[iframe style=”border:none” src=”http://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/2310821/height/100/width/400/thumbnail/no/theme/standard” height=”100″ width=”400″ scrolling=”no”]

Introduction:

Rudy Maxa, one of America’s premier consumer travel experts currently hosts the Emmy-award winning “Rudy Maxa’s World” featuring unique travel destinations around the world.

Key Takeaways:

Many things have changed in the world of frequent flyer miles. These days most points come not from travel but by applying for credit cards.

Certain websites, such as www.milevalue.com, help travelers locate and book tickets in a way that lets them get the most out of their miles.

Flightfox: crowdsourcing the best airline deals starting at $24

Seasonal deals can be found by traveling and staying in hotels and resorts on off-days.

Deals on rental cars are available for travelers heading north from Florida following snowbird season.

HotelTonight app allows travelers to search last minute hotel deals in a variety of cities

An overwhelming quantity of information can make traveling seem complicated; remember to enjoy yourself.

Links:

www.maxa.tv

www.rudymaxa.com.

RudyMaxaTravel/Leisure on Facebook.

Free email bulletins & experts who work to get you reward tickets:

www.milevalue.com

www.thepointsguy.com

Bio:

Mr. Maxa is well known as public radio’s “Savvy Traveler” and an award-winning contributing editor with National Geographic Traveler magazine. He is a contributing editor to Delta Air Lines’ SKY magazine and Artful Living, the Twin Cities’ lifestyle magazine. The voice of National Geographic Traveler’s “Walks of a Lifetime” podcasts, he also hosts America’s most widely-syndicated, weekend travel radio show, also called “Rudy Maxa’s World,” that airs on 110+ mostly news/talk stations and XM Radio in North America.

As a writer for Traveler, Mr. Maxa’s articles have earned him two Lowell Thomas Bronze Awards for excellence in travel writing from the Society of American Travel Writers. He has contributed travel articles to GQ, Worth, Forbes, Modern Maturity, USA Today, the Washington Post, Town & Country Travel, the Los Angeles Times as well as USAToday.com, MSNBC.com and ABC.com. He’s a frequent guest on national television networks and shows, including CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and “The View.” And he speaks frequently to both public as well as industry groups.

The most recent topics Mr. Maxa has covered include:
–MileValue.com
–ThePointsGuy.com
–LoyaltyLobby.com
–ITASoftware.com that is now owned by Google
–A la carte pricing for travel through sites that have you identify yourself before you look for a fare quote so they can “customize” what you see an what you are offered depending on their algorithms.

Audio Transcription:

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the JetSetter Show, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. Enjoy and learn from a variety of experts on topics ranging from upscale travel at wholesale prices, to retiring overseas, to global real estate and business opportunities, to tax havens and expatriate opportunities. You’ll get great ideas on unique cultures, causes, and cruise vacations. Whether you’re wealthy or just want to live a wealthy lifestyle, the JetSetter Show is for you. Here’s your host, Jason Hartman.

JASON HARTMAN: Welcome to the JetSetter Show! This is Jason Hartman, your host, where we explore lifestyle-friendly destinations worldwide. I think you’ll enjoy the interview we have for you today, and we will be back with that, in less than 60 seconds, here on the JetSetter Show.

[MUSIC]

ANNOUNCER: Have you listened to the Creating Wealth series? I mean from the beginning. If not, you can go ahead and get book one—that’s shows 1-20—in digital download. These are advanced strategies for wealth creation. For more information, go to www.jasonhartman.com.

[MUSIC]

JASON HARTMAN: It’s my pleasure to welcome Rudy Maxa to the show! He’s one of America’s premier consumer travel experts, and is host and executive producer of Rudy Maxa’s World, the Emmy Award-winning 20-episode public television travel series, featuring destinations as diverse as Korea and Argentina. Rudy, welcome. How are you?

RUDY MAXA: Well, nice to be here with you, Jason. I’m happy to report I’m so old that those 20 episodes are now 91. I think you probably found an old bio online.

JASON HARTMAN: Well. I am looking at an old bio, that’s absolutely true. So, fantastic. Well, I want to talk to you about a bunch of things, Rudy, but you recently just finished a speech talking about the misconceptions so many of us carry around about travel. And we think we know what’s right, and how to do it, and how to beat the system, if you will, but you’ve shown that a lot of people are wrong about that, right?

RUDY MAXA: Well, I think, yeah, I did a speech the other day at the Kansas City Public Library, called Everything You Think You Know About Travel Is Wrong. That’s a slight exaggeration, but as you know, when we do titles of books and speeches sometimes you do that to catch your audience’s attention.

JASON HARTMAN: You gotta make it interesting. Yeah.

RUDY MAXA: But I think that there have been changes, that even frequent travelers haven’t really keyed into yet. For example, for years, I and fellow travelers, flew on airlines, or you know, used credit cards, to charge things to get miles, so we could get free tickets. And so the conventional wisdom these days is, oh, you can’t get any free tickets anymore, all the airlines—the seats are all gone, you can’t get to Europe this summer—well, first of all, the paradigm has shifted. You can fly to get miles, sure. But the way you get miles these days is by applying for credit cards. And then maybe giving them up in six or eight months, and then waiting another six months and applying for more. And there is a—I call them idiot savants lovingly—there’s a cluster of experts on frequent flyer miles and hotel points, that have figured this system out. One of them just the other day applied for five credit cards in one fell swoop, which you know credit agencies don’t even report, because it all comes in at the same time, so nobody else sees it—and he picked up 350,000 miles in one afternoon.

JASON HARTMAN: Wow. Yeah, were they 350,000 miles on one airline? I mean, they couldn’t have been on one airline, because they were different airline cards.

RUDY MAXA: Exactly. Or no, there are, you know, any number of generic cards like the Barclay MasterCard that I just got, that you can apply American Express membership points. All of these cards give you 35, 40, 50, 60, sometimes 100,000 points or miles to sign up, and you can just transfer them in the case of the Barclay card, you can just buy a ticket on any airline at any time with no blackout dates, based on the price of the ticket and how many points you have. So, you’re right—if it’s an airline affiliated card, it’ll go to the airline that’s affiliated with the card. But there are hundreds of cards that aren’t affiliated with specific airlines, which you can apply those points or miles, whatever they call them—usually points—to any airline, and transfer them into your favorite airline’s account, in which case they become miles instantly. For example, one of my favorite sites is called www.milevalue.com. It’s run by an American guy who lives in Buenos Aires. And this guy sends out seven days a week, bulletins about opportunities for gaining miles, and how to really get business class seats for less miles. And he is one of the few that actually—well, all these guys will send you a free, if you sign up for it, a free daily newsletter at least five days a week. Let me mention another one while we’re at it. www.milevalue.com, and www.thepointsguy.com, are two to begin with. And while they’ll all send you free email bulletins, which are just mind boggling to me, what these guys know, one of them, Scott at Mile Value, will actually for $99, work to get you reward tickets. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I was one of the first members of American Airlines and United Airlines frequent flyer mileage programs, because I alone thought they were going to last. Everyone around me thought they were like the CB craze, the, you know, that they’d be citizens band radio craze, that they’d go away in a year. But I put them to the test. I had to get a friend of mine from Washington, D.C. to the south of France late in May coming back out of London in early June.

JASON HARTMAN: That’s prime time. Yeah.

RUDY MAXA: Prime time. I did my best, and all I could find was 200,000, 260,000 mileage rewards.

JASON HARTMAN: You mean that’s what they wanted to charge for the ticket?

RUDY MAXA: Exactly. As a reward ticket. The ticket, when I had bought one matching, it was $1200. But by the time I went looking for hers, it was $2400, and I was averse to paying that. So I found these outrageous numbers of miles you’d have to cash in, so I wrote Scott in Argentina, I said okay, I’m gonna pay your $99 fee. Here are the airlines. You