Continental OnePass to Guest Rewards

[battalion51]

Something occured to me while I was booking myself a hotel room in Tallahassee today for September (for the FSU-UAB game). Is there a minimum number of miles you have to have with Continental in order to transfer those miles to an Amtrak Guest Rewards account? (We all know Airline Miles are more widely given out than Amtrak Guest Rewards points are.) I looked through the archives and saw an earlier topic about transferring in 5,000 mile blocks, but is that the maximum, the minimum, or the fixed number that it always will be?

 

[Amfleet]

5,000 is the minimum, but the next amount you can transfer is 10,000. I don't think there's a maximum, but it just has to be done in blocks of 5,000.

 

[AlanB]

Book yourself a Hilton or one of thier sister chains and you'll get 500 Amtrak GR points for your stay.

Hilton's already been kind enough to boost my GR account by 3,000 points in the last six months. I'll be adding even more over the next few months. Plus they still give me Hilton points too, already got 17,000 or so of their points too.

 

[battalion51]

One problem Alan, it's a football weekend. :lol: About all that was left were Choice Hotels, so I ended up at the Quality Inn on the North Side of Tallahassee.

 

[snake]

OnePass miles to Guest rewards can be a great deal, since the airlines give credit based on miles traveled rather then dollars spent. Often the value of the Guest Rewards points can exceed the actual cost of the air travel.

A $250 cross-country discounted air ticket can easily yield in excess of 5,000 miles that convert to points 1:1

I just cashed in 40,000 points for a trip from Arizona to Glacier National Park that would have cost $3000 for a deluxe sleeper.

Example: I just booked a trip on Continental from Arizona to Raleigh, NC, via Houston and Newark, the cost was $238 for 5,500 flight miles plus 1,000 miles credit for booking online. (I also get bonus mileage due to elite status on the airline, which I'm not including in this example)

The cost of 6,500 miles/points is 3.66¢ per mile/point

The value of the mile/point in the above example is 7.5¢

 

[Guest_amtrak_flyer]

Heres a deal. If you apply for the Continental One Pass Visa card, you get 10,000 miles. The cards 85 bucks, but its a good way to rack up some miles quick, especially if your on the west coast where Amtrak doesnt have that many bonus mile offers. if interested go to Continentals website.