Unlock Free Vacations With the Method That Suits You Best
Booking travel with credit card points and airline miles provides enormous benefits compared to booking cash. Here are the two main advantages:
- Free flights, hotels, and car rentals
- Luxury travel becomes affordable. For example, the $8,165 business class flight I took to Japan that I paid $291 for. That’s even cheaper than an economy flight!
The purpose of this article is to help you decide which booking method is best for you. It’s difficult to find complete information on this topic. A lot of sites provide catchy headlines, but don’t tell you the challenges of booking a 5 star hotel or first class flight.
In this article, I’ll provide an honest comparison of these methods. I’ll include both the highlights and potential pain points that I’ve learned from experience.
For clarity, “points” are what you earn from the credit card issuer when you use your card. Miles are what your points turn into when you transfer them to an airline.
BOOKING WITH POINTS
Booking this way is typically done by booking through your credit card issuer’s travel portal. This enables you to directly pay for travel expenses with points instead of cash. Travel expenses include flights, hotels, and car rentals.
BENEFITS OF THIS METHOD
This method is straightforward. You’re paying with points, not cash. It’s easy to earn significant sums of points for free, making this a low-effort way to earn free vacations. If you don’t already have a stash of points, check out this article on the easiest ways to start earning them.
You can increase the value of your points up to 50%. The details of this are beyond the scope of this article, but know that premium travel cards from Chase make your points more valuable.
DRAWBACKS OF THIS METHOD
This method sometimes requires you to book travel through your issuer’s travel portal. For example, if you have American Express points, you book through the American Express website. Notably, Chase does not require you to book through their portal.
The issue with booking through a portal is that prices are sometimes higher than alternatives. You can still use points to cover your entire purchase, but it will cost more points than it really should.
BOOKING WITH MILES
Booking this way requires you to exchange your credit card points for airline miles, or hotel points. The two biggest benefits of this method are listed below.
- Your points become much more valuable. Sometimes even 15x as valuable, but 2-5x is more common
- Luxury travel. This is how you find yourself sipping champagne in first class 35,000 feet over the Pacific ocean, or at a 5 star resort in the Maldives
The tradeoff is that it adds complexity. Plainly put, it’s more work. If you seek simplicity and don’t care about luxury travel, booking with points is best for you.
If you’re intrigued by this option despite the extra work, you’ll want to know just how much extra work we’re talking about here.
THE REALITY OF AFFORDABLE LUXURY TRAVEL
There are many considerations when maximizing the value of your points for luxury travel. Discussing them all will make this post too long, so we’ll focus on the biggest hurdle.
The booking process is complicated. Here’s an example. I recently exchanged my American Express points for Air Canada miles, in order to book a United Airlines flight.
Seems silly, doesn’t it? The reason you can use the miles of one airline for a flight on a different airline is because they are in the same “alliance”.
But, how do you keep track of which airlines are in which alliance? How do you know where to find the best deals? Starting from scratch, this will take a lot of googling to figure out.
HOW TO MAKE IT EASIER
We invite all of our readers to reach out to us directly. The Life of Points team has spent countless hours researching this topic. We have learned many best practices from real world experience.
The best way to get in contact with us is by joining our discord, but you are also welcome to send us an email at [email protected]. Our mission is to help our readers craft unforgettable vacations, so we are happy to help!
HOW TO MAKE IT EVEN EASIER
The simplest option is to pay a third party to do all of the legwork for you. You provide them with the details of your trip (route, number of passengers, desired cabin, point balances) and they provide a list of your best options and guidance on how to book.
These services charge roughly $200 per passenger. With how much you’ll save on the flight itself, the total cost will still be quite reasonable.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Credit card points provide huge savings for anyone with travel plans. If you don’t mind some extra work in planning your next trip, luxury vacations are within your grasp.
If you want to keep things as simple as possible, booking directly with points, or a cashback strategy is a low-effort way to make your next vacation free.
