Our typical savings from loyalty programs have been 10-20% on other trips. That is the case because either the points accumulated are not sufficient to fund the entire flight/ hotel or the redemption value is too low compared to average. US was a surprise exception. We list some tricks to get the maximum value out of loyalty programs and how loyalty programs helped us save 25-30% of US trip costs
International Flights: Savings from Emirates Skywards
We booked Emirates- it has the best the economy product. While we could have stretched our budgets for business-class lie-flat seats, the expense was too much compared to our income. We could instead go on another trip with that money
We accumulated 18k miles in one account and another 10k in family account. Redemption for cash + miles option gave us about 0.7 cent or INR 0.73 per point value. While not the best, redemption on partner hotels would have given even lower value, and the points would not been sufficient either
Family pool creation helps combine points and redeem for each other. The catch to remember is that miles already present in the account do not go into family pool, so we had miles in both individua and pool account
The mistake we made was not booking 2 different PNRs to utilize both individual and family pool miles. We thought booking under same PNR has a better chance of getting seated together since Emirates auto allocates seats during check-in and you don’t get much choice unless there is low utilization on seats
In hindsight, booking separately would have helped utilize both sets of miles
Domestic US flights: Savings from Air India Maharaja Club
Air India, part of Star Alliance is a steal deal here. You can get United flights for as low as 3500 points for short flights under 2 hours and about 7500 points for flights around 4 hours
Few points to note
- Availability is a hit or a miss. Start looking 6 months in advance.
- Keep looking for availability even if it shows no availability as some routes randomly pop up as available if you keep refreshing multiple times
- You can buy points at INR 1.5 per point which is usually cheaper than cash fares. You can’t buy points on newly opened account without flying twice on Air India
- Flights with layover need to be booked as 2 separate legs. You can ask the check-in desk to send baggage directly to final destination. We still booked flights with 3-hour layover option, but you can risk going up to 60 minutes due to this wonderful interlining rule
- United Silver get free baggage for up to 9 people travelling together even if on different PNRs on same flight. You can find options to link different bookings together
- We used Bonvoy status match to get United Silver and get bags for free. For some reason, the app would take only Air India loyalty number. Bonvoy had offered Ambassador status to a family member- we used that to get United Silver and then add bags for free
- You can also try Aeroplan or Singapore airlines who offer single booking with layovers for 10-15k points where Air India becomes expensive for longer/ multiple stop journeys
Jackson to Las Vegas routes were blacked out for Thursdays like most Las Vegas incoming flights. We booked cash rates only on this leg
Hotels: Savings from Marriott Bonvoy, Smartbuy
Most of our hotels were booked through Bonvoy Marriott points. We got a value of INR 0.8 per point on average. Using points in high-cost countries like USA makes most sense because booking outside the network has similar cash rates. You will most likely not get a sub-INR 5k ($50) room
We chose hotels with free breakfast. This helped us get 500-1000 welcome points per stay. In addition, you can manage breakfast for all. We were 3 adults and utilizing welcome amenity for breakfast would have only served 2 out of 3
Large cities like San Francisco and New York are tricky if you want central location where point requirements were upwards of 60k per night. We used one free night award we had for NY, and decided to book outside Bonvoy network in San Francisco. Surprisingly, there were few hotels that offered breakfast, and that too at $100 additional charge compared to similar ones that didn’t. Most Bonvoy hotels were sold out 6 months in advance, most likely due to annual Salesforce conference that was happening at the same time. There were no Bonvoy hotels that offered free breakfast in 20-mile radius. Beyond that BART/ taxi fares compensated for higher prices in the vicinity of Union Square/ Fisherman’s wharf
We booked a private room in a hostel without breakfast and decided to order in. We used Diners Black Smartbuy points for this instead of Bonvoy.
At Jackson hole, rooms started at $300+ per night. Rates in September are 2x-4x of off-season rates. We found a cheap motel on Expedia not listed on other sites
Tours: Savings with promos from Viator, Tripadvisor
Tripadvisor usually ensures same pricing vs. direct listed price if booked direct with tour operators with their price match program. You can find seasonal promos that give 10-15% off on yours like BOOK10EXP on Tripadvisor, APP102026 on Viator
Note that loyalty programof Tripadvisor is applicable for US residents only (needs US phone number for verification). We did get exclusive promo codes while booking in US that gave higher discounts of 15% vs. when in India (10%)
You can reach out to tour operators for promo codes on their site to match Tripadvisor fares. These are not widely published and need 1:1 ask or booking multiple tours to enable future discounts
National Park Express, a prominent operator in Vegas area gives 20% discount with promo code VIP
What we couldn’t use points savings for
Day tours were our largest expense outlay. Crunch for time, multiple cities in few days and not knowing driving meant we had to rely on group tours
We used IDFC WOW, Scapia card to minimize forex charges. IDFC WOW gave reward points on forex spends too
Few takeaways to maximize savings
While you need points in the first place to be able to redeem, US is one of the best places for redemption, offering good value for points and wide array of redemption options. You just need to book well in advance to capture availabilities