Reader Question – Am I “right” for playing the game?

So, would you be willing to offer your thoughts?  As a 1-2x a year traveler, needing four award seats at a time, during specific periods, (and no need for hotel points) is this something that can be useful to our family?  If so, I’d happily and gratefully welcome any thoughts.

 

What I drew from that letter

Bolding and italicizing mine.  Here are some of my assumptions, presumptions and ideas based on the letter.  I think the example Nicole gives is quite indicative of many people who are dipping their toes into this ‘game’.  Firstly, the desire to travel more with family is there, and that often leads into searching around on how to use Airmiles and Points to save on travel.  That she works, is in control of her debt and has an end goal makes answering her question actually quite easy.  Yes, this game is for you.

The problem that she faces is that the environment is overly competitive, there are many other families that are competing for award space over the school holidays, and getting 4 tickets together is not easy at all.  Though it can certainly be done.

Help Booking 4 Award Tickets

Book far ahead

The first thing to consider is that airlines release award inventory something like 330 days in advance, and the sooner you book it, the more chance you have of getting seats. So if you plan to go the route of award travel, you need to be willing to book far in advance.  I typically have my travel booked 12 months in the future, and am currently booking trips for 2015 for flights and a cruise.

Split PNRs

This is risky, but if your kids are old enough, you might want to book not 4 awards in one Passenger Name Record (PNR), but book 2 x 2 PNRs, pairing one adult and one child each.  This method has pros and cons, the major Pro is that finding 2 seats is easier than finding 4 seats, the major Con is that if something goes wrong with your flight people will be rebooked based on PNR, so should your first flight be cancelled you may (not necessarily will) end up flying on different planes to your destination.  That is why you pair the PNRs with a parent on each so the kids never end up having to fly alone in that event.

Know the change rules

Some airlines charge a fee for changes, some don’t, however, if you again look at American Airlines, as long as your Origin and Destination remain the same, you can change routes and dates of travel.  This can be useful in conjunction with the Split PNR- you book 2x people on one flight from say NYC-LAS and 2 on another flight with the same airline.  You then track both flights and as soon as either opens up 2 more seats you call in and ask to swap to that plane, fee free.  Airlines often drip feed award space after the initial push from 330 days out, sadly more and more it is 1 seat at a time in Business Class, but you might get more luck in Economy.  A good service to help offload the tracking is Expert Flyer, it costs about $10 per month, but sets alerts so you don’t have to check seats every day.  Here is my review  Worst case, you are opting to fly as pairs (remember that Adult Chaperon, unless your kids are horrible to fly with and they are old enough to fly without you) so be prepared to arrive at different times and meet up at the destination.

Learn about Alliances

You may have an abundance of American Airline miles, and but searching from AA.com shows no space to book your 4 tickets.  I personally like to run a search through Kayak.com simply to see who flies from my airport to that destination.  There may be times where you will see that NYC-Madrid is mainly flown using Iberia, which you can book with American miles, but the AA.com booking engine doesn’t show the space due to poor integration.

Learning about the Alliances that you can leverage can point you into the direction you need to go, after your find that Iberia is the airline you want, google ‘finding Iberia award space’ and you will hit a ton of results.  Here is a way that The Miles Professor recommends, using a Qantas Airline tool to search!

Pro tip – when looking at Kayak for those routes, open up the ‘details’ box to see who actually operates the flight, in this case it looks like Iberia, but when you hit the expand button you can see that the first leg is operated by British Airways:

You could still book this ticket using your American AAdvantage miles, but anything that involves you flying to the UK (and more severely, out again) will come with a tremendously high fee.  You can’t expect to get away with dumping our beloved Tea in the harbor and not pay any penalties…  If you look at this option however, you can see a non-stop flight operated to Madrid by Iberia.  This one would have much lower fees as it avoids London:

However, this flight being direct is also much more desirable for the travel time and experience, so finding seats will be harder as demand is higher.  

Outsource?

The spending side of the ‘travel hacking’ game is as complex as the earning side, and knowing how to leverage award rules, and where to find the space can make a massive difference to your success.  I am more than happy to help when I can, you can ask me via twitter and if I don’t know the answer I will gladly pass you along to someone who might.  If you really can’t figure it out, but have a bunch of miles accrued, you might want to consider paying a pro for the service.  Prices tend to vary, you could be looking at $100+ for this, but if it gets those miles spent and your goals achieved it could be a good investment.

Boutique Hotels and Income

Nicole mentioned that she prefers boutique hotels, and also that she doesn’t really want to make income from her earning habits. These two are actually slightly dichotomous so I would suggest a paradigm shift here.  Even though she may have sufficient income from her regular employment, if we can find ways to shift Travel Costs out of the family budget, and offset them with ‘earning travel related income’ we can create value.

The most obvious solution to boutique hotels would be to say THE ARRIVAL CARD!!!! However, I sadly vowed I wouldn’t hyperlink my affiliate links within posts any more, and should stick to that vow for at least a week (like my diet).  The Barclay Arrival card is great for non chain spending, you basically put the hotel bill on that card, and use your points to erase the bill.  Travel related spend done like this garners a 2.22% earning rate, which makes it attractive.  But you know what is better than 2.22%? Yep, 2.23%! The arrival is solid, and the signup bonus is worth it, but after you have captured that 40,000 points for regular (or irregular) spend, 5% is way better ROI than 2.22%.  If you were to approach a strategy where you earned 5% ‘income’ and assigned it to travel costs, that is a great way to keep your costs low.

I would also suggest leverage a trifector of Third Party Rewards (think Hotels.com Welcome Rewards) portal bonuses (go through online shopping to get to Hotels.com) and coupons for these sites- note if you use Coupons on Hotels.com you often waive the Welcome Rewards night bonus, so it is either or, but you might find value in comparing Hotels.com without a coupon with the price on say Travelocity WITH a coupon.  More on how to do that really well: Exploring Hotel Booking Strategies

Conclusion

Everyone starts out  in a similar way, and learning how to both earn, and redeem your points and miles is going to be instrumental.  It may take a shift in thinking, but you might want to let the ‘availability’ lead the decision making on where you go, and you must always remember that holding high balances of miles exposes you to the risk that they will be devalued and your plans will go to waste.  Earn, and burn folks, earn and burn.

(Question Time image stolen from from another blog, that may or may not have stolen it from the Beeb)