A Blog for the (Un) Road Warrior

There is no shortage of blogs and websites dedicated to the proverbial ‘Road Warrior’. My favorites include: the venerable InsideFlyer, ‘Road Warrior Tips blog, Orbitz’s webpage for Road Warriors and of course, FlyerTalk – the ultimate forum for all professional travelers and Road Warrioirs. The typical Road Warrior out there is a person who travels weekly. They are at the top Elite level of the airline or airlines and hotel chains they favor. They are experts at maximizing the miles or points they earn on every trip. They can tell an EQM from an RDM at 50 paces. They have done a Mileage Run or better a Mattress Run to qualify for a higher elite level. They probably have a spreadsheet or an online account on a website likeMileageManager to track their Mileage accounts and more importantly, they update these after every trip. This cool article on Inc. magazine describes your typical run-of-the-mill road warrior.

This blog is for the Un-Road-Warrior. The UnRoadWarrior is the business traveler like me who travels often (and like me thinks it is way too often) but is not on the road every week.

As I look back at the many years of travel I did as a novice UnRoadWarrior I kick myself for all the wasted opportunities to maximize the miles and points earned. At all the miles that expired without using and the elite status I earned but never benefited from. I qualified a Gold in HiltonHonors but never got to stay at a Hilton as a Gold for the whole year after I qualified!

I am (a bit) wiser now. Having researched several forums and blogs and most importantly from over 15 years of personal travel experience, I can now say that I maximize every trip. While, I would still never (ok, never say never) pay with my own money for a trip just to qualify for the next Elite level (Mileage run), I am willing to take a longer/later/earlier flight to be able to focus on leveraging trips I have to take anyway.

If this post describes you and your travel patterns, you will learn a lot as I share what I have learnt. I hope to learn from you too. So, comment away on each post as I post.