TripIt Blog » Amy Jackson

7 Surprising Ways to Earn and Use Reward Points

Amy Jackson — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:35:18 +0000

Just when you think you’ve exhausted all the ways to earn and redeem reward points, there are more avenues to explore. And in many cases, you can collect perks for things you’re already doing. This was the focus of our recent Twitter chat on January 31, where @LandLopers, @ThePointsGuy, @RoadWarriorette and @EarthXplorer hosted a lively Twitter discussion about earning and using points in 2013. Here are some highlights:

Spend strategically – Use one miles-earning credit card for all purchases. This was the #1 recommendation during the Twitter chat.
Go shopping –United MileagePlus Shopping and Delta SkyMiles Shopping give you a portal to shop on popular sites like Macys.com and earn points for each purchase.
Go out to eat – Several major airlines and hotels participate in dining reward programs, so you can earn miles when you nosh at participating restaurants.
Join a wine club – Alaska Airlines serves up bonus points when you sign up for Vinesse.com, an online wine club.
Skip housekeeping – The Starwood "Make a Green Choice" program rewards bonus SPG points for opting out of housekeeping during your stay.
Go somewhere new – There’s nothing to lose if you’re using points to pay for a vacation. Try a destination you’ve always been curious about, but didn’t want to pay out of pocket for.
Travel like royalty – One of my personal favorites is to use United MileagePlus miles to stay at 5-star hotels. Another chat participant said she finally took the vacation of a lifetime to Hawaii for her 10^th anniversary using points.

What tips would you add to the list? Join us for our next Twitter chat using hashtag #TripItChat on Wednesday, Feb. 27 at 11a PT/2p ET, and follow @TripIt on Twitter for other helpful travel tips.

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3 Tips for Getting Online While Traveling Internationally

Amy Jackson — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:19:34 +0000

By Gary Arndt, Everything Everywhere If you are a traveler in the 21st century you are probably going to need to get online frequently during your travels.
I have been traveling around the world non-stop for the last five and a half years. During that time I've traveled to over 100 countries and have gone online in almost every single one of them.
Whether you are a road warrior, a backpacker or on a family vacation, odds are that you will be in need of internet access at some point. Here are three tips that will help you in your quest for connectivity.
1) Get A Boingo Account I've been using Boingo since I kept seeing it pop up as an option for getting online when I was in Japan in 2007. Since then I've used Boingo to get online in dozens of countries around the world. With a Boingo account you can log on to over 500,000 hotspots around the world. Many telecommunications companies and municipal wifi spots around the world use Boingo as one of their login options.
You can be standing on most street corners in cities like Bangkok, London or Zurich and be able to use wifi with your Boingo account.
They offer an array of account options depending on how you will be traveling. They include cheap options for traveling within the United States and options that will let you log on anywhere in the world.
It isn't quite as ubiquitous as 3G, but it is the next best thing and much cheaper for international travel.
2) Frequent Cheaper Hotels One of the counterintuitive realities of travel is that the more you pay for a hotel room, the more you end up paying for internet and usually the worse it is. Lower cost hotels, motels and hostels will usually provide you with free internet.
I've found the best internet connections to be at business hotels like Four Points Sheraton, Hotel Indigo, and Ibis in Europe.
There are some higher end hotels which will provide free internet if you are a member of their loyalty programs. Kimpton and Fairmont will provide free internet for their program members, and membership is free. Hilton provides free internet to Gold level members of their program as well.
3) Buy an Unlocked Phone If you need something more than wifi, then you will have to use a local 3G network. If you use data roaming from your home provider, you run the risk of a data bill which will run into the thousands of dollars. International data roaming is by far the most expensive bandwidth in the world.
The way around this is to get an unlocked smartphone. Some providers will unlock your phone if you ask and some will not, in which case you will have to buy a separate device.
Once your phone is unlocked you can usually buy a local sim card which will give you a local phone number and data account.
Make sure that your phone is a GSM phone, which is the mobile system used throughout most of the world. Verizon and Sprint in the US use a CDMA network which is not compatible with other networks. (Note: the iPhone 4S and up are dual band phones which can work on both networks).
Likewise, GSM iPads are unlocked by design and it is easy to get new sim cards in new countries you visit.
For more tips from Gary, follow @everywheretrip on Twitter. Check out his travel plans on TripIt.

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TripIt’s Fall Line-up: iPad App and TripIt Pro Alerts Makeover

Amy Jackson — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 10:22:16 +0000

With fall quickly approaching, it’s a good time to turn over a new leaf. TripIt has exciting updates for the iPad app and good news for TripIt Pro members…
So fresh and so clean: The latest update to the TripIt app for iPad makes it easier than ever to see upcoming trip plans in one place. The new design features the same welcome dashboard, “What’s Next” reminder and enhanced trip maps available on TripIt for iPhone, which received a design refresh of its own.

Never miss a beat: TripIt Pro members with an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Android phone can now receive push notifications! We’ve also added an alerts center to the iPad app, so you can browse a list of recent notifications. Both options are a good alternative when Wifi is available, but data access is not, i.e. planes and international travel.

Now available as push notifications, in-app alerts, text messages, emails or TripIt.com messages, TripIt Pro alerts include:

Check-in reminder 24 hours in advance
Departure summary and gate changes shortly before the trip begins
Cancellations and delays, with alternate flight options that have open seats
Arrival and connection summaries to help make the transfer or airport pick-up go smoothly
Alerts if the price of the airfare goes down, with instructions on how to claim a refund or credit

The latest TripIt app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch is now available for download at www.itunes.com/appstore, and for Android at https://market.android.com.
Check it out and let us know what you think!

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Favorite Apps of an Invention Hunter

Amy Jackson — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Recently, I sat down with Steve Greenberg, author of Gadget Nation and host of the new kitchen gadget discovery show "Invention Hunters," which premieres tonight at 9/8c on the Food Network.

"Road warrior" does not do justice for the amount of time Steve spends on the road. And while he relies on TripIt Pro to keep him in one piece (while earning hundreds of dollars back on airfare), Steve turns to a handful of other apps to keep him entertained and informed while conquering planes, trains and automobiles.

Here are some of Steve's go-to apps while traveling:

TED Talks – Not technically an app, but TED's prolific speakers can be viewed in airplane mode by downloading each episode from iTunes. Prepare to be inspired.
TV Food Maps – Want to dine like a pro? Sync your TripIt account, and the app will find nearby restaurants where hosts from the Food Network and the Travel Channel have ventured. If Anthony Bourdain likes it, I abide.
Roamz – Now that you're fed, here's an easy way to find something to do in the neighborhood. The app aggregates photos and content from social networks to help you navigate the town like a local.
2CamShoot – Here's a great way to share a video message with loved ones while spotting something noteworthy during your travels. This app allows you to simultaneously shoot video from both forward and rear-facing cameras.
Trulia – Have you fallen in love with the destination enough to make it your second home? Or, are you simply a fantasy real estate shopper? Trulia will keep it real, by showing you nearby listings.

What apps do you use while in flight, or after you land? We'd love to hear from you.

Also, see more from Steve Greenberg on Facebook, Twitter and his blog.

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New Android App Brings Interactive Trip Maps to Tablets

Amy Jackson — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:47:30 +0000

The latest version of TripIt's Android app is now available in the Marketplace.

Are you a tablet-toting traveler? You'll notice a slick new design that makes it easy to explore your trip plans using interactive maps while keeping an eye on all your trip details at-a-glance.

If you're a TripIt Pro user, you can now access all your reward points in one place on any Android tablet.

No tablet? No worries. The update also brings new widgets to Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich smartphones.

Check it out, and let us know what you think.

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Get TripIt Pro and Sync Your Calendar On-the-Go

Amy Jackson — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:00:00 +0000

So let’s say you’re leaving on a trip tomorrow. Before you run off to the airport (maybe you’re still in your pajamas), you can instantly upgrade to TripIt Pro right from your iPhone or iPad, and be kept in the know if there’s a change with your flight.

Better yet, let’s say you finally booked tickets for Cabo next month. TripIt Pro will keep an eye out to see if the price drops, and notify you immediately to claim your refund or credit.

Or maybe you’ve been meaning to put all your trip plans in your calendar, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. Now you can subscribe to your TripIt calendar feed right on your iPhone or iPad.

The newest version of TripIt for iPhone and iPad makes it easy to do all of this on-the-go. Plus, a new travel dashboard greets you on the home screen, with the following options:

What’s Next: preview the next trip or activity, or click through to view the trip itinerary
Trips: access all travel itineraries in one place, including shared trips
Network: keep track of friends’ trip plans, including “Who’s Close,” TripIt groups and network updates, and “Inner Circle” for Pro users
Points (TripIt Pro only): get a heads up on reward points nearing expiration on the home screen, or click through to access all accounts, point balances, progress towards the next status level, year-to-date and recent activity

Check it out on the App Store and let us know what you think!

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TripIt.com Gets “iPadified” with New Map View

Amy Jackson — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:00:00 +0000

By Aaron Friedman, Product Manager at TripIt

We're always looking for new, smarter ways to organize all your travel plans in one place, and bring minute-by-minute details of your trip to your fingertips.

But we realize that sometimes the "where" matters more than the "when" – especially when you're in a new place.

Inspired by TripIt’s iPad app, the new itinerary map view let's you interact with your entire trip geographically. You can get the "lay of the land" and quickly create directions between your activities.

To explore the itinerary map, open an upcoming trip on tripit.com and click the "Map" button.

PS – Did you know there are lots of cool, unique things you can only do on tripit.com? Here's a quick list:

Total trip cost: see how much was spent on air, car and hotel reservations at-a-glance
Weather: itineraries automatically include historical averages for each day of the trip
Calendar sync: subscribe to a calendar feed of all trip plans or download one trip’s calendar file
Group trip planning: add travelers to an itinerary with the ability to add or edit trip plans
Social networks: share trip plans automatically on Facebook, LinkedIn, Salesforce Chatter and Yammer
TripIt Groups: access a company calendar to see when and where colleagues are traveling

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Reverse Time Machine: Visualizing a Year Of Travel Data

Amy Jackson — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:00:00 +0000

By Cemre Güngör

Most of the apps on TripIt’s open platform assist you with your upcoming or current trips. However, I discovered a reflective benefit to using TripIt: you create a physical record of where in the world you have been.

So as my final thesis project at NYU's Brooklyn Experimental Media Center, I experimented with visualizing data from TripIt to look back at my own (and other people's) travel history.

I thought creating a physical object would let the data expose itself in very interesting ways.

While I started off with visualizing itineraries on a map, I quickly realized that plotting flights on a map wasn't translating to something that had emotional impact.

So I started looking into what makes trips memorable.

I abandoned the map in favor of an abstract representation that shows each trip in relative locations to home, and depicted their length and purpose.

I built my final object by laser cutting, painting and stacking plates of acrylic.

While it is fun to examine and attractive to look at, for the person it is made for, it functions as a reverse time machine, reminding her of one year of travels.

To get your trip data visualized by Cemre, visit http://cem.re/tripit/.

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Keeping Tabs on Travel: TripIt Now Available on the Samsung GALAXY Tab

Amy Jackson — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:06:48 +0000

Live from CES, TripIt is making its debut on the Samsung GALAXY TAB 10.1 and 7.0 Plus. So no matter what kind of hot new tablet you got for the holidays (or perhaps, pre-holiday splurge?) you can easily organize and view trip plans.

What’s new with Samsung Apps? Itinerary-driven maps and the ability to view multiple layers of travel details – including air, car, hotel and more – all in one place. Here’s more detail:

Trip Details Organized for Flexible Viewing

You can view your itineraries in two layers at all times, which makes it easy to dive into details like confirmation numbers or seat assignments, while maintaining an eye on the full trip schedule. The other option is to view a list of all trips, alongside a single itinerary overview. Also, new with TripIt for Samsung GALAXY Tab devices is the ability to view a list of all trips in landscape or portrait mode.

Enhanced Maps Make it Easy to Navigate Trips Geographically

Now, you can dynamically view and navigate maps, directly from the itinerary. For example, when you select a flight, the airport location will light up on the map, and you can choose to get directions.

We realize you prefer native apps, so we’re excited to add Samsung’s hot new tablets to our growing family of smartphone and tablet apps.

Did you recently join the world of tablets? Let us know how your tablet of choice improves life on the road, in the comments section below.

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5 Billion Miles Traveled with TripIt in 2011

Amy Jackson — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 11:06:47 +0000

There's no place like home for the holidays, but it sure took a long time to get here. Collectively, TripIt users have logged more than 5 billion miles with TripIt in 2011. That's the equivalent of a round trip to Pluto! See the infographic below for more fun facts.

Have you checked to see how many miles you've traveled this year? When you log into TripIt, scroll down to the bottom of the page where it says "full stats" and tweet @TripIt to tell us how far away you've roamed.

Speaking of fives, we're offering $5 off the gift of TripIt Pro for the holidays, to bring peace to the next billions of miles traveled. Grab it before it melts away and let it Pro, let it Pro, let it Pro. Cheers!

Grab the embed code here.

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