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I have a huge number of Starwood points and need to use them the best way possible. Ideas?

rickandcindy23

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I was thinking of transferring to Marriott, but it's no longer a quick way to a companion pass with SW. We have the CP this year and next, and I wish there was another way to get the CP when ours expires. Oh well.

Anyway, I may just let them build even more, but right now there are just under 200K points to transfer somewhere. These are my manufactured spend points, 100% of these points are from buying Simon Visa Gift Cards and getting MO's at WM, then depositing to our credit union. They aren't cheap to build, $8.90 per thousand points + .70 for the money order, but for Europe or Australia, I think they could be very valuable to us.

Also Amtrak is appealing for another trip, maybe the Cascades route? We did the Denver-San Francisco and really enjoyed it. We stayed at Suites at Fisherman's Wharf, then went right back to Denver after five nights.

Is it tough to get two first class seats to Europe or Australia? What airlines work for getting two of those seats? Forget timeshares for a trip like this.
 

VacationForever

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If you are looking at air tickets only, 200K SPG points will get you 250K for most airlines except United (United exchange is bad - 2:1). I am familiar with Delta for Europe as I have gotten pretty "cheap" DeltaOne reward tickets twice. The point requirements go up the closer it gets to fly date. The cheapest I have found is 140K to 160K for 1 round trip DeltaOne tickets. You can get more Delta skymiles when you sign up to bump your Delta miles and get you over 300K on Delta and maybe top up by buying Delta points to get you a second set of DeltaOne tickets. The other option is to buy SPG points and then transfer over. I don't like American Airlines so I don't pay attention to it. I am not familiar with European airlines. I have tried studying them... Lufthansa seems to have good/low mileage to get business class tickets.

I have not studied Australia too much. Since I am on the West Coast, I had looked at Hawaiian Airlines to get to Australia and New Zealand. I don't remember the mileage rate but they were very high based on my memory. I don't think 200K SPG will get you 2 business class round trip tickets to Australia.
 

rickandcindy23

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We have friends who went to Australia in coach, and they were so uncomfortable. The flight going was not as difficult as the flight coming back because they were excited about going.

I may have to play around with various airlines. There used to be a search engine for checking award seats on multiple airlines at once. I cannot remember what it was called. I keep checking various blogger sites for that site again.

Hawaiian is a good option for us. I have miles built up already. Hawaiian usually gives one seat for the lower points, and then a higher price for the additional seat. Do they use the same planes for Australia? I think I would need a way to really recline for a long trip.
 

VacationForever

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Hawaiian Airlines use their own planes to fly to Australia. We only fly business or first class, unless we are forced into flying Southwest when the latter is the only airliner that flies non-stop to a location and short enough to tolerate it. We are too old to not treat ourselves right. This year we cruised from Florida to Rome, and flew from Rome back to the US on Delta business class (Delta One).

Next year we have 2 international trips - a roundtrip flight to Rome which we have booked on Delta One again. We paid for one way for both of us through the cruise sister company to fly there and used Delta Skymiles to fly back.

The other trip is in Asia, fly into the Singapore, spend several days there, get on a cruise, cruise ends in Hong Kong, spend a few days there and fly back. We are planning on flying on United Polaris (business) when booking opens as they have the most direct routes. United is releasing their new point (expect higher point requirement again) system in Nov 2017 where points are no longer fixed and varies with the ongoing rack rate. Currently it is 175K per person one way to Asia, making it 350K per person. We have enough to use 700K United Airline points for the 2 of us. It then becomes whether we want to use all the points on the trip or do we pay for one way and use miles for the other way.
 

MULTIZ321

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....I may have to play around with various airlines. There used to be a search engine for checking award seats on multiple airlines at once. I cannot remember what it was called. I keep checking various blogger sites for that site again....

Hi Rick & Cindy,

Is this the site you were thinking about? https://travelcodex.com/award-maximizer/

Also see http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com/2016/06/03/websites-use-search-award-availability/

Good Luck,

Richard
 

remowidget

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We went to Australia last year and snagged:

Alaska First Class from Portland Oregon to LA

Qantas Premium Economy from LA to Brisbane. This was as nice as Alaska Air First Class.

Qantas Business Class from Brisbane to Perth. We ended up not using this leg as we decided not to go on a cruise.

It was one way and 110k Alaska points.

Sent from my SM-T580 using Tapatalk
 

remowidget

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We went to Australia last year and snagged:

Alaska First Class from Portland Oregon to LA

Qantas Premium Economy from LA to Brisbane. This was as nice as Alaska Air First Class.

Qantas Business Class from Brisbane to Perth. We ended up not using this leg as we decided not to go on a cruise.

It was one way and 110k Alaska points.

Sent from my SM-T580 using Tapatalk
Oops. That was 110k alaska points for two tickets.

Sent from my SM-T580 using Tapatalk
 

icydog

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Have you thought about using Marriott Hotel and Flight Leisure Packages. You could transfer the SPG points into MRP and get a lovely hotel and miles for first class travel. As a Marriott Owner you can also do a couple of five night Leisure Packages rather than the 7 nights stays listed on the webpage above
 

rickandcindy23

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rickandcindy23

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Wyndham Founder; Disney OKW & SSR; Marriott's Willow Ridge,Shadow Ridge,Grand Chateau;Val Chatelle; Hono Koa OF (3); SBR(LOTS), SDO a few; Grand Palms; WKORV-OF (2),Westin Desert Willow.
Have you thought about using Marriott Hotel and Flight Leisure Packages. You could transfer the SPG points into MRP and get a lovely hotel and miles for first class travel. As a Marriott Owner you can also do a couple of five night Leisure Packages rather than the 7 nights stays listed on the webpage above
Because we have this ridiculous number of timeshares, I haven't used the 5-night package I already have.

Rick wants to transfer a lot of our points to Amtrak. I guess 2019 will be another train trip, probably from San Francisco through The Cascades. It will be fun.
 
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