Preparation: Taking Advantage of Membership

We aren't leaving for another week or so, but we've been preparing for our trip for awhile now. This preparation isn't very time-consuming, but some items have longer lead times than others so we got started early.

One of those longer lead time items is reviewing travel-related memberships to see how to best use them on your trip. Some potentially useful memberships are obvious, such as AAA, and some are not so obvious, like your credit card rewards program.

Chances are you have at least one credit card that gives you points for each dollar you spend. I have a card that has a lot of flexibility on how those points are redeemed - for merchandise, air miles or gift cards. I decided to cash in the points that had been accumulating for gift cards good at different restaurant chains.

Picking out the best cards can be a little intimidating, especially if there are a lot of choices. A little bit of number crunching showed that the best values in my program were the higher denomination cards, so I decided to get $100 gift cards. These are debit cards that deduct the value of each meal until the card is depleted, so I knew I would have no problem using up $100 -- as long as the chain had good coverage in the areas where we would be traveling. So I stuck with large national chains, such as Applebee's and Chili's, but even for these I went to their website to confirm they were in several cities along our route. I was able to lineup $300 of 'free' food in this way. I made my choices online, and the cards were Fedexed to me free of charge within 5 days of placing my order.

Another important type of membership is frequent traveler programs with different hotel chains. These memberships are free and you can sign up online. I belong to several, but my favorite is the Marriott Rewards program. I like Marriott because they have several chains at different price points: Marriott, Residence Inn, Courtyard, Fairfield Inn... We'll be focusing on Fairfield Inns on this trip; they are relatively inexpensive, have free Internet access and continental breakfasts. By consolidating our travel with one reward program, we should be able to get some free nights by the second half of the trip.

You can manage your account online, and the rewards account has a nice trip planner feature that allows you to research towns along your planned route and save hotels that look promising. When you are ready to commit to a stay in a location, you can make the reservation online, including reservations that use reward points.

Another membership tip: if you don't already belong to AAA, sign up now. You can make back your membership fee in a single night's stay, and almost all hotels have special AAA rates. You can also use their trip planning services, but frankly, there are so many free options online now that TripTiks don't justify the membership - the discounts do.

My next post: technology tools you should get before you leave, if you don't already own them...