90 | |
| Tesco | 11760 | |
| Top Cashback | 17407 | |
| Credit card | 4,142 | |
| Grand Total | 125,364 | 4,142 |
So between my husband and I, we have earned 129,506 so far this year. That is 125,364 into British Airways and 4,142 into Lufthansa. This is not quite on a par with the 332,000 airmiles I earned last year but then again, I wasn’t racking up credit card sign up awards for hotels last year.
Our best earnings options
As you can see our earnings come mainly from credit cards, Tesco and Top Cashback. If you have not already checked out credit cards which can bag you free travel, you are missing a trick!
If you want to learn all the tips and tricks I use to build up these reward points, then check out the From Miles To Smiles 14 Week Guide or simply sign up to my weekly newsletter.
Redeeming points
We’ve been pretty busy putting them to good use too, booking reward flights to Albania, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.
I was pretty excited when I used a bunch of miles to book First Class flights to Abu Dhabi with British Airways, (no worries about paying for drinks in First!) and First class flights on to Qatar to see a fellow MBA pal. My excitement was short-lived as only two weeks later the feud in the Middle East blew up. Who knows if we will get there.
This could be you…
So why not? If I can organise myself to earn this number of points, even in the very stingy travel hacking universe that is the UK, then so can you! I have earned enough points for a full week in fab hotels and am not far off earning enough to fly long-haul business class to China.
I would love to know how you travel hackers are getting on of course. Perhaps you have some great ideas for how to earn yet more points that I am not considering. Well, don’t be shy, feel free to have your say in the comments.
This surely looks like some great travel hack! can’t believe you actually secured a hotel like that with all the points! I’m yet to jump into this miles thing, and your strategies convince me well!
Nice breakdown. Great way to get miles and points for stuff.
We earn points on our credit card that is linked to an airline and manage to get a couple of free domestic flights a year, which is really handy. We haven’t earnt anything huge enough to take us overseas though (which is hard from Australia, I’m guessing?). We are members of IHG, so maybe we should look into using them more and actually earning some decent rewards! Thanks for the inspiration!
Those stories of people earning miles, etc always seems awesome to me and yet I have never thought of trying. Maybe I should think about that.
Wow, that is so impressive and now I’m going to go look at what I’ve done this year and see how I can earn more points/miles. I love being able to travel for free when I have enough of either one!
I love the IHG program too! They have so many properties around the world that it’s super simple to earn and redeem.
Impressive numbers for just half a year! I’m terrible at travel hacking and it’s definitely something I should be doing more of.
I’ve met a number of people who do this, sadly I don’t check this enough but now I am trying to do just that. I mean come on, that would be really good. THanks for the tips.
Wow, you’ve earned quite a lot of miles in half a year! I’m impressed! Must admit we rarely pay much attention to miles when booking flights or hotels, but definitely should do it more often. Thanks for sharing your post!