The past few days, I’ve received tonnes of queries about how to travel in luxury, on a budget. While I’ve written extensively about this subject for about 8 years now, I thought I could put down some tips for everyone to know how they could get started with flying in business class or more, at prices next to nothing.
The power lies in the art of using airline and hotel loyalty programmes to collect miles and points, which you can later use for redeeming towards free flights or hotel stays. When I mean free, it is not exactly Zero, but the amount is significantly lower, because you still have to pay the convenience charges, fuel surcharges if any, and some taxes for the air ticket.
The first step to this journey is to start engaging with loyalty programmes. A lot of people still ignore this simple step, which if done religiously, could change a lot for them. For instance, I was travelling on Jet Airways a couple of weeks back and the co-passenger in the next seat did not have a JetPrivilege number on their boarding pass. Given they had an expensive ticket for this route, they could have easily earned 900 JPMiles for this flight.
Signing up for loyalty programmes is free of cost. It allows the airline or hotel chain to award you notional points every time you use their services. For airlines, you can book from any source and still earn those miles, but for hotel bookings, hotels insist you can only earn if you book with a corporate travel agent such as International Travel House or Carlson WagonLit, or you book directly with the hotel chain. Make it a point always to credit your stay to the hotel or airline chain.
In India, you can sign up for JetPrivilege for Jet Airways flights, Flying Returns for Air India or Club Vistara for Vistara flights. SpiceJet Also recently launched a loyalty programme. In terms of hotels, Hyatt, Marriott and Hilton have some of the best hotel programmes out there. The bar to stay in these brands has also dropped a lot over the years. Many of their brands could cost ? 3000 to ? 5000 a night, which is directly competing with the unbranded hotels. Also they have spread themselves across the country. For instance, Marriott is India’s biggest hotel chain, and most of their hotels are not the 5 Stars but more humble hotels such as Four Points and Aloft.
01/02/19 Ajay Awtaney/CNBC TV18
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The power lies in the art of using airline and hotel loyalty programmes to collect miles and points, which you can later use for redeeming towards free flights or hotel stays. When I mean free, it is not exactly Zero, but the amount is significantly lower, because you still have to pay the convenience charges, fuel surcharges if any, and some taxes for the air ticket.
The first step to this journey is to start engaging with loyalty programmes. A lot of people still ignore this simple step, which if done religiously, could change a lot for them. For instance, I was travelling on Jet Airways a couple of weeks back and the co-passenger in the next seat did not have a JetPrivilege number on their boarding pass. Given they had an expensive ticket for this route, they could have easily earned 900 JPMiles for this flight.
Signing up for loyalty programmes is free of cost. It allows the airline or hotel chain to award you notional points every time you use their services. For airlines, you can book from any source and still earn those miles, but for hotel bookings, hotels insist you can only earn if you book with a corporate travel agent such as International Travel House or Carlson WagonLit, or you book directly with the hotel chain. Make it a point always to credit your stay to the hotel or airline chain.
In India, you can sign up for JetPrivilege for Jet Airways flights, Flying Returns for Air India or Club Vistara for Vistara flights. SpiceJet Also recently launched a loyalty programme. In terms of hotels, Hyatt, Marriott and Hilton have some of the best hotel programmes out there. The bar to stay in these brands has also dropped a lot over the years. Many of their brands could cost ? 3000 to ? 5000 a night, which is directly competing with the unbranded hotels. Also they have spread themselves across the country. For instance, Marriott is India’s biggest hotel chain, and most of their hotels are not the 5 Stars but more humble hotels such as Four Points and Aloft.
01/02/19 Ajay Awtaney/CNBC TV18
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