Sharon and I have always loved going to see concerts. Our music tastes aren’t perfectly aligned so there’s only a slice of shows we’re going to want to see every year. We used to stick to shows in our home town of Orlando, which has been getting better quality acts since the Amway Center and the Dr. Phillips Center For Performing Arts have both opened in the last decade,
Occasionally, there are shows we want to see that aren’t anywhere near home and sometimes these are festival or multi-day concerts featuring many bands and performers we really want to see. Other times it’s just a tour that isn’t happening in our home town,
Whether it’s driving across the state to Tampa, Jacksonville or Fort Lauderdale or flying across the country to New York, Chicago or Indio, CA, using points and miles can go a long way towards making rips like these possible, The concert tickets are expensive enough so saving on hotels and transportation is a wonderful thing.
Airfare
Using airline miles to pay for tickets so you can go to a concert is great if you can find a good deal. Fortunately, concerts usually happen in big cities so there are many different airlines you can check to see if there’s points availability If not, there might be a fare sale going on; there always seems to be a fare sale nowadays. A plus is that concerts aren’t just on weekends, for example our Phil Collins concert in Chicago was on a Monday night, so we were flying home on Tuesday. It was easy to find an award ticket on Tuesday afternoon.
Hotel
Booking hotels for concerts is a great way to use points. Room rates are usually higher that normal due to demand but the amount of points needed (usually) doesn’t increase.
Holiday Inn Express – Palm Desert
When we traveled to California to see Desert Trip, Rooms at this Holiday Inn Express were going for over $400 a night (and the hotel was sold out). I found award space and booked three nights for 20,000 IHG points each.
The Who was just one of the amazing acts we saw during the three days of the Desert Trip festival.
Transportation
Nothing’s worse than paying a bunch of money for a ticket to a show and then having to pay a ton of money for parking. We try not to rent a car if we’re traveling just for a show, like when we used public transportation in New York to get to the Classic East concert at Citi Field featuring The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and others.The subway station was 2 blocks from our hotel and went right to the stadium.
Concert Tickets
There’s not much you can do to reduce ticket costs for concerts. There are things you can do, like using a card that earns the most points and provides insurance in case you miss the show due to an emergency. I used our Citi Prestige to buy tickets for Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden from Stubhub and earned 2x ThankYou points. It was one of the more awesome shows we’ve seen and we had great seats.
Final Thoughts
I never thought of the two of us as the “concert” type. However, we like the music we like and who knows how much longer the people who sing those songs will keep touring. As this article is going up tonight, I’ll be on my way to see Ed Sheeran in Tampa. I paid for the hotel with Hilton points and we’re going to Uber from the hotel to the stadium to avoid the crazy parking situation. I also picked a hotel that doesn’t charge for parking, unlike other hotels in the area.
I’ve seen Ed twice before in Orlando and I’m really stoked to see his stadium show.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
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