Frequent Flyer University is over in Los Angeles! A crazy weekend surrounded by a bunch of miles/points obsessed lunatics! We feel so at home being surrounded by lunatics, woohoo!
As a veteran I realized going in that there would not be too many new things to learn. The best part about these conferences is the networking that happens. I managed to learn a few things of course. The best part about the meeting was again connecting with old friends and making new ones, especially ones who you meet in person for the first time after getting to know them online for a long time! The never ending search to uncover who PointsEnvy really is was not successful. We suspect who it is but he is not confessing…We are watching you:-)
I need some time to regroup and gather my thoughts about the whole event. In the meantime, I would like to catch up on a few things…
There is an excellent question asked in the December 2012 issue of Inside Flyer’s Wiseflyer column.
The question is: “It seems like every day, there’s a new travel blogger who explains how they are earning hundreds of thousands of miles per year with credit card signup bonuses. With so many people seemingly taking advantage of these promotions, how long do you think this can last?”.
Wiseflyer (ok, this is Randy right?) has an excellent answer. Some parts I quote here: “You are correct, something does have to change…With the improving economy and availability of credit again, you ‘ll start to see if you haven’t already, signs that these offers which minted six-figure mileage maniacs (there’s a smiley next to the word smiley) are on the decline. From the banks’ perspective, this is a return to more balanced and rational times…Take advantage of these types of signup bonuses while you can and understand that many of these blogs you mention may not be around long, only about 25% percent of them will actually continue with their blogging days, because it’s not much fun to brag about a 15,000-mile credit card bonus that will get you a one-way award ticket to who knows where” [Well, I think the question was answered very thoroughly!]
In the Kiplinger magazine, December :
“In 2009, consumers loaded $28.6 billion onto prepaid cards. By 2015, prepaids will hold $168 billion, estimates consultant Mercator Advisory Group. Prepaid cards used to be considered downscale-mostly for people with poor credit or without access to banks. But a survey conducted by banking consultant Aite Group found that a swath of mainstream consumers-accounting for roughly 7% of U.S. households- are opting out of the traditional banking system. Nearly one-fifth of those consumers-many of them high-earning, well-educated Millenials- said they were likely to swith to a prepaid card”
[Looks like Bluebird will be around for a while…]
BEST OF BLOGS
Milevalue’s Anatomy of an Award: South America, Africa, Europe, and North America in Biz for 100k [Wow, that was beautiful!]
I noticed over the weekend that Loyalty Lobby has broken the news on both Hilton’s change in Elite requirements and Priority Club’s new way of counting points toward Gold and Platinum Elite Levels!
Nice job!
Another mention for Travel Bloggger Buzz from the Texan Giddy for Points. That was a very nice synopsis of FTU! Great meeting you. I think we may be the only bloggers still on Blogger:-)
ODDZ & ENDZ
20 Quotes That Reveal How Mark Cuban Became Everyone’s Favorite Billionaire
Need to catch up with real life now…and we promise we will be back!
Haha Its cause I’m cheap 😀 Great meeting you at #FTU! Until next time!
I’m still on blogger too …. (although as you correctly note, I waver between points and miles topics, on the one hand, and running and fitness related topics, on the other hand [foot?]. The fact is though, that I’m in the points & miles cult, as much as the rest of you lunatics (said lovingly, of course) ….
Sounds like FTU was a blast. Jealous I didn’t go, but I did go to FTU NY, SMD3, SMD4, the Freddies and Chicago Seminars… This weekend, I went to Memphis instead, on a United mistake fare ticket I bought nearly a year ago…
Send me some top deal secrets u learned at FTU please – I promise I won’t blab (I mean blog) about them!
so, did you apply for the Club Carlsson card? which one?
I hope to put together a blog post in the next day. Its difficult sometimes to do everything we all do.
Kathy
http://www.WillRunForMiles.com
@ Elena: Oh yeah, cheap lunatics we all are:-) See you at the next event I am sure.
@Kathy: I did not realize you are still on Blogger too, sorry!
There was nothing earth shattering revealed at the “secrets” session in FTU. Just a lot of certain hotelrelated codes revealed. Knowing these in “secret” was uncomfortable for me….now throwing them out in the open will only lead to…different codes:-) I reemember what happened to the SPGGold code when it was revealed in Chicago Seminar #1, SPGmade it much tougher to give away! Shoot me an email at
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail or msg me in FB if u want more.
I have not applied for the CC cards yet. I have way too many CC points and BofA I am not that thrilled with. I have InkPlus waiting for me to start attacking its min spend now. I see no need to rush into CC, maybe in January.
Yes, this is hard work. It kills me when I hear “You can travel for free”. Unless these people had no marketable skills, there is a great cost of TIME involved. This has NOT been helped with this darn blogging adventure I got myself into:-)
Hope this helps.
G
Glad to see all these idiot bloggers (note I’m not referring to you based on the word before “bloggers”) will spill the whole list of hotel corp codes in “secret sessions” to any old noob that pays them $99 to attend FTU. The bloggers are so pathetically transparent it’s not even funny. If spilling these corp codes had gotten them a couple more affiliate referral CC application clicks, then you can be sure they would have spilled the beans directly on their blogs to anybody and everybody who would listen. But since they get nothing back in terms of referral money for that, they keep these for “secret sessions”. Just like fuel dumps, they get no CC money back for spilling the beans on that, so they don’t do it. But they sure as hell will pump Vanilla Reloads & Bluebird til they are blue in the face so they can get as many Ink Bold/Plus CC referral clicks as possibly. Truly pathetic the motivation/greed of these damn bloggers………..happily killing deals just to pad their pockets.
I do not necessarily disagree with you. Please no name calling, keep it “private”:-)
I could not believe they were proudly giving out the corporate codes and bunch of newbs were writing the numbers down. Just don’t use any more codes of that huge old company in the IT field with 3 letters:-) I do have a problem of them standing up there and telling it is OK to use the codes if you are not employees! And it was like “ok, please do not spread this out online’ BS. Funny how MMS was agreeing to it AND he was doing it too.
Sometimes this space totally drives me up the wall. I did learn ONE thing I did not know in the “secret” session, just one. And fully expect all this code sharing to stop…until we all get new codes, lol. Yeah, fuel dumps were mentioned too. That remains a very esoteric “waytoomuchwork” very geeky stuff, I am way too busy in general and with this blog now to sit down and crank some of them:-)
In the credit card sessions, no blogger voluntarily disclosed they get paid for successful apps, NEVER! Slides with “Thank you Chase” and “Thank you Banks” and all newbs thinking “oh, these guys are so smart flying for free and telling us how to do it too in their blog”…yep, clueless, I talked to a few of them!
I am too busy catching up on everything in my life to sit down and crank out a quality rant:-)
I am definitely not quitting my day job for this gig, LOLOLOLOL