The Boston Marathon is now less than 80 days away! I know there are many of you who are running it and looking forward to it with great anticipation! Hopefully, your training is well under way and you are managing with the snow and cold.
Travel for the Boston Marathon
Hotels
If you have not gotten your travel set yet, start working on that now! A quick look at some of the good point hotels showed that they are already full or without award availability. Hotel award availability changes often so keep checking your preferred hotel chain for rooms that may open up. Hyatt, for instance, is already showing all of their Boston hotels completely sold out (not just award stays).
Hyatt hotels all sold out for the Boston Marathon
SPG actually still has some decent award options, including the Sheraton Colonial Boston North hotel at 3,000 Starpoints per night!
Great deal with SPG @ 3,000 points per night
Airlines
Airline award availability is still good, but it will depend on your departure city and dates (just like always!). The best bet for airline awards may be US Airways or using United or AA miles for US Airway flights. If you do not mind waiting and you are within 650 miles of Boston, wait until March 31st when you can use 9,000 British Airways Avios for non-stop US Airway flights to Boston (as long as you are within 650 miles of Boston). That is definitely the best deal, but you will still need award availability to be there.
If you are traveling across the country, there is not a lot of award availability in economy for some west coast cities. However, business/first class availability still looks good. Normally, I do not like spending the premium in miles for domestic first class, but from one end of the country to another makes a good argument for it!
Non-Award Travel
Of course, you can always book paid hotels and/or airline tickets and not have to worry about the award availability. However, you will want to watch the airline tickets since they may fluctuate quite a bit between now and then. Kayak.com allows you to set alerts for pricing that would be very helpful to alert you to the low fares you are looking for. When it comes to hotels, you can always Priceline or Hotwire a hotel in the area you want and come out ahead of the regular rate.
Tickets from the West Coast are already high!
Of course, if you use a card like the Barclaycard Arrival, you can still get those non-award travel options for free thanks to the Arrival points that can be applied towards travel charges on that card. So, if you book a ticket for $350 to Boston and use your Barclay Arrival card, you can use 35,000 Arrival miles to wipe out that charge altogether! Since you get 40,000 points as a sign-up bonus, the sign-up bonus alone can help you immensely with your travel. If you would like to apply for that card, you can click here or on the link at the bottom of the post. Disclosure: I receive a commission if you use my link and are approved.
Summary
Keep checking back over the next couple of weeks as I start to lay out some of the best travel options remaining for the Boston Marathon to make sure you can get there on the cheap!
