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Where should I go? Meet the destination checklist
Miles and Points obsessives play a fun game called “chase the fare”. If you’re not familiar, when some crazy low airfare or award ticket deal comes up, you don’t think, you just book…and then figure out what you will do when you get there. It’s why you’ll see bunches of folks on social media going to and from the same random places within a short period of time. To the average traveler, it’s just a weird way to spend your…
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Please help me understand the $4,000 DelMarVa beach week
Greetings from Ocean City, Maryland, where I have been unsuccessfully trying to confront my own biases. Maybe you can help. I’ve covered in detail my disdain for the Mid-Atlantic beach vacation, mostly on the grounds that there are so many other places you can get to for less than the cost of a typical DelMarVa (That’s DELaware, MARyland, VirginiA for those not from here) beach week. I even found a post I wrote in 2012 about it. But I’m here…
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Keep or cancel: Hilton Aspire
Renewal time has come on my Hilton Aspire American Express card, and $550 is a lot of money. I’m of two minds on whether to keep the card and thought I would lay out my pros and cons list here so you can see my thinking process. I’d appreciate your thoughts in the comments as to whether the Hilton Aspire is worth it or not. Whenever an annual fee hits, you should do a cost/benefit analysis before you make that…
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6 travel hacking tips I learned the hard way
It’s been said that one way you get good at something is to fail enough times at it that you learn from your mistakes. Here are six lessons I have learned that I am sharing in the hopes of preventing you from having to learn them the hard way like I did. Reward travel is not free The social media post starring an influencer living it up in a lie-flat airplane seat sipping champagne while bragging about how the flight…
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PSA to Disney influencers: Disney World is a theme park, not a personality trait
This one is gonna get salty. I’ve recently done some Disney content on Fortune that has generated an, ahem, spirited debate on social media. The TL:DR is that I posited that it’s cheaper now for many families to go to Disneyland Paris than it is to Disney World. Tickets to Disneyland Paris are so much cheaper than tickets to the Orlando park that the savings can account for the increased airfare it takes to get to Europe. My friend Leslie…
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Requalification reconsidered
As the year draws to a close, you might find yourself contemplating whether to requalify for airline or hotel elite status. It’s easy to get caught up in the allure of upgrades and lounge access. I made decisions for years that didn’t make sense at the time in the hopes of future perks. I chose flights with connections over non-stops because I wanted the miles to credit toward status, or I stayed in a less convenient location because that’s where…