Tag: Hilton Honors

Hotel Review: Hilton Garden Inn Charlotte/SouthPark

The Hilton Garden Inn Charlotte/SouthPark is located down the road from the SouthPark Business area and across the street from the SouthPark shopping center, just south of Charlotte. There are a Ruth’s Chris, Palm and DelFrisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse just minutes away, so it’s clear hotels in this area are catering to those visiting the many surrounding office complexes. As I was visiting for my first work trip ever, it was nice to have many restaurants in the area that were open late and accustomed to solo diners showing up to catch a bite at the bar just before closing time (and with expense account that allowed me to eat at them).

The Hilton Garden Inn shares a building with a Homewood Suites but for my entire stay, I managed to stay in “my” side of the hotel. The Hilton Garden Inn side of the hotel consists of 160 rooms spread over seven floors. Parking for the hotel is located in a (usually full) small lot across from the entrance and a two-story parking garage. There’s no charge for parking or any type of hotel fee charged at this hotel.

Hilton Garden Inn Charlotte/SouthPark
4808 Sharon Rd.
Charlotte, NC 28210

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Why You Need To Diversify Your Miles and Points Portfolio

As you may have read, we had a blowout trip through the American Southwest in 2017. For us, a fifteen night trip is an amazingly long time to be away from home. We could have stayed at the same hotel chain properties and worked our way towards some low level of status. However, it was much better for us to pick the best hotel for us in each location and use the most sensible form of payment, be it paying cash or using points. The same thing went for the flights, which were booked with a combination of cash and airline miles.

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This was possible because I had a stash of points in several hotel programs as well as had transferrable credit card points. Some of the rooms I paid for because the hotels either weren’t part of any point program or there was a promotion that made paying with cash a much better value than using points.

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Why Do Banks Make Everything So Difficult?

Note: Offers mentioned in this article are no longer available.

Over the course of one week, I dealt with issues from three different banks. Needless to say, that was one long week. I don’t understand why, when dealing with a bank, every transaction must be difficult. It’s like pulling teeth to get anything accomplished. When everything is difficult, I tend to get introspective and think, “Maybe I’m the one that’s difficult to deal with.” I’m looking for some objective opinions, is it me or is it the bank?

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A Look Back At Our Hotel Stays Of 2018

Here we are, at the end of 2018. When looking back at our hotel stays from the past year, I get a sense of how we traveled and how it compared to previous years. I make travel decisions based on how I think we travel but if those trends are changing, I’ll need to adapt the methods I use when looking at the best way to maximize our points usage and out of pocket spending. When I look back at 2018, I’m really happy how everything turned out. Going into the year, due to some work changes, I knew that saving cash on hotel stays would be a priority. I never really focused on earning hotel points before but I’m a quick study and I set a goal to not pay for a hotel room if I could help it.

I did really good in achieving my goal. We stayed in hotels for 37 nights and only paid $1000. When I paid cash for a room there was a specific reason I did so. The rest of our hotel stays were paid for by points or free nights earned by having certain hotel credit cards. Here’s a breakdown of our stays for the year:

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Sign Up Now To Earn Bonus Hilton Points

There have been ongoing promotions for bonus Hilton Honors points for stays at their hotels for at least the last two years or so. The current promotion, which was offering double points on all stays and triple points on resort stays, is still running through January 3, 2019. It was about time that Hilton announced their new promotion if they were planning on having one.

Wouldn’t you know, I just received this in my email:

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