[jIM_Ohio]

You looking to save money or maximize rewards?

I used to travel 50-75%.

Always used one airline. Delta has a hub in Salt Lake.
Always used one car rental. I like Avis, their prefferred member service was free 10 years ago.
I like Marriot, Courtyard in particular.

For car and airline, I received frequent flier miles
For hotel, I used Marriot rewards points. The points at a hotel are worth more than anything an airline or car rental place gives you.

For Marriot, it was 10 points per dollar at a Courtyard.
5 points per dollar at Residence Inn. A 5 night stay usually got me one free hotel night.

Residence Inn's have a free breakfast and free happy hour. I could usually get a salad/soup type thing at happy hour, have a beer at the happy hour, then go out later for something small.

In addition Residence Inn's have a kitchen/stove/frig/plates. If you wanted to buy groceries to save money, you could.

I had a travel agent at work make most of my reservations. I liked choosing the hotel myself. Call them directly to find rates. AAA might save you some money in this regard.

Frequent flier miles are tough to accumulate. Need 20,000 real miles on Delta to get one ticket. That's a lot of flying.

You could transfer credit card points, hotel points and car points to frequent flier account, but it will still take you some time to get 20,000.

My travel paid to two plane tickets for our honeymoon, a 3 night stay at a five star Marriot Resort in Ft Lauderdale, plus 4 other plane flights at various points. This was from ~7 years of travel. A few other Marriot stays on cross country trips, and I still have lots of free hotel stays I can use right now.