I am heading to Europe in June with a few friends. Is there a way to use credit cards offers to get a significant deal when buying airline tickets and other expenses? Airfare alone will be around 3500-4k and then all the hotels/car rentals.
Don't really deal with credit cards that much outside of my Costco amex and amazon card.
The June time frame is going to be a bit tough as its a bit close. Which card often depends on where you can fly out of and into. The nice thing about the Chase Sapphire Preferred card is that (In addition to no ForEx fees) you can transfer the points to a number of programs - two which might be useful for you: British Airways and United. BA charges a lot of fees but you can instead transfer those points again to Aer Lingus or Iberia which could more easily get you to Ireland, Spain or parts of Italy. If thats your final destination Great! Otherwise hop on a cheap intra-Europe flight. United might be a good option as well depending on availability leaving form cities near you. There are also cards out there specifically fore BA and United.
AA is another option with 50k, 75k and 100k mile offers out there (but the 100k mile requirement is $10k in 3 months). Again which card depends on what options they have in your area.
I would avoid the Hilton card as their award redemption prices in European cities (or really any city of decent size) are high. 50,000 might not even be enough for a single night depending on where you're staying.
A better option (IMO) for hotel stays in Europe would be the Club Carlson card. You get 85,000 points and assuming there are properties in the area you get the second night free when redeeming points. A number of European cities have options for 44,000 a night so that would give you 4 free nights.
IHG might be another option. 60,000 points for the card and most of their redemption hover in the 20,000-25,000 range. The also have a points + cash option you might be able to use if you end up a bit short for a stay
$3500-4000 sounds pretty high unless this is for 2 people. A flight from San Francisco to Berlin is 'only' $1700 RT in June. Check out
this site as you might be able to find a cheaper flight and don't dismiss carriers like Turkish air, Norwegian air and Icelandic air as they often have specials making them pretty cheap. Also consider doing a separate ticket for positioning if you are flying from an out of the way airport.
If you care to share where you're flying from and to I could give more specific advice
i don't know if airtran flies there, but i believe you can use southwest points on airtran now, and they have that 50k point card you can get now.
You can only use Southwest points on Air Tran flights you can book through SW's website which is, unfortunately, not all of AT flights. I think the only international options are the Caribbean and Mexico currently