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Stack AAdvantage Mile Offers
I’m nearing the end of my loyalty to American Airlines and I’ve been preparing to move over to Delta in a few weeks by going through all of my associated accounts and getting my ducks in a row. Last night I was playing around with the Citi credit card site and found a bonus miles offer for Citi AAdvantage card holders. Specifically, you can earn 4,000 Bonus miles on your first Rocketmiles hotel booking on top of the miles you already earn. All hotel stays booked through Rocket Miles earn 500-10,000 miles per night (with many falling between 2k and 5k). This means you could potentially earn 14k miles on a one night stay. Check out this stay at Wynn that earns 10,000 points for a one night stay.
Related: FoundersCard Offers Free AA Status and Challenge Plus Option to Choose Challenge Dates!
The Citi promo could present an interesting opportunity if you combine the stay with an AA Vacations Bonus Mile offer. Currently there are a several destinations offering 25k- 30K bonus miles per package! I did a quick search to test out my idea and came up with promising results. I covered other deals like this here: A Better Way to Buy AA Miles.
How Would You Book This?
When you book a vacation package you can choose to arrange your own hotel for all but one night of the package- so you can book one night with Rocketmiles and the rest through the vacation package and be eligible for both bonuses. Look for the search option that says “I only need a hotel for part of my trip”. Either way you’re earning a minimum of 30,000 bonus miles. Combine this with the a Rocket Miles earnings and the points you’ll earn from flying, enhanced credit card earning and the 10% discount offered to AA cardholders. There’s also a Simply Miles Offer for an extra 3 miles per dollar on AA Vacation purchases over $3,000. (Ideally the goal here is to spend as little as possible but if you upgrade your flights or get book for more than one person you may get there.)
Read: Mastercards Amazing Travel Booking Portal & Why It’s Better than FHR and LHRC
Stacking Options: Earn Extra Miles for Booking Travel
- Rocket Miles Regular Miles- up to 10,000 Miles
- AA Vacations Bonus Mile Promo- 25,000 Miles
- AA Vacations Standard Miles for each booking- 1,000
- 10% AA Cardholder discount
- Miles earned from flight
- Hyatt point per $1 attributed to airfare portion of vacation package
Also Read: Easily Calculate How Many Miles You’ll Earn for a Flight
Analysis
I value AA miles between 1.5 – 2.2 cents a piece, so an extra 30,000 miles is around $600 in value for me. That 30K doesn’t even include the standard Rocketmiles bonus or the credit card rewards and the 5-10% back in value you earn from flying plus the 2% value from Hyatt Points.
I did a sample search to Mazatlan and found a vacation package for I including the additional hotel booking for about $1050 for 4 nights and estimated that I would earn 35,000 AA Miles and around 600 Hyatt Points, so for me that’s about $700 in value- not a bad deal.