Tricks

My SPG Best Rate Guarantee Experience

ByDCTA
4 Comments

Many hotel programs offer a Best Rate Guarantee (BRG) program, where the chain will beat any price listed by another online travel agent (subject to a laundry-list of terms and conditions). SPG has recently upped their BRG offer: you can select either a 20% discount on the matched rate, or 2,000 SPG points. Previously, the offer was a 10% discount on the matched rate. Moreover, unlike a number of other BRG programs, with SPG you don’t need to book before you submit a BRG claim. I recently did this, and will explain my experience and provide some tips for when you do it.

Using Google Search to find things they don’t want you to know…

ByDCTA
1 Comment

Online research skills are important. Knowing them helps you in school, in the workplace, and even in the travel hacking game. Although there are many dozens of search tools you should know about, I’m going to focus on just a couple and how you can use them to find promotions and other tricks that the airlines and hotel programs don’t want you to know about. I won’t publish any exact promotion here, however, I know of a couple interesting and hidden promotions going on right now that you can find using these tools.

Sunday Reader Question: How can I save money on passport applications/renewals?

ByDCTA
2 Comments

Our wonderful government has done a lot of good for Canadian travellers. They’ve increased passport application/renewal fees (who doesn’t love paying more for stuff?), reduced consular services (of course I love being independent in a crisis), and through their hostility to other states, created increased visa fees for Canadians. Even though I absolutely love the wonderful things that our wonderful government does for travellers, sometimes it’s nice to save some money.

How to use ExpertFlyer to Search for Award Inventory

ByDCTA
2 Comments

ExpertFlyer is a service that collects proprietary airline data, including award inventory, from a number of airlines and for a subscription fee, will reveal that data to consumers. ExpertFlyer is a unique tool, as they have contracts for data-sharing with airlines, unlike a number of other services which scrape the data from publicly available sources. I find that ExpertFlyer is the most accurate tool to search for award inventory for participating airlines, as it does not show phantom availability which can be a serious problem (looking at you Air France!).

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Possible Mistake: Delta Skymiles Showing Near Unlimited Partner Availability (sometimes)

ByDCTA
16 Comments

One of my part-time jobs is as an award booker. I was recently working on a file using Delta Skymiles, and was facing a number of oddities on the Delta.com website. For example, there was a Virgin Atlantic flight that I wanted. It wasn’t appearing on a normal Delta search, nor was it showing as available to the Delta phone agents. However, if I put my browser into incognito mode, logged out of my Skymiles account, and searched initially using the “flexible” search option, that flight showed up, and showed up as bookable (and booked!)

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Getting Dukoral (Traveller’s Diarrhea Vaccine) Covered by Insurance in Canada

ByDCTA

Unfortunately, many places in the world do not have the cleanest drinking water or sanitary food preparation standards, and traveller's diarrhea can easily ruin your trip. Beyond the mantra of "Boil it, cook it, peel it, or forget it," you can use Dukoral to reduce your risk of traveller's diarrhea.