Welcome To Traveling For Miles

Welcome To Traveling For Miles

Traveling For Miles is a Miles & Points centric blog that aims to provide travelers with information that will help make travel easier, cheaper and a lot more comfortable than it often is. There’s no great mystery to the Miles & Points world but a working knowledge of how various loyalty programs work, which loyalty programs are offering good promotions/bonuses and how best to grow your Miles & Points balances is essential to anyone wanting to travel in comfort (and sometimes luxury)…and that’s what I hope Traveling For Miles provides.

Who’s Behind TFM?

 It’s always better to know whom you are dealing with when it comes to blogs. So, with that in mind, I’m Ziggy and I own Traveling For Miles. I split my time between the US and the UK, so I get to experience travel and loyalty programs on both sides of the Pond. I hold top-tier status with American Airlines, with Marriott and with Hyatt but, while those statuses do have an effect on my travel patterns, I get to play around with trips involving quite a few other other airlines and hotels as well.

I fly anywhere between 100,000 and 150,000 miles a year and I stay in hotels, resorts and AirBnB accommodation on average 60 nights per year, so I get to try out a good variety of places to stay. I use my own money for all the travel you’ll read about on the blog and any miles & points that I use will have been earned from that travel, or from the tips and tricks that I’ll share on this site.

What You’ll Find On TFM?

• Airline reviews
• Airfare deals
• Hotel reviews
• Trip reports
• Miles & Points offers
• Credit card news
• Travel industry news

So what makes TFM different from other travel blogs?

I like to try out a number of things that you don’t see too often on other travel blogs and produce some content that will be useful to a broad segment of the traveling public. Things like:

• Anatomy of a trip – I’ll set out how much my trips cost to do and, if miles & points were used, how those miles & points were earned in the first place. This should give readers a realistic idea of what trips cost and how promotions can be maximized to keep spend down.
• Economy class reviews – while I’m not about to give up all my business class flights (there’s no way I’d survive 100,000 miles in economy!) – I’ll be doing a number of long-haul flights in economy class to allow me to review the options available there.
• Low Cost Carrier Reviews – I know I can survive a low-cost carrier on a short-haul flight (less than 5 hours) but what about flights that are longer than that? With airlines like WOW and Norwegian now offering long haul options between the US and Europe, just how good are they?
• Ex-Europe flights – a lot of my trips start in the UK, which means I’m at the mercy of the high taxes that are imposed on travelers departing from a UK airport. To get around this I’ll be seeing what it’s like to take ‘positioning flights’ to various European cities before starting my main journey from there. It will be interesting to see if the cost savings are as good as they appear on paper and if they’re worth the extra hassle and travel time.

What Doesn’t Appear On TFM?

• Credit card affiliate links – TFM has no affiliations with any banks or credit card companies. Any mentions of credit card or banking products are in the blog because they add to all of the information being provided. Any links to credit card or banking products are simply there to help readers find the products being discussed.
• Financial advice – hopefully this is obvious but it’s probably worth mentioning. A large percentage of miles & points earned by travelers every year come from financial products like credit cards – so I’ll be mentioning these as good offers become available and when they relate to trips I’ve taken or when I think they explain the miles & points system a bit more. I am not a financial adviser and at no point am I offering the reader advice on ANY of these financial products just as I’m not recommending any financial product for anyone’s personal circumstances. Your finances are your responsibility, so do your research and get expert advice before diving in. For more details please read the disclaimer you’ll find at the foot of every TFM page. 

Advertising

Booking.com, Amazon (US & UK), Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Priority Pass and ExpertFlyer.com are all Traveling For Miles advertising partners and I hope to add more travel-related partners in the future. You’ll find banners with links to TFM partners dotted around the site and I earn a small commission from purchases you make once you’ve clicked though to the partner sites. In addition, I will occasionally add links to partners in blog posts but only when I have tried out the item(s) I’m linking to or when I have a reason to recommend them. All commissions go to covering the overheads of the site.

Lastly

One of the most important things I hope this site manages to do is to help travelers get the most out of whatever trips they take. The whole point of disclosing how much my trips cost, how many miles & points I use and how I earn them is to give readers an idea of what’s possible with a little effort. I don’t churn credit cards (if you don’t know what that is I’ll be explaining it in a future post) and I don’t participate in too many crazy point-earning strategies, so most of the things I discuss should be accessible to a lot of people. Yes, what you can and can’t do will vary depending on your budget, but there’s almost always something you can be doing (for little or no cash outlay) that will improve the trips you take – so why not do it?

I’m always happy to answer as many questions as I can, so use the Comments section below the blog posts to ask (or use the contact form which you’ll find on the menu bar at the top of each page). If there’s anything you’d like to see me cover, or if you see/hear about a good deal you’d like to share then let me know and I’ll look into it.

Enjoy reading!

Z