ATHLLC4343836506

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.480 | - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,

00:00:04.880 | a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel,

00:00:07.440 | all while spending less and saving more.

00:00:09.560 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and I'm excited to have you

00:00:11.400 | on my journey to optimize and upgrade my own life.

00:00:14.280 | Now, a good portion of the emails I get from you all

00:00:16.720 | are about how to best use all the points and miles

00:00:18.920 | you've racked up for travel.

00:00:20.720 | And while I've covered parts of that

00:00:22.000 | in at least a dozen episodes,

00:00:23.600 | I felt like it's time to have an episode

00:00:25.400 | solely focused on booking or travel.

00:00:28.480 | So for the last few months, I've been trying to track down

00:00:30.900 | someone who is truly world-class at this, and I did.

00:00:34.120 | So today, I'm joined by Tiffany Funk,

00:00:36.440 | who knows this game in and out.

00:00:38.560 | For the past decade, she's produced, written for,

00:00:41.400 | and been the managing editor of One Mile at a Time,

00:00:44.040 | the largest independently-owned travel and loyalty blog,

00:00:46.600 | and she also ran operations

00:00:48.160 | at one of the top award-booking services,

00:00:50.080 | Points Pros, for nine years.

00:00:51.920 | Then, she took all that experience to co-found Point Me,

00:00:55.140 | one of, if not the best award-searching product out there.

00:00:58.360 | So today, we're gonna break down the why, when, and how

00:01:01.760 | to search for award travel,

00:01:03.320 | talk about some of the philosophy

00:01:04.400 | about how to think about travel

00:01:06.280 | with your points and with your miles.

00:01:07.880 | We're gonna get tactical,

00:01:08.840 | so you can confidently put your points and miles to good use.

00:01:12.080 | I'm also gonna try to get a few travel hacks

00:01:14.120 | and tips from Tiffany,

00:01:15.060 | because after visiting 80-plus countries,

00:01:17.380 | I'm sure she has plenty.

00:01:19.080 | So let's get started after this.

00:01:21.080 | Tiffany, welcome to the show.

00:01:24.760 | Thank you for being here.

00:01:26.000 | - Of course, thank you.

00:01:27.760 | - Before we actually talk about the process

00:01:29.400 | of booking award travel,

00:01:30.680 | I just wanna talk about why people should even think

00:01:33.560 | about award flights.

00:01:34.880 | I know I get a lot of people that always email me in

00:01:37.160 | and say, "Wouldn't it just be easier

00:01:38.920 | "if I just redeem all these points for cashback

00:01:41.320 | "or book in the travel portal?"

00:01:43.040 | And I know you've thought about this more than anyone.

00:01:45.660 | How do you think about that trade-off?

00:01:47.400 | - Yeah, that's actually really interesting,

00:01:48.980 | because my answer three years ago would've been different,

00:01:51.660 | and I actually think as we talk today,

00:01:53.360 | there's going to be a lot of things where I will say,

00:01:54.920 | "My answer three years ago would've been different,

00:01:56.540 | "but for right now, this."

00:01:57.700 | In general, everyone has points, though,

00:01:59.700 | and no one knows how to use them.

00:02:01.020 | And I think there's an intimidation factor,

00:02:04.000 | and people just think, "Okay, it's hard,

00:02:06.240 | "but the portal is easy."

00:02:08.080 | So I think it's worth knowing what the options are

00:02:11.600 | and how to explore your alternatives,

00:02:14.120 | and just do that comparative shopping,

00:02:15.880 | even if you do ultimately end up booking through the portal

00:02:18.580 | because the nonstop flight isn't available

00:02:21.460 | using a traditional miles and points award,

00:02:23.840 | or you decide that actually for this trip,

00:02:25.600 | the economy is fine, and so the value is better

00:02:28.080 | through the portal just because of the way

00:02:29.360 | the economics have changed in the past couple of years.

00:02:32.120 | But ultimately, there is tremendous value to be had

00:02:36.320 | by leveraging these loyalty programs and their partners

00:02:40.960 | and what we refer to as distressed inventory.

00:02:44.040 | The goal of an airline executive

00:02:45.620 | who works in loyalty management

00:02:46.960 | would be to take all 150 of those seats on a 737

00:02:51.720 | and sell every single seat on the plane

00:02:53.720 | for the maximum amount

00:02:55.880 | that each passenger was willing to pay.

00:02:57.520 | So that might be a $49 WebSaver special,

00:03:01.600 | it might be a 65,000 mile redemption,

00:03:05.400 | but at the end of the day, if the seat goes out empty,

00:03:08.060 | no one gets anything.

00:03:09.000 | So because of that, there's this very complicated interaction

00:03:12.680 | between the airline, their alliance partners,

00:03:15.740 | other partners, where everyone is collaborating

00:03:18.560 | in the background to make these seats available

00:03:21.960 | in different inventory buckets,

00:03:24.160 | and that's where the magic of miles and points comes in

00:03:26.360 | because there's frequently opportunities to use points

00:03:29.680 | that you didn't even know you had or had access to,

00:03:32.400 | but they're one of 25 partners that your credit card

00:03:36.080 | or your hotel points can transfer to.

00:03:38.080 | You can move them to that program,

00:03:39.800 | you can get a seat on the same flight

00:03:42.000 | you were going to purchase otherwise,

00:03:43.240 | and you're spending a fraction of the points

00:03:44.840 | that you would have.

00:03:45.680 | - Is there a kind of rule of thumb fraction

00:03:47.880 | where using points by transferring them to partners

00:03:50.520 | can be two to three times as valuable?

00:03:52.560 | One of the scariest things is if you Google online,

00:03:54.720 | you'll find someone who writes a post about,

00:03:57.080 | I got 25 cents per point booking this crazy thing.

00:04:00.620 | I don't wanna set the bar there,

00:04:02.400 | but is there a place where you're like,

00:04:03.520 | look, even this feels like a win?

00:04:05.360 | - Yeah, for sure.

00:04:06.200 | On average, over the time we've been doing this,

00:04:08.820 | I typically find that people who are transferring

00:04:12.600 | their points to a program and redeeming

00:04:16.440 | through the loyalty program charts and those methods,

00:04:19.840 | they're getting six to 12 times the value

00:04:21.920 | of someone who redeemed through their credit card portal.

00:04:24.920 | And I like to make that comparison

00:04:26.680 | because when people talk about the value

00:04:29.560 | they got for flights, it's frequently not reality-based.

00:04:33.440 | - And what do you mean by that?

00:04:34.520 | - Because ultimately, and this gets into

00:04:37.280 | the economics classes that maybe it's been a while

00:04:39.000 | since anyone's taken, the ultimate value of a thing

00:04:42.960 | is only what you or a comparative consumer

00:04:46.440 | is willing to pay for it.

00:04:48.160 | So that flight from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi

00:04:53.160 | is only worth $25,000 if you were ready, willing,

00:04:56.800 | prepared, and able to purchase a $25,000 flight to Abu Dhabi

00:05:00.800 | and I don't have anyone in my life for whom that's true.

00:05:03.500 | So you can't really say, okay, I traded in

00:05:05.640 | my 70,000 advantage miles for this $25,000 flight

00:05:09.160 | because those 70,000 points are not worth $25,000.

00:05:12.200 | You would not have paid $25,000, right?

00:05:14.280 | What you would have paid might have been $4,000.

00:05:17.120 | You know, if it was a special occasion or something,

00:05:18.660 | even still, I don't know a lot of people

00:05:19.840 | who are buying $4,000 flights to Abu Dhabi.

00:05:21.600 | So I like to base it off of what you would have paid

00:05:25.080 | booking through the credit card portal

00:05:26.200 | because you would probably, if you were in

00:05:27.640 | the credit card portal, seen that price

00:05:30.080 | for that flight to Abu Dhabi and been like,

00:05:31.520 | I'm not spending that many hundreds of thousands of points,

00:05:34.920 | but 70,000 points is a bargain.

00:05:36.800 | - Yes.

00:05:37.640 | - And sort of looking at it that way

00:05:38.460 | and framing it a little bit more practically.

00:05:40.960 | - And are there types of travelers for whom

00:05:43.520 | that huge multiple is not as valuable,

00:05:45.920 | whether it's people flying economy

00:05:48.200 | versus splurging for business,

00:05:50.120 | only flying domestic, international?

00:05:52.680 | - So it used to be that the best value for your points

00:05:55.900 | was very consistently international premium cabins,

00:05:59.720 | where you were going to get tremendous outsized value

00:06:03.240 | if you were booking, especially a partner,

00:06:06.920 | and booking the front of the plane

00:06:08.260 | versus if you were trying to use your points domestically.

00:06:10.520 | There's so many occasions where I'd see somebody be like,

00:06:14.160 | oh, I booked tickets from Phoenix to Orlando

00:06:16.840 | and they were 50,000 per person each way,

00:06:20.120 | but it was first class.

00:06:21.040 | I'm like, oh my gosh, you're paying first class

00:06:22.800 | on a terrible, terrible product.

00:06:25.840 | There's nothing first about a Dallas

00:06:27.940 | to Orlando experience regardless.

00:06:30.000 | And 50,000 points per person,

00:06:32.560 | that would have been enough for you to go to Europe.

00:06:34.280 | But I've tempered that a bit as I've matured in the space.

00:06:38.640 | Some people just really want to go to Orlando

00:06:40.360 | and so that's the best value of their points.

00:06:42.000 | There's no value for them in Paris.

00:06:43.660 | It is what it is.

00:06:44.500 | And I don't wanna be disparaging of other people's

00:06:46.000 | travel plans and dreams and things like that.

00:06:48.100 | The other thing is that the combination of dynamic pricing

00:06:51.740 | and the huge change in airline routing and capacity

00:06:55.800 | that we've seen since COVID began,

00:06:58.320 | means that domestic awards

00:06:59.840 | can actually be a phenomenal value.

00:07:01.720 | Your flights are very full, they're very limited.

00:07:04.400 | And again, everyone is playing the same game

00:07:06.760 | of not having seats go out empty.

00:07:08.920 | So there are frequently times

00:07:11.960 | where I've seen domestic flights

00:07:13.900 | where if you go to buy them last minute,

00:07:16.420 | they're setting them at 450, $600 for an economy flight,

00:07:20.580 | but you can get them for 7,500 miles.

00:07:23.520 | That's a great use of your points,

00:07:25.640 | no matter how you slice it.

00:07:26.840 | - And is that domestic economy or business?

00:07:29.760 | If domestic economy can be a good deal

00:07:31.520 | and international business could be a good deal,

00:07:33.440 | it seems like there's probably something good

00:07:35.700 | along the whole spectrum.

00:07:36.860 | Is there any gap where you're like,

00:07:37.780 | "Whoa, if you're interested in this, not a good fit."

00:07:40.660 | - Yeah, so I generally would say

00:07:42.220 | that domestic first or business is still not a good deal,

00:07:45.820 | for the most part when using points.

00:07:47.900 | And that has gotten worse since COVID

00:07:51.540 | because we don't have a lot of people

00:07:53.300 | traveling for business anymore.

00:07:54.540 | So the cadence of inventory is different.

00:07:56.900 | There's a lot of leisure travelers though,

00:07:58.480 | and there's a lot of people

00:07:59.440 | who haven't traveled for a few years,

00:08:01.020 | and so they're willing to just buy up

00:08:02.580 | and pay the extra $100 when they're booking their ticket

00:08:05.400 | to have domestic first.

00:08:06.560 | And that sort of becomes the thing,

00:08:08.320 | is the buy-up price might not be very high.

00:08:10.420 | It might be 100 or $150,

00:08:12.820 | but the award price is probably at least double of economy.

00:08:16.380 | And maybe that's fine

00:08:17.380 | if you're going from 7,500 miles to 15,000 miles,

00:08:21.200 | but if you're going from 25,000 miles to 50,000 miles,

00:08:24.760 | that's just a huge premium for a recliner.

00:08:27.400 | - First off, like you said, it's a recliner.

00:08:29.100 | There are very few other than San Francisco, LA to New York,

00:08:32.820 | very few of the routes domestically

00:08:35.060 | have a quality business class product.

00:08:37.620 | Internationally, you said maybe it's 100, 200, $300 buy-up.

00:08:40.460 | I kind of always had this mantra of like,

00:08:41.660 | I'm never gonna pay for business class.

00:08:43.140 | That'd be crazy.

00:08:43.980 | I've had times where I've looked and it's like $100 more.

00:08:47.540 | And it's like, wow, we have kids, we're traveling with bags.

00:08:50.020 | The bag fee's $30.

00:08:51.660 | - Exactly, just adding that up by itself.

00:08:53.420 | It's like, okay, this actually makes sense.

00:08:55.780 | - But internationally, whenever I look,

00:08:57.700 | it still seems to be like three to five times

00:09:00.540 | more expensive to buy a business class ticket

00:09:02.540 | than it does a coach ticket.

00:09:03.580 | So that's where I think you can get another bulk of value.

00:09:06.500 | Does anything change now pre-pandemic?

00:09:09.220 | It was me and my wife, just the two of us.

00:09:11.260 | Now it's me and my wife, two kids and an au pair.

00:09:13.580 | - So everything has changed.

00:09:14.940 | - Everything has changed in more ways than one.

00:09:17.420 | But when it comes to travel,

00:09:18.980 | if you're playing a game trying to look for five seats,

00:09:21.820 | I wanna get in, by the way,

00:09:22.860 | to the actual meat of this conversation,

00:09:24.980 | which is how do you do this?

00:09:26.380 | But someone emailed me the other day and said,

00:09:27.820 | well, we have four kids.

00:09:28.740 | We're looking for flights with six of us.

00:09:30.620 | Like what kind of expectations should someone like that have

00:09:34.060 | because I think looking for one seat

00:09:36.300 | is so much easier than looking for four,

00:09:39.060 | at least in my experience.

00:09:40.300 | And if it's more than--

00:09:41.420 | - So many things are different when you're single

00:09:43.180 | than when you have a family.

00:09:44.260 | And this is actually one of the things

00:09:45.740 | that has long bothered me about the miles and points space,

00:09:50.420 | and especially a lot of the influencers

00:09:51.740 | are pretty consistently younger people

00:09:56.500 | with not a lot of ties.

00:09:58.700 | And they come from a pretty high socioeconomic status.

00:10:02.020 | We're guilty of this.

00:10:02.940 | Ben and I, at one mile at a time,

00:10:04.860 | so much of when we were doing our things,

00:10:06.220 | we had partners, but we had a lot of flexibility.

00:10:09.020 | We were both digital nomads.

00:10:10.660 | So it's very easy to be like,

00:10:11.700 | yeah, Buenos Aires for the weekend, why not?

00:10:13.340 | Once you have other responsibilities

00:10:15.540 | and other people in your life, things change, right?

00:10:17.820 | So I'm very sensitive to people who have kids.

00:10:20.660 | I will say in your case,

00:10:21.620 | it's much easier when they're the size that they are

00:10:24.100 | and you don't have school schedules to contend with.

00:10:26.060 | Once you get into school schedules,

00:10:29.860 | I think the expectation needs to be adjusted

00:10:32.180 | on the earning side of the equation.

00:10:34.580 | For your listener who has the family of six now,

00:10:38.420 | and if they know that they're going to be traveling

00:10:40.180 | over comparatively peak dates,

00:10:42.940 | you're either going to be going over spring break

00:10:44.700 | and everyone in your area has spring break at the same time,

00:10:47.300 | or you're going to be going

00:10:48.140 | like when school gets out or things like that,

00:10:49.380 | like that's just the natural cadence of family travel.

00:10:52.820 | You need to solve that ahead of time

00:10:55.180 | and earn more points either in a specific program

00:10:58.460 | or that can be transferred to a specific program

00:11:01.220 | from a variety of sources.

00:11:02.260 | And we can talk about some of those

00:11:03.580 | because ultimately for a price,

00:11:06.580 | these airlines are willing to accommodate

00:11:07.940 | any lack of flexibility that you have.

00:11:09.620 | You just need to prepare for that early

00:11:11.740 | and just know that like your awards might cost you more

00:11:14.740 | in terms of points, you could quantify,

00:11:17.100 | okay, what is the cost of a connection?

00:11:19.900 | What is the cost of mid-con red eye with toddlers, right?

00:11:24.900 | There's huge costs that aren't the points cost

00:11:28.500 | for doing that.

00:11:29.340 | But if you can stack up a bunch of points

00:11:31.900 | in flexible programs, Capital One and Chase

00:11:36.100 | and even Built Now,

00:11:37.940 | and then transfer those points to Flying Blue,

00:11:39.780 | like Flying Blue will absolutely have six seats for you

00:11:41.900 | from California to Europe during peak dates.

00:11:44.820 | You're going to pay some fuel surcharges,

00:11:46.180 | but you can know that and you can plan for it

00:11:48.180 | and you can budget around it

00:11:49.580 | and you can still get a tremendous redemption.

00:11:52.020 | It's just different than what a tremendous redemption

00:11:53.980 | might've looked like when you were unencumbered.

00:11:56.820 | - We're looking at a trip in February

00:11:59.180 | to Belize, which it's so crazy because it's not that far.

00:12:03.660 | It's like just a tiny bit further than Cancun,

00:12:05.860 | but getting there is like 10 times more complicated

00:12:08.180 | because there's no direct flights.

00:12:09.660 | So we were like, man,

00:12:10.500 | it's going to cost us like 70, 80, 90,000 miles to get there,

00:12:14.760 | which in our mind seems crazy for such a short trip.

00:12:17.820 | But the week that my daughter doesn't have preschool

00:12:20.560 | is the week that all the schools are out in February.

00:12:23.140 | - Exactly.

00:12:23.980 | - And the flights are like $1,500, $2,000.

00:12:27.620 | If you don't want to fly to Dallas

00:12:29.700 | and sit at the airport for seven hours

00:12:31.820 | and then get in at 11 p.m. and leave at 5 a.m.,

00:12:34.020 | it's actually still a good value to use the points.

00:12:36.900 | It's just a lot more points than it would have been

00:12:39.440 | if I was like, oh sure, I'll take the red eye on Wednesday

00:12:42.260 | and I'll hang out at an airport for five hours.

00:12:44.740 | It's just a different calculus.

00:12:45.780 | So my takeaway has been the value is still there.

00:12:48.540 | It's just more points.

00:12:49.760 | And now that it's more points because of the flexibility,

00:12:52.460 | the desire to not change planes as much or long layover,

00:12:55.960 | you just need more points.

00:12:57.420 | - Right, but I will also say that there is a benefit

00:13:01.300 | in thinking outside of the box with family travel.

00:13:03.780 | Any trip that you would take within North America,

00:13:07.100 | including upper or Central America and things like that,

00:13:09.300 | Belize is a perfect example, is going to be expensive

00:13:12.260 | because a lot of people think that it's close and it's easy.

00:13:14.780 | If you were to look instead those same dates

00:13:17.580 | and look at going to Thailand,

00:13:18.900 | I would wager that your travel time is not much longer.

00:13:23.060 | You would spend far fewer points.

00:13:24.800 | You're still getting to beach.

00:13:25.860 | You're getting vastly better food

00:13:28.180 | than anything Belize has to offer.

00:13:30.460 | And you might be surprised, right?

00:13:32.380 | It might be something to think about.

00:13:33.220 | And I know a lot of parents,

00:13:34.420 | especially newer parents are hesitant.

00:13:35.820 | They're like, "Oh my gosh, it's a long flight."

00:13:37.900 | Okay, but is it?

00:13:38.820 | It's probably the same travel day.

00:13:41.100 | I did this.

00:13:41.940 | I'll actually send you some pictures, Chris,

00:13:42.980 | 'cause they're adorable.

00:13:44.100 | We took my sister's family and her kids.

00:13:46.700 | We went to Thailand for a couple of weeks over Christmas

00:13:50.340 | and all in, everything done,

00:13:53.340 | we spent about $2,000 per person for 10 days,

00:13:56.100 | including the value of the points.

00:13:58.280 | And granted, I had the points to spend

00:14:00.620 | and not everybody has points to do seven people

00:14:02.620 | in international first class.

00:14:03.940 | Again, you can plan for that.

00:14:05.540 | And it was great.

00:14:06.380 | My nephew was seven at the time,

00:14:08.420 | which is a very precarious age for travel

00:14:10.800 | because they can't sit still, right?

00:14:12.740 | And they're very busy, but he was great.

00:14:14.220 | And he loved the flight.

00:14:15.860 | He laid down in the bed.

00:14:16.980 | It was fantastic.

00:14:18.300 | We worked through the jet lag

00:14:20.460 | and we didn't have to spend 12 hours in DFW,

00:14:23.000 | which we would have had to do

00:14:24.140 | and did the next year when they went to Costa Rica.

00:14:26.860 | - In this case, the family has decided

00:14:28.980 | this is the family trip.

00:14:29.980 | So there's a little bit less flexibility.

00:14:31.980 | - Yeah, so you didn't get a vote.

00:14:33.180 | That's the other thing about being a parent, right?

00:14:34.620 | Is your vote share diminishes tremendously as you.

00:14:37.540 | - But we're gonna start planning more family trips

00:14:39.780 | for our extended family.

00:14:41.120 | This is an extended family trip where we're like,

00:14:42.660 | hey, this is the plan this year.

00:14:44.020 | This is where we're going.

00:14:44.900 | Let us know if you need help booking it.

00:14:46.260 | But I think we can agree.

00:14:47.600 | Getting your points and transferring them

00:14:49.300 | can be a lot of value.

00:14:50.980 | There's almost 30 different airlines.

00:14:52.940 | You can transfer to amongst

00:14:54.460 | all these flexible points programs.

00:14:55.780 | I went this morning, I was like, okay,

00:14:56.880 | if you sum up Amex and Built and Chase

00:14:59.180 | and Capital One and Citi, there's 30 airlines.

00:15:00.900 | And if you look and include their partners,

00:15:02.560 | it's almost double that.

00:15:03.860 | Where does someone start to think about this?

00:15:06.660 | And I know you guys have a product to do this.

00:15:08.340 | So I wanna cover both with and without tools.

00:15:11.280 | But if someone's like, all right,

00:15:12.580 | I've saved up the few hundred thousand points

00:15:15.160 | I need to take a family on a trip anywhere in the world.

00:15:18.500 | But like, what do I do?

00:15:20.140 | The Amex probably has like more than a dozen places

00:15:22.360 | you could transfer those points to.

00:15:23.940 | How do you think about that if you're someone new to this?

00:15:26.900 | Okay, so the very old school way.

00:15:28.380 | So I would actually take it back a step

00:15:30.980 | and I would think about this before deciding

00:15:32.900 | whether I'm going to get an Amex card

00:15:34.140 | or a Chase card or whatever other card.

00:15:36.100 | Because while they do have a lot of partners

00:15:37.780 | and there's a lot of leverage,

00:15:38.680 | there are some unique situations

00:15:41.300 | where you can't get Amex points to United

00:15:44.780 | and you can't get Chase points to American Airlines.

00:15:48.780 | And because of how airline inventory management

00:15:52.600 | has evolved in the past few years,

00:15:55.040 | there may be times where you do need points

00:15:58.040 | with that domestic carrier

00:16:00.020 | because they are making space available

00:16:01.920 | only to members of their program.

00:16:04.360 | So if you were talking before we started recording,

00:16:08.000 | you mentioned French Polynesia.

00:16:09.660 | So if you know that you wanna go from San Francisco

00:16:13.000 | to Papeete and the only carrier that has a points program

00:16:18.400 | that flies in nonstop is United,

00:16:20.180 | that's a trip where I would probably look at paying cash

00:16:22.460 | for the flights because they can actually

00:16:23.540 | be pretty reasonable in comparison

00:16:25.100 | and because they are considered South Pacific,

00:16:27.940 | the award prices are bonkers.

00:16:29.900 | But if you know you're going to want to use miles,

00:16:31.400 | you know you're going to need United miles in that case

00:16:34.060 | because they're not gonna make space available

00:16:35.460 | to their partners very, very rarely.

00:16:37.660 | So you probably, in that case,

00:16:38.860 | wanna get the Chase card versus the Amex card.

00:16:40.780 | So that's my setting the table for that.

00:16:44.500 | Otherwise, what I like to do,

00:16:45.860 | if we're doing the old school way,

00:16:47.540 | I like to go to Wikipedia and look at the destination

00:16:50.520 | that you're going to and literally put in CDG

00:16:53.900 | for Charles de Gaulle Airport Wiki

00:16:56.140 | and go through and look and see like,

00:16:57.540 | who are the airlines that fly there

00:16:59.020 | and where do those airlines fly to?

00:17:00.500 | This is the most manual way possible that you can do it,

00:17:02.860 | but I think it's really helpful 'cause you can look at it

00:17:04.780 | and you can be like, oh, okay,

00:17:06.300 | I didn't know that Air France flew there

00:17:09.500 | from Salt Lake City or whatever.

00:17:10.740 | I actually don't have the Wikipedia page open

00:17:12.900 | for the Paris Airport, so I hope that's still true.

00:17:15.740 | But you can look at that and if you cross-reference that

00:17:18.940 | to then the list of partners for your credit card,

00:17:23.940 | you can see like, okay, does Air France fly in blue?

00:17:27.180 | Oh, they are a partner of my program.

00:17:28.540 | Okay, so that's a good place to start.

00:17:30.340 | That's sort of the baseline.

00:17:31.780 | You could go from there.

00:17:32.660 | When you get into the more advanced ways, it's like,

00:17:34.220 | okay, well, what other programs are partners of Air France

00:17:37.780 | and is there an arbitrage opportunity

00:17:39.500 | by moving my points to some other SkyTeam carrier

00:17:43.780 | or some non-Alliance carrier

00:17:45.580 | and looking at their award charts?

00:17:47.540 | And at this point in time,

00:17:48.680 | you should have 30 to 70 browser tabs open

00:17:52.060 | and that's how you know you're doing it right.

00:17:53.380 | - I wanna go back to this example of maybe it's better

00:17:55.700 | to have points in the domestic program.

00:17:57.460 | So I will say, I got lucky.

00:17:59.140 | We were flying last minute and it was actually cheaper

00:18:01.660 | to book through Air Canada's aero plan

00:18:03.660 | for the flights to Papiete.

00:18:04.980 | - Right, but you were booking last minute,

00:18:06.260 | which is not how most people plan their trips to Tahiti.

00:18:08.700 | - Totally.

00:18:09.540 | - That's sort of that give and take, right?

00:18:10.780 | If you were like, oh, maybe we can go to Tahiti

00:18:12.780 | or maybe we'll go to somewhere else.

00:18:16.040 | - Yeah.

00:18:16.880 | - Then that's fine, but.

00:18:18.000 | - Are there programs in general where you're like,

00:18:20.240 | okay, Flying Blue, I think is a great example

00:18:23.100 | because they're a partner of most flexible point programs.

00:18:26.220 | They have pretty reasonable award prices.

00:18:29.580 | Is there a, okay, I wanna go on a common route.

00:18:32.260 | I wanna go from New York to London.

00:18:34.220 | There's probably a quick version of,

00:18:35.920 | I would say like maybe it's check Air France,

00:18:38.420 | check United or Air Canada and check British Airways.

00:18:42.140 | And like start there, maybe you find something great

00:18:44.820 | before you get to the 60 browser tabs.

00:18:47.460 | - Well, you said if somebody was brand new

00:18:48.840 | and wanted to know, right?

00:18:49.860 | So like they don't necessarily know where to look.

00:18:52.340 | So if you're going New York to London,

00:18:53.920 | I would look first at Virgin Atlantic.

00:18:55.820 | And I would also look at the travel time

00:18:58.300 | for New York to London.

00:18:59.180 | I've been on a New York London flight

00:19:01.300 | that ended up clocking in at three hours and 45 minutes.

00:19:04.200 | I don't need business class for three hours and 45 minutes.

00:19:06.520 | That's something to consider too.

00:19:07.360 | And Virgin Atlantic will frequently have nylon

00:19:10.380 | for like 10,000 points in economy.

00:19:12.860 | And that's an incredible bargain.

00:19:14.540 | It can be a four hour flight.

00:19:15.740 | We think of like, oh, it's international.

00:19:17.140 | But when you're already in New York, it's not that far.

00:19:19.400 | But again, I think if you were looking

00:19:20.900 | at the Heathrow Airport Wikipedia page,

00:19:23.100 | you would have been like, oh, Virgin Atlantic

00:19:24.620 | and they're a partner of all of my credit cards.

00:19:26.720 | I can look there.

00:19:27.560 | So it's the same method.

00:19:28.660 | You don't have to memorize these things.

00:19:30.500 | - I just didn't know if you had like a,

00:19:32.700 | before you get to 60, here's three or four to start with

00:19:35.620 | to see if you find something good.

00:19:37.660 | - I think it depends where you're going.

00:19:38.980 | People always want me to say like,

00:19:41.620 | well, this is the best program.

00:19:43.080 | And this is the best partner, so we should go.

00:19:44.620 | But it really depends.

00:19:46.540 | And as we see this trend where loyalty programs

00:19:49.860 | are making more and more inventory available

00:19:53.180 | exclusively to members of their own program,

00:19:56.460 | it's better to keep your points flexible

00:19:59.020 | than necessarily go all in on that one program.

00:20:01.620 | Because what if you can't book something

00:20:04.460 | with their partners that you would have expected

00:20:05.900 | to be able to book?

00:20:06.740 | Like back in the day where we moved maybe a billion points

00:20:11.740 | from membership rewards to AeroPlan

00:20:14.380 | to book Lufthansa First Class when it was a 16 seat cabin

00:20:17.060 | with no fuel surcharges through AeroPlan.

00:20:18.580 | And like, it didn't even matter.

00:20:19.660 | Frequently I would tell people, no problem, there's space.

00:20:22.100 | And then I would go and actually look

00:20:23.580 | to see if there was space.

00:20:24.420 | Because there was always space.

00:20:25.260 | There were 16 seats in the First Class cabin.

00:20:26.860 | Of course there was space.

00:20:27.820 | - And to be clear, these were client points.

00:20:29.600 | You didn't actually have a billion points yourself.

00:20:31.580 | - Correct, these are other people's key points.

00:20:33.320 | Yeah, and so things evolve and they change.

00:20:35.700 | One of the great evolutions in the miles and points space

00:20:39.220 | in the recent comparative years

00:20:41.380 | from when I've been in the game

00:20:42.820 | has been the advent of these flexible points.

00:20:44.660 | So you don't have to commit to a single program early on.

00:20:49.660 | - It's funny, I always use the United card as the example.

00:20:51.980 | People are like, oh, I live in the Bay Area

00:20:53.620 | so I have this United card.

00:20:54.940 | And I'm like, well, even just a chase card

00:20:58.140 | might actually earn you more United points

00:21:00.620 | than the United card itself.

00:21:02.260 | And then those points actually could go

00:21:04.840 | to a bunch of other airlines

00:21:06.500 | and you don't have to decide until you're planning the trip.

00:21:08.940 | - Exactly, if you live in the Bay Area,

00:21:10.500 | you should have the United card

00:21:12.540 | and you should not spend on it

00:21:14.900 | unless you are purchasing tickets on United.

00:21:16.540 | You need the baggage benefit because you're flying economy.

00:21:19.140 | In that case, it makes sense

00:21:20.340 | because getting triple points from another card

00:21:24.120 | doesn't offset the $150 that you would pay in baggage fees.

00:21:27.780 | But yeah, don't use it at the grocery store, please.

00:21:29.620 | - Or maybe even for buying United flights.

00:21:31.820 | - Does United still have that limitation

00:21:33.380 | where you only get the baggage benefit on your credit card

00:21:35.700 | if you purchased the flight using a United credit card?

00:21:39.180 | - That is a question I don't know the answer to.

00:21:40.860 | - Yeah, I don't know it off the top of my head anymore,

00:21:42.540 | but it used to be the case.

00:21:43.600 | And so that was then my exception of like,

00:21:45.460 | this is the time when you would use that United card.

00:21:48.200 | Otherwise, for the Delta and American cards,

00:21:50.160 | have them if you check bags, but don't use them.

00:21:54.260 | - It's funny, I used to be in the like,

00:21:55.540 | why would you ever check bags camp?

00:21:56.880 | And it's like, oh, because maybe you have children.

00:21:58.580 | - Now you have kids, yeah, yeah.

00:22:01.980 | - Hi again, it's Chris's wife, Amy.

00:22:04.340 | Do I need to keep saying that?

00:22:06.100 | Anyway, Thanksgiving is always a time

00:22:08.480 | where I reflect on the things I'm grateful for

00:22:10.780 | and think about ways I can give to others,

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00:23:27.540 | Seriously, I am pretty sure it's more comfortable

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00:23:46.500 | Their products can be used for just about any activity,

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00:24:21.620 | and get yourself some of the most comfortable

00:24:24.900 | and versatile clothing on the planet.

00:24:27.340 | - You mentioned the flexibility was probably the reason

00:24:29.820 | I found such a good deal.

00:24:31.200 | If someone's thinking right now,

00:24:32.380 | "Oh, I wanna take a trip,"

00:24:33.780 | do they wanna start looking right at one year out?

00:24:36.380 | Is there a sweet spot that you've seen

00:24:38.260 | of when someone should start actually looking

00:24:40.280 | for a trip they're planning,

00:24:41.620 | if they know long enough in advance

00:24:43.660 | that they could search any time?

00:24:45.540 | - If you know that you're traveling someplace

00:24:46.740 | a year from now, look and book right now.

00:24:50.740 | You can always cancel it.

00:24:51.820 | You can always change it.

00:24:53.580 | Award tickets are super flexible.

00:24:55.180 | There's frequently not even a penalty.

00:24:57.380 | It depends on the program, of course.

00:24:59.260 | But it's so easy to change or cancel them,

00:25:01.640 | and you're not going to necessarily find something better.

00:25:04.520 | It used to be that within 10 days of departure,

00:25:09.160 | we'd see a lot more award space.

00:25:10.780 | Again, the goal is for seats to not go out empty.

00:25:13.980 | But with COVID and the social commitment

00:25:18.980 | to not having non-vaccine precautions,

00:25:23.740 | the reality of that is flight attendants

00:25:25.700 | and pilots are getting sick, and they're not at work.

00:25:28.020 | And so if you are managing operations for an airline,

00:25:33.020 | you used to comfortably be able to say,

00:25:34.860 | "Okay, 10 days out, this is probably

00:25:37.020 | "what our flight loads are going to look like.

00:25:38.860 | "These are the seats that are going to have occupants."

00:25:41.060 | And then we feel good about it.

00:25:42.400 | And inventory management could say,

00:25:43.520 | "Great, we're gonna release these seats into inventory.

00:25:45.660 | "We'll let partners book them.

00:25:46.860 | "Maybe we'll have a last-minute sale."

00:25:48.980 | There was some degrees of confidence.

00:25:50.900 | Now, we're seeing that inventory get held

00:25:53.160 | until sometimes two hours before departure,

00:25:56.740 | because on any given day, if you have one flight

00:25:59.560 | get canceled between San Francisco and Minneapolis,

00:26:02.080 | you now have 150 passengers

00:26:03.740 | that you have to do something with.

00:26:04.780 | So if you don't have a crew,

00:26:06.300 | you have to accommodate those passengers.

00:26:08.460 | And so we're just not seeing

00:26:10.580 | the near-term inventory dumps that we used to see.

00:26:14.420 | That could get better.

00:26:15.340 | So if you're booking a year out, you might get lucky.

00:26:17.820 | And within 10 days or three days,

00:26:19.500 | you might see a better itinerary.

00:26:21.380 | You might see a nonstop.

00:26:22.500 | You might see a nicer product.

00:26:25.060 | And you can change to that.

00:26:26.620 | But in the current environment,

00:26:29.080 | if you see something, I would book it.

00:26:30.340 | - Okay.

00:26:31.300 | What about flexibility with where you go?

00:26:34.300 | This is a question that I know you've gotten

00:26:35.940 | and I've gotten a lot.

00:26:36.780 | It's like, "I just wanna take a trip

00:26:38.640 | "that lets me get a great use of my miles

00:26:40.960 | "and go somewhere in Asia next year."

00:26:43.940 | And I know from using basically

00:26:46.580 | any search tool on the internet,

00:26:48.020 | Google Flights is probably the closest,

00:26:49.620 | but it certainly doesn't have

00:26:50.580 | any miles and points component.

00:26:52.600 | But just to be like, "Okay, from San Francisco in July

00:26:55.540 | "or next year, where could I go that's cheap?"

00:26:58.740 | Is there a points and miles equivalent?

00:27:00.580 | Or what do you tell people

00:27:01.440 | that have a little bit more flexibility

00:27:03.580 | but don't wanna run 1,000 searches?

00:27:05.940 | - In general, I think that the best use of points

00:27:07.940 | is always going to be something

00:27:08.980 | that provides you with a great experience.

00:27:10.660 | But when you're very flexible with destinations,

00:27:12.820 | I actually don't think starting with Google Flights

00:27:14.500 | is a bad option.

00:27:15.620 | Just to sort of see what the routings look like

00:27:18.540 | and the timings and to sort of get a sense

00:27:20.400 | of what the carriers are that are operating those routes.

00:27:23.220 | As long as you know that that doesn't match over

00:27:26.340 | to award availability or even award routing rules.

00:27:30.620 | There are things that you can do with miles

00:27:32.300 | that you can't do with money and vice versa.

00:27:34.700 | - Can you give us some examples?

00:27:35.720 | - There's a lot of nuance to fair combinability.

00:27:39.580 | So if you're in California and you wanna go to Sydney,

00:27:41.460 | obviously there's the direct flights

00:27:43.240 | that are going to be expensive.

00:27:45.980 | Qantas or American or Delta or United

00:27:48.980 | now has nice seats going to Australia.

00:27:52.020 | But you could also route via the Middle East.

00:27:54.660 | And you could do something like from California

00:27:58.660 | into Doha and fly Qatar's Q Suites

00:28:01.940 | and then go first class from Doha to Sydney.

00:28:05.180 | And you can't really book that with money

00:28:08.740 | because it's not a legal routing when using money.

00:28:11.220 | Qatar might sell it to you as part of a round trip,

00:28:14.020 | but then there's different partners and things like that.

00:28:15.980 | But if you call Advantage and you say,

00:28:17.460 | okay, I need to book two awards, but I want them

00:28:19.100 | on one ticket, they can book that for you.

00:28:21.560 | And it's business class in Q Suites on the long haul.

00:28:25.140 | So you get that nice flat bed.

00:28:26.660 | If you're traveling with a family,

00:28:27.740 | there's a suite that can basically be for four.

00:28:30.620 | It's a lovely experience.

00:28:32.480 | You can go to the museum and enjoy Doha

00:28:35.260 | and then go on to Sydney and it's like 100,000 miles.

00:28:37.460 | And that's a great value.

00:28:38.340 | It's a really extended trip.

00:28:39.800 | It's a fun routing that you wouldn't necessarily do.

00:28:42.460 | And it's frequently fewer points

00:28:44.620 | than doing like an LA-Sydney direct.

00:28:47.420 | Because carriers charge a premium for that

00:28:49.420 | in both miles and money

00:28:50.700 | because they know that that's what people want to do.

00:28:52.420 | - So you can be flexible with routing

00:28:53.940 | and sometimes points and miles lets you do that.

00:28:56.460 | What about just destinations?

00:28:58.100 | Like if someone said, I kind of want to go to Asia

00:28:59.780 | or I kind of want to go to Europe,

00:29:00.740 | I'm not sure where I want to go.

00:29:02.180 | Is there an argument to be made of just like searching

00:29:04.640 | the major hubs to try to find something there first

00:29:07.940 | to see where it might be easiest to get to or?

00:29:10.900 | - Yeah, no, I think that's a perfect example.

00:29:12.900 | In general, it still makes sense to search hub to hub

00:29:15.500 | and just to get a concept of things.

00:29:17.300 | Let's talk about Europe

00:29:18.140 | because Asia is very complicated with COVID still.

00:29:20.740 | But we can go back to Asia.

00:29:21.940 | The thing that I think we don't think about

00:29:24.020 | because travel within the US is really unpleasant.

00:29:27.960 | Travel within Europe isn't necessarily unpleasant

00:29:30.620 | and there are a lot of low cost carriers,

00:29:33.140 | there's a lot of trains,

00:29:34.000 | there's a lot of ways to get around.

00:29:35.940 | So if you really want to go to Amalfi,

00:29:38.420 | you don't need to look at tickets to Naples.

00:29:40.940 | You can look at tickets to Munich

00:29:42.940 | and then there's a bajillion ways per day

00:29:45.700 | to get from Munich to Naples that you can't use points for,

00:29:48.420 | but it might be like a $45 ticket.

00:29:50.940 | So I think looking at a major hub in Europe

00:29:55.940 | as a starting point that you wouldn't mind

00:29:58.860 | spending a night in if you needed to or a day

00:30:01.380 | is a great place to get started with that.

00:30:03.360 | For people starting in the US,

00:30:05.580 | I think it's important to recognize

00:30:08.340 | that the closer you get to the ocean you're going to cross,

00:30:12.300 | the more flight options you will have.

00:30:15.460 | So if you're in Miami and you're trying to go to Tokyo,

00:30:18.300 | good luck, you're not going to find seats.

00:30:20.260 | There is a Korean Air flight,

00:30:23.020 | or there used to be from Miami to Seoul,

00:30:25.660 | which would have been a good option,

00:30:26.660 | but realistically you're connecting in California

00:30:29.380 | or at least in Chicago or possibly in Texas.

00:30:32.200 | And the same thing goes the other direction.

00:30:33.340 | If you're in California and you want to go to Europe,

00:30:36.820 | you could luck out and get a nonstop flight

00:30:39.560 | in business class at a good price point at the saver level.

00:30:44.780 | Or you might need to pay a few more points

00:30:47.320 | to have expanded availability.

00:30:49.140 | And you could plan for that.

00:30:50.060 | Or you might need to make a connection.

00:30:51.320 | And that's where it gets into that sort of trade off

00:30:52.780 | of like, okay, if you're flexible and totally flexible,

00:30:56.380 | you still benefit from determining

00:30:59.260 | what is most important to you.

00:31:01.140 | Is it the in-flight experience?

00:31:02.740 | Is it the travel time?

00:31:04.060 | Is it where you connect?

00:31:05.740 | Because overnighting in Frankfurt is not as fun

00:31:09.660 | as overnighting in Munich.

00:31:10.700 | Everybody has their own things of what matters to them.

00:31:13.580 | And the airports that they like to transit through and not.

00:31:16.740 | And I think if you consider all of that

00:31:18.060 | as part of your flexibility,

00:31:19.020 | it makes it a little bit easier to narrow down

00:31:21.040 | your travel plans and your flight options.

00:31:24.060 | - And one thing we talked about before we got started

00:31:26.580 | was the flexibility of dates.

00:31:28.100 | People are like, oh, I want to go next year.

00:31:29.900 | One thing you pointed out that I was like, okay,

00:31:31.340 | well, are you really that flexible?

00:31:33.100 | I was kind of thinking about it for myself.

00:31:34.620 | I was like, well, I might be flexible

00:31:36.780 | to go somewhere next year.

00:31:39.040 | Maybe I actually really only want to go

00:31:41.020 | on Saturday to Saturday or something

00:31:43.780 | so that we're not taking more than one week

00:31:45.860 | off of work or school or something.

00:31:47.500 | It's like, well, now you just narrowed 365 days

00:31:50.340 | down to like a hundred.

00:31:51.900 | And you pointed out like, what about weather?

00:31:54.000 | - Right, there are places that are super muggy in the summer.

00:31:56.340 | And I love Japan as an example because everyone is like,

00:31:59.500 | oh, I'll go anytime.

00:32:00.340 | Like, but you don't actually want to be in Tokyo in July.

00:32:03.120 | It's very hot.

00:32:04.660 | They turn the escalators off.

00:32:06.180 | You could still go and have a great experience,

00:32:07.860 | but like, it wouldn't be my preferred time.

00:32:09.980 | - What are the local holidays when you're going?

00:32:12.980 | If you're like, oh, okay,

00:32:13.820 | I'm going to try and time it for cherry blossom season,

00:32:15.940 | but do you want to be there during golden week?

00:32:18.260 | Pros and cons to that.

00:32:19.300 | That should be a conscious decision.

00:32:20.780 | There's also a bit of just the human psychology of it

00:32:23.360 | where we all have this fear of missing out.

00:32:25.580 | And in decade plus of doing this,

00:32:29.660 | I think every single time,

00:32:31.680 | and I could check with my colleagues,

00:32:32.780 | but I'm pretty confident saying every time

00:32:35.420 | that we've had someone say, I'm totally flexible.

00:32:38.180 | If I give you an itinerary,

00:32:39.780 | your natural instinct is going to be like, okay,

00:32:41.620 | but what about this instead?

00:32:42.960 | What about this alternative?

00:32:43.800 | So you aren't actually totally flexible.

00:32:45.380 | You do have opinions.

00:32:46.500 | You do have priorities and things that you want to consider.

00:32:50.140 | So when you're booking for yourself,

00:32:51.440 | I think just going through that triage list

00:32:52.940 | and thinking about what are school schedules?

00:32:55.460 | What am I willing to accommodate?

00:32:56.620 | Do I want to have a night in a cool city

00:33:00.380 | on the way to my destination?

00:33:01.920 | Or do I want to just have a shorter layover

00:33:03.820 | and just plug through?

00:33:05.240 | Am I checking bags?

00:33:06.620 | If so, am I concerned about if my bags get lost?

00:33:09.560 | One of my colleagues, their daughter and her husband

00:33:12.700 | were doing this hiking backpacking trip

00:33:14.780 | in rural Scotland last summer.

00:33:16.780 | And they did almost everything right in their planning,

00:33:21.580 | except they didn't plan enough time in Edinburgh

00:33:24.900 | at the start of the trip in case things go wrong.

00:33:27.020 | And so when inevitably with the Heathrow baggage meltdown

00:33:31.140 | of last summer, their bag was delayed.

00:33:33.680 | They're like, we're in Edinburgh and we have nothing.

00:33:35.480 | We have just the essentials that we need in our carry-on,

00:33:37.340 | but we obviously didn't carry on our tent, right?

00:33:40.620 | So you need to think about that too.

00:33:43.060 | With the type of trip that you're taking,

00:33:45.060 | that may matter or it may not be an impact at all.

00:33:47.340 | If you're planning on spending a week in Paris

00:33:48.940 | with your kids, having a lost checked bag

00:33:51.040 | is not a big deal.

00:33:51.880 | You're in Paris.

00:33:52.700 | You just go to Carrefour and buy whatever you need to buy

00:33:54.860 | and get it reimbursed through your credit cards,

00:33:57.060 | trip delay and coverage and move on with your life.

00:34:00.620 | - The other thing I've just been thinking about is,

00:34:02.020 | okay, even if I was like Japan flexible next year,

00:34:04.660 | there's probably an ideal month

00:34:06.340 | or an ideal period of time.

00:34:08.180 | And I don't know if you have any stats on this,

00:34:09.940 | but I imagine if you're like,

00:34:11.460 | I wanna go to almost anywhere

00:34:13.700 | and you're flexible within a month,

00:34:15.480 | you're probably pretty likely to find something

00:34:18.020 | that I don't even know if you need a year's worth

00:34:20.660 | of flexibility to find a good deal.

00:34:21.500 | - No, no one needs a year's worth of flexibility

00:34:23.860 | is my general sentiment there.

00:34:25.860 | Other than that year's worth of flexibility

00:34:27.780 | helps you rule times out.

00:34:30.180 | So like I personally have done it a couple of times

00:34:35.420 | and will probably in future avoid traveling to Asia

00:34:39.180 | during Lunar New Year.

00:34:40.300 | It's a really fun experience in ways if you haven't done it,

00:34:43.380 | but I think for most people,

00:34:45.340 | if you're not actively setting out to do that,

00:34:47.780 | it's just frustrating, it's too crowded.

00:34:49.540 | All the places you wanna go, everyone else also wants to go

00:34:52.140 | and a lot of things are closed.

00:34:53.860 | In Vietnam, they don't refill the ATMs during the holiday.

00:34:56.940 | So there's just like one very specific difficulty

00:35:00.020 | for traveling during that time period.

00:35:02.300 | So there's things like that that you can rule out.

00:35:04.860 | But in general, I would say there's always a word space

00:35:08.500 | and I don't wanna say that

00:35:09.420 | that means there's always good award space

00:35:11.340 | or there's always this thing that you saw on Instagram

00:35:14.340 | that you're going to be able to book,

00:35:15.820 | but there's always something

00:35:17.500 | and finding something that is good for you

00:35:22.060 | has a lot of nuance.

00:35:23.260 | - Are there a few either routes or destinations

00:35:26.200 | that if someone's truly like,

00:35:27.460 | I just wanna go on an amazing trip with my points

00:35:29.400 | that you see more frequently than not

00:35:31.780 | popping up with better availability

00:35:33.900 | that could inspire someone and save them some points?

00:35:36.660 | - I would generally say, if you're going further,

00:35:40.980 | you're going to have better availability.

00:35:43.940 | Like domestically, North America, even South America,

00:35:47.460 | flights are so full that there are just not

00:35:51.000 | the point bargains that people might want.

00:35:53.300 | And so I do think that if you're looking for

00:35:55.100 | some kind of like aspirational fun trip,

00:35:56.780 | it makes more sense to go further afield.

00:35:58.940 | You also have the benefit of when you're going further

00:36:01.540 | of getting those international products

00:36:04.300 | that are much nicer.

00:36:05.700 | Qatar has their Qsuites product

00:36:07.860 | and availability is pretty good,

00:36:10.020 | not necessarily from all cities.

00:36:13.160 | Like it's not great from LA right now

00:36:14.360 | because it's very popular,

00:36:15.480 | but they also have it to Seattle.

00:36:17.060 | So if you're willing to do like that short hop up

00:36:19.260 | and then connect,

00:36:20.340 | then that opens up all of Africa and the Middle East

00:36:23.000 | and Southeast Asia to some really phenomenal options.

00:36:27.820 | I think if you're doing that,

00:36:28.900 | I also like to look at places where hotels are reasonable.

00:36:33.900 | A lot of people have like the pinnacle of their trip

00:36:36.940 | as being like, I'm going to use my points.

00:36:38.340 | I'm going to fly business class or first class.

00:36:39.900 | I'm going to go to the Maldives.

00:36:41.180 | And that's great.

00:36:42.180 | I personally don't love the Maldives,

00:36:43.780 | which I know is sacrilegious,

00:36:45.300 | but it's just a difference in what I'm looking for

00:36:49.220 | in travel at this point in my life.

00:36:51.320 | But I think that there's things like that

00:36:52.440 | that you can look at.

00:36:53.280 | Like we took my niece to Egypt when she graduated

00:36:55.620 | from high school as like her senior trip.

00:36:57.220 | And that's not something that she would have picked

00:36:59.380 | or that she would have thought of,

00:37:00.620 | but it was very much like, okay,

00:37:01.900 | well, we're going to go during this time, what's available.

00:37:05.380 | Okay, there's easy space to Europe.

00:37:07.300 | And then we can connect down to Cairo and then to Luxor.

00:37:10.700 | And I don't think she would even put Egypt on her radar

00:37:13.900 | as somewhere to go, right?

00:37:15.220 | And it's not like it's that exotic

00:37:16.900 | in the space of exotic travel,

00:37:18.520 | but it's very exotic if you're 17 from a smaller town.

00:37:21.740 | - How did you come to the conclusion

00:37:23.620 | that that was a place that was easy to get to?

00:37:26.280 | Was that just trial and error or?

00:37:28.500 | - In general, Northern Africa is not difficult to get to.

00:37:32.980 | - Meaning availability.

00:37:35.100 | - And just their flight routings.

00:37:36.360 | And I think one of the reasons for that

00:37:38.340 | is it's well served by both European carriers

00:37:43.300 | and Middle Eastern carriers.

00:37:44.740 | And so you have that sort of combination

00:37:47.420 | of inventory and space.

00:37:48.900 | Because you can fly to Abu Dhabi or to Dubai or to Doha

00:37:52.460 | and then connect up,

00:37:53.700 | or you can fly to Paris and connect down.

00:37:55.780 | So it's just, you have more flights there

00:37:57.780 | than you would think.

00:37:58.760 | It's also less competitive

00:38:01.820 | because it's not a place that as many people think to go to

00:38:04.660 | as like Florence.

00:38:07.020 | I feel like the entire internet went to Italy this summer.

00:38:09.700 | I don't know about you,

00:38:11.060 | but I feel like every time I opened Instagram,

00:38:12.740 | it's like, okay, you're in Italy and you're in Italy

00:38:14.260 | and you're in Italy.

00:38:15.220 | So like a word space to Italy is very bad

00:38:17.420 | because people are just buying tickets to go to Italy.

00:38:19.500 | Not as much travel to some of these other destinations.

00:38:22.100 | Also my bias is that I tend to like to go places

00:38:24.620 | that people don't think to go.

00:38:26.500 | That's just sort of where I'm at with travel

00:38:28.080 | at this point in time.

00:38:28.920 | Like once you get to the close to 100 country mark,

00:38:32.740 | I think you start looking for different things

00:38:34.860 | than you did in the first tranche of countries

00:38:37.700 | and destinations.

00:38:38.840 | - You mentioned hotels,

00:38:40.180 | making sure that you don't get this amazing redemption

00:38:42.580 | to a place like the Maldives and then find out,

00:38:44.540 | okay, now I have to spend thousands of dollars a night.

00:38:47.140 | - Literally thousands of dollars.

00:38:48.860 | Yeah, even if you're using points,

00:38:50.100 | you still have to pay for that seaplane.

00:38:51.780 | - But how do you feel about points

00:38:54.260 | used on airlines versus hotels?

00:38:56.580 | My advice has often been,

00:38:58.860 | if you have points in a hotel program,

00:39:01.600 | by all means it can be great.

00:39:02.900 | But if you have flexible points, other than Hyatt,

00:39:06.100 | on the luxury side, at least it can be tough.

00:39:08.260 | I have heard a lot of people point out,

00:39:10.060 | no, no, no, there are some really good sweet spots

00:39:12.380 | in Wyndham and Choice Hotels and IHG.

00:39:15.340 | But I'm curious, you live and breathe this space.

00:39:17.940 | How do you feel about using your transferable points

00:39:19.940 | at hotels?

00:39:20.780 | - I struggle, I struggle.

00:39:22.460 | I think I struggle for a different reason

00:39:24.580 | than maybe some other people struggle.

00:39:26.700 | 'Cause it's not that there aren't values,

00:39:28.400 | it's that my brain is full.

00:39:29.940 | And at some point in time it's like,

00:39:31.740 | okay, I recognize that there's this great value

00:39:35.100 | for choice points if I move it here

00:39:36.820 | and move it here and move it here,

00:39:37.900 | but I don't actually want to stay there.

00:39:39.540 | That's a factor too.

00:39:40.420 | And the min-maxing of points

00:39:44.480 | to have a completely free trip is super fun.

00:39:48.860 | It's super rewarding.

00:39:50.820 | And also something that I don't think

00:39:52.300 | that most people have time for in their lives.

00:39:54.500 | So I generally have taken an approach where,

00:39:57.340 | okay, here's a great points redemption for hotels.

00:39:59.960 | It's a fifth night free situation

00:40:02.100 | with a Hilton or a Marriott.

00:40:04.020 | Or it is one of these really niche properties

00:40:06.660 | where it's just ridiculous that you're able

00:40:08.460 | to use choice points to stay there,

00:40:09.980 | but it's this incredible castle, great.

00:40:12.340 | And if I found that and locked in availability there,

00:40:14.460 | then maybe I find myself being more flexible

00:40:16.260 | with my flights and not trying to have

00:40:19.820 | the ideal redemption for flights

00:40:21.820 | because I already have this great hotel redemption.

00:40:23.980 | And I sort of ladder it personally.

00:40:26.980 | The flip side being, of course,

00:40:28.340 | okay, we found these incredible flights.

00:40:30.220 | I took my mom on a trip once.

00:40:31.680 | It was literally just an airplane ride trip.

00:40:33.220 | We did Emirates, A380s the whole way through.

00:40:35.720 | And it was like, okay, these are the dates

00:40:37.500 | that we're going to be in Dubai.

00:40:38.900 | Or you know what, mom, let's go to Abu Dhabi

00:40:40.540 | and we'll stay at the Park Hyatt there in Abu Dhabi.

00:40:42.220 | That's fine.

00:40:43.220 | But then we're going to have a couple nights in Singapore

00:40:45.020 | and I'm not trying to get everything perfect.

00:40:48.020 | It's like, well, this is where I want to stay with my mom

00:40:50.460 | because I know that she'll enjoy this.

00:40:52.860 | And I can use some points

00:40:54.900 | or I can just book it through the travel portal.

00:40:56.540 | And it's still a really good value, all things considered.

00:40:59.640 | And the experience outweighs the value

00:41:03.740 | in those cases a little bit.

00:41:05.660 | - There's only so many airlines that fly to a place

00:41:08.420 | and almost all of them, not all,

00:41:10.460 | but almost all of them have some type of program

00:41:12.880 | that you might be able to book

00:41:13.980 | directly or through a partner.

00:41:15.260 | Whereas hotels, there are so many hotels

00:41:17.780 | that you can't book with points.

00:41:19.140 | And similarly to you, I find myself prioritizing the flights

00:41:23.540 | just so that I have the mental freedom to be like,

00:41:26.300 | where do we actually want to stay?

00:41:28.100 | - And that's, I think, sort of just a great way of saying it

00:41:30.100 | in that sort of mindset of,

00:41:31.500 | I got a phenomenal deal on the flights

00:41:33.800 | and I didn't spend $25,000 for my family of four

00:41:37.980 | on these flights and we're still having

00:41:39.260 | this incredible experience.

00:41:40.880 | And I wouldn't have spent $25,000 on the flights,

00:41:43.820 | but I would have spent 6,000.

00:41:45.300 | And do I consider I need to save the 6,000

00:41:48.460 | or do I invest that back into this vacation

00:41:50.780 | and the experience that we're going to have

00:41:52.260 | and go ahead and book the suite

00:41:54.580 | rather than having to try and worry about

00:41:56.020 | finding the one property in Paris

00:41:57.620 | that will allow you to have connecting rooms?

00:42:00.380 | That's about to be your life.

00:42:02.020 | - No, no, I know.

00:42:02.860 | But I did see that I think Hyatt in Europe

00:42:06.220 | has a pretty good deal where at a bunch of properties,

00:42:09.340 | you can get your second room as a family

00:42:11.820 | at like 50% off or something.

00:42:13.540 | Which is so necessary because those hotel room occupancies

00:42:17.180 | are frequently two people in a lot of places in Europe.

00:42:19.500 | It's the fire codes.

00:42:21.140 | You can't even find room for three

00:42:23.580 | even if the third is an infant.

00:42:24.820 | So finding things like that that accommodate

00:42:27.260 | the way you need to travel in your life

00:42:28.860 | is I think ultimately the best travel hack.

00:42:33.140 | - I found, and people have heard this before,

00:42:34.980 | this isn't just because you're here,

00:42:36.260 | you're not paying me to be here,

00:42:37.660 | but like Point Me was this tool

00:42:40.140 | and I remember when it came out as Juicy Miles

00:42:42.060 | and I was like, I hope one day they change the name of this

00:42:43.940 | and thank you.

00:42:44.980 | - You're welcome.

00:42:45.820 | That's ultimately my contribution to all of this.

00:42:47.260 | It's not actually the decades of knowledge

00:42:49.100 | or like my ability to deconstruct things

00:42:51.820 | and then reconstruct them.

00:42:52.740 | It's that we got to change the name guys.

00:42:54.500 | - Yeah.

00:42:55.340 | (laughing)

00:42:56.180 | But I'm so fascinated because it seemed like

00:42:58.820 | so many people tried to do this

00:43:00.180 | and it just stopped working.

00:43:01.420 | Airlines hate it.

00:43:02.460 | First off, why do airlines make it so hard

00:43:05.900 | for people to use their points?

00:43:07.660 | And how are you able to make it so much easier?

00:43:10.380 | - I don't think airlines make it intentionally difficult

00:43:13.220 | to use their points.

00:43:14.180 | It depends on the program.

00:43:15.580 | We have a lot of loyalty program managers

00:43:17.700 | that have been playing on easy mode recently.

00:43:21.180 | We're about to see this in a lot of aspects of the economy.

00:43:23.660 | When we had the last recession,

00:43:26.500 | loyalty programs had to get really innovative

00:43:29.260 | and they had to get really creative

00:43:30.620 | because ultimately the job of a loyalty program

00:43:33.460 | is to fill seats on planes or fill hotel rooms.

00:43:36.980 | It's to avoid perishable inventories.

00:43:38.820 | That's why you have a loyalty program.

00:43:41.220 | And we saw 15 years ago,

00:43:44.620 | really a lot of creative promotions

00:43:46.820 | and really interesting engagement

00:43:48.380 | and really honing in on who the customer was

00:43:50.460 | and how to leverage their interests and emotions

00:43:53.220 | in order to get seats filled on planes.

00:43:55.380 | That hasn't been a challenge recently,

00:43:57.260 | the past couple of years not withstanding,

00:43:58.900 | but the latter half of this decade,

00:44:01.100 | everybody's on easy mode.

00:44:02.180 | We saw a lot of loyalty programs go to,

00:44:04.700 | we're basically running a coupon program.

00:44:06.140 | It's buy nine, get one free,

00:44:07.300 | just like at your local coffee shop.

00:44:09.100 | And that's as innovative as they were getting

00:44:10.980 | because people had a lot of money to spend on flights

00:44:14.100 | and so it wasn't as much of a priority.

00:44:15.420 | So I don't know that programs

00:44:17.900 | don't want you to use your points.

00:44:19.340 | They do because they want you

00:44:20.740 | to be engaged with the program.

00:44:21.980 | They want you to be a repeat customer.

00:44:25.060 | They want you to have that satisfaction

00:44:26.820 | of redeeming your points

00:44:28.000 | because then you're going to commit to earning more points.

00:44:29.780 | Like those are, that's what loyalty is.

00:44:31.340 | All those things are important.

00:44:32.920 | But they are burdened by using computer systems

00:44:37.920 | from like the Apollo era in some cases (laughs)

00:44:42.980 | where literally they're using DOS-based systems still

00:44:47.520 | in some cases.

00:44:48.360 | I think one of the most public examples of this,

00:44:50.960 | and I think it's to the credit of the program

00:44:53.600 | that they shared this,

00:44:55.040 | was Aeroplan with their Aeroplan 2020 project,

00:44:58.400 | which they started in 2016,

00:45:00.400 | knowing that they were going to buy back

00:45:01.800 | their loyalty program.

00:45:03.480 | They were going to modernize their technology

00:45:06.000 | and move off of Resy 2,

00:45:09.680 | which was their old reservation system,

00:45:11.320 | which Resy 2 because it came about in like the 1980s

00:45:14.400 | rather than what they had before.

00:45:15.840 | So moving from that technology

00:45:18.560 | that's literally older than us

00:45:20.480 | into something more modern took them five and a half years.

00:45:24.400 | So it's these huge technical lifts

00:45:26.560 | and that's the case with a lot of this.

00:45:27.760 | There are still airlines

00:45:30.080 | where they are taking their award inventory,

00:45:33.720 | and it's a CSV file that they're uploading

00:45:35.720 | from time to time into their other inventory system.

00:45:38.920 | Their revenue management systems aren't tied

00:45:40.880 | with their airline inventory systems.

00:45:42.920 | And if the person who's in charge of uploading the CSV

00:45:45.720 | isn't there that week,

00:45:47.480 | then award inventory doesn't get added that week.

00:45:49.280 | You have to wait until the next week.

00:45:50.600 | Fortunately, that's rare.

00:45:52.160 | But when you talk about why is this so hard,

00:45:54.240 | that's why it's so hard.

00:45:56.040 | It's they don't have super robust computer systems.

00:46:00.280 | And we live in an era that requires

00:46:02.120 | some super robust computer systems.

00:46:03.880 | - In today's internet age,

00:46:06.360 | people's personal information is being shared online

00:46:09.360 | with the click of a button without their consent,

00:46:11.960 | and it happens all the time.

00:46:14.040 | But you can tackle this problem

00:46:15.680 | thanks to Delete Me from Abine,

00:46:17.560 | and I am excited to be partnering with them

00:46:19.440 | for this episode.

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00:46:22.160 | I would find hundreds of detailed profiles

00:46:24.720 | sharing my cell phone number, address, email,

00:46:27.240 | family members, and a lot more.

00:46:29.680 | At first, I actually tried to remove it all myself,

00:46:32.120 | which you can do.

00:46:33.280 | But after at least 10 hours,

00:46:34.920 | I signed up for Delete Me,

00:46:36.160 | and it was so much easier.

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00:46:51.040 | On average, Delete Me finds and removes

00:46:53.200 | over 2,000 pieces of data for a customer

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00:48:29.400 | I just wanna thank you quick for listening to

00:48:33.080 | and supporting the show.

00:48:34.580 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

00:48:37.400 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals,

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00:48:45.440 | So please consider supporting those who support us.

00:48:48.600 | I remember a handful of companies trying to make this easy.

00:48:51.640 | Like there were plenty of people that were like,

00:48:52.540 | "We're gonna help you find the award flights."

00:48:55.380 | How did you guys end up making it work?

00:48:57.680 | Was it relationships with airlines?

00:48:59.480 | Was it just software?

00:49:01.040 | How is that possible?

00:49:02.040 | - Ultimately, I think what it is,

00:49:05.000 | without getting into like secret sauce and things like that,

00:49:07.120 | although of course we can talk about some of that,

00:49:08.760 | but ultimately I think it's the experience and the knowledge.

00:49:11.900 | Other people have tried this,

00:49:13.160 | but most of the time it's been people

00:49:14.840 | who are parachuting into the space,

00:49:16.840 | and they're looking at it and being like,

00:49:17.920 | "Oh, here's an opportunity.

00:49:18.920 | "I love opportunities.

00:49:20.420 | "I'm gonna do this."

00:49:21.920 | But they don't have the decades of really deep knowledge

00:49:26.920 | of airline inventory systems,

00:49:30.840 | and especially as they relate to loyalty management.

00:49:34.040 | And that's not repeatable.

00:49:36.360 | No one else has that.

00:49:37.280 | It's just a handful of people

00:49:39.620 | who would have had it to begin with,

00:49:41.020 | and we're all working on point me.

00:49:43.320 | So I think that's the thing.

00:49:44.420 | It is not an exaggeration when I say

00:49:45.800 | that even people who work at airlines

00:49:47.580 | don't understand how their systems work, in many cases,

00:49:51.260 | as far as it relates to their business rules

00:49:54.860 | or their routing logic or their partner relationships.

00:49:59.320 | They don't know.

00:50:00.160 | We know.

00:50:00.980 | And so we were able to take that knowledge

00:50:03.980 | and build out all of those data relationships

00:50:08.080 | and those ontologies and those different structures

00:50:10.580 | that allow you to then create the business logic

00:50:13.040 | and the tool itself.

00:50:16.020 | But you have to have all that knowledge

00:50:17.900 | to give it to the software, right?

00:50:19.900 | You can't just make an app.

00:50:21.500 | - And for people who haven't heard me talk about it before,

00:50:23.720 | you can correct me, but I'll give my pitch for it.

00:50:25.980 | - Okay, your pitch is probably better

00:50:27.460 | than my pitch at this point.

00:50:28.540 | - Basically, you've built this tool

00:50:30.340 | where I can go in and say,

00:50:32.500 | "I wanna go from destination A to destination B

00:50:36.000 | "on these dates in business or economy

00:50:38.720 | "with this many people."

00:50:39.740 | And you'll go out and run the 30 browser tab search

00:50:43.380 | on your side and come back in a couple minutes

00:50:45.900 | with here's exactly what's available

00:50:48.540 | across all the airlines.

00:50:50.260 | And because you've gone in and said,

00:50:52.380 | I have Chase points or I have Amex points

00:50:54.240 | or Capital One points,

00:50:55.080 | here's the cheapest way to book it.

00:50:56.540 | And I'm pretty sure it's also like,

00:50:57.820 | and here are the instructions

00:50:58.980 | on how to transfer them and book it.

00:51:00.620 | - Yeah, step-by-step.

00:51:01.580 | Here's how I would book it myself.

00:51:03.140 | I think the thing that is worth noting

00:51:05.140 | and maybe goes into what you were talking about,

00:51:06.780 | how airlines make this difficult for themselves,

00:51:08.880 | not just for us, but for themselves.

00:51:11.260 | We're not just going out and doing 30 searches.

00:51:13.500 | You know, we're pulling inventory

00:51:14.580 | from like 35 different places at this point in time.

00:51:17.220 | And we're continuing to refine our data sources.

00:51:20.060 | We're also applying all of the routing rules and the logic.

00:51:25.020 | So things that airline websites themselves don't always show

00:51:29.100 | but we know to work.

00:51:30.460 | And then there's things that like,

00:51:31.900 | we know that the airline website doesn't show it either.

00:51:34.140 | And we're still trying to figure out

00:51:35.060 | how we best present it without causing frustration.

00:51:38.220 | And I can give a real-time example.

00:51:39.620 | Delta is partners with China Airlines,

00:51:41.980 | which is a Taipei-based airline.

00:51:43.660 | And I don't know if it's political reasons

00:51:46.020 | or technical reasons,

00:51:47.820 | but you can't find routings on delta.com

00:51:50.980 | connecting through Taipei on China Airlines very easily.

00:51:54.260 | It requires a lot of manipulation of the website

00:51:56.300 | in a way that no other airport code requires.

00:51:59.620 | So ultimately those things generally have to get booked

00:52:01.420 | over the phone if they're bookable at all,

00:52:02.880 | but we know that they're there.

00:52:04.460 | And so that's something that Point Me can do

00:52:06.280 | is we can look at, okay, well, we know the slide is here.

00:52:08.220 | We can combine this and we can tell you

00:52:09.840 | what the price should be.

00:52:11.660 | And then it's here's the instructions

00:52:12.980 | because you're going to have to call.

00:52:14.020 | And this is the magic word

00:52:15.700 | that you're going to have to say to the airline agent

00:52:18.300 | in order for them to be able to find the inventory.

00:52:20.020 | And so sometimes we go through that

00:52:21.380 | and we decide that this is actually too complicated.

00:52:23.220 | Let's pause this for now.

00:52:24.420 | Let's maybe not show this result.

00:52:25.980 | So we do a lot of that triangulation,

00:52:27.540 | a lot of that verification.

00:52:28.900 | If we see something that's available

00:52:31.740 | on Airplane's website and on United's website,

00:52:35.340 | but it's not available

00:52:37.460 | through a third Star Alliance carrier,

00:52:39.820 | we go through this whole check process of

00:52:41.900 | is this space actually available to Star Alliance?

00:52:44.220 | Is it phantom space?

00:52:45.860 | Which is when one of these airline websites

00:52:48.260 | is just making things up

00:52:49.600 | and they display a flight that's not bookable.

00:52:51.620 | So we try and go through and filter that as well

00:52:53.640 | and apply our knowledge.

00:52:55.080 | So people aren't getting frustrated

00:52:57.380 | by trying to book things that aren't there.

00:52:59.220 | - The reason I reached out to you originally to say,

00:53:01.020 | hey, is there any way we can get a deal for listeners

00:53:02.860 | was because I was like,

00:53:03.700 | this is the tool I want to recommend.

00:53:05.100 | And so anyone that does the standard monthly membership

00:53:08.080 | can get the first month for a dollar

00:53:09.580 | with the code, all the hacks.

00:53:11.060 | And that's what I tell people to do.

00:53:12.980 | And I would tell them to do it

00:53:14.140 | if you didn't have a discount code,

00:53:15.340 | but it's nicer for them to get one.

00:53:18.100 | - We did want to do that

00:53:19.220 | and just make it easy for people who have points

00:53:21.260 | because everyone has points

00:53:22.300 | and no one really knows how to use them.

00:53:23.780 | And I can teach you how to do it by hand.

00:53:25.620 | We have 30,000 blog posts on one mile at a time

00:53:29.260 | if you want to do this by hand.

00:53:30.820 | I don't know who has time to read 30,000 blog posts though,

00:53:33.180 | but if you want to, like there's an option available to you.

00:53:35.340 | You don't have to pay anything to learn how to do this,

00:53:38.540 | but there is a market for people who don't want to do that.

00:53:42.140 | They don't want to open 30 or 60 browser tabs.

00:53:44.980 | They just want to see what their options are,

00:53:46.840 | get a sense of what the prices are

00:53:48.740 | so that they can do their goal posting

00:53:50.660 | as they're earning their points.

00:53:51.940 | And just to be like, wow, great to know

00:53:53.820 | that I can do San Francisco, Paris

00:53:55.460 | with Flying Blue on the nonstop.

00:53:56.740 | Didn't realize the fuel surcharges

00:53:58.340 | were going to be $450 a person.

00:54:00.500 | I'm going to think about that and be informed

00:54:02.540 | and then be able to make a decision

00:54:03.900 | and discuss and contemplate their travel plan.

00:54:05.740 | That's really what we wanted for Point Me

00:54:07.260 | was to just help people not feel like the space

00:54:10.380 | was completely opaque and impenetrable,

00:54:13.300 | that they could be informed and make travel choices.

00:54:16.420 | - The advice I often give people is,

00:54:18.980 | look, if you want to do a quick search,

00:54:21.100 | pull up like the main three domestic carriers,

00:54:23.860 | pull up United, pull up Air France,

00:54:26.620 | pull up British Airways, you could do three searches.

00:54:29.740 | That's not going to get you a comprehensive view.

00:54:31.540 | Like by all means, I've done that three airline search

00:54:34.180 | and then I've gone to Point Me

00:54:35.260 | and I've gotten results that I didn't find.

00:54:37.700 | But sometimes you find exactly

00:54:39.540 | what you're looking for on search one

00:54:40.820 | and you don't need the other 59 browser tabs.

00:54:43.140 | - And that is why I like to say,

00:54:44.340 | like start with the Wikipedia page

00:54:46.420 | of the airport you want to go to,

00:54:47.820 | because it gives you some bounds

00:54:50.540 | for your browser tab experience, right?

00:54:52.540 | And you can look and be like,

00:54:53.380 | oh, okay, so I'm looking at this list.

00:54:55.780 | There's not a single Star Alliance carrier.

00:54:57.940 | Granted, you also have to open the tab

00:54:59.300 | for Star Alliance carriers.

00:55:00.540 | So you're two tabs,

00:55:02.020 | but there's not a single Star Alliance carrier

00:55:04.060 | that flies here.

00:55:04.900 | Maybe there's not a benefit

00:55:05.980 | of even opening United or Aeroplan,

00:55:08.260 | but like, oh, there's three different

00:55:09.780 | one world carriers that fly here.

00:55:11.380 | So I can just use the Alaska tool or the American tool

00:55:15.220 | or the Qantas tool or the British Airways tool

00:55:16.820 | or whichever one I'm most familiar with

00:55:18.340 | and most comfortable using.

00:55:19.540 | And I can look at space there.

00:55:20.780 | - I can't speak to this product because I haven't used it,

00:55:23.300 | but someone emailed me from a company called Flights From,

00:55:26.420 | and I pulled up the product and I just looked at it.

00:55:28.660 | You can go in and say,

00:55:30.340 | all nonstop flights from Paris filter by Star Alliance.

00:55:33.900 | And it actually shows you all the flights there,

00:55:36.300 | days of the week, what airlines they are.

00:55:38.340 | I'm not getting paid to promote this product,

00:55:40.220 | but for someone who wants something more visual

00:55:41.900 | than Wikipedia, which by the way,

00:55:43.060 | Wikipedia was also my path.

00:55:44.620 | I'm always like, Wiki, CDG, go look and look at the airline.

00:55:48.180 | I feel sometimes you get like, oh, this is seasonal.

00:55:51.140 | It's not going to start till next November.

00:55:53.300 | Whereas if you just search a flight connection-

00:55:55.140 | - The seasonal thing is so helpful

00:55:57.100 | because I always get people who are like, oh my gosh,

00:55:58.980 | you know, I want to fly nonstop to Nice.

00:56:01.340 | It's like, okay, there is one freaking flight

00:56:03.380 | from the US to Nice and it's seasonal.

00:56:05.060 | And they're like, oh, but my friend just took it.

00:56:06.540 | Yes, in the season, right?

00:56:09.060 | It's November, it is not the season.

00:56:10.620 | - But I did play around on this site for a little bit.

00:56:12.740 | And I was like, oh, this is a tool I would like.

00:56:14.580 | I can look at a routing map filter for where does it go?

00:56:16.940 | So throw it out there.

00:56:18.780 | If anyone uses it- - Yeah, I'm looking at it now.

00:56:20.140 | I think that's really fun.

00:56:21.140 | The one thing that I would caution with looking at this,

00:56:25.620 | 'cause you know I have to have a caution,

00:56:27.260 | is that it looks like it includes

00:56:28.620 | a lot of low cost carriers,

00:56:30.540 | which is phenomenal for thinking about

00:56:32.220 | how you can be flexible,

00:56:33.980 | but is not going to be good for using your points.

00:56:38.260 | 'Cause you generally can't use your points

00:56:39.580 | on those low cost carriers.

00:56:41.060 | - My hack there was I went in

00:56:42.260 | and I just checked like Star Alliance.

00:56:43.980 | - Yeah, the same thing that you can do

00:56:45.300 | on Google Flights then,

00:56:46.140 | where you can just be like, just show me Star Alliance

00:56:48.180 | or just show me One World.

00:56:49.740 | - Yeah, I guess Google Flights just does all this also.

00:56:52.620 | I don't know why I was looking for a new tool.

00:56:54.020 | It's just sometimes I'm like, what airlines fly here?

00:56:56.580 | - I actually do think that the low cost carrier feature

00:56:59.180 | is super helpful 'cause you often don't see those

00:57:02.380 | and they matter.

00:57:03.540 | We used to live in Sicily and like,

00:57:06.740 | yes, there were a couple of Alitalia flights,

00:57:09.300 | but mostly it was going to be EasyJet or Ryanair

00:57:12.460 | or Air Malta or things that you couldn't use points on

00:57:15.780 | and you weren't going to find searching other consolidators,

00:57:19.820 | unless you knew to look for them.

00:57:21.220 | Knowing where to look is hugely valuable.

00:57:24.140 | - Are there any other tools in the space online

00:57:26.700 | that you use or recommend people check out

00:57:29.540 | when they're trying to think about award travel?

00:57:31.380 | - I think it depends on what you want to do.

00:57:32.820 | I don't want it to be a plug,

00:57:33.700 | but this gets into why we built PointMe

00:57:35.340 | because there are things like, I use ExpertFlyer every day,

00:57:38.340 | but more for schedules and upgrade space potentially

00:57:42.900 | and things like that.

00:57:43.740 | You can use it for award inventory,

00:57:46.020 | but ExpertFlyer, like if you know that A space

00:57:50.100 | is first class in Alaska and W is economy,

00:57:52.460 | you can pull up ExpertFlyer, you can search for it that way.

00:57:55.120 | But it requires a lot of knowledge

00:57:57.980 | to be able to use it effectively

00:58:00.100 | and requires you to know the routing rules.

00:58:04.460 | It can find you space,

00:58:05.700 | but it doesn't tell you the combined ability.

00:58:07.340 | So if you are getting deeper in the rabbit hole

00:58:10.420 | and you're really interested in those kinds of things,

00:58:12.000 | I think you get to a point where ExpertFlyer is indispensable

00:58:15.340 | for sort of cobbling those things together

00:58:16.500 | and be like, oh my gosh, I should actually book

00:58:18.620 | premium economy on Virgin Atlantic on this route

00:58:20.700 | and then I should upgrade

00:58:21.660 | because then I'll get my extra MQMs for Delta.

00:58:25.900 | When you get into that level,

00:58:27.060 | you definitely need some of those more technical tools

00:58:29.260 | that aren't necessarily as user-friendly,

00:58:30.860 | but do have really great information.

00:58:32.700 | - Yeah, I will point one thing out

00:58:33.800 | that you just brushed over,

00:58:35.020 | which is just because you find award availability

00:58:37.580 | between two cities doesn't mean

00:58:39.620 | that you can always combine it.

00:58:40.860 | So I've had times where it's like,

00:58:42.060 | oh, I can go from San Francisco to Paris

00:58:43.900 | and Paris to Athens.

00:58:46.020 | And I like looked at each individual leg

00:58:48.420 | happens to have an award flight that's reasonably priced,

00:58:51.720 | but when combining them, it doesn't always work.

00:58:54.420 | I know you guys do that in your search,

00:58:56.160 | but I would just caution people.

00:58:57.660 | I'm curious what you think about this.

00:58:58.620 | Sometimes I'm like, okay, I wanna get to Europe.

00:59:01.100 | So let's not look at the ultimate destination.

00:59:03.620 | Let's just look at like the transatlantic flights.

00:59:06.860 | And that's like how I sometimes narrow it down.

00:59:08.620 | I'm not gonna take two stops.

00:59:10.240 | So like, I wanna get from San Francisco to Athens.

00:59:13.220 | If you're willing to say,

00:59:14.080 | I'm only gonna change planes once.

00:59:16.140 | And ideally it's not a six hour flight to the East Coast.

00:59:19.860 | You can kind of narrow it down to like,

00:59:21.220 | maybe there's only seven routings you could take

00:59:23.380 | or 10 routings.

00:59:24.220 | You could just kind of systematically

00:59:25.460 | check those seven to 10,

00:59:26.860 | but just make sure that you check them

00:59:29.020 | all together by the end.

00:59:30.860 | Otherwise you might end up finding out

00:59:32.820 | that it doesn't actually work.

00:59:33.660 | - Right, and the altogether at the end will also matter

00:59:35.980 | based on what program you're booking through.

00:59:38.340 | That phenomenon you're describing

00:59:40.580 | is referred to as married segment itineraries.

00:59:44.500 | There are many cases where,

00:59:46.420 | let's say it's Lufthansa 'cause they do this a lot,

00:59:48.960 | where they'll say,

00:59:49.800 | sure, if you are coming from San Francisco,

00:59:52.380 | of course we'll make sure that there's space

00:59:54.240 | all the way through to Athens for you or vice versa.

00:59:56.440 | And they'll say,

00:59:57.280 | this isn't necessarily combinable on a ward

01:00:00.100 | because we don't need to make inventory available

01:00:03.380 | on the Frankfurt Athens route.

01:00:06.480 | It's going to sell out anyways.

01:00:08.240 | So there's a lot of that.

01:00:09.160 | And it can depend because even within an alliance,

01:00:11.660 | some partners have better access

01:00:15.460 | to those married segment itineraries,

01:00:17.220 | or they are willing to pay a little bit more

01:00:19.660 | to their partner to have access to that space.

01:00:22.480 | Or sometimes, especially in the US,

01:00:25.720 | this segment is only available

01:00:27.200 | to members of our loyalty program.

01:00:29.260 | So Delta or United or American

01:00:31.820 | might even be able to give you a great discount

01:00:34.260 | on that flight from San Francisco to Salt Lake,

01:00:37.860 | but they're not gonna make it available

01:00:39.460 | to their alliance partners.

01:00:41.780 | So you wouldn't be able to combine it

01:00:43.380 | if you then saw space on flying blue.

01:00:45.860 | - If someone's thinking, okay, I want to take a trip.

01:00:48.140 | Is there an easy way to just get a good sense

01:00:50.060 | of like how much it might cost?

01:00:52.020 | It used to be years ago, there's just an award chart.

01:00:54.900 | It's like, okay, I could go pull up the award chart

01:00:56.580 | for a few airlines.

01:00:57.620 | I remember United, it was like every domestic flight

01:00:59.940 | was 25,000 points in coach

01:01:01.580 | and 50,000 points in business round trip.

01:01:03.900 | And it was just so simple.

01:01:04.860 | It's like, you want to go to Europe?

01:01:06.340 | This is the cost.

01:01:07.580 | I think some airlines still have that.

01:01:08.980 | But for the most part,

01:01:09.820 | it seems like everything is a mixed bag.

01:01:12.900 | How could someone get a sense of

01:01:14.380 | what might it cost a family of four to go to Europe

01:01:16.980 | without necessarily having to go through all the searching?

01:01:19.380 | - So many programs still have award charts.

01:01:22.460 | American Advantage still has an award chart

01:01:24.740 | for their partners.

01:01:25.700 | And I think that's actually probably a good place to look.

01:01:27.660 | They still publish it.

01:01:28.500 | And a lot of things are in that range.

01:01:30.820 | So if you're like, I have no idea, ballpark,

01:01:33.940 | what I should be spending, that gives you a sense.

01:01:35.900 | It gives you a starting place.

01:01:36.820 | And Delta or United or Aeroplan may charge more

01:01:39.420 | or less, but at least you have the right number

01:01:40.940 | of significant figures for the most part.

01:01:43.660 | The flip side of not everybody having award charts

01:01:45.860 | is that with the dynamic pricing,

01:01:47.060 | sometimes you can see really low prices

01:01:50.140 | that would never have made it onto an award chart

01:01:52.260 | just based off of inventory capacity.

01:01:53.820 | I mentioned earlier Virgin Atlantic will have

01:01:57.420 | just bargain flights from New York to London,

01:02:01.780 | 10,000 miles in economy.

01:02:03.460 | And if you stack that with a transfer bonus

01:02:05.420 | and where you're getting a 30% bonus

01:02:07.940 | when you transfer your chase points to Virgin Atlantic,

01:02:09.860 | it's just a steal.

01:02:10.900 | That would never show up on an award chart.

01:02:12.340 | It's not a consistent price necessarily,

01:02:14.700 | but it happens often enough that I can speak to it

01:02:17.380 | because it's not like a one-off, right?

01:02:18.940 | It happens with some consistency

01:02:20.220 | when they have extra space on a plane.

01:02:22.060 | So the dynamic inventory is hard, right?

01:02:24.460 | Because we all like to know how much things

01:02:26.580 | are going to cost and be able to work towards them.

01:02:28.340 | I think that's such a key component of loyalty programs.

01:02:31.020 | But the little bit of the crumb that you're getting there

01:02:33.860 | at least is that there are sometimes

01:02:35.460 | some really great values on the other side,

01:02:37.020 | especially domestically, I think where you get some prices

01:02:39.500 | that you wouldn't have anticipated.

01:02:41.420 | - When people listen, you're like, okay, I now get it.

01:02:43.420 | I feel confident about how I could start to plan this trip

01:02:47.180 | and book this and find availability.

01:02:49.460 | But now I gotta go get those 300,000 points.

01:02:51.380 | We've talked plenty about, okay, well,

01:02:53.740 | you can get the card that optimizes

01:02:55.660 | where you spend your money.

01:02:56.500 | You can get some signup bonuses

01:02:57.940 | and keep on top of what they are.

01:02:59.260 | And I try to share that.

01:03:00.940 | Any other hacks or tips or tactics

01:03:02.980 | that you like to share with people

01:03:04.220 | who are trying to get to that mileage goal

01:03:07.180 | so they could take the trip?

01:03:08.380 | - Yeah, that's really a fun question.

01:03:09.980 | So I think in general,

01:03:10.940 | I like to encourage people to be opportunistic.

01:03:13.180 | And there is a great signup bonus to take advantage of it.

01:03:16.460 | I'm also at a place where I recognize

01:03:19.460 | that people who are doing this also have full-time jobs.

01:03:22.540 | And so you don't necessarily want to be in a situation

01:03:25.420 | where you have so many cards

01:03:26.460 | and they're hard to manage and things like that.

01:03:27.860 | But I think it's important to think about it.

01:03:30.100 | And if you're planning like an extended family trip,

01:03:32.540 | maybe you have that conversation with the extended family

01:03:34.580 | and say, "Hey, this is the trip we want to take.

01:03:36.380 | "It's going to be this many points.

01:03:37.940 | "In our household, we're going to get that

01:03:39.820 | "because we're both going to get this card."

01:03:42.220 | That might be an option for you.

01:03:43.300 | You don't want to be in charge

01:03:44.140 | of your family's finances overall.

01:03:45.500 | It's a bad, bad life choice.

01:03:47.460 | But to think about that

01:03:49.100 | and to be sure that as you are getting credit cards,

01:03:54.100 | that your points are ultimately combinable.

01:03:57.220 | I think this is especially important if you have a family

01:03:59.380 | or if you're more than one person in general,

01:04:01.620 | is, okay, it doesn't help you to have 50,000 points here

01:04:05.820 | and 60,000 points here and 70,000 points here.

01:04:08.660 | You may find yourself in a situation

01:04:10.220 | where you have half a million points

01:04:11.660 | and you don't have enough points

01:04:12.780 | for a single round trip international ticket

01:04:15.420 | because they're not combinable.

01:04:16.860 | So that's, I think, the second level thing

01:04:18.900 | is don't just get the Chase Sapphire Preferred

01:04:21.180 | because it has a big signup bonus.

01:04:23.020 | Like, that's great, do that.

01:04:24.180 | But then when you go to get your next card,

01:04:25.740 | look at, okay, well, where could these points move to?

01:04:28.140 | I want to make sure that my next card,

01:04:29.580 | I can also move those points to the same places

01:04:32.180 | or it bolsters one of those balances there.

01:04:35.340 | And just make sure you have a couple hundred thousand points

01:04:39.260 | in a program or able to get to a program

01:04:41.860 | before you move on to the next thing.

01:04:45.300 | - My advice has been, you can now,

01:04:47.860 | for most airlines, book one-way awards.

01:04:49.820 | I always say, instead of trying to book like,

01:04:51.460 | oh, we're two people and we have enough points

01:04:53.300 | in two programs, book the one-ways together,

01:04:56.140 | both be on the same itinerary with one program,

01:04:58.460 | and then the return with the other program

01:05:00.580 | instead of trying to book each person separately.

01:05:03.260 | - Yeah, absolutely.

01:05:04.180 | Especially if you have one person

01:05:06.660 | who's not as confident of a traveler

01:05:08.460 | or you have extended family members.

01:05:09.900 | I always talk about, like,

01:05:10.740 | when we're traveling with our moms,

01:05:11.820 | it's totally different than when we're traveling

01:05:13.900 | just with each other.

01:05:15.100 | And I think that that's key, like,

01:05:16.260 | staying on the same itinerary.

01:05:17.380 | And again, are you getting points in a program?

01:05:20.300 | So maybe it's more thinking of like,

01:05:21.500 | am I getting points in an account, right?

01:05:23.700 | Because if you have 50,000 points in United Mileage Plus

01:05:26.420 | and your partner has 50,000 points in United Mileage Plus,

01:05:29.220 | you still neither together nor separately

01:05:32.180 | have enough points to do what you wanna do.

01:05:33.740 | If you have 100,000 points in one account,

01:05:35.700 | you have more options.

01:05:37.260 | - Alyssa actually reminded me,

01:05:38.540 | I know Capital One, you can share points with anyone.

01:05:40.780 | So if you have Capital One points, you can.

01:05:42.660 | With Chase, I think it's within your household.

01:05:44.740 | So if you're both accumulating Chase,

01:05:46.580 | you can share within your household.

01:05:48.100 | Amex, most of the actual airlines though,

01:05:51.100 | make it incredibly difficult and costly to share points.

01:05:54.620 | So another bump to the transferable points game

01:05:57.980 | is that it is very hard.

01:05:59.860 | If you have American points

01:06:00.860 | and someone else has American points,

01:06:01.740 | combining them for a trip,

01:06:03.340 | a few of the international carriers have programs for this,

01:06:06.580 | but it's very hard.

01:06:07.500 | - Yeah, you should combine them

01:06:08.540 | before they get to the airline.

01:06:09.900 | The nice thing though, is that for the most part,

01:06:12.620 | all the airlines will let you book tickets for someone else.

01:06:15.140 | And we hear this all the time

01:06:16.700 | because we have the grandparents

01:06:18.020 | who wanna pay for a honeymoon

01:06:19.020 | and they're like, "How do I get my Amex points?"

01:06:21.140 | To my granddaughter, it's like, "You don't.

01:06:23.060 | "We'll take your Amex points

01:06:24.740 | "and we'll move them to maybe your AeroPlan account

01:06:27.380 | "and then we'll book the flights for her from your account."

01:06:30.700 | You don't have to transfer them to other people

01:06:32.420 | and pay transfer fees.

01:06:34.100 | - But if you and your spouse both have,

01:06:35.820 | let's call it 50,000 Amex points

01:06:37.820 | and you wanna book an award that's 100,000,

01:06:39.780 | there's no good answer.

01:06:40.800 | You can't combine Amex points.

01:06:42.260 | But my version of a hack,

01:06:43.940 | which I think is still possible,

01:06:45.780 | is that if you add your spouse

01:06:48.020 | as your authorized cardholder,

01:06:49.720 | then you can transfer points from Amex to their accounts.

01:06:52.780 | - Correct, yeah.

01:06:53.620 | If it's an authorized user,

01:06:54.900 | then you can transfer them to the same account.

01:06:57.180 | - So you can't combine the membership rewards balances,

01:06:59.380 | but if you're transferring to Delta,

01:07:02.380 | you could transfer them both to the same Delta account

01:07:04.900 | and book from there.

01:07:05.740 | - Right.

01:07:06.560 | I would say if you are going to do that,

01:07:07.780 | and you know you're going to do that,

01:07:09.100 | there is a high potential for the airline

01:07:10.780 | to put a fraud alert on the account

01:07:12.900 | if you're getting back-to-back transfers

01:07:15.060 | from different accounts in short succession.

01:07:17.880 | They'll resolve it.

01:07:18.720 | It's not going to be actual fraud.

01:07:20.100 | It's just going to be something that needs manual approval.

01:07:22.180 | So if you are in a situation where it's like,

01:07:24.660 | "Oh my gosh, I know that I'm going to book this flight,"

01:07:27.780 | or you find this diamond in the rough award space

01:07:30.700 | that you would never have been able to book,

01:07:32.020 | and you're moving all these points all around

01:07:34.180 | to temper expectations,

01:07:35.340 | because it might be 72 hours

01:07:37.420 | before those points are cleared for you to book it,

01:07:39.540 | in that specific example.

01:07:41.300 | I don't want to dissuade anyone from earning points.

01:07:43.640 | - No, no.

01:07:44.480 | (laughing)

01:07:45.300 | - It's good to know that there can be pitfalls.

01:07:47.340 | - One important thing, actually,

01:07:48.540 | that came up with another listener

01:07:50.140 | was there are a lot of mileage programs

01:07:52.780 | where it's like you can't transfer points in for 72 hours,

01:07:56.920 | or there's some rules about how long the account

01:07:59.180 | has to be open before you can book something.

01:08:01.220 | So one suggestion I have is if you have Chase,

01:08:04.280 | it doesn't cost you anything

01:08:05.580 | to go to a dozen or so Chase airline partners

01:08:08.540 | and go open all of those mileage accounts now.

01:08:10.620 | - Yeah, why not?

01:08:11.460 | - I don't know if you know exactly which ones,

01:08:13.020 | but I know there are at least a few airlines

01:08:14.680 | where it's much better to have had the account open

01:08:16.780 | than open it when you need it.

01:08:18.580 | - Yeah, I would actually say with almost any of them,

01:08:21.220 | it's better.

01:08:22.260 | And again, this is just security checks

01:08:24.880 | are all driven by algorithms.

01:08:26.740 | It's obviously more suspicious

01:08:27.980 | to have a brand new account that was just opened

01:08:29.980 | and now is receiving points from non-flight activity

01:08:33.340 | from multiple sources in 90 minutes.

01:08:36.580 | Like if you're a computer, you flag that too.

01:08:38.500 | So you can just avoid some of those triggers

01:08:41.660 | by opening the accounts early on,

01:08:44.640 | maybe make a purchase

01:08:45.620 | through the airline shopping portal early on.

01:08:48.140 | I don't want the takeaway from this though

01:08:50.140 | to be that like airlines are super concerned about fraud

01:08:52.300 | and that you're going to run into problems

01:08:53.340 | when you're reviewing your points.

01:08:54.300 | This gets into like the edge cases of it.

01:08:57.060 | Most people are not going to have these problems.

01:08:59.280 | It can happen.

01:09:00.180 | So you might as well season the accounts a bit.

01:09:03.340 | - But there are some airlines

01:09:04.400 | where I think you can't actually do anything.

01:09:06.140 | Even if they don't flag you for fraud,

01:09:07.540 | they just have a rule.

01:09:08.360 | It's like your account has to be open for a week

01:09:10.340 | or that kind of stuff.

01:09:11.180 | - Yeah, and there's others where can't search award space

01:09:15.620 | unless you have a couple of points in the account.

01:09:18.900 | And if you can't search award space,

01:09:20.460 | that means you can't book award flights,

01:09:21.940 | but you don't necessarily need

01:09:22.920 | to have the full number of points.

01:09:24.580 | But if you have two points in there or five points

01:09:27.980 | because you bought something through their shopping portal

01:09:31.340 | and posted the points there,

01:09:33.140 | then you can have full functionality.

01:09:35.180 | - And the other one is I've had some issues.

01:09:37.820 | I can't remember exactly why,

01:09:38.840 | but my name is long enough that sometimes

01:09:41.660 | when I try to add an airline to my Amex account

01:09:44.840 | to transfer points out, it's like, ah, it didn't work.

01:09:47.820 | So I would also say, if you go and create

01:09:49.820 | an airline mileage account for all these airlines

01:09:52.100 | that you can transfer to,

01:09:52.940 | you can also go and link those accounts

01:09:55.180 | to your Amex, Chase, CapOne account as well.

01:09:59.340 | And the thing I'm ultimately trying to help everyone avoid

01:10:02.540 | is you don't wanna go and find a flight

01:10:05.380 | and be ready to book it.

01:10:07.220 | Finally, I found the availability.

01:10:08.660 | - Right, and now it all falls apart.

01:10:11.480 | - Now I need to wait three days for my account to be active

01:10:13.660 | or my account was active, but now that I linked to Amex,

01:10:16.800 | there's like some error and I have to get Amex

01:10:18.580 | to help resolve the error before it works.

01:10:20.500 | So I like to put all those pieces in place.

01:10:23.020 | - That's actually maybe the next level of things

01:10:25.580 | is when you are applying for credit cards

01:10:29.920 | to apply for them with the name

01:10:32.940 | that is on your secure flight information.

01:10:35.460 | And this might seem obvious to people.

01:10:37.300 | Like American Express will issue you a credit card

01:10:39.540 | as C. Hutchins, but Flying Blue won't allow you

01:10:44.540 | to create a Flying Blue account with C. Hutchins.

01:10:46.840 | It needs to be Chris or Christopher

01:10:48.380 | or whatever is on your passport.

01:10:49.860 | And so when you go to transfer the points, they won't match.

01:10:52.060 | And so Flying Blue will send the points back.

01:10:54.420 | And I think a lot of us with like shorter names

01:10:56.500 | or I have two middle names,

01:10:57.900 | so I just never include them on anything

01:10:59.820 | because it's too complicated.

01:11:01.380 | But it's like, oh, I'm just applying for this credit card.

01:11:03.220 | I'm not thinking about using my full legal name

01:11:05.760 | as it is on my passport.

01:11:07.700 | Just to add something else

01:11:08.540 | to make it a little bit more complicated for everybody.

01:11:10.740 | - Any other travel points, miles,

01:11:13.260 | broad speaking, tactics, tricks,

01:11:15.100 | hacks to share before we wrap?

01:11:17.460 | - I think the biggest thing to think about

01:11:19.740 | is that you can absolutely use your points.

01:11:23.060 | People get so overwhelmed.

01:11:24.220 | They get so wrapped up in trying to optimize

01:11:26.260 | and find the very best example,

01:11:28.240 | or they see influencers who are doing things

01:11:30.620 | and they think that there's only one way

01:11:32.100 | to redeem their points.

01:11:33.460 | At the end of the day, the best use of your points

01:11:36.260 | is one that allows you to have an experience

01:11:39.780 | that might have otherwise been out of reach.

01:11:42.300 | Whether that's a trip that was expensive

01:11:45.460 | or a trip that was difficult

01:11:46.620 | or a trip that was super aspirational and lovely

01:11:49.620 | and to just not be afraid to go ahead and book it.

01:11:51.860 | It's not a contest, it's not a race.

01:11:54.060 | And there are some tremendous ways to improve your life

01:11:57.460 | through these experiences, just go for it.

01:11:59.460 | If it's not perfect, then maybe the next one will be better.

01:12:01.500 | And you learn so much going through that first process

01:12:03.820 | of booking an award flight

01:12:05.460 | that you didn't apply to the second.

01:12:06.580 | But I find so many people are too intimidated

01:12:09.420 | to book the first one.

01:12:10.740 | - And hopefully, I think people can leave this saying,

01:12:13.060 | "Okay, I feel like I understand how the system works

01:12:15.980 | so I can do some searching myself.

01:12:17.880 | I know of at least one tool that you guys have built

01:12:20.060 | that will make this a lot easier."

01:12:21.520 | When do you think that actually makes sense for someone?

01:12:23.820 | - The reason why we set a point up the way that we did

01:12:26.380 | and why we're happy to, for certain audiences like yours,

01:12:29.900 | give a really significant discount to use it for a month

01:12:32.120 | is because we are pretty evangelical

01:12:34.060 | about using points as an option.

01:12:35.500 | So for a dollar, you can spend a whole month

01:12:38.140 | clicking around and just sort of seeing what the options are.

01:12:40.360 | And we have the instructions laid out for you

01:12:42.780 | step by step by step.

01:12:44.540 | And I do truly think that for most people,

01:12:47.880 | if you just try, maybe even take a theoretical trip,

01:12:51.100 | one that you're not emotionally committed to yet,

01:12:53.100 | but you've just thought about wanting to take

01:12:55.100 | and go through the steps,

01:12:56.380 | and maybe you're not actually transferring your points,

01:12:58.220 | but you're sitting there and thinking,

01:12:59.140 | "Okay, this is the point where I would go

01:13:01.820 | to my credit card company

01:13:02.980 | and I would transfer the points.

01:13:04.060 | And okay, I see now how I would book."

01:13:05.880 | And just play with it and build that confidence in doing it

01:13:09.500 | because it doesn't have to be overwhelming.

01:13:11.500 | There's a lot of information.

01:13:12.540 | There's a lot that you could do.

01:13:13.980 | There's a lot of ways that you could maximize

01:13:16.120 | the heck out of it.

01:13:17.660 | At the end of the day, it's not that much more difficult

01:13:19.400 | than other things that you'd successfully do

01:13:21.140 | every week of your life, right?

01:13:22.980 | You're just applying that skillset

01:13:24.340 | and those abilities to something different.

01:13:27.520 | And you only are able to do new things

01:13:30.140 | when you practice them.

01:13:31.060 | We work really hard at Point Me

01:13:32.620 | to give you all the tools that you need to be successful.

01:13:35.900 | We're checking to make sure that it's actual flights

01:13:38.420 | that you can actually book

01:13:39.460 | with the points you actually have.

01:13:40.740 | And we have step-by-step instructions,

01:13:42.380 | including little videos of like,

01:13:44.420 | "Here's where you go to click."

01:13:45.660 | So ideally, anyone should be able to do this.

01:13:48.540 | And I laugh because we say this, but it's true.

01:13:50.580 | Like we've tested it with our moms

01:13:52.020 | who are not the most tech-savvy group of ladies out there,

01:13:54.540 | although we love them.

01:13:55.960 | So I do really hope that by using the self-serve tool there

01:13:59.140 | that for a very moderate price,

01:14:01.880 | you're equipped and you can book travel.

01:14:03.740 | If you are somebody though,

01:14:05.580 | who has a lot of points and a lot of different accounts

01:14:09.140 | or with different family members,

01:14:10.380 | or you're planning something that is complicated,

01:14:12.980 | but you know specifically what you wanna do,

01:14:14.380 | it's just too complicated and it's too intimidating.

01:14:16.780 | We do have a team of people that can book that for you.

01:14:20.700 | It's obviously much, much, much more expensive

01:14:22.860 | than the self-serve tool,

01:14:24.520 | but that is an option that's available as well.

01:14:27.260 | - Cool. I feel like we covered a lot.

01:14:29.060 | I'm sure I'll have some questions.

01:14:30.260 | I'll do the next Q&A as a follow-up to this.

01:14:32.240 | If people have questions, I might even send you some.

01:14:34.500 | But one thing I like to do before we wrap up every time

01:14:37.380 | is you've been to a bunch of countries, more than me,

01:14:39.940 | more than probably most people listening.

01:14:41.820 | Are there a couple of places that you think

01:14:43.780 | might not be on someone's radar?

01:14:45.200 | Like you mentioned earlier, your new focus on travel

01:14:47.820 | isn't just the place everyone goes.

01:14:49.340 | Are there a couple of places that you'd say

01:14:51.020 | people should check out

01:14:52.060 | and maybe something interesting they could do

01:14:53.960 | while they're there that might make it

01:14:55.660 | an exciting destination?

01:14:57.140 | - I think that Malaysia is really underrated

01:14:59.260 | for people who are looking for a trip to Asia.

01:15:01.220 | Incredible food, really welcoming people,

01:15:03.980 | fantastic beaches on a lot of the islands.

01:15:06.540 | I think that that's some place

01:15:08.500 | that people should really consider.

01:15:09.700 | And then I'm, of course, biased

01:15:11.540 | because I've lived in Sicily and people go to Italy,

01:15:14.180 | but they don't really go to Sicily to the same extent.

01:15:16.500 | And I think if you are an independent traveler

01:15:19.880 | or you're open to, again,

01:15:21.520 | having to work for it a little bit,

01:15:23.600 | that there's some really incredible experiences there,

01:15:25.840 | some agriturismos that you can stay at

01:15:27.620 | where you're getting a much warmer experience

01:15:31.380 | than you'd find on a lot of mainland Italy.

01:15:33.660 | And it's an interesting history and archeology

01:15:36.820 | and all those things, too,

01:15:37.940 | that not as much on the tourist trail.

01:15:40.260 | - Cool.

01:15:41.100 | Tiffany, thank you so much for being here.

01:15:42.540 | This is great.

01:15:43.380 | I appreciate it.

01:15:44.580 | - Of course, thanks for having me.

01:15:45.580 | I hope it was helpful and demystifying for people.

01:15:48.780 | (upbeat music)

01:15:50.220 | - I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

01:15:52.020 | Thank you so much for listening.

01:15:53.780 | If you haven't already left a rating and a review

01:15:55.920 | for the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify,

01:15:58.720 | I would really appreciate it.

01:16:00.440 | And if you have any feedback on the show,

01:16:01.880 | questions for me, or just wanna say hi,

01:16:04.260 | I'm chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.

01:16:08.520 | That's it for this week.

01:16:09.600 | I'll see you next week.

01:16:10.800 | (upbeat music)

01:16:13.640 | (electronic beeping)

01:16:16.720 | (electronic beeping)

01:16:19.800 | you

01:16:21.860 | you