NickyD

ello,

I have not participated on this board in a few years. Raising children, working on my own business and supporting my wife in her's has limited my travel a great deal in the last few years.

However, my sister (husband, two kids) are living about 20 minutes outside of Rome until next March, and I would like advice on making the most of my MR points on planning a trip to visit them. My kids are 8 and 3, and I have never travelled internationally with them, so any input would be great.

I currently have a little over 77k Starpoints, more than 200k American Express points, 30k miles on Northwest, 30k miles on US Air, and a smattering of other points spread out amongst other airlines. (I think I have like 20k on AA, but I may have used them for something already.)

I have no real airline preference, but US Air and Southwest are the airlines I've been using the most since moving to PHX. I do not believe I currently have any airline status.

What airlines would you suggest? How much lead time to do I need to move points and book award tickets? And, what's the best way to get into Business Class or First Class seating without spending too much in additional money? And, what hotels would you suggest in Rome? (I believe my sister mentioned a Westin or Sheraton near where she lives.)

Thanks for any advice! (and if there might be a better place for me to ask these questions, please direct me to them.)

SanDiego1K

Hi NickyD, and welcome back to the joys of travel. Your questions seem to be focused more on how to get you and your family affordably to Italy, with the Starwood hotel question a secondary concern. I'm going to move your post onward to MilesBuzz, where I hope you'll find what you need.

When you figure out the name of the Starwood property near your sister, come back, do a search and see if we've covered it. Feel free to bump such a thread with specific questions you have - and if there is no such thread, start one.

Here's hoping it all clicks into place and you have a great trip.

SanDiego1K
Starwood Moderator

Kagehitokiri

flatbed
UA PHX-IAD-FRA-FCO

lieflat
AF PHX-XXX-CDG-FCO
LH PHX-XXX-XXX-FCO
LX PHX-XXX-ZRH-FCO
NW PHX-XXX-XXX-FCO*

lieflat?
AZ PHX-XXX-FCO

RT J upgrades possible via amex
AF - 50K
LH - from 56K**
LX - from 56K**
UA - 56K**
AZ - 50K
**upgrade only across atlantic, via NH
*only one you cannot upgrade via amex

Kagehitokiri

only 3 possibilities for that property near your sister >
Sheraton Roma Hotel & Conference Center/4.56 miles/cat 4
Sheraton Golf Parco de' Medici Hotel & Resort, Roma/7.52 miles/cat 3
Four Points by Sheraton Roma West Hotel/8.8 miles/cat 3
(distance from roma/city center)

Sheraton Roma Hotel has a club lounge

cat 3 - 7K (1 nt) / 28K (5 nts) / 2800+$45 (1 nt)
cat 4 - 10K (1 nt) / 40K (5 nts) / 4000+$60 (1 nt)

with 77K SPG you could afford to upgrade, or add 1 nt in roma >
westin - 20K/25K or 8000+$150
st regis / eden - 30K/35K

NickyD

Thanks Kagehitokiri!

Once I figure out how to translate that exactly...

Kagehitokiri

RT J = roundtrip business class

airline/airport codes can be found via FT glossary or google search

altaskier

Frankly, this late in the game it's going to be challenging to find award seats for summer flights to Europe without either being an elite member or using double miles for the award. I don't know about the American Express miles and how you can use them; that's the one pot that's big enough for you to have a chance with for enough seats for a family. But you should probably also look into options for buying tickets too...

szg

Indeed it is very difficult to get award seats to Europe on all airlines. Also it is difficult to find a flight back, because European like now travel to US because of the cheap USD.

sdsearch

First of all, you cannot move miles out of NW, you cannot move miles out of UA, and moving between airlines (even when it's possible) involves a huge loss of value, so it's only worth it when yhou have tons of miles in one airline and only need a handful of miles in another, which isn't your case.

And according to the Mileage Converter tool at WebFlyer, you can't convert AMEX MR points directly to Northwest or US Air either.

Therefore, it seems to me that your NW and US miles are not going to help you here (since neither of them is enough to get you even one trans-atlantic ticket).

Next, 200K miles divided by 4 people is 50k miles per person, which is exactly what it costs for "capacity controlled" economy (coach) tickets US<->Europe on many airlines (though some airliens, such as AA, have 40k off-peak season and 60k peak season). The only way to upgrade to the next class up is by using double the miles, which you don't have (unless you only use miles for 2 people, or unless you convert your Starpoints to miles at the same airline, in which case theoretically one person could get a next-class-up award instead of coach.

I didn't see you specify when you need to get (except well before next March). Consider that you'l be able to buy way chaper tickets for cash in the fall, while (except at a few airlines like AA) the award cost won't go down. (On the other hand, awards may be hard to find at all except in "low" or "shoulder" season!)

Please understand that the awards at these levels (about 50k per person for coach US<->Europe, about 100k per person for Business) are very "capacity controlled", and thus you have to be extremely flexible about dates, and with a party of 4 your quite likely have to split up between different planes (likely on different days!). (It's hard enough to get 1 or 2 award seats on a plane, getting 4 is way harder.)

Meanwhile, there's one very important thing you need to know about European hotels and traveling with 2 children: Many "business" hotels in European cities don't have any rooms that can accomodate 4, or only a few suites that can. So don't assume that you can use whatever Starwood hotel at whatever rate is quoted until you verify that the reward rooms there will accomodate your whole family (because obviously if you need two adjoining rooms you have to pay double the reward rate, and if you need a suite that might be a higher rate).

gretchendz

Call NWA World Vacations and have them cost out a trip both with money and miles.




We did Italy last year, paid for the hotel and air, used miles to upgrade to Business.

We found them easy to work with on some complex travel.

Move what miles you can without much loss of value or use for hotel.

gre

The chances of finding 4 seats in J, whether award or upgrade, are pretty slim. Sorry, but if you want to ride in the front of the plane I suspect you'll have to pay for it.

Personally, I'd check out a package on GoToday, Gate1, or Lastminutetravel. At least one of these sites probably offers a hotel that's in the area of Rome you're looking for.

Kagehitokiri

OP has a whole year. how about less "thats impossible" and more suggestions on what is most likely available / strategies for booking.

MarkXS

Some ideas, not necessarily for the full trip but some strategies that might help.

1. Amex MR points are usable as cash if you book your tickets (or flight + hotel package) at americanexpress.com. Not necessarily a good value, basically 1 cent per mile, so 200,000 points will pay up to $2000.00 of value. You have to book at the Amex site. At checkout you're prompted to log in to Amex (if you haven't already - same login as for paying your bill online) and can designate how many points you want to use as cash.

2. 77,000 SPG Starpoints are good currency for transferring to airlines. Starwood gives you an extra 5000 points into the transfer for every round lot of 20,000 SPG points transferred. So if you could get your SPG balance up to 80,000 points, you could transfer 80,000 points from SPG to NW, and receive 100,000 NW miles into your NW account. That's one business class (if you can find it) on NW, KLM, Delta, Continental, Alitalia, Air France, Czech Air, Aeroflot, or any combination of the above (all partners in Skyteam along with several other airlines.) Not all of them can be booked online - you'd need to call NW when you have time and when they're not busy with weather delays and such as all that. There are lots of possible routings once you start looking at partners.

3. How would you get the extra 3000 starpoints? I usually don't recommend transferring Amex MR points to SPG, because it takes 1000 Amex points for only 333 SPG points. But for "topping off" an account to an award threshold, it's worth it. It would take 9000 of your amex points (which would reduce the points available for spend as cash by $90 of value).

Another way: Amex has a Starwood Preferred Guest credit card, which almost always has a 10,000 point bonus around. Ads are often right here on FT. The bonus, plus spend on that card might easily get you even more SPG points to transfer.

4. Amex points do transfer 1:1 to Delta. As noted in #2 above, Delta is also in Skyteam. You can't combine miles between different Skyteam partners. But you might be able to get the same award, perhaps on Air France or Alitalia, with one ticket from Delta using 100,000 DL miles (transferred from Amex MR) and another on the same flights from NW using 100,000 NW miles (transferred as 80,000 SPG points -> 100,000 NW miles). Delta also often has 15% or 20% bonus promotions when transferring from Amex into Delta.

5. You're probably not going to get everyone over there for free. You probably can get 2 people over there for free, maybe 3. If you have to buy one ticket, make sure it is YOUR ticket you buy, so that you earn the miles/points in your FF account.

6. Do searches on FlyerTalk for KVS Availability Tool, and for ExpertFlyer, both of which are services/tools which for a small fee, provide visibility into award inventory on various airlines. For KVS (which is an application you download), you have to pay $30 for the Platinum level in order to search award availability - well worth it because it also adds several other features. I haven't used ExpertFlyer (I think that's web-based and has a fee), but many FTers swear by that as well. Keep in mind, what Airline B in an alliance thinks that Airline C in that same alliance has available for an award, isn't necessarily what Airline A in that same alliance sees as available from Airline C. It should be but it often isn't. Or you have to suggest each possible routing to the agent because it might be available to them but not pop up automatically on their screen. Delta can probably access Aeroflot flights from the US to Moscow connecting to an Alitalia Moscow to Rome, for example, but they might not have that appear on a JFK-FCO (Rome) request.

Good luck and let us know how it is working out!

CaveatEmpty

As above, the smattering of airline miles won't get you much, but the AMEX offers some strong possibilities.
Realize that AMEX has their own 'travel agency', where you CAN burn those points without converting ~ remember those obnoxious TV ads? Start looking at www.americanexpress.com/travel/.

How it works (roughly): their agency deducts your points & buys the tix according to agreed preferences/schedule. You can typically expect those to be 'normal' tix, earning regular creditable miles on your carrier/alliance of choice.
If you're short on points for the package, they'll gladly charge you the additional (and you earn more points).

Generally, CC points aren't really such a great deal ~ but for what you have to work with in this situation, it's not all bad.

Dial 'em up & see what they have to say, before you start moving points around willy-nilly.
Good Luck
/.

ricosuave

Several years ago, I (mistakenly) thought the first day that reward seats came online was 300 days out, not 330. The phone rep told me "There's no way you will find two reward seats. You're a month late." Where there's a will, there's a way. We were flying to Brazil to see my wife's family. We had planned this trip for three years. I don't fly much for business, and pgary's website is how I earn most of my miles. I don't want to fly first class, I just want to get there by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin.

To get around the problem, I had the rep check every (reasonable) gateway city for two award seats on or around our desired days. I needed to coach her a bit, and gave her some humble suggestions. Nearly sixty minutes later, we had two free seats from JFK down to Sao Paulo (we live in Tampa). I then had 300 days to find a free/cheap flight up to JFK from Tampa. I found a fabulous price (so cheap it wasn't worth cashing in miles for), and they even checked our luggage straight through. I love telling that story - because I "worked" for it. If I could just earn millions of points/miles, where's the adventure in getting first class tickets at the drop of a hat? If you can do that, you can probably afford to buy a ticket with cash. I'm a (nearly) starving musician, doing what I love and feel called to do. But, alas, I also have the travel bug. I work hard for my money, and I expect it to work hard for me as well.

You can do it! It's not impossible!