From Miles to Smiles Stylish travel for professionals seeking luxury at affordable prices
Who doesn’t love to save money on their travels? How about free hotel nights, credit towards private homes and apartments, free taxi rides and extra airmiles or hotel points? If this sounds of interest, then you are in the right place! Today I’m pulling together a range of money saving travel resources to help you on your way.
Accommodation
Airbnb sign up
If you use this link to sign up to Airbnb, you can bag yourself £30 of FREE credit. If you are not already familiar with Airbnb, you will find a huge range of private homes, apartments, chalets and rooms available for rent. I have stayed in Airbnb in Canada and Macedonia and really love the variety of properties, which are often much better value than booking hotels. For families, they offer the flexibility of staying just a few nights, with the convenience of self-catering.
Once you’ve signed up, you will be able to refer other friends and every time one signs up and books a trip, you earn referral credit which you can put towards your next stay.
Saving: minimum £30
SPG
Sign up for the AMEX SPG card and spend £1,000 within just 3 months and you will earn a 11,000 sign up bonus. This is enough to bag yourself a three night stay, entirely FREE, in a category one hotel. You will also earn at least 1 point per £1 spent on the card. Be sure to use this link as it gets you 11,000 points rather than the standard 10,000 points!
Saving: over £200 based on average stay cost of xxx for a category one hotel
Other hotel credit cards
There are a bunch of other hotel reward credit cards that you can sign up for too. I’ve included details for some in this post. If you have a preferred hotel chain, it is worth checking to see if they offer a credit card. Cards come with other benefits, in addition to points. For instance, you may receive fast track access to higher status levels which can save you tons of money in additional benefits. For instance, my Hilton Gold account gives me access to the executive lounge, with complimentary drinks and snacks, free breakfast and a room upgrade. The value of these benefits can easily exceed £50 per night of your stay!
Saving: Every free night earned will likely save you around £100 but the exact amount varies depending on chain and quality.
Travel
Uber
Ok, so we all need to get from the airport to the city, or the train station to our digs. What better way to do it than with a free taxi ride? Sign up for Uber, and enter this code (annes3529ue) for a free ride on me. You can then recommend your friends and bag tons more free rides.
Travel Credit card links
The British Airways Premium Credit card and Amex Gold cards are my favourite for earning tons of air miles. With the former, I can earn a companion voucher, allowing me to fly business class for less than the price of economy. I also earn 1.5 avios for every £1 spent on the card. If you use this link to sign up, you will earn 26,000 points when you spend £3,000 in three months. That is enough for two short haul economy flights in Europe, paying just £35 in taxes each. Alternatively, you can bank those points and take advantage of all these tips and tricks to fly long-haul in style. Be warned, you won’t ever want to fly economy class again though!
The AMEX gold is less generous, at just one mile per £1, but offers much greater flexibility as you can transfer points to a bunch of different airlines’ loyalty programmes. You can even exchange these for hotel nights too. Use the link above to earn 22,000 membership rewards (instead of 20,000) when you spend £2,000 in three months.
Refer a friend
One top tip for American Express credit card holders is to share the love. Let your friends know about the great benefits and you can earn reward points any time someone signs up using your referral link. It’s a win:win as you earn points, and they earn more points than they would if they went direct to the relevant website. This even works if you recommend your spouse!
Saving: I’ve saved literally thousands on business class flights using my companion voucher and airline rewards. In each case, I paid less for Club World to Delhi, Quebec, Tokyo and Seoul, than I would have paid for economy class.
Spend
Curve card
The Curve card allows you to save on your overseas transaction fees. Have you ever noticed all those odd little charges which accompany spending on your credit cards overseas? They soon add up, but this card allows you to charge to a credit card and AVOID these fees. You can see my full review here and if you decide to sign up, be sure to use this code (7BF5Y) for £5 of free credit.
So there you have it, five top ways to save money.
Share your referral links
If any readers have other credit cards than those mentioned, and want to share the link for referrals, please pop them in the comments below. There’s a limit to how many cards I want, so I don’t have referrals for them all but others may have links to earn bumper points. If you do put your links, please be sure to state the country for which it is relevant, and the additional bonus for your ‘friends’ so readers don’t waste time being directed to offers they cannot benefit from.
Go on…sharing is caring. While you are it, feel free to share this post too, and you never know, you may find some bonus points on your statement next month. I love getting those statements!
Great tips on how to save while on the road. Gladly Uber is always giving code here in our country. So if ever you visit Philippines. Let me know 🙂
Everyone loves free travel! I’ve definitely used my Airbnb and Uber codes for free stuff when I signed up. Lots of deals to be had!
These tips are great for anyone! They could really help you save a lot of cash for your trip. Great list- I’m going to use some of these for myself.
HI I already use Airbnb and Uber. The cards, I can’t relate too. But in UK there’s also gett referral so yeah. It’s for transport.
I know about most of these. I actually stopped using Airbnb, because I figured the price is the equivalent of a hotel with cleaning and fees. So, I usually just book a hotel. I use the airmile credit card and all the rest.
I’ll admit I suck at finding good deals when I travel. But as I am about to depart for Canada and get into Calgary at an awkward time, I will be using Uber for the first time. Looks like I’ll save about $15 on a cab ride.
That’s great news. Enjoy your trip to Calgary. Is it about this time of year when the stampede takes place?
Lots of great ways to save money on travel–thanks for sharing! We always love those giant credit card sign on bonuses 🙂 So nice for scoring free rooms, but I like your suggestions on getting discounts for Airbnb, Uber, etc too. Haven’t heard of Curve Card–will have to check that out!
Hi Jenna, just a word of warning with Curve. It is UK based so you may not be eligible if based elsewhere. I suspect there will be similiar options though.
I’m already using Uber and Airbnb. I agree you can get great savings on there, especially when they are pushing their services. Your other tips I can’t use though, since I’m not from the US. Still, it’s a good idea to check my credit cards to see which applies to me. Thanks for the idea!
I’m from the Uk so these tips apply to the UK. Some are universal in the sense that credit cards help with travel hacking globally although the US deals are better than anywhere else
This is such a useful post! I’m a huge fan of SPG… My husband travels bucket loads for work, and even if you don’t get one of their credit cards, if you sign up for their frequent stay program it can still be worth the effort. We get lots of free nights, it’s a great way of “earning back” your stays 🙂
I agree that there are some great ways to save money. We definitely make use of special offers for credit cards and when it comes to collecting airmiles in general. There aren’t so many hotel loyalty options in the UK, but again worth keeping one’s eyes open.
This article should have been labeled < Five Easy Ways To earn this blogger Money On Hotels, Flights and Travel Spend>>
Oh Jack, if only it was that easy to earn money as a blogger! Shame your cycnicism prevents you from seeing the value in the tips and yes I make no bones (disclosures included) about the fact that I earn referral points (as can anyone taking advantage of the tips). After all, there are costs involved in running a blog!!
I commend you for posting and not deleting my comment. It just seemed all your suggestions are common knowledge for Frequent Flyers…
Hi Jack, I think you are probably right for frequent flyers but I have a real mixture of readers, some of whom probably know way more than I about flight hacks, and some who are starting out. Not every post will resonate with everyone but if you have a topic you would love to see covered, please let me know as i should have finished my Masters in a few weeks and plan to put that extra time to work on my blog. Have a great weekend