~ $5000 Competitours Europe Challenge Trip Giveaway!

by Gary Leff

My Award Booking Partner Steve

Many of you know that I offer an award booking service. It grew too big to handle on my own, and I was fortunate enough to be able to partner with one of the real veterans and gurus in the frequent flyer game, Steve Belkin (known in online forums as ‘beaubo’).

Steve is most famous for exploiting loopholes in frequent flyer programs like Aeroplan and United’s MileagePlus in a truly big way, scaling opportunities to earn millions instead of thousands of miles. And in that pursuit he has hired disable Thai rice farmers to fly in and out of the Golden Triangle area of Thailand, and New Zealand college students to fly to Europe for the summer.

His ‘Amazing Race for Regular People’

One of the really fun projects he’s had is called Competitours. Every summer, Steve disappears from work to run what the Chicago Tribune calls “The Amazing Race for Regular People.”

COMPETITOURS is a team travel competition, traversing a mystery itinerary of Western Europe and earning points by accomplishing a daily dose of surprise challenges in pursuit of a $7200 cash prize split between three teams.

Challenges are structured to test 7 – 10 pairs of teams’ creativity, resourcefulness and spontaneity (NOT speed or fitness – hah!). Here’s some of the challenges. Each day’s destination and challenges are revealed just a day or two before. Unlike the ‘Amazing Race’ TV show, Competitours steers clear of weird food, exhausting tasks and manufactured conflict and drama.

It’s a great project, reports are that the trips are great fun. I just lose Steve for those couple of weeks.

I Wanted to Go This Year But Can’t — So You Win

The destinations and challenges change each year, so even my talks with Steve about what they’ve done wouldn’t help prepare me. I can’t participate this year though.

There are readers who would would get a kick out of this unique opportunity of competitive travel. So I’ve arranged for sponsorship of half a team to do my bidding! (You keep the prize money if you win.)

So, if you have a team partner and can DEFINITELY commit to the trip dates (we can arrange for you to arrive earlier and / or depart later if desired) then here is the offer:

  • one trip fee and airfare will be covered
  • the second team member’s trip fee of $3850 and airfare is not covered, though.
  • Both players are responsible for costs that include 8 dinners and 10 lunches, laundry, international data and voice, shopping, etc.
  • dates are July 2-14

The value of this is probably in the range of $5000.

How to Enter and Win

Leave a comment in this post by March 27 at Noon Eastern time.

That comment should say “I am definitely 100% in!”

I will select from qualifying entries via Random.org.

Any questions? Ask away!

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  3. “I am definitely 100% in!”

    Lindsay and I would totally be in for this. People are always telling us we should be on amazing race. So this would be perfect for us. Done and done. Random.org please select us. 🙂 Thanks Gary. Very fun. I suppose you will be in the Maldives suite 51?

  7. Should pitch Competitours to a network, given even the OTA channels now wait a few days before rerunning an episode. I learned recently that a swinging couple series will soon be coming to a cable channel.

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