Hawaii Without the Price Tag, Rakuten's Craziest Card Offers & Flying Four Airlines in Five Days!

MTM Travel - The Fun Side of Points & Travel!

Mark recounts his recent whirlwind trip through the Azores and Portugal, evaluating various airline experiences including Royal Air Maroc an

Key takeaways

• Bank of America Travel Rewards via Rakuten offers up to 40,000 Bilt points plus a $250 bonus after $1,000 spend.
• Royal Air Maroc business class provides decent seating but suffers from poor service and unreliable food delivery.

Main topics

• Rakuten Credit Card Offers
• Royal Air Maroc Review

Notable quotes

I don't regret the trips you take, you regret the trips you don't take.

Conclusion

A valuable guide for budget-conscious travelers looking for high-value

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Mark got back from the Azores and he survived flying Royal Air Maroc, going to Lisbon for the first time. We're going to throw in some Rakuten credit card deals to all of that coming up right now on MTM Travel. Speaker 1 (0:10) Made it out of Boston before I got flooded. There's sharks in the water. Speaker 2 (0:14) And Speaker 1 (0:15) lobsters too. Speaker 2 (0:23) So happy Monday, everyone, and welcome back home, Mark. It seems like you Speaker 1 (0:27) just left. Yeah, I mean, that's what it feels like. It was a lot of flying. I pretty much traveled every day except for Saturday and flew four different airlines during it. So it was a whirlwind trip. It was a lot of fun. Such a cool place to check out. Glad I got to do it. But yeah, I'm pretty beat. Speaker 2 (0:48) Well, we'll... Find out about it. I can't wait to hear your take on Royal Air Maroc business class since I just flew it earlier this year. So we both have recent memories of it. And then all the hotels, everything else that you did. But you want to start with these Rakuten increased offers that you found so that we can let everybody know how to grab them? Speaker 1 (1:07) Yeah, we put them up on the site just a quick to let people know because I don't these can go away in like a day or two. But the city strata. Premier went up to $150 or 15,000 built points if you have status, silver status or above with them. And that's on top of the 60,000 thank you points you get for signing up. And then the Bank of America cards, most of them went down or two out of the three went down a little bit. But the one that's always the highest, the Travel Rewards card, went up to $400 or 40,000 built points with status, which is just crazy. I mean, think about Palladium. which is a $500 card, and that's giving 50,000 points. And this is giving you 40,000 built points just for signing up and getting approved. You don't have to spend anything. And then you get another $250 bonus that you get after $1,000 in spend. I don't know how Bank of America is affording this. I don't know if Bilt's okay with it. Maybe they are because they're buying the built points or Rakuten is, but this is just pure insanity. Also, the Amex card, I think for today only, the Rakuten Amex card is up to 20,000 points. Again, that comes around every couple months. So lots of good deals out there. Speaker 2 (2:22) Yeah, I'm signing up now. Let's just stop the show. The trial rewards card, as you point out, or you didn't point out, but I want to point out, no annual fee. So, I mean, just 40,000 bill points, Speaker 1 (2:32) $250, no annual fee, blowing bill cards out of the water, except for, you know, everything else like earning and perks. But if you're just bonus hunting, this is as good as it gets. Speaker 2 (2:43) Yeah, that's incredible. And as Mark kind of remind me, because I have several accounts, this will not work if you have an account that earns membership rewards. They won't show up. It'll just show zero points because I logged in right before the show, felt sad for myself. And then he reminded me why. Speaker 1 (2:58) Yeah, some people have said they've been able to see it, but most people with membership rewards, they get the zero. So you have to change either to cashback or built points and then it should populate for you. Speaker 2 (3:08) So let's talk your trip. We have a lot to talk about, a lot to cover. I've seen some videos and pictures, and the Azores looks incredible. I got a small taste of it a few years ago, and to me, it was just like one of the most beautiful places on Earth. So I can't wait to hear what you have to say about that. You flew Royal Air Maroc out there. How was it? Speaker 1 (3:25) Yeah, it is not my favorite experience. And I mean, they seem to have pretty reliable award availability. Or if you look far enough out, you can find that flight with Alaska Airlines miles. I think it was 55K, but they usually only release one award seat, which I know you grabbed, I think three. So you got kind of lucky there. But for the most part, when I've done my searches, it's for one. And would I do it again? Because it's a cheap. ish way to get to Portugal. Yeah. If there's nothing else, I'll probably take it, but I didn't love the experience. Big part of like just starting off, you can't log in online or get your boarding pass online. That's not a huge deal. If you're flying out of the airport, you know, you're starting from there, but if you're doing a connecting flight into it, like I was going into Dulles, I have to leave security. Go wait in line, get my boarding pass, go back through security. And if I had a tight turn, that would have sucked. I got there earlier. I had a decent length layover, but I got there and they didn't even open until five. So I had to stand there for 15 minutes or so just for them to open to be able to get my boarding pass. Luckily, TSA wasn't that big of a deal and then went and hung out in the Capital One lounge, which I'm happy to announce that they figured out how to make it not so hot in there. So it wasn't too bad. Speaker 2 (4:47) progress in the world. Good things are happening. You know, I talked about Royal Air Maroc, like the seat is fine. I mean, a lot of other airlines have that same seat and it's a good seat. There's far worse seats in business class than that one. I found on mine, you know, like the soft product, I mean, I just didn't find the service to be all that great. The food was sort of a letdown. It just didn't stand out for anything. But like, if I was going to have to fly a lesser, like fly any kind of, of course, this is better than that. Does that sort of what your takeaway was of the situation? Or do you have any other like nuanced thoughts on the service, the food? I know that there is a Speaker 1 (5:19) lack of alcohol that I noticed and you probably need to. No, and I plan to eat in Capital One and just grab that stuff and fill up and go to bed quickly and not really take on any of the food at night. And I figured let's try to get as much sleep as possible. And the food at Capital One Lounge was not the best. It's usually pretty good. But this time I didn't eat anything. There was nothing that really was speaking to me. So I actually went to like a Jersey Bikes in the airport, spent 12 bucks on a sub. How's that before I got on the plane? And then. Got on the plane looking at the menu and they did have like a, almost like a chicken parm, but it was just like a chicken cutlet in marinara sauce, but no like white sauce or noodles or anything like that. So it was like half a chicken parm. I probably would have ordered that and tried it, but not knowing how long that service can take. Sometimes it's like an hour and a half or whatever. I was like, I'm not going to do that. Looked at the drink list. I was like, maybe I'll have one drink before I go to bed. And they only had like five or six options. Only had one beer. So she comes around, take my order and I say, I'm not going to eat dinner. Can you just bring me the Casablanca beer? I think that's what it's called. And she goes, oh, no food. I'm like, no, all of that. And then for breakfast, I'll do the, I think it was like yogurt parfait and, and some other stuff. And I was like, okay, I'll do that for breakfast. I waited an hour and they were serving food to everybody. She never brought me the beer. I was like, I'm getting tired. I'm just going to go to bed. I don't know how you don't bring the drink. One, the drinks out first to, wouldn't you bring the drink to the guy that's not eating right up front. uh his drink right away so i didn't get to try their beer she ended up waking me up when breakfast time i probably should have said don't wake me if there's if i'm sleeping for breakfast because it wasn't that that good or that big of a deal so overall service not great the food didn't look great to me but i agree the seat is as comfortable as most seats it's interesting that you say that because my Speaker 2 (7:10) takeaway was very similar they did not want to refill my drinks at all on my flight And they were just bringing me, well, first off, I remember ice being a big issue, which if you fly internationally, you know that ice is like, they'll give you one or two things to ice, but it's not a big deal, right? But people internationally don't drink as much ice as Americans. So they're not giving me a full cup of ice, whatever that is. But I had to, you know, keep asking for ice and because they keep giving me these warm, tiny cups of Coke Zero, like I was drinking Coke Zero. Speaker 2 (7:39) And I think this was like later in the flight because remember, I did the whole jet lag thing. So I was avoiding stuff, whatever it was. It just seemed like they were they did not want to provide that kind of service, that kind of like following up service. They just wanted to give you what they wanted to give you and get out of there. Speaker 1 (7:53) Yeah, I agree. And then I went connected in Casablanca, then got on just like a domestic first class to Lisbon. And the service was a bit better there. She was more attentive. They did bring out food, even though it was a shorter flight. And I just, it didn't look appealing at all. So I said, I don't need any food. Just bring me like a Coke Zero. And they brought out some tea that was good and things like that. So that was perfectly fine, comfortable. They didn't have like, there was only three people in the first class, so they must not upgrade people or they don't have a lot of frequent flyers, things like that. But that was unremarkable. Otherwise, it was. Speaker 1 (8:32) Fine. And I was only in Casablanca airport for like an hour. So I just basically moved through everything, got off on a road, the bus, walk to the gate and started boarding. Speaker 2 (8:42) Yeah, I think that's the thing about Casablanca is there's a lot of bus gates because I every flight I took out of there was in a bus gate. I will say their lounge in Casablanca, the Royal Air Maroc flagship lounge is not bad. I thought it was pretty good. It's very nice and new. I think it just opened in the last year or so. They renovated it. So that's Speaker 1 (8:59) a Speaker 2 (8:59) recommendation. I've been to far worse lounges. Speaker 1 (9:01) Yeah, I was bus gate even in Lisbon. So I was bus gate team like all the whole time or walk to gate team. Speaker 1 (9:10) That's something as a kid, though, like I still Speaker 2 (9:12) appreciate it as like a I don't know. I wouldn't call myself an aviator. I'm not an aviation nerd, but I'm like loosely related to an aviator. Like I like that stuff. So like when you're under the plane and you're walking, especially these big wide bodies, it's so cool. But then as an adult, it's like it's tedious to take the bus as you get crammed in. Like it's not as nice. But as a kid, my daughter loves it. Anytime we're at a bus gate, she loves getting out on the tarmac, walking, all that stuff. Speaker 1 (9:35) Yeah, I'll say in Casablanca, they had like. little buses for business class people to get on that were a little bit nicer we were kind of crammed in there but then when you got to lisbon you just got on the regular bus which is the nice thing about being a business class is you kind of beat everybody uh to customs and and the border patrol and all that stuff and when you have to get on a bus with a whole bunch of people you're like oh that doesn't give me a leg Speaker 2 (9:59) up at all my favorite story one time