Why do we need an award booking service?

[goals^n^dreams]

I have never used miles to book an award trip. From my understanding, if we have airline miles from United, AA, US dividend, we will need to go to their websites and choose the date to fly and use our miles to book. I think it is very easy. Anyone can do it as long as he/she has miles. Am I right?

I remember I booked a hotel at Las Vegas from my Amex point. I chose a date and then used my Amex points to book. It was easy and fast.

I still dont understand why we need award booking service?

 

[momoftana]

It's possible to use miles from one airline program to book tickets on partner airlines. United is a member of the Star Alliance and through their program you can book flights on some other Star Alliance members. A lot of times you won't find the exact flight you want, but it can be pieced together by someone with more experience. I think it's a great idea if someone has the time to spare and is offering assistance.

 

[fulthrust7]

Because there are rules to programs that the average person may not be aware of. Further, there are loop holes that you may not know of. And lastly, some people don't want to deal with the hassle of calling (which is often involved). Each program has their own nuances that aren't displayed and if you were to just search online, you are, on average (without extra knowledge) probably missing out on at least 30-40% of the potential your points can do for you.

 

[Sunny]

Expert award bookers may be able to help you find different routings for complex itineraries. If you're just doing a simple A->B->A and aren't interested in tacking on extra segments, you may not need their help.

 

[Matt]

I have never used miles to book an award trip. From my understanding, if we have airline miles from United, AA, US dividend, we will need to go to their websites and choose the date to fly and use our miles to book. I think it is very easy. Anyone can do it as long as he/she has miles. Am I right?

I remember I booked a hotel at Las Vegas from my Amex point. I chose a date and then used my Amex points to book. It was easy and fast.

I still dont understand why we need award booking service?

It's about value. If you spent say 25000 points to book that hotel what did you leave on the table? Knowing what points to use where and when is a skill. I am not saying people here don't have that skill, but it does have massive value.

When I book an elaborate award it takes several hours, and crazy things happen... here is a post I wrote about booking one such booking that resulted in 5 trips:

http://saverocity.com/travel/spend-o-rama-an-elaborate-award-booking-that-resulted-in-5-new-trips/

The cost breakdown is here:

• June 5th-11th New York- Italy, Two City Rome and Milan
• June 12th-17th Rome- Dubai (for just me)
• October 18th-21st New York- Two City Panama City, Panama and San Juan, Puerto Rico
• December 12th-17th New York- Zurich
• February 28th – March 2nd New York -Toronto

For a total cost of:

130K UA, 20K AA, 9K Avios for me and

72.5K UA, 40K AA and 4.5K Avois for the Mrs.

 

[Alpen_Geoff]

Also being that you're paying them for a service they have more time to dedicate to finding seats on the flights / dates you want. Airlines seem to be getting more stingy all the time with how many seats they release especially to partners so it can be very time consuming to search multiple times a day on the various routes they fly that are applicable to you. For example I was able to find 2 F seats on CX for the day I wanted to start my trip so that was easy, but for more than a week after I couldn't find any return flights - I'd find 1 seat here or there but not 2 on the day I wanted and that's searching all their US routes (LAX, SFO, NYC, YVR, ORD, YYZ) I ended up slightly altering our return date as soon as 2 seats popped up to save myself the time of searching multiple times a day.

 

[flyingcturtle]

I agree its about value. Paying $100-$150 to have someone else plan your trip details is nice. The miles/points saved and added comfort is easily worth the price. I use it more for airfare then hotels. I want to maximize my miles and places I see. They help me do that.

 

[tmount]

Agree with the consensus - It really comes down to how much time you want to put in. Personally - I've not used an award booking service, I gave one a try and got a response that was both vague and didn't match up with my requirements. That said, if you don't want to put the time in IDing routes, IDing flights 1 by 1, you really do have to be methodical.

 

[yuneeq]

I agree with the responses earlier.
Here's a few reasons I would use a booking service:

1) Time- it takes a load of time to find the flights you need on complex itineraries.

2) They know how to book hard-to-find award space on popular routes based on experience and workarounds.

3) If they maximize the points you use, it could be your saving more than $100-150 worth of points, all without the hassle of searching yourself.

4) There's a lot to learn in order to book complex itineraries, and this knowledge changes all the time.

 

[cocobird]

I definitely agree with the group that award booking services are invaluable. Although simple trips can be done by yourself, more complicated itineraries can be highly confusing. For my initial first class award trip, I paid an award booking service because lots of space was opened unexpectedly and like a mistake fare they were being snatched up. If I had to do the booking, the space would have all been taken before I could have figured out all the connections using multiple airlines. It took the expert an hour to do so. By the time he was done, 75 percent of the space (dates) was gone. Within 12 hours of the it being blogged it was all gone.

 

[PWMTrav]

It saves you time and points, unless you happen to just be picking a trip with wide open availability for the dates you want. It never hurts to look yourself first.

My last trip to Italy almost convinced me to start a service, when I realized how much I enjoyed maximizing value and schedule for myself. I spent a lot of time doing it, but I saved a lot of money by avoiding fuel surcharges and managed 3 seats in business over a holiday week. My day job probably prevents me from doing it for others but I've thought about it.

There's added value as well if the service monitors your flights. US Airways "lost" partner segments that I booked for a family member. Twice. If I hadn't been proactively monitoring it, she would have been stuck mid-trip figuring it out. IMHO, it's worth paying someone to keep an eye on things.

 

[Alpen_Geoff]

Anyone have good suggestions for an award booker? I'm trying to get 5 people to CUZ next spring and LAN J seats are a pain to find and I don't really have the time to search multiple times a day.

 

[Mountain Trader]

For most itineraries, a booking service will not save you miles, unless you might have used an unrestricted award, which most would never do. Mile savings would be possible, for example, in finding space on an AA award to get to Australia without going through Asia, which can mean using two awards.

Learning enough to get around on awards and staying current on what you need to know takes a lot of time. Using that knowledge to book a trip can require hours of left brain, often frustrating work.

For those who think they can just call an airline and have the CSR find them an award, I suggest finding a good booking service or getting another hobby.

 

[Matchmee]

Anyone have good suggestions for an award booker? I'm trying to get 5 people to CUZ next spring and LAN J seats are a pain to find and I don't really have the time to search multiple times a day.

Did anyone help you find a place?

 

[Alpen_Geoff]

Honestly no...I contacted 2 diff groups, only got a reply from 1 but after about 4 days and finding a half-assed itinerary I promptly shot down I never received another reply. Ended up moving my travel dates a bit and just called AA to find LAN space at 331 days out and had no issue, guess being flexible pays off sometimes! Dates aren't ideal but I'd rather LAN's J product than AA's and getting 5 seats on the same flights is an achievement enough for me.

 

[TheBOSman]

Don't do award bookers. Post here. Many people would be willing to help for free. As long as you aren't looking to visit 20 places on one trip, it should be workable .

When I book an elaborate award it takes several hours, and crazy things happen... here is a post I wrote about booking one such booking that resulted in 5 trips:

http://saverocity.com/travel/spend-o-rama-an-elaborate-award-booking-that-resulted-in-5-new-trips/

One of these days, I'll go over the Explorer award that I booked with AA which I finished flying two months ago, and how long it took me to line everything up with how much I maximized it. Let's just say I had to book the last leg for 15000 Avios in J, because it would have both been too many segments and too many miles to add it .

 

[Alpen_Geoff]

Don't do award bookers. Post here. Many people would be willing to help for free. As long as you aren't looking to visit 20 places on one trip, it should be workable .

I like that mentality, I'm more than willing to help where I can.

My itinerary was pretty simple SFO-LAX-LIM-CUZ for 2 and HNL-LAX-LIM-CUZ for 3 with the LAX-LIM-CUZ on same flight. I ended up just getting frustrated with the ongoing searching and calling without luck so contacted the bookers and am quite disappointed with the results. Prior to this I was onboard with the concept but it took just as much effort answering their queries and chasing them up when I didn't receive updates as it would have taken to search on my own

 

[TheBOSman]

I like that mentality, I'm more than willing to help where I can.

My itinerary was pretty simple SFO-LAX-LIM-CUZ for 2 and HNL-LAX-LIM-CUZ for 3 with the LAX-LIM-CUZ on same flight. I ended up just getting frustrated with the ongoing searching and calling without luck so contacted the bookers and am quite disappointed with the results. Prior to this I was onboard with the concept but it took just as much effort answering their queries and chasing them up when I didn't receive updates as it would have taken to search on my own

Simple enough, but five seats on the same flight will be a bit tough unfortunately. What miles do you have? I think only LA flies LAX-LIM, and finding bookable award space with them can be tricky. 3x HNL-LAX won't be easy either, but at least it will be easier to find. Is economy class ok for all 5 seats?

 

[Alpen_Geoff]

Simple enough, but five seats on the same flight will be a bit tough unfortunately. What miles do you have? I think only LA flies LAX-LIM, and finding bookable award space with them can be tricky. 3x HNL-LAX won't be easy either, but at least it will be easier to find. Is economy class ok for all 5 seats?

I ended up using AA miles, as mentioned above I gave up on the bookers and adjusted my dates to get flights that we want.
Ended up with the following all in J aside from LIM-CUZ which is all Y:
2x: SFO-LAX(AA) LAX-LIM-CUZ(LA) LIM-LAX(LA) LAX-SFO(AA)
3x: HNL-LAX(HA) LAX-LIM-CUZ(LA) LIM-LAX(LA) LAX-HNL(AA)

We have 5 seats together on the LAX-LIM-CUZ and LIM-LAX
I'll add the CUZ-LIM flights with Avios once we finalize our plans, was also able to get near 24hr layovers in LAX both ways for the 3 from HNL as my grandmother will be 94 and would like to break up the flights. All in all the flights are great but dates are ~3 weeks later than we were aiming for.

 

[TheBOSman]

Should be able to change dates later for free if the award space appears. Hope everyone enjoys the flights!

 

[richklhs]

Use award booking services so you can fly NRT-AKL-NAN-AKL-NRT-BKK-SYD all in NZ J and two legs of TG F for 45k UA miles all in -

 

[InstinctX]

Travel noob ... Would appreciate help with trying to book travel from DCA to SFO with extended stopover in San Diego.

 

[TheBOSman]

Travel noob ... Would appreciate help with trying to book travel from DCA to SFO with extended stopover in San Diego.

UA, AA, and DL do not allow for stopovers on USA only tickets. You would have to book two awards, but SAN-SFO is probably better as a paid ticket to be honest. Could book DCA-SAN as an award and SAN-SFO paid. SAN-SFO award is 10,000 miles in economy on UA.

Alaska Airlines (AS) does allow for stopovers on domestic tickets, but it might be tough to get DCA-SAN-SFO, as Alaska does not serve any of those nonstop. You would have to fly something like DCA-PDX-SAN, then SAN-PDX-SFO (or put in SEA instead of PDX). I'm not sure if their award system would even allow this, never mind if you want to fly that far out of the way twice.

 

[PWMTrav]

UA, AA, and DL do not allow for stopovers on USA only tickets. You would have to book two awards, but SAN-SFO is probably better as a paid ticket to be honest. Could book DCA-SAN as an award and SAN-SFO paid. SAN-SFO award is 10,000 miles in economy on UA.

Alaska Airlines (AS) does allow for stopovers on domestic tickets, but it might be tough to get DCA-SAN-SFO, as Alaska does not serve any of those nonstop. You would have to fly something like DCA-PDX-SAN, then SAN-PDX-SFO (or put in SEA instead of PDX). I'm not sure if their award system would even allow this, never mind if you want to fly that far out of the way twice.

Well, you pretty much posted what I was typing. So that.

 

[asthejoeflies]

There's a good forum post for this stuff: http://saverocity.com/forum/threads/award-booking-help-burn-here.23/