Tr getaways

[fly2rei]

Just received my quarterly Totalrewards magazine.
On the back page it shows `Free Vacation Bonus!'.
Went on the web site and couldn't figure it out.
It says 7stars get $5,000.00 towards your vacation
getaway. But says something like you can use this
`Bonus' towards partial payment of your vacation, if
booked thru them. Is this really a deal or just more
Smoke and Mirrors from Ceasars?

[Dan Druff]

Just received my quarterly Totalrewards magazine.
On the back page it shows `Free Vacation Bonus!'.
Went on the web site and couldn't figure it out.
It says 7stars get $5,000.00 towards your vacation
getaway. But says something like you can use this
`Bonus' towards partial payment of your vacation, if
booked thru them. Is this really a deal or just more
Smoke and Mirrors from Ceasars?

It's BS.

I knew as soon as I saw $5,000 "free" credit for Seven Stars that it had to be a semi-scam. However, I was curious enough to look into it.

Basically, it's just a discount travel site which isn't affiliated with Caesar's. (They probably profit-share with Caesar's when people book with them, but that's just my guess.) In any case, this is just a marketing partnership. Caesar's definitely didn't pay the site any money on your behalf.

So you select various travel products -- rental cars, flights, hotels, vacation packages, etc, and the site discounts it a little for you.

Where does the $5,000 come in?

It's a useless gimmick. Rather than allowing you to purchase unlimited products at their prices, they subtract your discount from the $5000 each time you use it, so you feel like you're really getting value.

Simply put, which sounds better to the average traveler?

"I'm giving you 5% off on this booking, which comes to a $20 savings."

OR

"Since you have $5000 in free bonus money with us, you can use $20 of it to pay for this reservation. Your bonus balance is now $4980!"

In the first case, the traveler feels he just got a discount, which is ordinary.

In the second case, he feels like he was really given free money.

So that's what this is. I have a feeling that they aren't even promoting this much (or at all) to their Gold members, who supposedly have a limit of $250 in "bonus".

For example, I just tried to reserve a rental car from Enterprise (a full size vehicle) for 3 days later this month at a non-airport site. On the Enterprise website, the car is $39.99 per day. After tax, it ends up $130.77 for the 3 days. On the TR getaways website, the same car in the same location on the same days is $45.55 per day (for some reason they claim the tax is zero, which either means it's included or you will get charged it later), and then you can use $11 of your "bonus" on it. That leaves the total price as $125.65, meaning at best you save $5, and more likely you will find yourself paying tax when you pick up the car.

But even if you really are saving $5, you can do way better by just using one of many LEGAL coupon codes for the Enterprise website, and save 10% or more that way.

I tried to use this awful thing when booking a flight, and it didn't save me any money at all.

Basically I think it's useless.

[fly2rei]

Thanks Dan for confirming my suspicions. Also, I will be in Vegas this weekend.
I'm going to the National Finals Rodeo on Saturday. This will be My 5th year going
Thanks to Cet. I have always been surprised how good the seats have been in the
past, considering I was only diamond. This year I made it to 7 stars back in June.
Looking forward to at least as good as, if not better seats this time.