Triangle Trip

In response to Captain G‘s previous post about the best Visa/Mastercard (or alternative to using an American Express card), I would like to tell you that the Chase Priority Club Mastercard is the only card in my wallet. Like the Chase Sapphire Preferred card (see Terminal D‘s post), it does not have foreign transaction fees.

In addition, the Chase Priority Club Mastercard annual fee is 50% less of the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card. The Chase Priority Club Mastercard annual fee is only $49 a year (first year is free). The $49 annual fee is still less than my old American Express Starwood Preferred card which was $65 a year. The Chase Priority Club Mastercard annual fee can be offset with these benefits:

1.  You get an annual free night at any Priority Club property after one year. The real translation is:  at any Intercontinental Hotel in the world which is normally ~$250 a night.

2.  Platinum Priority Club status. This perk is not as good as SPG Platinum but gives you small perks like free bottles water, free Internet, and the occasional room upgrade. Note that the American Express SPG card gives you Gold membership which is equivalent to Priority Club Platinum.

3.  A 10% discount on point redemptions for hotels which is a huge value (36,000 points for Intercontinental instead of 40,000). You should also check out our previous blog post on why hotel points are worth more than airline miles.

You can also check out my previous post regarding the British Airways and Asiana credit cards.

As Captain G mentioned in his earlier post Starwood currently has a stay 2 stays get 1 weekend night promotion.  There are more reasons to take advantage of this promotion as Starwood is also offering 1000 Delta miles or 1000 Northwest miles with each stay.  The only catch here is that not all Starwood properties are participating in the 1000 Delta/Northwest miles promotion.  Here is a list of the participating Starwood properties.

Also, regarding the Priority Club free weekend nights promotion that I touched upon in my previous post, I recently read the fine print and realized the free weekend nights are in lieu of Priority Club points.  This essentially means you will not be receiving Priority Club points during this promotion period.  More reasons to stay at Starwood instead.

Before July 3rd, I am going to stay at least 10 nights at a Crowne Plaza hotel.  Why you ask?  There are two highly enticing offers that have caused to me switch temporarily from Starwood to Crowne Plaza in particular, especially if you golf:

1) Stay 2 nights at a Priority Club hotel (ie. Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, Intercontinental) and get a free night at Priority Club hotels (ie. Intercontinental). You’ll get a max of 4 free nights.  Here is the link to this offer.  See Captain G’s post regarding this offer.

2) Bonus of 1000 points per NIGHT when you use AMEX to pay for your stay at a Crowne Plaza hotel.  And along the way earn Callaway golf equipment.  You’ll get a sleeve of Callaway Golf Tour iX balls shipped to the address you have on file after the first night.  Each successive Callaway award according to the fine print will be fulfilled in the form of a Callaway Golf Gift Card.  Ten nights will give me the equivalent of a sleeve of Callaway Golf Tour iX balls, another dozen Callaway Golf Tour iX balls, and a Callaway X-Forged Wedge. The rest of the details of the offer are here.