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The Points Guy: Travel Rewards 4+

Tpg: credit card benefits, the points guy.

• 4.4 • 3.5K Ratings

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Description.

Create an account to unlock the world of points & miles with The Points Guy App. Maximize your spending, earn rewards faster, and easily track all of your points and all of your miles all in one place. With over 70 loyalty programs supported and growing, The Points Guy App is your one-stop-shop for tracking exactly how to maximize your spending, points earning, and points redemptions across every card and program specific to you. Connecting the dots from earning points on every purchase to turning those points into travel realities can seem complicated and full of hoops to jump through, especially if you're new to the world of credit cards, points and miles. The Points Guy App is here to help you navigate that journey at every step -- using the best credit card for your spending habits, earning valuable points on every purchase, learning about loyalty programs and transfer partners, and redeeming your points at the best value for you, whether that's visiting family for the weekend or planning the trip of a lifetime. Optimize your spending habits and learn how to make your next trip a reality with: THE TPG DASHBOARD Tailor your TPG experience with the completely customizable dashboard. Check in daily to track your rewards and welcome offers, compare monthly earned points to missed points, and get a snapshot of your recent transaction history. Don't forget you can also use tools like our "Card Advisor" to get recommendations of nearby places to use your best card and continue to maximize your rewards. YOUR WALLET See your points net worth across all cards and programs by syncing your accounts. Learn how to maximize every purchase with in-depth breakdowns of your cards and spending categories. Add your airline and hotel loyalty programs to see your points and statuses, and use the transfer partner calculator to see how to get the most out of your points. Plus, updated benefit tracking for cards helps you get the most value out of all the benefits you receive with your cards and lets you know when they are about to expire. A CURATED NEWS FEED Stay up to date with travel news: Get up to speed with the latest TPG content anytime, anywhere with a customizable feed of the articles you care about. From credit card reviews to personal trip experiences to breaking news, our experts have the inside scoop on all things travel. Across the 70+ institutions supported, you can choose to connect your account for automated tracking or add cards, points or miles without connecting to manage your rewards manually. Some of the secure bank connections you can make include: - American Express (AmEx) - Bank of America (BoFa) - Barclays - Capital One - Chase - Citi - Discover - Wells Fargo The TPG App also supports -- Airline loyalty programs like: - Air Canada Aeroplan - Air France Flying Blue - Alaska Mileage Plan - British Airways Executive Club - Bilt - Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - Delta SkyMiles - El Al Matmid - Emirates Skywards - Etihad Guest - Flying Blue - FRONTIER Miles - HawaiianMiles - Iberia Plus - Lufthansa Miles & More - Qantas Frequent Flyer - Singapore KrisFlyer - Southwest Rapid Rewards - United MileagePlus - Virgin Atlantic Flying Club Hotel loyalty programs like: - Best Western Rewards - Choice Privileges - Hilton Honors - IHG Rewards Club - Marriott Bonvoy - Radisson Rewards - World of Hyatt - Wyndham Rewards And additional valuable loyalty programs you may want to connect like: - Amazon Rewards - Amtrak Guest Rewards - Diners Club Rewards - Disney Rewards - Expedia Rewards - Lowe's - Walmart Rewards

Version 3.1.9

Minor bug fixes following the release of our updated app. We've merged our Points and Cards sections into a single Wallet tab that makes it easier to add and track the value of the cards in your account. We've also added several new tools and guides within your Wallet: "Benefits Tracker" which includes auto tracking for our most popular cards (more cards to be added soon!), "My Best Card" which identifies your best card for top TPG spend categories, "Transfer Guide" with the ability to view your Wallet as if you transferred to a specific program, and "Awards vs. Cash" tool to help you determine when it's a better deal to purchase an award ticket or pay in cash.

Ratings and Reviews

3.5K Ratings

Gonna be great!

Great work TPG Team. A few suggestions: 1. The Alaska Miles on the Award Explorer are showing half the real price (you’re pulling the data from their website as a roundtrip price but really they are shown in one-ways) 2. In “Cards,” it would be cool if there was a button for “what are you buying” and then a card recommendation - you could also monetize that pretty easily. Users could select “gas” or “clothes” or you could even break it down by vendor (#ads). Rakuten or Honey would also probably love to get involved in that. 3. I have two cards from the same bank, but it will only list the “current points” for one of the cards on the Points tab even though both are in the Cards tab. Just a minor thing, and I read in your FAQs you can’t fix it yet. 4. Lots of options for the Award Explorer tab. This was a fantastic idea. I would love to be able to put in my home airport and it would give me a list of all the places I could go at various rates. 5. There really needs to be a simple video made about how to turn transferable currencies into flights. I remember getting AMEX points and then realizing how difficult it was to see it through. Transferring to Air Canada - I had to figure it out on my own. If you can make a video called “turn your points into flights” or something it would go along why on the learning curve. Once I figured it out, my world was mine for the traveling. 6. I’ll work with you anytime if you’d like a new team member.

Truly the travel app of my dreams (so far!)

I was so lucky to come off the waiting list for TPG app today and have been waiting for so long since Brian at TPG announced his app. I’ve been in the “credit card rewards” life for a few years now and the biggest problem I have had is keeping track of which card and/or loyalty program is offering the best bang-for-my-buck at any given time in the year. And this app does that. After entering in my credit cards (all Chase mind you) and loyalty programs, the app not only gives me a current value for all my points, it also intelligently tells me where I missed more earning potential for each category of purchase. Additionally, it has an amazing “award explorer” that will give you the best estimate point redemption for any air travel given the loyalty program you’re enrolled in. As of this moment it does not search actual award charts as it only bases it off published and estimated redemption values, however it is a great starting place when it comes to award travel. It still needs a little help with some bugs, most notably that my app seems to log me out every other time I launch the app, but given its still in the “invite only” phase I expect that to be patched up before the full release. I am truly excited to see where TPG continues to go with this app!

Has the potential to be the greatest!

Great app! I had a few technical problems early on but I understand that this is a bet version and they have since been resolved. I would suggest that the feature allowing you to check which card is best to use for a certain store or category should be more prominent. It is only located with a single button on the “Cards” tab and when I test it from home I only get a popup suggesting one business that is a mile away from my current location. I think there should be drop down list of locations nearby to choose from. This feature should also have its own tab in the app since I believe it would be heavily used. I would also suggest adding the ability to automatically add or sign up for different card offers like the quarterly bonus categories for the Freedom Flex or the different vendor offers for AMEX and Chase. I still like the easier access to the TPG articles and calculation of points accrued and missed but I suggest adding all of the aforementioned features to make this app the best in the “points and miles” business. I hope you strongly consider my suggestions. Thanks!

Developer Response ,

Hi DW, thanks so much for your great suggestions. Would you mind contacting our support team in the "More" section of the app for your Amex Platinum bonus tracker? That does sound like a bug we'd love to get resolved for you!

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The Man Who Turned Credit-Card Points Into an Empire

Brian Kelly, The Points Guy, has created an empire dedicated to maximizing credit-card rewards and airline miles. What are they worth in a global pandemic — and why are they worth anything at all?

Brian Kelly, the Points Guy, at J.F.K. Terminal 4 before departing on a trip to Croatia. Credit... Jonno Rattman for The New York Times

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By Jamie Lauren Keiles

• Published Jan. 5, 2021 Updated June 15, 2023

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They came to Dubrovnik by cruise ship or Ryanair — members of a new hypermobile class of tourist, who traveled for cheap and didn’t stay long. They’d seen its walled Old Town on “Game of Thrones,” and they wanted to be there themselves, so they went. Venice, Barcelona, certain beaches in Thailand — these places had all faced their own “overtouristing” problems, but even by this standard, Dubrovnik was extreme. On busy days, tourists could outnumber permanent Old Town residents about 6 to 1. With a main thoroughfare less than a thousand feet long, this pressure on the city’s charm was overwhelming. By 2017, tourism had so overburdened the Old Town that UNESCO was threatening to revoke its World Heritage status. Mayor Mato Frankovic set out to save his city by sabotage, capping passage through the gates at 4,000 daily visitors and functionally banning new restaurants. Nevertheless, the tourists kept coming.

But then, around March 2020, they stopped. After the Diamond Princess debacle, no more cruise ships appeared in the port. Airplanes were grounded, then took flight again — ending an age of quick and easy travel and ushering in a new, slower one. Pandemic travel was arduous and impeded by knotty, sometimes contradictory governmental guidelines. To travel under these conditions required an unhinged urge to take flight and a bureaucrat’s eye for parsing fine print. Brian Kelly, the founder of a website called The Points Guy, had both — plus a few million unused frequent-flier miles. This was how, on Saturday, Aug. 7, he found himself heading from New York to Dubrovnik, to see the walled city with nobody there.

His trip began at 2 p.m. the day before, with an express nasal swab at NYU Langone Medical Center. Travelers arriving in Croatia were at that time required to present a negative coronavirus test no more than 48 hours old. Between test-processing time and travel time, the tight window posed a logistical challenge. But Kelly, as the face of the world’s most popular credit-card rewards blog, had plenty of experience interpreting strict guidelines. For 10 years, readers had come to his site for help turning terms of service into free trips. In this way, the pandemic was another day at work. That afternoon, he posted footage of his nasal swab to Instagram. Nine hours later, he shared his results: negative.

The following evening, he arrived at J.F.K. ready to board a Virgin Atlantic flight to London. The business-class ticket cost him 57,500 miles, plus $724 cash. He eased his way through the TSA PreCheck line and signed into the Delta Sky Club lounge. (The airline, he knew, had a partnership with Virgin.) A bartender announced the evening special: 10,000 points for a bottle of Dom Pérignon. On that day, The Points Guy — which publishes monthly cash valuations of the top 45 rewards currencies — had Delta miles trading at 1.1 cent each. Kelly did a quick calculation in his head: The deal was worth about $110. The same bottle of Dom at a restaurant might go for $250, or more. He ordered the Champagne.

The flight boarded at 10 p.m. Kelly counted just 12 passengers in the 44-seat business-class cabin. Everyone was wearing a mask, and some fell asleep wearing two (face and eye). “Flying during Covid is kind of like flying private,” Kelly told me later. “I had my own A350 plane.” The transfer at Heathrow went smoothly. The flight touched down in Croatia just in time. Kelly presented his negative test results.

Dubrovnik that day was near-empty and majestic, saved by disease from the lure of its own beauty. Kelly met up with his friend Mauricio, a furloughed fashion merchandiser from Miami, and they made plans to meet up with more friends and all rent a boat to hop around the nearby islands. The idea was that by the time they docked again, they’d all have been in Europe for two weeks, freeing them up to travel on to other places. This was a sort of loophole in the strict E.U. travel restrictions. Kelly knew that international travel was not, at the moment, feasible for the average Points Guy reader, but he had the points, the Covid status and the time to allow his readers to travel vicariously through him. He had no idea when the world might reopen. For now, he was content to enjoy the solitude.

“No cruise ships, no mass tourists,” he says.

Just the reigning king of cheap travel, enjoying a momentary upside to its downfall.

The seeds of cheap travel were planted in the 1970s, as U.S. airline deregulation drove down the cost (and luxuriousness) of flying. The boom would not begin for another two decades, when self-book travel websites curtailed travel agents’ power, removing considerable friction from the market and allowing the consumer to take flight more casually. In 2018, according to the United Nations, global tourist arrivals reached a record annual high of 1.4 billion — a 56-fold increase since the end of World War II. This boom, like all booms, had its clear-cut losers (locals, the environment) and winners (home-sharing platforms, crowdsourced review sites, wanderlusting influencers).

Somewhere in this mix is The Points Guy, and its domain is the set of novel currencies issued by airlines and credit cards. Points are ersatz money that you earn by spending real money, a form of currency hidden inside of another. And “loyalty programs,” as the broader sector is known, are businesses inside businesses. On an ordinary, nonpandemic weekday, an American might encounter half a dozen opportunities to accrue loyalty points, from morning coffee (Starbucks Rewards) to daily commute (Exxon Mobil Rewards+) to lunch break (Chipotle Rewards) to after-work errands (CVS ExtraCare points) to date night (Regal cinema’s Crown Club). The degree to which loyalty programs actually increase customer loyalty varies widely from program to program. Good programs dangle a deliberate carrot, forging customer loyalty and heightening what behavioral economists call “switching costs.” They exploit perceived thrift and a fantasy of status to make users want to earn, and thereby spend.

Within the loyalty-program space, travel and credit-card rewards are by far the most successful and well known. As one oft-cited, almost-certainly imaginary airline executive once put it, “People are willing to pay anything for a free ticket.” Travel rewards pose a compelling incentive — a shortcut to the playgrounds of the globalized elite. (Or, if not that, at least a chance to sit in the part of the airplane where cocktails are free.) And yet, as rewards programs have multiplied, the earned point has grown increasingly complex and fungible: A Chase Ultimate Rewards point, worth about 2 cents as I write, can also be converted to a British Airways mile, which in turn can be transferred to Iberia Plus, or cashed out for a ticket on Cathay Pacific, or used to book a rental car with Hertz. The Points Guy helps readers navigate this web.

Since 2010, The Points Guy has published over 30,000 blog posts: hotel, airline and cruise-ship reviews, next to wonkish analyses of rewards-program fine print. (Some typical headlines: “Why the Amex Gold Is the Perfect ‘In Between’ Credit Card”; “How to Get to Puerto Rico on Miles and Points”; “Why I Canceled Bora Bora Again.”) Kelly is only the face of the site; the “guy” is now voiced by a 30-person team of credit-card experts, aviation reporters and expats from legacy travel media. Older travel publications sell a daydream: crisp ocean vistas, street side cafes, European hamlets with more steeples than people. The Points Guy sells that daydream as a promise, upholding a sworn oath to help you “maximize your travel.”

This is not a false promise, at least not on an individual basis. Almost anyone with a decent credit score can get a free vacation by following the protocol outlined in the “T.P.G. Beginner’s Guide.” First, forget your debit card. Your debit card has “no point — pun intended.” It takes without giving and spends without earning. “Wouldn’t you rather know that all the money you spend is like an investment toward your next trip?”

If the answer is yes, your next step is credit. Since the chuh-CHUNK days of the Diners Club card, the credit-card industry has evolved from a substitute for checks into a passport to total convenience. The latest credit cards, known on the market as “premium cards,” charge an annual fee for access to deluxe amenities: airline lounges, free TSA PreCheck, travel reimbursements and, most crucial, points. Convertible, transferable — practically alchemical — points turn diapers and caramel macchiatos into premium status, and first-class upgrades, and over-water villas at the Conrad Maldives. Points accrue passively, without apparent work, taunting the labor theory of value by simply appearing on your monthly credit-card statement.

On The Points Guy Instagram feed, there is proof of all the ways that household-budget straw might be spun into travel gold: Honeymooners hold hands in lie-flat seats. Retirees see the Taj Mahal at last. A cancer survivor with a new lease on life strikes a pose at the world’s tallest indoor waterfall. Two dads with two kids take a family selfie, en route to a free getaway in Cancún. Three shades dominate the color palate: vitreous ocean blue, white sand and cleanable-seat-back-headrest navy. Here, the legroom goes on forever. All the rooms are suites, all the pools are infinite and anyone can live like a billionaire, so long as you play your credit cards right.

Don’t have a premium credit card yet? The Points Guy is happy to sign you up for one. This is, in fact, the site’s main source of revenue. Wander the labyrinth of guides and reviews, and soon you’ll encounter your first sign-up bonus: 60,000 for Chase Sapphire Preferred; 100,000 points for a Capital One Venture. Why should running money through this essentially arbitrary chain of transactions produce value? Does it? The Points Guy is barely concerned with such questions. With one new card, a free trip can be yours. Just enter your address and your mother’s maiden name.

The Points Guy is headquartered in New York City, in a midrise office building just north of Union Square. I went there to visit on Feb. 10, a month or so before the pandemic would devastate the U.S. travel industry. Stepping off the elevator, I felt no sense of impending collapse. The office floor whirred with bullish momentum. Inside a glass-walled conference room, a blogger pecked out posts from a converted airline seat, salvaged from a defunct Concorde turbojet.

Kelly’s office was spacious and clean, appearing mostly ceremonial. In 2012, The Points Guy was purchased by Bankrate, a consumer-finance company, which in turn was acquired by Red Ventures — a portfolio of service-y sites, including Lonely Planet, CreditCards.com, Safety.com, Reviews.com and HigherEducation.com. Kelly stayed on through both acquisitions, retaining the title of chief executive and remaining the figurehead of the brand. In a typical year, he spends about four months traveling, splitting the rest of his time between two homes in the West Village and Bucks County, Pa., where he grew up. Still, when you go on vacation for a living, the line between personal and professional life can be hard to draw. (A March 2020 Business Insider article highlighted this lack of boundaries, reporting that Kelly had made passes at freelancers and snorted cocaine in front of colleagues on a business trip to the Nobu Hotel Las Vegas. Kelly and Red Ventures denied any wrongdoing.)

A bank of shelves, behind a large and empty desk, showcased evidence of Kelly’s airport-lounge lifestyle: an unopened box of Veuve Clicquot; a scale model of a Singapore Airlines jet; two copies of “Rich Bitch: A Simple 12-Step Plan for Getting Your Financial Life Together ... Finally.” (The author was a guest on his podcast.) In the corner of the room, on a gray sectional sofa, Kelly, in dark-wash jeans and Gucci boots, reclined into a stockpile of novelty throw pillows. One was inspired by air-traffic-control lingo (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.). Another showed a dozen smiling Celine Dions. A third, in brassy, boldface type, asked, “DO I LOOK LIKE I FLY ECONOMY?” At 6 feet 7 inches tall, he did not. He spoke with a frank insiderishness that made me feel as if I shouldn’t, either.

On TSA PreCheck: “I haven’t waited more than five minutes in years.”

On the Concorde: “I’d rather be in a lie-flat bed for six hours than a cramped seat for three. Whose time is that valuable?”

On the diminishing thrills of success: “The joy of a 50,000-point sign-up bonus is lost when now our corporate cards earn up to two million points a month.”

Kelly found points and miles as a child. One morning in 1996, his father, a health care consultant, came to him and said: “Hey, I have all these frequent-flier miles. If you can figure out how to use them, we’ll go somewhere.” Kelly, age 13 — “closeted, gay, fabulous,” by his own description — called the US Airways customer-service line, asked a few questions in his best adult voice, then hung up and told his parents, “OK, we’re going to the Cayman Islands!” (He’d first heard about the Caribbean hideaway in John Grisham’s best-selling thriller “The Firm.”) A few months later, the family of six was wheels-up on a zero-dollar flight to paradise. Thus, a devotion to miles was born.

In college, at the University of Pittsburgh, Kelly earned US Airways Gold status flying to and from student-government conferences on the university’s dime. After graduation, he moved to New York and eventually wound up in human resources at Morgan Stanley, recruiting at college job fairs (and racking up airline miles in the process). The year after he started, the economy collapsed — a failure of too-imaginative financial widgets. Morgan Stanley downsized. Kelly found himself on the firing squad, waiting outside conference-room doors to escort the casualties down to the lobby. This was thankless, demoralizing work. The lifers sometimes cried. Kelly went home feeling drained. Miles and points became an escape — rewarding on some higher plane of human need. He learned the fine print of his corporate Amex card and earned a water-cooler reputation as “the points guy.” In spring 2010, he unveiled a simple website, where visitors could pay him for help booking vacations.

This first version of The Points Guy went online just as several economic trends converged. As the economy began to improve, credit-card companies were looking for ways to regain the customers they lost during the downturn. Chase had just poached a top executive from American Express — the reigning rewards charge card at the time — and had just introduced Chase Ultimate Rewards, a new, flexible points currency designed to draw millennials into the premium-card market. Kelly added a blog to his site in June 2010, just as many other miles hobbyists were launching credit-card blogs of their own. But only Kelly was lucky enough to come across a way to turn this passion into money. In February 2011, a distant friend who had come across the site reached out and asked Kelly to meet him for dinner.

“I thought he was asking me out on a date,” Kelly says. “He was like, ‘Let’s meet up, I can help you with your blog,’ and I was like, ‘OK, that’s like the lamest excuse.’”

The two sat down for a pinot grigio near the Morgan Stanley office in Times Square. The friend, it turned out, was an account manager at LinkShare (now Rakuten), which specialized in affiliate marketing — an online sales tactic in which a company pays a commission to bloggers for selling its product. If you wrote a blog post that got the top Google ranking for, say, “best nonstick skillet,” and put in an affiliate link to the product, you could earn money for every customer you brought in. This was a relatively novel concept in 2011. To Kelly, it seemed spammy, but what did he have to lose besides time? The friend signed him up as a Chase affiliate, and Kelly put up a blog post about the Chase United card. That first month, Kelly says, he earned $5,000 in affiliate payouts. The following month, he earned $20,000. The month after that, he earned $130,000. “I don’t like talking about numbers,” Kelly says. “But basically, it just picked up from there.”

At the time we sat down in his office, The Points Guy had reached a peak of about 12 million monthly unique readers. Up on the wall, a flat-screen TV reeled off a feed of metrics from the site. The blog, by then, had published 16 posts about what we then called the novel coronavirus, covering rerouted cruise ships and suspended flights from China weeks before most mainstream publications. Still, the outbreak remained a curiosity; none of the posts were cracking the Top 10.

The main thing on Kelly’s horizon that day was a new Points Guy app, which he hoped would be released by June, after months of delays. The app, he explained, was designed to synthesize the terms of different loyalty programs, helping people choose which transactions to put on which credit card. Beyond sign-up bonuses and regular spending, a major way to rack up points is by playing the so-called category bonuses — e.g. “5x points on dining” — which vary among cards and change all the time. Hardcore earners keep track of these rules in Excel spreadsheets, or by sticking Post-it Notes to their cards. The Points Guy app would make the chaos systematic, opening the hobby up to more casual earners.

“Mastercard now has Lyft credits. Amex has off Uber. Chase now has Lyft, too” Kelly said, trailing off. “It is dizzying — the amount of constantly changing promotions and targets.”

More dizzying than racking up points is figuring out how to spend efficiently. Most casual credit-card users think of rewards as a freebie. The Points Guy thinks in terms of cold, hard cash, and wants you to get the most freebies for your money. Beyond publishing points-to-cents valuations, the site also posts step-by-step instructions for transferring points among the currencies themselves. Most airlines and credit cards have transfer partners, and those transfer partners have their own partners. By converting points among the different programs, a traveler can arbitrage his way to better deals. This convoluted system formed incidentally, over many years, as airlines and credit cards formed ad hoc agreements. Kelly, who told me he has 25 credit cards and employs a full-time staff member to manage his and his company’s rewards, admitted he still messes up the calculus. “I’ll post on Instagram, ‘I’m using Alaska Airlines to fly American Airlines to fly to London first class,’ and people will be like: ‘Dumdum! Didn’t you realize if you transfer Amex to Etihad it’s less miles?’”

Kelly is a middleman’s middleman — an intermediary in an industry that exists to turn intermediation into profit. There are three major players in the travel-rewards game: credit cards (banks), airlines and consumers. Points, the set of novel currencies minted by airlines, transform their vague-but-strong mutual interests into something fungible. This web of partnerships can become tangled, but generally speaking, the system works like this:

Airlines issue their own frequent-flier miles, but they don’t always go directly to consumers. Just as often, the currency is sold in blocks to banks. With points in hand, a bank can then issue a “co-branded” credit card, like the Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards card, and use the incentives to attract high-value customers. In another version of this arrangement, a bank issues its own currency, like Chase Ultimate Rewards. These points can be redeemed for just about anything. The bank converts its own points into real dollars when buying the desired reward from a third-party vendor.

Points function, in most ways, as real currencies do. When airlines devalue their points — as United did recently during the pandemic to counter the glut of unspent miles — it can cause a minor shock wave, nerfing one card or supercharging another. But because travel remains such a high-value prize, what industry wonks call an “aspirational reward,” the minor fluctuations have not yet destabilized the market. With points in the mix, all three players generally win: Airlines make money selling rewards; consumers enjoy the indulgence of free travel; banks recruit new customers, who more than justify the upfront cost of acquisition.

It’s a common misconception that premium credit cards earn money mainly through interest payments and annual fees. Their meat and potatoes are interchange fees, the surcharges levied on merchants per transaction. When you pay with your credit card in a store, the owner pays the bank a percentage of your total. For certain credit cards, this fee is low — maybe 1 to 2 percent. For premium cards, like Chase Sapphire or American Express, the fees can be higher, depending on the merchant, to cover the cost of a card’s amenities. (This is partly why restaurants, which operate on thin margins, sometimes exclude American Express from the list of cards they accept.) In places outside the United States, interchange fees are generally capped, which can make rewards far less rewarding. In this way, points and miles are an all-American pastime. Only here was the margin wide enough for the coupon scheme to flourish into the kind of game The Points Guy’s readers play.

You might rightly begin the history of points with Diners Club, the first credit card, which came into use in 1950 and, through issuing monthly statements, inadvertently established a way to track and analyze consumer spending. Credit cards would eventually become an indispensable tool for administering travel-rewards programs, but it was deregulation in the 1970s that did more to establish points currencies themselves. From the Nixon administration on, think-tank types on both sides of the aisle began to advocate for regulatory reforms that decreased federal involvement in America’s largest industries. Energy was partially deregulated in 1973. Railroads began in 1976. In 1978, Jimmy Carter signed the Airline Deregulation Act, which undid federal aeronautics controls in place since 1938.

Before airline deregulation, flight maps and ticket prices were set centrally by the Civil Aeronautics Board. Because this prevented airlines from competing on price, they were forced to offer fliers deluxe amenities: full meals in coach, conversation-pit seating, attractive stewardesses in Oleg Cassini suits. Under the Airline Deregulation Act, carriers were free to determine their own prices, which could theoretically increase profits, but also introduced a new quandary: What would prevent the airline market from simply becoming a race to the bottom? Frequent-flier programs emerged as a way to reward customers for staying loyal. Certainly, the business traveler would spend a little more of his boss’s money if it meant getting something extra for himself.

“Using incentives was hardly new,” says Bob Crandall, American Airlines’ C.E.O. at the time. Supermarkets gave out S&H Green Stamps, luring customers with prizes like free toasters. In the airline industry, experiments like United’s “100,000 Mile Club” had already demonstrated some success, but the big impediment to administering such programs was keeping track of customers. (Who could say whether the John Smith who flew New York to London was the same John Smith who flew Houston to Detroit?) On this front, American had a technological advantage — a new computerized reservation system. “So we started doing some research about what kind of rewards people would like,” Crandall says. The answer, somewhat obvious in hindsight, was travel.

“The only thing people want more than cash, as an incentive, is travel,” says Hal Brierley, a consultant who helped design American’s first program. AAdvantage, as it came to be called, debuted in May of 1981 with a wave of pre-enrollment mailers directed at the airline’s top customers. From the beginning, the program was tiered, with the top prize being a free round-trip ticket. “If you flew 50,000 miles in one year,” Brierley says, “you got a first-class trip to wherever we flew, which at the time meant ‘Go to Hawaii.’ Even a business guy wants a beach in Hawaii!”

With haste, other airlines unveiled their own mileage programs. (“I credit United for having responded to the program literally over the weekend,” Brierley says.) These early miles, unlike modern points, were measures of actual distance: miles flown from A to B. Program enrollees received monthly statements, tracking their progress toward the reward. At this early stage, a free trip cost an airline almost nothing to give away. Airline seats were perishable; planes take off, full or not. By turning this so-called distressed inventory into an asset, airlines retained their most loyal customers, who more than paid them back in repeat business.

Within a few years, an estimated 75 percent of all business travelers had joined at least one frequent-flier program. The programs were free; there was no risk in joining. Consumer expectations were low, and most still saw the miles as a kind of funny money. Business sections, throughout the early ’80s, devoted column space to explaining terms of service — and complaining about blackout dates and mileage thresholds. One reporter deemed frequent-flier programs “as confusing and as complicated as Rubik’s Cube.” Another critic, the former senator Eugene J. McCarthy, took to The New York Times to complain:

I was rarely able to take advantage of the special reduced fares, given if one scheduled three months in advance, or agreed to go on Tuesday and return on Sunday, before noon; or to complete one’s round trip within the Octave of the Feast of All Saints, or of the birth of Clare Booth Luce; or buy a ticket before the spring equinox and use it before the summer solstice or, failing in that, only after the September equinox and before the winter solstice, flying west before noon and east after sundown.

The gimmick reputation of early mileage programs proved to be a hindrance, but soon a set of early adopters came to see the programs for what they were worth — or rather, what they could be worth.

In 1981, when AAdvantage was introduced, Randy Petersen was 30 and working in the corporate offices of Chess King, a groovy young-men’s mall retailer founded on the market-research proposition that teen males loved auto-racing and chess. Flying from grand opening to grand opening to reposition racks of nylon parachute pants, Petersen accrued a free trip to Hawaii, booked a room at the Sheraton Waikiki and ate dinner at the luau every single night. When he returned to the Chess King offices in New York, his co-workers gathered around his desk with questions about taking free trips of their own. Seeing latent demand in their barrage of inquiries, Petersen put in his two weeks’ notice. By 1986, he had struck out on his own as the publisher, editor and only employee of the world’s first frequent-flier magazine.

The first issue of InsideFlyer looked, in Petersen’s words, like a “bad ransom note.” Typewritten commentary on airline programs mixed with photocopied offers clipped from monthly statement mailers. Its first readers were road-warrior types — guys in wrinkled suits with Hartmann luggage — who traveled enough to earn a free trip now and then, but didn’t go out of their way to earn further. This all changed in 1988, with the debut of Delta Triple Mileage, one of the first industry experiments in driving consumers to actually fly more than they might otherwise. The promotion, which delivered on the promise of its name, shortened the free-ticket accrual time from a period of years to a period of months. A free trip to Hawaii, which cost about 30,000 miles, used to be an ambitious goal. Now, it could be earned in one-third of the distance — just two round trips from LAX to J.F.K.

For the average business traveler, Delta Triple Mileage increased the immediate value of belonging to a loyalty program. For mileage obsessives like Petersen, taking miles off the gold standard of concrete distance transformed program membership from a static, passive interest to a game that could be played. Triple Mileage gave rise to a frequent-flying frenzy, one that could be amped up even further by learning and exploiting airline-route particulars. Back then, routes were more limited, and travelers often completed the last leg of a trip with a short flight from a hub airport to a smaller regional one. To make accounting for these brief jaunts less annoying, Delta decided to compensate all flights with a minimum of 1,000 rewards miles, even when the actual distance was shorter. Under Triple Mileage, the minimum, well, tripled. And quickly, InsideFlyer readers realized that by stacking these short flights they could mint their own free trips. Flying back and forth between two short-leg cities, a rewards ticket to Hawaii could be earned in just eight continuous hours of flying. “One of the most popular ones was Dallas to Austin,” Petersen says. “People would do that eight, nine, 10 times in a day.”

In time, other airlines introduced their own “multiples” promotions, and around them, a mileage community was born. InsideFlyer eventually spawned its own online replacement — a message board called FlyerTalk — where mileage prodigies, including Brian Kelly, would come to hear the lore of their mileage ancestors. Most stories from this Wild West time have proved impossible to fact-check in hindsight. Back in the ’80s, before the T.S.A. and security theater, “the number of people that used to fly under other people’s names strictly to earn frequent-flier miles was extraordinary,” Petersen says. According to his memory, one high school basketball coach enlisted a whole team to fly under his name. “Back and forth all weekend,” he says. “Between Dallas and Austin, just so he could earn bonus miles. That’s how you push the envelope. You get greedy.”

One of the greatest points-and-miles hustles of the pre-broadband age was something called the LatinPass Run. In the lead-up to the new millennium, a small handful of Latin American airlines formed a consortium called LatinPass. For a while, it was doing OK, but then the big global airlines came in and started eating up all of the business travelers. LatinPass needed a competitive edge, so it turned to Bobby Booth, an airline marketer out of Miami.

Booth’s idea was to incentivize travel with the smaller carriers by creating a million-mile prize for flying at least one international segment on each of the LatinPass member airlines in one year. There were a bunch of exceptions and fine print, stuff involving rental cars, hotels and partner airlines, all of which amounted to a brain teaser for Petersen. In 2000, he worked out a plan for how you could do it and published an article in InsideFlyer saying, “I’m going to do it all in one weekend. Any volunteers?” Three people joined the first LatinPass Run. One was a Silicon Valley investor. One was a loan officer down in Dallas. The third was an off-duty I.R.S. agent. The foursome met up in Miami on a Friday and flew 24 hours a day — up, down, connect; up, down, connect. They got into Lima, slept on the concrete floor of the airport for two hours and then caught the first flight out to Nicaragua. There was unrest in the country at the time, Petersen recalls. “You’d look at all the soldiers all around with the machine guns, and think: We’ve been here. This qualifies. I’m not getting off. No, no, I’ll sit here for two hours while you refuel.”

In the end, the whole run cost about $1,100 per person. The million miles, via transfer partners, were worth at least three first-class international round trips. Petersen published the details of the run, and after that, LatinPass really took off. “You’d pull into Lima last flight of the day,” he says, “and you’d look over and see a couple of other Americans in the back, because we were all in coach, and you’d kind of nod your head a little bit, like ‘I know what you’re doing.’”

In the end, about 250 people earned the million-mile bonus — more than the few dozen the program had forecast. (One was the famous “Pudding Guy,” immortalized by Adam Sandler in “Punch Drunk Love.”)

“They ended up folding that venture just a few years later,” Petersen says. “Just because they couldn’t handle all the redemptions.”

LatinPass was an inflection point in loyalty-program history, marking a moment when airlines began to give more thought to the delicate math required to maintain a strong points currency. By 2005, the global pool of frequent-flier miles was accruing 10 times as fast as the open seats that made the whole system possible. That year, The Economist estimated the value of these unredeemed miles as more than the value of all the $1 bills in circulation. Consumers had embraced the frequent-flier program, but now airlines found themselves facing pressures to give away seats that would otherwise be sold. In time, more and more programs would begin selling points to banks. By turning their loyalty programs into income streams, the airlines could afford to give away more free seats. In fact, according to Evert de Boer, managing partner of an airline loyalty consulting firm, seats purchased with airline points can generate more revenue than seats purchased with cash.

Today the business of selling points is more stable and more reliably profitable than the business of actually flying people places. “Over time, airline performance is very volatile,” de Boer says. “Something happens — say, the price of oil goes up, or a competitor comes in, dumping capacity — and it constantly goes up and down, up and down, up and down ... ” Points, by contrast, are relatively calm. Recently, in the midst of the pandemic, American Airlines used the program as collateral to secure a $7.5 billion CARES Act loan. Delta did the same with SkyMiles to get $9 billon from private lenders. As in other parts of the American economy, airlines are finding ways to become financial-service providers. “There have been transactions in the past where the loyalty program was acquired or sold at a total value exceeding that of the airline,” de Boer says. “It’s the tail wagging the dog.”

Earlier this year, on March 8, I traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend Frequent Traveler University, a travel-hacker seminar series held several times a year around the world, most often in airport-hotel conference rooms. This iteration took place at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center as part of a Travel and Adventure Show that, unfortunately, coincided with the first wave of Covid travel panic. In the main hall of the convention center, two scuba instructors floated idly in an unattended demonstration pool.

I arrived at the F.T.U. conference room just in time for introductory remarks by Stefan Krasowski, a blogger who had leveraged the Delta and United mileage programs to visit every U.N. member country before his 40th birthday. Krasowski, like much of the room, was male, white, not overtly subcultural-looking. He warmed up the crowd with some lighthearted cracks about how “travel hacking” had affected his marriage. His wife, he said, had recently instituted a “one-free-hotel-lounge-meal-per-day rule.” The room laughed along in recognition.

In the mileage community, almost every relationship has one obsessive and one tolerant enabler, generally known as “Player 2.” Marriage unlocks a higher level of the game by uniting two incomes, two credit scores and two Social Security numbers. Several obsessives I spoke with joked that getting access to a spouse’s credit card was one of the best days of his or her life. Krasowski told the room that one of the most common questions he gets was, “What can I do about spouses that are interested in the spending, but not the earning?” He and his wife had begun taking an annual “spousal harmony trip.” She lays out the parameters, and he has to deliver: “Fourth of July weekend, Australia. Business class, single connection preferred, Korean Air.”

My first seminar of the day was called “Awards Worth MS-ing for.” MS, or manufactured spending, was popularized through FlyerTalk. The technique has since established itself as the foremost earnings tactic of hard-core milers. The seminar was hosted by Nick Reyes, a self-declared “rabid” points and miles collector, with an open-collar shirt and a neatly trimmed goatee. He approached the lectern, took off his fedora and rubbed some sanitizer on his hands. As someone struggled to set up the projector, he stalled for time by telling the crowd that he’d named his first son Conrad, after the Hilton luxury hotel chain. (He had already collected several complimentary Conrad-branded stuffed animals from his previous stays.)

“If you were to name your child after a hotel brand, which would you pick?” he asked.

The crowd tossed off suggestions: Regis (in homage to the St. Regis hotel chain), and Bonvoy (after the recently-merged Starwood-Marriott-Ritz-Carlton rewards program).

Soon the PowerPoint presentation was up and running. Manufactured spending, Reyes explained, is a tactic in which you buy a cash equivalent using a credit card, earn credit-card rewards points for the purchase and use the cash value to pay off the bill. A simple example might entail using your Visa credit card to buy a Mastercard prepaid gift card and then repaying the bill through an online bill-pay app (perhaps even using the gift card itself). This is a tidy way to print points, but rarely are MS schemes so obvious. Bill-pay apps, gift cards and other cash abstractions tend to come along with all kinds of piddly fees. In order for an MS scheme to turn a profit, the earning must exceed the cost of manufacture.

One of the earliest MS schemes, at this point a foundational legend of the points-and-miles community, was the dollar-coin bonanza. In 2005, in an attempt to overcome the struggling Sacagawea dollar — and to piggyback off the recent state-quarter craze — Congress passed the Presidential $1 Coin Act, introducing a new series of coins. The first, featuring George Washington’s face, went into circulation around Presidents’ Day 2007. For the next few years, by congressional mandate, a new president was minted every season — Adams, Jefferson, Madison and so on.

Nearly every venue of American consumer life is set up to dissuade the use of coins, and so the new series was a failure. In order to get the currency into circulation, the U.S. Mint started a new direct-ship program, allowing consumers to buy the coins online and have them mailed out free of charge. Before long the Mint started to notice strange buying patterns, as travel hackers discovered the program, used their credit cards to buy millions of coins, and delivered the packages straight from their mailboxes to the bank. This hustle generated an untold number of mileage millionaires, and even more big-fish tales for the points-and-miles community. Here’s one: At the first Frequent Traveler University in 2010, held at a Sheraton near La Guardia Airport, attendees broke for lunch together at a nearby Chinese restaurant, only to discover that the business was cash only. When the bill finally arrived, the waitress was surprised to discover a table piled high with golden coins. (Eventually, the Mint halted the bonanza by disallowing credit-card orders altogether.)

In my second talk of the day, called simply “Manufactured Spending,” a software engineer named Mike Graziano ran through a list of other bygone MS tactics, like paying yourself through the Amazon Pay portal or prepaying a Visa Buxx debit card. In the course of my reporting, I heard of others too: paying yourself through a Square credit-card reader; overpaying your taxes with a credit card and waiting for the I.R.S. to refund you; issuing short-term microloans to the developing world using a website called Kiva. One travel hacker I spoke with divided MS schemes into two categories: pajama spend, which you could do from your computer, and real-world spend, which took in-person work. Manufactured spending was getting harder, as credit-card algorithms became smarter at catching hackers. Increasingly, the profitable schemes involved arduous real-world effort, like driving between Walmart locations to buy money orders at a discount. Some hackers I read about online build these pit stops into their real-job commutes, as a kind of second shift. Others, a small percentage, make travel-hacking (and other arcane arbitrage schemes) a full-time occupation — reselling their points in secret online markets, against the credit-card terms of service.

Staying ahead as a manufactured spender means staying alert, and attuning yourself to particular ways that abstract financial innovations can be layered. “There are new financial products popping up every day,” Graziano assured the crowd. “Bill-pay apps are Silicon Valley-backed companies. Generally they are moving very quickly, and we are not on their radar when they put these products out. When you see that, do not hesitate.”

Legally speaking, travel hacking is not a crime, though it does lead to conflict with vendors and credit-card companies, many of which have instituted rules against MS schemes. A bank or airline has a lot of leeway to decide what abides by its program’s rules and what does not. Even if a travel-hacking scheme does not outright violate the terms of service, a company can simply decide the technique transgresses the spirit of its program. In cases like these, your rewards balances might be seized. Card issuers even institute long-term bans.

Every travel hacker I spoke with had a different relation to the morality of the hobby. Credit cards and airlines are not sympathetic victims, and this fact could be used to justify almost any ethical position. Some drew the line at exploiting credit unions. Others stopped at misrepresenting their own identities, or reselling points online for cash. Pretty much every player at this level disliked Brian Kelly and The Points Guy for one reason or another, including, but not limited to: being a sellout, beating them to the punch, getting in bed with the credit-card companies, advocating for suboptimal deals, masquerading as a consumer advocate, taking credit for a community he did not create and giving a face to a subculture that would rather remain anonymous.

Kelly admits these travel hackers are not his target audience. “I don’t want to have to go around to 10 different Targets to buy different gift cards to get points,” he says. “People called me a sellout in the beginning, like, ‘Oh, you’re just doing this for the masses.’ And yeah — I am. That’s the point.” He didn’t start The Points Guy to keep his deals a secret. “That was a business decision early on, and that’s why I think we’ve been able to grow it. We are very open about the fact that we have to make money. I have 100 employees. I can’t pay their salaries in Amex points.”

I left Washington on March 8 and arrived back home in New York City just in time to watch it shut down. That Thursday, Broadway went dark, and a prohibition on gatherings of more than 500 people was announced. In the following weeks, the schools were closed; the city’s daily Covid deaths reached a peak of more than 800, by some counts. The Points Guy, with its fluency in bureaucratic jargon, pivoted almost exclusively to parsing the daily-changing crisis plans. (Some sample headlines: “Everything You Need to Know About the U.S. European Travel Ban”; “Here’s How to Figure Out if You Qualify for a Flight Refund”; “How to Cancel an Airbnb if Your Reservation Is Affected by Coronavirus.”)

Over the months that followed, I checked in with Kelly periodically as he bounced around the world, from Palm Springs, Calif., to Antigua to Mexico City — getting massages, dining out at restaurants, updating his Instagram story throughout. When we last spoke, in November, he had just returned from two weeks in French Polynesia, where he stayed at the Conrad Bora Bora Nui and swam with humpback whales. Now back home in Pennsylvania, he was once again looking forward to the release of the Points Guy app, which had been kicked down the road to mid-2021. “I’m still confident it will change the way people think about points,” he said.

While writing this article, my own perspective on miles and points certainly changed. Through day-to-day spending — and expenses, which were later reimbursed by The New York Times — my rewards balances began to grow. At press time, I have: 3,815 in AAdvantage, 4,735 in Delta SkyMiles, 5,600 in Marriott Bonvoy, 44,485 in Southwest Rapid Rewards and 65,482 in Chase Ultimate Rewards. I hoped to end this story in a faraway place, relaxing on my own plot-concluding free vacation, but who knows when this might be possible? The more I sit home daydreaming about travel, the more skeptical I feel about the sorts of trips that points and miles tend to produce.

As corporate partnerships have grown increasingly enmeshed, rewards have come to form a worldwide hamster tube, connecting Sky Club lounges to Ritz-Carlton lobbies to Wolfgang Puck Expresses to Uber Black cars. This elite global habitat — part of our world, but also apart from it — is suggestive of our stratified economy at large, one that stays aloft through financial novelties and unfettered access to cheap money. A major reason points-and-miles trips exist is because airlines turn a more stable profit by minting their own currencies than by selling actual airline seats. The flight seems almost ancillary to the financial transaction it enables — a trend across the whole economy, where the selling of goods or services serves to enable the collection of data, the absorption of venture capital funds or the levying of hidden transaction fees. In this scheme, posting to social media, or collecting points and miles, or ordering a taxi or a gyro on your phone, is merely a gesture to keep the whole process in motion. The real moneymaking happens behind the scenes, driven by a series of exchanges where value seems conjured from nothing at all.

But of course, value always comes from somewhere. If you trace the thread back on any one of these businesses, it’s always the same deal: The poor underwrite the fantasies of the middle class, who in turn underwrite the realities of the rich. When credit cards charge high interchange fees, they pass the cost of loyalty programs on to merchants, who in turn pass it back to customers by building the fees into their sticker prices. Those who pay with credit can earn it back in points. Those who pay with debit or cash wind up subsidizing someone else’s free vacation. According to a 2010 policy paper by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the average cash-using household paid $149 over the course of a year to card-using households, while each card-using household received $1,133 from cash users, partially in the form of rewards. It remains a regressive transfer to this day.

Almost a year into the pandemic, we’ve seen travel plummet to practically premodern lows. According to the United Nations’ World Tourism Barometer, international tourist arrivals dropped 93 percent year-over-year last June, the beginning of the summer tourism season. The ripple effect was quick and vast, manifesting itself in idiosyncratic ways: Carbon emissions dipped; the Mona Lisa sat alone for four full months, probably her longest solitude since she was painted. In famously overtouristed Venice, reduced canal traffic and the disappearance of tourist “wastewater” output contributed to what one study called “unprecedented water transparency.” The decline in export revenue from international tourism has been, according to one estimate, eight times more severe than the loss the sector experienced following the global financial crisis. Hundreds of millions of people are out of work. The United Nations predicts travel will begin to rebound as early as the third quarter of 2021. McKinsey says we might return to pre-Covid levels by 2023. “Rebound,” to me, is a strange way of describing whatever the next tourist wave might look like. In any case, I’ll keep holding on to my points.

Jamie Lauren Keiles is a contributing writer for the magazine.

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The Points Guy Tells Us the Secret of Maximizing Travel and Airline Rewards

The Points Guy talks to us about the best strategies for spending wisely and earning big.

You were young when you figured out how to use points to take your entire family on a trip– how did you figure it out?

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In 1996 the internet was not nearly as sophisticated, there was basic information available and most of the frequent flyer program were in pamphlets. You really had to rely on calling and getting a phone agent that knew what they were doing. That’s when I learned early on to be EXTREMELY nice to phone agents and they can work magic. Especially back then, they were able to open up award space. I learned and did it all via phone. In terms of finding the house, I used VRBO.com which had just launched. It connected vacation home rental owners with buyers, it’s still around today. Between those two that’s how I planned our first trip.

The obvious need for your website and insight suggests the process of maximizing points isn’t intuitive. Is that intentional on the part of credit cards and partners or is it just a complex, nuanced process that takes time to really optimize?

A lot of the complexity comes from the competitive nature of travel rewards. For instance, when it comes to credit cards, there are dozens of banks offering literally hundreds of different cards, and each one has its own rules designed both to attract customers and keep the card profitable for the bank. What we do at The Points Guy is help our readers figure out which cards and programs will earn them the most points in the shortest amount of time so they can get traveling as quickly as possible.

What’s a common mistake people make when it comes to using/earning points?

People still think frequent flyer miles mostly come from flying, but the majority of miles aren’t earned in the air anymore. If you really want to earn a lot of points and miles, the key is earning them with the right travel rewards credit card or set of credit cards. And you’ll need to be flexible when using points — trying to redeem for a nonstop flight the day before Thanksgiving probably isn’t going to work, but if you can travel during times with less demand, you can get some fantastic trips.

It seems like you have to spend a lot of money to get enough points for a first class or premium ticket on flights– is that accurate?

Not necessarily. It’s actually more important that you’re using the right credit card for each purchase. For instance, since you can get 3 points per dollar from the Chase Sapphire Reserve on all dining purchases, you’ll want to make sure to use that card or one like it whenever you eat out. But then you can use a different card at the supermarket, one that gives you bonus points for buying groceries. It takes a little time to keep everything organized, but it’s worth it.

What do companies get out of allowing us to use points on purchases?

Airlines and hotels are trying to create loyalty — they want people to focus their travel on one airline or hotel instead of shopping around. For banks, giving points to their customers encourages them to use their credit card on an everyday basis. Since banks charge merchants a fee every time you buy something with a card, the more you use it, the more they earn.

Are there any downsides to earning points?

When you’re earning points and miles with credit cards, it’s important to be responsible about how much you’re spending. You have to stay disciplined and only make purchases that you would have made with cash anyway. What you don’t want to do is start buying things you can’t afford just because you’re earning points for them. And make sure you pay your bill in full every month — otherwise, you’ll end up paying a lot more in interest than the points are worth.

Is it wise to try to build up loyalty with one airline, or join as many loyalty programs as possible?

It doesn’t cost anything to join most loyalty programs, so you should join them all to make sure you’re earning points and miles everywhere. But if you’re just starting out, rather than focus on an airline program, it makes more sense to focus on one of the bank programs with flexible points, such as Chase Ultimate Rewards or American Express Membership Rewards. Those points can then be transferred to a number of different airline and hotel programs, which means you’ll have a lot more options for redeeming them later.

If someone wants to limit the number of credit cards they open, what’s the best strategy for earning the most points possible?

Figure out where you want to go first and how you want to get there. A person who wants to travel in the US and doesn’t mind flying economy will need to earn different types of points than someone who’s interested in flying internationally in first class . So come up with your travel goal and then pick credit cards that will help you reach that goal.

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Beginning April 24, 2025, Cathay Pacific will offer non-stop service between Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) and Hong Kong International Airport (HKG). Dallas will be the airline’s first major hub in the region, demonstrating its commitment to North America. Cathay Pacific’s new Hong Kong flight spans 3 days Hong Kong Andrew Jephson via Unsplash

The DFW to HKG route, flight CX897, will be aboard the latest Airbus A350-1000 and departs on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The departure time is 11:55 p.m., and arrival is two days later at 5:05 a.m. So those departing on Monday night arrive on Wednesday morning, spanning three days of travel time. 

In the summer of 2025, Delta Air Lines will make Europe more accessible than ever, with over 700 weekly flights to 33 European cities. The airline will particularly focus on Italy, where service will increase by 10% year-over-year. Delta is also offering an enhanced experience all around, with new airport lounges, free WiFi, and more premium seating on A330-900 and A350-900 aircraft. Explore Europe in 2025 with Delta Air Lines Assago Milanofiori Nord, Milan, Italy Massimiliano Donghi via Unsplash

Delta’s 2025 summer schedule adds even more transatlantic routes from New York-JFK, Boston, Detroit, Atlanta, and Minneapolis-St. Paul. Those seeking to explore Italy have more options than ever, with flights to Rome, Naples, Catania, and Milan starting in May. Once there, Delta Vacations offers an array of accommodations and private tours of historical sites like Pompeii and Duomo.

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When you're planning a trip or preparing to travel, there's no shortage of crowdsourced options for finding a place to stay. But let's be honest, most of those options are more like gambling. You never really know what you're going to get, or what kind of place you're going to be reserving. In most cases, it's almost always better to go with a tried and true option, so you're not scrambling late at night to find a new place to stay. I've been there before, more than once, and it's not fun. It's even more relevant if you're traveling with your family. So, where do you go? Somewhere like ChoiceHotels.com -- one of the largest and most successful franchisors in the world.

Through Choice Hotels you can access over 7,000 hotels across more than 40 countries and territories worldwide. Options include full-service and upscale hotels, midscale, extended stay options and even economy stays. You can find hotels easily and quickly, book a reservation just as easily, and manage reservations later. Everything is accessible online or via the mobile app, plus you'll earn select member rewards for repeated bookings.

How to get started with travel points and airline miles in 2024

Jan 26, 2024 • 20 min read

An expert's easy guide to everything you need to know to get started with travel points and airline miles © Wera Rodsawang / Getty

This series of articles about credit cards, points and miles, and budgeting for travel is brought to you in partnership with The Points Guy.

Advertiser Disclosure: This post contains references to products from one or more of our advertisers. We may receive compensation when you click on links to those products. Terms apply to the offers listed on this page. This relationship may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. All information about the Hilton Honors Business Card, the United Club℠ Business Card, and the Southwest Rapid Rewards® Priority Credit Card have been collected independently by Lonely Planet. These cards are not available through Lonely Planet. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more.

When I got into the points and miles world a decade ago, it was a niche “hobby,” and there were few resources to help newbies get started. I had to dig through countless blogs, forums and read loyalty program terms and conditions obsessively to learn all the tips and tricks. Nowadays, social media is swarming with travel optimizers leveraging points and miles for exotic vacations that would otherwise cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Miles and points can be an excellent way to save money on travel, regardless of your objectives. By signing up for airline loyalty programs and credit cards, you can save up for discounted flights, free hotel stays, car rentals and more. Not only does travel become more accessible with points and miles, but you can upgrade your travel experience significantly by flying in first class and staying in luxury hotels.

If you’ve been curious about points and miles but unsure how to get started, you’ve come to the right place. Here’s everything you need to know to get started:

How to make a travel budget using points and miles

Start with a travel goal: dream big

Setting a travel goal before earning points and miles is an essential first step. By setting a goal, you can determine which loyalty program best suits your needs and maximize its earning potential. If you’re a budget traveler, you’ll need to earn different points than if your goal was a luxury vacation. Figuring out what you’ll use your points for can also help you determine whether credit card annual fees are worth paying to achieve that goal.

You don’t want to earn points without purpose and realize (too late) that you can’t travel to your dream destination with those rewards. Or that the airline you’ve saved up miles for your family vacation only releases 1-2 seats in the cabin you hoped to fly. Planning ahead and setting goals is the crucial first step in mapping out your rewards strategy.

Traveling to Hawaii with points and miles

Find the best loyalty program to fit your needs

When looking for the best loyalty program to fit your needs, consider what type of rewards you’re looking for. There are three primary types of loyalty points you should familiarize yourself with. Ideally, you should diversify by having at least two types of points readily available: Airline miles, hotel points and transferable rewards.

You may decide that hotel points don’t fit your travel goals because you prefer boutique hotels or cheap bookings through travel agencies. You can certainly go without earning hotel points. You may even decide you don’t want to fly in the near future, and airline miles aren’t useful for your goals. However, transferable rewards are one type of currency you don’t want to skip out on. They’re a good fit for virtually any traveler and provide the ultimate redemption flexibility.

Best credit cards for traveling with kids

Airline miles can take you far

Most airline miles can be used for virtually any travel expense, but the best redemption is for flights. You’ll get the most value from airline miles by using them for international business and first-class travel, though there are always exceptions. Airlines like Delta , Air France and KLM often run award travel sales , discounting economy tickets by as much as 50%.

Which miles you should earn depends on your travel goals and which airline your local airport is serviced by. If you live in San Francisco, you have many options since all the major airlines serve that airport with both domestic and international flights. A great way to determine which airlines and routes are available is to visit your local airport's Wikipedia page. See the “airlines and destinations” section for a comprehensive list.

If you want to travel internationally, your best bet is to earn miles from an airline that is part of an airline alliance: One World, Star Alliance or SkyTeam. Alliances can help you travel to more places since your miles can be redeemed on partner airlines.

If you want to stick to domestic travel, look at airlines primarily serving those markets. Southwest Airlines is a popular option for West Coast travelers; while JetBlue has a vast network on the East Coast and is expanding to international markets.

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Transferable rewards

Transferable rewards are the ideal points currency to start. They provide the most flexibility since you can redeem them at a flat rate towards travel purchases or transfer them to select airline and hotel loyalty points. Why is this so crucial? Because airline miles and hotel points are constantly getting devalued – sometimes with no notice. Transferable rewards protect you against these devaluations because you’re not tied to a single currency.

For example, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club recently increased redemption rates for All Nippon Airways (ANA) first-class tickets by 42%. Overnight, without notice, these awards now cost 145,000 points round trip from the West Coast and 170,000 from the East Coast. That left a lot of customers frustrated who had been saving up for that award and now it costs significantly more.

If you have been earning transferable rewards – specifically American Express Membership Rewards – you’re in luck. Because Membership Rewards is also a 1:1 transfer partner of ANA Mileage Club, which charges 150,000 miles roundtrip for these trips. Instead of transferring your miles to a devalued Virgin Atlantic program, you can transfer them to ANA Mileage Club and 20,000 points on East Coast-departing flights.

Some good transferable rewards options include American Express Membership Rewards, Capital One miles, Chase Ultimate Rewards and Citi ThankYou points.

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Hotel points

Hotel points are great for covering hotels and even vacation homes during your travels. Seven major hotel chains are worth considering: Accor Live Limitless, Choice Privileges, Hilton Honors, IHG One, Marriott Bonvoy, World of Hyatt and Wyndham Rewards. These programs partner with transferable rewards currencies, so you don’t need a designated hotel credit card to earn their points.

Marriott is the largest hotel chain in the world, while Hyatt is popular for its exceptional elite benefits and being one of the few hotels that still publishes an award chart. IHG One has a vast network of budget and luxury hotels, while Hilton can be found virtually anywhere in the world. Wyndham is excellent for families since free nights start at just 1500 points per bedroom. Wyndham has a vast network of timeshares you can book in popular destinations like Hawaii and Las Vegas, making it a great choice to stretch your points further and provide more space for large groups.

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Start earning points and miles

Earning points and miles used to require extensive travel, but that’s not the case anymore. Many airlines offer rewards programs that allow you to earn miles by shopping with their partners, using their credit cards, booking hotels and rental cars through them, dining out and shopping with their retail partners. Some methods require minimal effort, making it easy to accrue enough points for your dream vacation. Here’s how to earn points and miles without actually traveling:

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Credit cards with perks and benefits

Credit cards are the single best way to earn points and miles quickly. The best credit cards offer welcome bonuses ranging from 50,000 or more after you complete a spending requirement. When evaluating credit cards, consider the welcome bonus, your travel goals and spending habits. Be sure to get a credit card that rewards your most significant spending categories (i.e., groceries, dining, gas, travel) at a reasonable annual fee.

You should also consider credit card perks that might improve your travel experience and lower out-of-pocket costs, like airline fee credits, free checked bags and elite status upgrades. These benefits can save you money on travel and offset the annual fees on these cards.

Shopping portals to save

Every major airline and hotel loyalty program has a shopping portal where members get rewarded for shopping with popular retailers. All you have to do is click through these portals to your favorite retailer and you’ll automatically earn extra rewards for every dollar spent. The exact amount varies by retailer, but you’ll typically earn at least 1 additional point per dollar spent. Here’s a list of shopping portals affiliated with popular loyalty programs:

Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan Shopping

American Airlines AAdvantage eShopping

Barclays RewardsBoost

Chase Ultimate Rewards Shopping

Delta SkyMiles Shopping

JetBlue TrueBlue Shopping

Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Shopping

United Airlines MileagePlus Shopping

During the holidays and back-to-school season, many portals offer additional bonuses for meeting certain spending thresholds. To find the highest payouts, you can head to Cashback Monitor and enter the retailer name you want to shop with. You’ll get a list of the shopping portals offering the highest rewards with that retailer.

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Dining rewards programs

Earning points with dining rewards programs is one of the easiest ways to earn miles on autopilot. It’s as simple as signing up for the program, registering your credit card and then using it at participating restaurants. You’ll earn up to 8 points for every dollar spent, plus additional bonuses for writing reviews and meeting specific spending requirements. Most of these dining rewards programs are run by the same rewards network, so you can’t register the same credit card with multiple programs at a time.

You can even register a debit card if you don’t have credit, allowing you to earn points with every purchase automatically.

Alaska Mileage Plan Dining : Earn 1,500 Mileage Plan miles after spending $30 and writing a review within 30 days. Plus, earn up to 5 miles per $1 at participating restaurants.

American AAdvantage Dining : Earn 500 AAdvantage miles after spending $25 within 30 days of registering and writing a review, plus up to 5 miles per $1 at participating restaurants.

Delta SkyMiles Dining : Earn 500 SkyMiles after spending $30 within 30 days, plus up to 1 per $1 at participating restaurants.

Free Spirit Dining : Earn 500 Free Spirit bonus points after spending $30 within 30 days of joining and writing a review, plus up to 5 miles per $1 at participating restaurants.

Hilton Honors Dining : Earn 500 points after spending $25 within 30 days and writing a review. Plus, earn up to 8 points per $1 at participating restaurants.

IHG Rewards Dining : Earn 1,000 IHG points after spending $30 within 30 days of joining and writing a review. Plus, earn up to 8 points per $1 at participating restaurants.

JetBlue TrueBlue Dining : Earn 3 points per $1 at participating restaurants.

Marriott Eat Around Town : Earn up to 6,000 Bonvoy points after spending $90 over three visits within 60 days. Plus, earn up to 6 points per $1 at participating restaurants.

Southwest Rapid Rewards Dining : Earn 500 points after spending $25 within 30 days and writing a review. Plus, earn up to 3 miles per $1 at participating restaurants.

United MileagePlus Dining : Earn 500 MileagePlus miles after spending $25 within 30 days of joining and writing a review, plus up to 5 miles per $1 at participating restaurants.

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Sign up for bonus point promotions

To earn the most points possible, you need to sign up for bonus points promotions. Both hotels and airlines periodically offer these on stays and flights. Members have to register for most promotions to earn extra points and miles. Hilton routinely offers double points on stays, while Hyatt gravitates towards flat-rate bonuses (i.e., 1000 bonus points per stay).

You can navigate to the “offers” page of most hotel and airline loyalty websites to find the latest one. You can also sign up for offers from each program, so you’ll never miss one. Most email notifications allow you to register for promotions with just one click.

If you don’t want an inbox full of promotional emails from loyalty programs, consider setting up a separate email just for that purpose. That way, you keep those emails separate from personal and business emails, assuring you don’t miss out on important messages while staying in the loop.

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Work on earning elite status

Once you’ve figured out which points and miles to earn, it’s time to consider elite status. Airlines and hotels bestow elite status on their most loyal customers. Earning elite status typically requires a lot of traveling, but the benefits pay off in spades. Top-tier elites qualify for upgrades, freebies (checked bags, breakfast, etc.), bonus points and other valuable perks. If you’re planning a trip, having elite status (or some way to leverage those trips for fast-tracking status) can be immensely beneficial.

Perks like complimentary breakfast and executive lounge access can cut your food budget down significantly while providing convenience during your travels. Free checked bags can add up to hundreds of dollars in savings on a single trip. But you don’t have to fly or stay at hotels frequently to earn status. Most airlines and hotels allow you to earn elite status through credit cards alone.

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American AAdvantage

American Airlines switched to a new elite status scheme where you earn 1 Loyalty Point for every dollar spent. That includes credit card spending, shopping portal purchases, dining rewards, and everything else. This can help you earn status faster, especially if you have a co-branded credit card.

American Airlines has five credit cards you can earn Loyalty Points with: The American Airlines AAdvantage® MileUp® Mastercard®, Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® Mastercard®, Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive Mastercard®, CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® Mastercard® and AAdvantage® Aviator® Red World Elite Mastercard®. The AAdvantage Executive Card even comes with 10,000 bonus Loyalty Points annually when you spend at least $40,000 on the card.

You earn AAdvantage Gold status after earning 40,000 Loyalty Points and can earn top-tier Executive Platinum status after 200,000.

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Delta SkyMiles

Delta has introduced a new way to earn Medallion Status. Learn more at delta.com/skymilesprogramchanges .

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Hilton Honors

Hilton is the only hotel loyalty program that offers top-tier status just for having a credit card. The Hilton Honors Aspire Card* has a $450 annual fee but gets you instant Hilton Diamond status. Diamond members enjoy complimentary breakfast or food and beverage credits at most hotels, executive lounge access (think: complimentary afternoon tea, evening appetizers, etc.), 100% bonus points, space-available room upgrades and more. Cardholders also get an annual free night, a $250 resort credit at participating hotels, a $250 airline fee credit and lots of other valuable perks. If you want to bypass Hilton’s 60-night or 30-stay requirement for Diamond status, the Aspire Card is the way to do it.

For a cheaper alternative (and lower status), you can opt for the following Hilton cards:

Hilton Honors American Express Card (no annual fee; see rates and fees ): Hilton Honors Silver status. Upgrade to Gold after spending $20,000 on eligible purchases in a calendar year.

Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® Card ($150 annual fee; see rates and fees ): Hilton Honors Gold status. Upgrade to Diamond after spending $40,000 on eligible purchases in a calendar year.

Hilton Honors American Express Business Credit Card ($95 annual fee; see rates and fees ): Hilton Honors Gold status.

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JetBlue TrueBlue

JetBlue recently switched to a “tile” system for determining Mosaic elite status. Members earn 1 tile for every $100 spent, and it takes 50 tiles to reach the first elite status tier. Alternatively, members can earn 1 tile for every $1000 in credit card spending. Mosaic 1 status unlocks valuable benefits like two free checked bags, priority boarding and security, extra-legroom seat upgrades and more. JetBlue currently has two credit cards you can earn tiles with: The no-annual-fee JetBlue Card and The JetBlue Plus Card, which has a $99 annual fee.

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Marriott Bonvoy

Marriott has four credit cards that provide automatic elite status or credit towards it. The highest status tier is offered by the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant® American Express® Card , which offers Bonvoy Platinum status. Platinum is the second highest tier in the Bonvoy program and usually requires 50 nights per year. Platinum members earn 50% more bonus points on stays and receive complimentary room upgrades, a welcome gift choice at check-in, late checkout and other valuable perks. If the card’s $650 annual fee (see rates and fees) is outside of your budget, you can opt for one of these other Marriott cards to earn status faster:

Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card ($95 annual fee): Limited Time Offer: Earn 125,000 Bonus Points After you spend $5,000 on eligible purchases within the first 3 months from the account opening with your Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® credit card.

Marriott Bonvoy Bold® Credit Card (no annual fee): Earn 60,000 Bonus Points plus 1 Free Night Award after you spend $2,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. Free Night is valued at 50,000 points. Certain hotels have resort fees.

Marriott Bonvoy Bevy™ American Express® Card * ($250 annual fee; see rates and fees ): Automatic Bonvoy Gold elite status, plus 15 elite night credits annually towards the next tier.

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United MileagePlus

To earn elite status with United Airlines, you have to hit one of two metrics: Premier Qualifying Flights (PQF) or Premier Qualifying Points (PQP). You can even opt out of the PQF requirement by earning a higher PQP. United Premier status starts at Silver, which requires 12 PQF and 4,000 PQP or just 5,000 PQP. PQFs are earned from segments flown, while PQPs are earned at 1 per $1 spent on qualifying United purchases.

United Premier elites receive complimentary seat upgrades (to Economy Plus and above), free checked bags, bonus miles on flights and more. Rather than flying, you can earn United PQP through the following co-branded credit cards:

United Quest℠ Card : Earn 60,000 bonus miles and 500 Premier qualifying points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months your account is open.

United Club℠ Infinite Card : Earn 80,000 bonus miles after you spend $5,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.

United Club℠ Business Card : Earn 50,000 bonus miles and 1,000 Premier qualifying points after you spend $5,000 in the first three months of account opening.

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Southwest Rapid Rewards

Southwest Airlines has three status tiers, and while you won’t receive flashy upgrades, the perks can be worthwhile. For example, you can earn a Companion Pass after 100 flights or 135,000 qualifying points for the remainder of the calendar year when the Companion Pass was earned and the following year. The companion you designate will then be able to fly with you free of charge, making it an excellent tool for families to save on travel. You can meet the 135,000-point requirement with the Southwest credit cards.

The welcome bonus and every dollar spent count towards this requirement, and you can even combine multiple credit card bonuses.

Southwest Rapid Rewards® Plus Credit Card : Earn 85,000 bonus points after spending $3,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.

Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Credit Card : Earn 50,000 bonus points after you spend $1,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.

Southwest Rapid Rewards® Priority Credit Card : Earn 85,000 bonus points after spending $3,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.

Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Business Credit Card : Earn 60,000 points after you spend $3,000 on purchases in the first 3 months your account is open.

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How to use points for travel

When you’re ready to redeem your miles, follow a few precautions to get the most value out of them. First, familiarize yourself with your program’s “sweet spot” awards. These are awards you can book for significantly less compared to other programs. Here’s a quick list of some of the best airline sweet spots you should consider when redeeming points:

United flights within the U.S. or to Hawaii for 15,000 Turkish Airlines miles roundtrip: United often charges that (or more) for the same award. You can get Turkish miles by transferring Capital One miles to the program at a 1:1 ratio.

Virgin Atlantic flight from the East Coast to London for 10,000 miles each way: You can transfer points to Virgin Atlantic from American Express, Bilt Rewards, Capital One, Chase Ultimate Rewards and Citi ThankYou points.

Star Alliance business class to Europe for 88,000 miles round-trip: ANA MileagePlan has one of the cheapest fares to Europe, almost half of what other Star Alliance carriers charge. You can get ANA miles by transferring American Express Membership Rewards to the program.

Some airlines also offer off-peak pricing, allowing you to save miles if you’re flexible with your travel dates. For example, Flying Blue discounts Air France and KLM flights worldwide by up to 50% when you book their Promo Rewards . American Airlines offers off-peak pricing to destinations worldwide if you’re willing to travel during the off-peak season. Familiarizing yourself with these programs can help you save on travel and stretch your miles further.

The same goes for hotel loyalty programs: Hyatt discounts off-peak awards by up to 46%, while Marriott discounts hotels through its PointSavers program. You can save further on hotel redemptions by taking advantage of consecutive-night booking discounts offered by different programs:

IHG: Fourth night free on award bookings for select IHG credit card holders.

Hilton: Fifth night free on award bookings for Silver members and above.

Marriott: Fifth night free on award bookings for all members.

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Frequently asked questions

How can i use my points for free flights.

Depending on the program, you can redeem points for flights directly through their website or by calling a customer service representative.

How to use points and miles to save money on travel

How many frequent flyer miles does it take to get a free flight?

The number of frequent flyer miles needed for a free flight depends on the airline, destination, cabin and time of year. Some programs allow you to book flights for as little as 1800 miles, while long-haul first-class tickets can cost well over 150,000 miles round-trip.

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Are travel points worth it?

Travel points are worth it if you redeem them for upscale travel. You can save on flights and hotels by leveraging travel points even if you're a budget traveler. However, it may not be worth it if you don't like traveling or dealing with restrictions around redemptions.

How to get started with travel points and airline miles

How can I get airline miles quickly?

You can get airline miles quickly by signing up for co-branded credit cards and meeting their spending requirements. You can also earn additional miles through online shopping portals, dining rewards programs and more. Travel isn’t required to earn points and miles.

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*Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers. Enrollment may be required for select American Express benefits and offers. Visit americanexpress.com to learn more.

The information for the Southwest Rapid Rewards Premier Credit Card has been collected independently by Lonely Planet. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.

Editorial disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airline or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.

This article was first published Aug 11, 2023 and updated Jan 26, 2024.

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The Points Guy launches new app with features for maximizing travel rewards

The new app makes earning and booking award travel easier than ever before

Published: September 27, 2021

Author: Ana Staples

Editor: Cathleen McCarthy

Reviewer: Brady Porche

How we Choose

The Points Guy App has been in the works for years – here’s the first look.

The content on this page is accurate as of the posting date; however, some of our partner offers may have expired. Please review our list of best credit cards , or use our CardMatch™ tool to find cards matched to your needs.

With the abundance of airline and hotel loyalty programs and credit card rewards becoming more and more competitive, managing rewards earning and redemptions can turn into a challenging task.

An app that would optimize this process has been a long time coming – and now, it’s finally launched.

On Sept. 27, 2021, CreditCards.com sister site  The Points Guy announced the launch of The Points Guy App . The app will allow users to connect their credit card accounts and rewards programs to track their progress, pick the best card to pay with to maximize earnings and find travel redemptions that offer the best value.

The new app is full of useful features and provides users with ways to “learn, earn and burn” their rewards.

Here’s the first look at this exciting new product.

What The Points Guy App offers

Juggling multiple rewards credit cards and loyalty programs can become a complicated process even for experienced cardholders and travel enthusiasts.

The Points Guy App makes this process much simpler. The app tracks rewards, suggests the best cards to use on purchases based on the user’s location, offers redemption options and explains how to use them. Additionally, users can stay on top of travel rewards news with The Points Guy’s news feed personalized to their interests.

The number of features the app offers, from sign-up bonus tracking to step-by-step instructions for booking award travel, is truly impressive and shows the level of expertise and attention to finer details put into this product.

“It’s been a complicated piece of product,” Mitchell Stoutin, The Points Guy App’s head developer, told us. “And this is the great thing about having the TPG staff behind this, to have these very, very deep travel experts on points and miles. I locked a number of them in rooms in Austin with very large whiteboards for days at a time, getting them to explain to us what was happening so we could build this piece of software. And I think it really came out great.”

Learning with The Points Guy

The first section of the app, “Home,” provides the opportunity for users to stay in the know of the travel industry trends. Here, you can track the latest travel news from The Points Guy, search articles and adjust your feed to follow topics like points and miles, deals, credit cards and more. You can also bookmark stories to return to them later.

Earning rewards with The Points Guy

The “Cards” section of the app allows users to add their credit cards by connecting their card accounts and access their earnings summary. The tab shows how much cardholders have earned and analyzes missed earning opportunities, offering a better card option.

In this section, users can also check which card they should use for a purchase based on their location. For cardholders with multiple credit cards earning different rewards rates, this can be a rather convenient feature.

For cardholders working to earn a welcome bonus, the app has another useful feature. By adding the date of approval, users can track their progress to meet the spend requirement.

In the “Points” tab, app users can add their hotel and airline loyalty programs and track the net worth of their rewards, including their card points and miles. Here, they can also check the points and value breakdown based on The Points Guy’s evaluations.

Burning points and miles with the Points Guy

In the “Award Explorer,” users can plan how to burn the rewards they’ve earned based on the estimated lowest price.

When a user taps on an award travel redemption option in search results, they can see transferable points toward the trip, prices in cash and points and credit card offers that could help them boost their points.

Probably the most exciting feature here is “How to Book” – step-by-step instructions on booking award travel. The process of transferring points may be confusing, especially to those new to travel rewards, so the detailed instructions the app offers can be extremely helpful.

Should you download the Points Guy app?

The Points Guy app is an ambitious product that can make earning and redeeming travel rewards easier. With the expertise behind the app and countless unique features, it’s an exciting addition to a credit cardholder’s list of downloaded apps.

However, we’ve noticed a few bugs while testing The Points Guy app – some minor, others more significant, like miscategorized transactions in spending reports or having to reconnect multiple accounts. The developers are continuing to work on the app and actively asking for feedback. For instance, the “Award Explorer” tab shows a message the feature is still in early testing and encourages users to report any info that looks inaccurate.

That said, the app is still an excellent product built by some of the most knowledgeable travel rewards experts. Despite some glitches that will likely be ironed out in the future, The Points Guy App has potential to save its users money on travel and make managing rewards simpler than it’s ever been.

The Points Guy App is currently available to iPhone users. Android users may have to wait to get their hands on the new app, but the developers are hoping to release it at the end of the year or the beginning of 2021.

Bottom line

The Points Guy App is an exciting new product that can help cardholders get the most of their credit cards, points and miles. While some features aren’t perfect yet, it shows amazing potential and is undoubtedly a helpful tool for award travel enthusiasts.

Editorial Disclaimer

The editorial content on this page is based solely on the objective assessment of our writers and is not driven by advertising dollars. It has not been provided or commissioned by the credit card issuers. However, we may receive compensation when you click on links to products from our partners.

Ana Staples is a staff reporter and young credit expert reporter for CreditCards.com and covers product news and credit advice. She loves sharing financial expertise with her reader and believes that the right financial advice at the right time can make a real difference. In her free time, Anastasiia writes romance stories and plans a trip to the French Riviera she'll take one day—when she has enough points, that is.

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A Beginner’s Guide to Traveling on Points and Miles

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Table of Contents

Know your travel goals

Different types of points and miles, the best airline and hotel rewards programs, before you collect points and miles, easiest ways to earn points, highest-value ways to use points, smart ways to redeem credit card points, more advice for getting started, the bottom line.

Welcome to the world of miles and points! We’re glad you’re here. In this beginners guide, we’ll show you the basics of airline miles, hotel points and credit card points. We will explain this hobby, the different types of travel reward “currencies” and the best ways to earn and redeem miles and points.

So sit back and get comfortable as we help demystify the fun and exciting world of miles and points.

» Learn more: The best travel credit cards might surprise you

This is an important consideration when evaluating what you would like to get out of your points and miles hobby. Do you want to travel several times a year to an exotic location, flying in first class on miles and paying for your hotel on points? Do you want to fly to visit friends and family using miles (but don’t care if you sit in economy or business class)? Or do you just want to learn what travel rewards are all about?

The good news is that regardless of your travel goals, understanding the basics of these currencies can make those goals a reality. Using points and miles to see the world can save a lot of cash. And when you get into this hobby, you begin to realize that all sorts of travel is affordable and within reach.

Setting clear travel goals can also help focus your attention and investigation. If you want to visit Japan, you can focus on relevant airlines and hotel programs while ignoring the rest (for now). This can help avoid overwhelm and the paradox of choice.

» Learn more: Are travel credit cards worth it?

Think of points and miles (travel rewards) as another type of currency. Just like stocks, crypto, bonds or foreign currencies, travel rewards present a way to pay for your travel experiences and invest in your travel goals without using cash.

Each travel reward currency has its own value , just like a country’s currency. Many points and miles are worth roughly a cent apiece, but values vary ... It’s important to do the math whenever you’re considering a particular offer or promotion to figure out the approximate cash value. 100,000 points might sound like a lot, but it depends on what kind of points they are.

There are three types of travel rewards: airline miles, hotel points and transferable points.

» Learn more: What are travel points worth and why do they matter?

Airline miles

Airline miles are specific to each airline. One example of airline miles is United MileagePlus miles. To earn United miles, you need to register for a frequent flyer account with United. Then, each time you fly with United (or another Star Alliance airline — more on alliances later), input your MileagePlus number on the reservation to earn miles for the flight.

United (and many other airlines) also has its own co-branded credit cards, such as the United℠ Explorer Card , which earns United miles every time the card is swiped. In addition to flying and earning miles on your flights, using this credit card for everyday purchases is the best way to earn United frequent flyer miles.

The number of miles earned on a flight depends on various factors including the type of seat you book, distance flown and cost of the ticket. Similarly, the number of miles earned with a co-branded credit card also depends on the type of purchase. For example, the United℠ Explorer Card earns 2 United miles per $1 on restaurants and hotels, and 1 United mile per dollar on everything else.

Then, you can redeem your earned miles for award tickets on that airline (and its partners). Generally, airline miles are not transferable directly from one airline to another.

Here are the major airlines you should pay attention to when getting started with points and miles, as well as some useful details about each:

Popular domestic airline frequent flyer programs

There are several considerations to make before joining an airline loyalty program , but understanding your domestic options is a good place to start.

Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan : Great for West Coast travel and award tickets on Cathay Pacific to Asia.

American Airlines AAdvantage : Useful for off-peak rates to Europe in the fall and winter.

Delta SkyMiles : Good for last-minute bookings; no “close-in fees” for tickets booked less than 21 days before travel.

Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards : Generally good award availability and straightforward pricing (award prices tied directly to cash fares).

United MileagePlus : Usually has the highest award availability due to Star Alliance membership.

Popular international airline frequent flyer programs

Air Canada Aeroplan : No 21-day close-in booking fees.

Air France/KLM FlyingBlue : Offers discounted monthly Promo Rewards.

British Airways Executive Club : Distance-based award chart makes it great for short-haul award flights.

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club : Excellent premium economy experience for low number of miles (despite high taxes).

Hotel points

Hotel points work very similarly to airline miles. Many hotel chains have their own loyalty programs, including Marriott Bonvoy and Hilton Honors .

You can earn hotel points via paid hotel stays or by using that hotel chain’s co-branded credit card . One example of such a card is the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card . Similar to airline credit cards, each hotel chain’s credit cards incentivize members to use the card by giving bonus points for using the card at hotels. The Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card , for example earns up 17 total points per dollar spent at over 7,000 participating hotels.

The best use of hotel points is usually for an award night redemption. Some hotel chains offer free nights to encourage members to use their loyalty points at the hotels (e.g., with Marriott you can book four award nights and get the fifth night free). In many cases, hotel points are transferable to airlines, but the transfer ratios are usually poor.

Popular hotel rewards programs

There are a few questions to ask before joining a hotel program , even the popular ones.

Marriott Bonvoy.

Hilton Honors.

Wyndham Rewards.

IHG Rewards Club.

Choice Privileges .

Best Western Rewards.

Transferable credit card points

Transferable points are the most flexible type of travel rewards currency. Examples of transferable points are Chase Ultimate Rewards® and American Express Membership Rewards, Citi ThankYou and Capital One Miles . The points are extremely versatile because you can redeem them in a number of ways, including for gift cards, cash back or by transferring to specific airline partners.

For example, American Express points are transferable to 18 airlines and three hotels. Because of their flexibility, these points are often considered more valuable than airline miles or hotel points.

Unlike airline miles and hotel points, transferable points are earned by using credit cards specific to the transferable point currency. For example, the Chase Sapphire Reserve® earns Chase Ultimate Rewards® points. The Business Platinum Card® from American Express earns Membership Rewards points. You cannot register for one of these rewards accounts without having a specific card (see below).

Now that you know the three main types of travel rewards, you are ready to get started. So what do you need to know before you begin?

As part of our Best-Ofs Awards initiative, NerdWallet performs a comprehensive, domestic industry-wide analysis of both airlines and hotels to make recommendations about the best of the best rewards programs.

Our 2024 findings determined that the best airline loyalty program is the Mileage Plan by Alaska Airlines. Here is how its peers compared:

On the hotel side of things, Hyatt also repeated as the best hotel rewards program.

Of course, the best awards program for you might not ladder up perfectly to our recommendations. If you have more access to certain brands (i.e. live near a Southwest hub) or prefer to stay at a Marriott, for instance, you'll want to take that into account before selecting loyalty.

Here is our full, nerdy analysis of travel rewards programs in 2024 .

Travel rewards beginners would be wise to keep the following in mind:

Know your credit score. For the most part, travel rewards credit cards are available only to those with excellent credit scores (720 and up) . If your credit score is significantly below 720, it’s important to take steps to improve it if you’re interested in participating in this hobby. Think of your credit score as a pie cut into five pieces: payment history, credit utilization, length of credit history, mix of credit types and recent applications.

Prepare to pay bills in full each month. If you decide to open up a travel rewards card, you will likely want to meet a certain minimum spending requirement within several months to earn the welcome bonus. For example, the American Express® Business Gold Card offers the following: Earn 100,000 Membership Rewards® points after you spend $15,000 on eligible purchases with the Business Gold Card within the first 3 months of Card Membership. Terms Apply. You need to consider if you can meet that minimum spending requirement within the specified time frame. Paying interest to earn travel rewards negates the value you’d derive from earning points. Remember, this is supposed to be a fun way to save money and travel the world for nearly free — it should not put you in debt.

Limit your cash usage. The key to maximizing your miles and point earnings is to stop using any method of payment that does not earn travel rewards. If you get into this hobby, make it a habit to only use a credit card that earns travel rewards. The best way to do this is to stop using cash and/or your debit card. Take your travel rewards card with you everywhere you go and use it to pay for everything, even small things like a $2 Snapple.

Now that you know the basics of points and miles and what good habits to keep in mind, let’s have some fun and look at the best ways to earn them.

» Learn more: How do travel credit cards work?

Below, we have listed the five best ways to maximize earning points and miles.

Utilize welcome bonuses on credit cards

The fastest and most efficient way to earn miles and points is by signing up for a credit card and using that card for everyday purchases. Credit card companies want to incentivize customers to use their products. For this reason, credit card companies will usually offer a sign-up bonus to a first-time holder of a credit card — making it the best way to accumulate travel points quickly.

Sign-up bonuses can be as high as 100,000+ points depending on the offer. Usually, a higher offer corresponds to a higher minimum spending requirement. This makes perfect sense because credit card companies want to reward customers who use their products the most. As a rule of thumb, an offer of 50,000 points/miles or more is considered a “good” offer.

One example of a strong offer is the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card , which is currently offering the following: Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.

Credit cards come out with limited-time offers all the time, so if you’re considering getting a card but think the sign-up bonus is low, you can always wait to see if a better offer comes along.

» Learn more: The best credit card bonus offers available now

To get started, sign up for a credit card that earns airline miles, hotel points or transferable points. If this is your first card, a transferable point credit card will offer the most flexibility for earning and redeeming points.

If you already have a transferable point card and want to add another card to your portfolio, consider your travel goals. Do you fly with United often? If so, think about a United credit card as your next card. Is Marriott your favorite hotel chain? Maybe it makes sense to add a Marriott card to your portfolio. Regardless of your plans, deciding which card to get is a personal decision and there is no right or wrong answer.

Below, we’ve included a list of some of the best credit card offers currently available, organized by airlines, hotels and transferable points programs.

» Learn more: The best points and miles credit cards for beginners

Airline credit cards

American Airlines : The AAdvantage® Aviator® Red World Elite Mastercard® is currently offering the following: Earn 60,000 AAdvantage® bonus miles after making your first purchase and paying the $99 annual fee in full, both within the first 90 days. When the card is used on eligible American Airlines purchases, you will earn 2 miles for $1. All other purchases earn 1 mile per $1.

Alaska Airlines : The Alaska Airlines Visa Signature® credit card earns 3 Alaska miles for every $1 spent on eligible Alaska Airlines purchases, 2 Alaska miles for every $1 spent on eligible gas, EV charging station, cable, streaming services, and local transit including ride share purchases, and 1 Alaska mile for every $1 spent on all other purchases.

United Airlines : The United Club℠ Infinite Card has a high annual fee: $525 . Despite the high annual fee, the card offers 4 United miles per $1 on United purchases, 2 United miles per $1 on restaurants and travel, a United Club membership, a $100 statement credit toward Global Entry, and much more.

» Learn more: NerdWallet’s best airline credit cards

Hotel credit cards

Marriott Bonvoy: Here’s the current offer on the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card : Our best points offer! Earn 125,000 Bonus Points after spending $5,000 on purchases in your first 3 months from account opening with the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card! The card also comes with an annual free night certificate worth 35,000 points and a ton of other perks. The annual fee is $95 and not waived in the first year.

Hilton Honors : The Hilton Honors American Express Business Card provides another excellent offer: Earn 175,000 Hilton Honors Bonus Points after you spend $8,000 in purchases on the Hilton Honors Business Card within the first six months of Card Membership. Offer Ends 1/8/2025. Terms Apply. The annual fee is $195 and is not waived in the first year. With this card, you’ll earn 12 points per $1 on Hilton purchases and 5 points on the first $100,000 in other purchases in a calendar year (and 3 points per $1 thereafter). Terms apply. If Hilton hotels are your thing, this is a great card to have. To view rates and fees of The Hilton Honors American Express Business Card , see this page .

» Learn more: NerdWallet’s best hotel credit cards

Transferable point credit cards

Chase Ultimate Rewards® : Here’s the current offer on the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card : Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. On this card, you’ll earn 2 points per $1 on travel (5 points per $1 if you book travel through Chase' travel portal), 3 points per $1 dining at restaurants worldwide, select streaming services and online grocery purchases (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs) and 1 point per dollar on all other purchases. The card has a $95 annual fee that is not waived in the first year.

American Express Membership Rewards : The Platinum Card® from American Express currently has the following welcome offer: Earn 80,000 Membership Rewards® Points after you spend $8,000 on eligible purchases on your new Card in your first 6 months of Card Membership. Terms Apply. With this card, you’ll earn 5 Membership Rewards® points per $1 spent on flights and prepaid hotels booked on AmExtravel.com (on up to $500,000 per calendar year). You'll also get a $200 annual airline credit (enrollment required), $200 Uber Cash (enrollment required), $199 Clear credit and many other benefits. Although the annual fee is $695 , the card provides various annual credits that offset the fee. Terms apply. This is an excellent premium travel card.

Citi ThankYou : The Citi Strata Premier℠ Card has the following signup offer: Earn 70,000 bonus ThankYou® Points after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months of account opening, redeemable for $700 in gift cards or travel rewards at thankyou.com The annual fee is $95 and it is not waived for the first year. You will also earn 3 points per $1 at restaurants, supermarkets, gas stations, flights and hotels. The points can also be transferred to 16 airlines and two hotels and there are no foreign transaction fees.

Capital One Miles : The Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card has the following welcome bonus: Enjoy a one-time bonus of 75,000 miles once you spend $4,000 on purchases within 3 months from account opening, equal to $750 in travel. The annual fee is $95 . You earn 2 points per $1 on all purchases and there are no foreign transaction fees. You will also receive a statement credit toward Global Entry or TSA PreCheck, plus two complimentary visits to certain lounges.

» Learn more: How to choose a travel credit card

Use the right credit card for the right bonus spending category

Not all travel credit cards are created equal. Depending on which card you have, the card will offer bonus points for spending in a specific category. For example, the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card earns bonus points on travel and dining at restaurants. So, if you hold this card along with another credit card, you’d probably use the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card for all your travel and dining expenses.

Another excellent card to have in your portfolio is the Chase Freedom Flex® , which offers rotating quarterly bonus categories.

For example, during the first quarter of 2022 (January 1-March 31), you can earn 5% cash back on up to $1,500 spent at grocery stores (excluding Walmart and Target) and on eBay.

Furthermore, you can turn the 5% cash back earned on the Chase Freedom® into Chase Ultimate Rewards® points. If you hold a premium travel card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card , you can pool your points, and get 25% more value when you redeem your points for trips through Chase's travel portal.

You can maximize your point earnings by using the Chase Freedom® for all purchases that earn 5 points per $1 and using the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card for all other purchases. If you max out the bonus category, you will earn 7,500 Chase Ultimate Rewards® points per quarter. Earning 30,000 points per year on a no-fee card is a pretty sweet deal.

» Learn more: Chase Sapphire Preferred review: A must-have for travelers

Book flights and hotel stays

Each time you book a flight or make a hotel reservation , make sure that you’ve registered for the airline or hotel chain’s loyalty program and input your loyalty number into the reservation. Although this is a very straightforward way to earn travel rewards, it is often overlooked. Make it a habit to not skip this step.

Shop in dedicated portals

An extremely easy way to earn points and miles is by shopping online via shopping portals. CashbackMonitor lists all shopping portals currently offering cash back, airline miles, hotel points or credit card points (transferable points).

Let’s say for example you want to make a purchase from Nike.com. Check CashbackMonitor for current shopping portal offers.

As seen above, many shopping portals offer cash back for Nike.com purchases. To earn the points, simply click on the portal you would like to earn points with. If you want airline miles, you could earn 6 British Airways Avios per $1 or 2 United miles per $1 (at the time of this offer). If you’d prefer to have a more flexible currency, choose to earn 3 Chase Ultimate Reward points per $1 instead.

And don’t forget that these portal points are in addition to what you’ll earn from spending on your card. Let’s say you’re making a $100 Nike purchase and want some British Airways Avios. By simply clicking through the British Airways shopping portal, you will earn 600 BA Avios on the transaction. If you use your Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card for this purchase, you would also earn 100 Ultimate Rewards® points.

Dine at restaurants and earn points or miles (U.S. only)

Dining rewards programs provide an excellent and easy way to pick up some airline frequent flyer or hotel loyalty points just by dining at a participating restaurant. First, you sign up for an account with a dining program and add a credit card to your account.

Then, every time you visit a participating restaurant and use the card on file, frequent flyer miles will automatically post to your dining account. Currently, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, United, Hilton and IHG offer dining programs .

These dining programs are run by the Rewards Network, so you can earn loyalty points on only one program at a time. At this time, only U.S. restaurants participate in the dining programs.

You can also earn extra points when you sign up for a new account. For example, at the time of publication United was offering a 2,500-mile bonus when you registered for the program and completed a dine within 30 days.

Now that you know about some of the best ways to earn travel rewards, let’s take a deeper look into how to redeem points.

Each airline that offers a loyalty program allows members to redeem frequent flyer miles for award seats. In addition, some airlines are members of alliances. Airlines that are part of the same alliance include codeshare agreements with one another that allow passengers to fly on one another’s flights and earn/redeem miles with each other.

For example, United Airlines is a member of Star Alliance, and so is Lufthansa. When you fly on Lufthansa, you can input your United Airlines MileagePlus number on the reservation and earn United miles.

Redemptions work the same way. You can use your United miles on United.com to book a Lufthansa award ticket. The ability to fly on alliance partner airlines opens up a world of possibilities for award redemptions.

The three main alliances are Star Alliance (26 member airlines), SkyTeam (19 member airlines), and Oneworld (14 member airlines).

Star Alliance members

SkyTeam members

Oneworld members

Star Alliance is the largest of the three and provides the most flexibility for earning and redeeming miles. Let’s say you hold the United Club℠ Infinite Card , which is currently offering the following sign-up bonus: Earn 80,000 bonus miles after you spend $5,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.

After meeting the minimum spend requirement, those bonus United miles are redeemable for award tickets on all of Star Alliance’s 26 member airlines — so you have numerous redemption options all over the world.

When applying for a credit card with a specific airline, consider which partner airlines you want to fly and redeem points with. Remember, airline miles are not easily transferable from one airline to another.

» Learn more: Your guide to airline alliances

Hotel stays

Hotel reward programs are similar to airlines, but much simpler. There are no alliances to worry about, or complicated transfer partners. These are the major hotel brands with reward programs:

Best Western .

To use your points with each of these programs, you’ll search for hotel rooms through the website or app, usually selecting “use points” or a similar function on the search tool. For some programs, you have to be logged into your reward account in order to make these searches.

The number of points needed per stay should be displayed in the search results.

Unlike airlines, which offer spotty award availability, most hotels offer award availability whenever there are any rooms available. This makes it much easier to use these points, especially when booking at the last minute.

» Learn more: How to choose between hotel loyalty programs

Rental cars

Unlike airlines and hotels, which follow similar rules across most brands and programs, rental car rewards are more of a wild west. Each program has its own rules for earning and using points.

That said, the basic reward approach applies: You’ll earn points or credits by using a single rental car company, and can then use these rewards to book future travel. The biggest trick, for a beginner, is to stick with one program for enough consecutive rentals to make use of the rewards.

If you have a card that earns Chase Ultimate Rewards®, American Express Membership Rewards, or Capital One Miles you can transfer points from those cards to member airlines or hotels. Citi ThankYou only has airline transfer partners. The advantage of having a credit card points is that you can keep your points in their most versatile form (with the issuer’s program) until you are ready to transfer them to an airline or hotel. Once transferred, the points cannot be refunded back.

Chase Ultimate Rewards® — Over a dozen transfer partners

Chase has several transfer partners (10 airlines and three hotels). Generally, transferring points to hotels isn’t advisable due to the lower valuation of hotel points.

American Express Membership Rewards — 21 transfer partners

AmEx has even more transfer partners (18 airlines and three hotels). Although AmEx has more partners than Chase, Chase’s transfer partners include United, which until recently had one of the better award charts .

Given the numerous transfer partners available between Chase and AmEx, it’s easy to see why these programs are so valuable. Deciding which program to prioritize can be based on which companies you want to fly or stay with.

Each of the airlines and hotels shown above has different award charts and redemption requirements. When electing to transfer miles, consider the value of your transferable points compared to the value of the redemption you have in mind.

Citi ThankYou — 16 airline partners

Although Citi lists 16 airline partners, they are only available if you have a premium Thank You card such as the Citi Strata Premier℠ Card or Citi Prestige® Card . If you have a no fee card like the Citi Rewards+® Card , you will only be able to transfer your ThankYou points to JetBlue, Choice or Wyndham.

Capital One Miles — 19 partners

Capital One is one of the newer programs and has done a good job of adding new partners and currently has 19 options for customers.

We’ve thrown a lot of information at you already in this guide, but don’t worry: As you get more practice with earning and redeeming travel rewards, the easier it will all be to understand. Here are some tips to help you get started on those first redemptions, as well as some common pitfalls to avoid

Earning points if you’re an infrequent traveler

One of the biggest misconceptions about travel rewards is that they are only useful for frequent travelers. After all, weren’t the original rewards called “frequent flyer” programs for a reason.

Infrequent travelers can get just as much value from these rewards by focusing on a few priorities:

Target big welcome bonuses. The welcome bonuses on credit cards, which are the points or miles you earn for signing up and hitting a minimum spending threshold, are not fixed. These cards will boost their bonuses periodically, or add other valuable perks.

Don’t chase travel-based promotions. Airlines and hotels will run deals to earn X number of points by taking Y number of flights or booking Z nights at a hotel. These are great for travel junkies, but not worth chasing or paying attention to if you aren’t.

Set your spending categories and forget them. Different cards will earn a different number of points and miles based on where you use them, as described above. But you don’t want to have to do the math at every checkout. Give yourself easy reminders (including taping notes to your cards) so you know which one to use on gas, groceries, dining, etc.

Redeeming points for good-enough value

When you start researching travel rewards redemptions online, you’ll likely notice an emphasis on “maximizing” value. On the surface that makes sense — isn’t that what we’re trying to do with all currency, from dollars to miles?

Yet it’s important to accept good-enough reward redemptions, especially when starting with this hobby. Your goal should be to offset or eliminate the cost of your travel goals, not to fly around the world in first class (unless that is your goal). In other words, the way to get the most objective value from your points might not align with your other priorities.

Keep it simple:

Use the 80/20 rule to avoid perfectionism. Look for easy redemptions that check most of your boxes. Don’t labor four hours looking for the perfect redemption — it likely doesn’t exist.

Make sure you’re getting the baseline value for a given travel currency by using a calculator . If a given flight or hotel stay gives you above-average value, that’s good enough.

Have fun. If slogging through award calendars searching for availability is starting to feel like a chore, take a step back and find another, easier strategy.

Common pitfalls

If travel rewards were easy, everybody would be doing it. The companies that run these programs want to entice you with big welcome bonuses and flashy promotions, but often make the work of actually redeeming points and miles confusing and complicated.

Here are some common pitfalls to avoid as a beginner:

Don’t try to learn everything. What’s a fare class? What are United Airlines’ stopover rules? The travel rewards world is full of jargon, regulations and know-it-all experts. Don’t try to learn it all before you start, or you’ll never start. Stick to your goals and learn what you need to in order to achieve them. Your knowledge will naturally expand.

Don’t hoard your points . Saving money is a good thing, as its value can increase over time. Saving travel points, on the other hand, is generally a bad financial move, as they generally devalue with time. Don’t just earn points: Spend them!

Don’t chase value . Booking a business-class flight to Norway in January might offer the best bang for your points, but … do you really want to visit Norway in January?

The amount of miles needed for an award ticket depends on the airline, cabin class, origin, destination and the date of travel. To check how many miles you need for an award ticket, log into the frequent flyer account of your favorite airline, go to the booking page and find the option to book award tickets. Then, you will need to input your trip details to see the cost of the flight in miles.

The easiest way to get miles is by signing up for a credit card with a specific airline and using the card for everyday purchases. When you fly on that airline (or any other airline within the same alliance), input your frequent flyer number so that you earn miles for that flight. Other ways to earn miles can include shopping through that airline’s shopping portal, renting a car, participating in the airline’s dining program and making purchases with the airline’s list of partners.

Credit card points (e.g., Chase Ultimate Rewards®, American Express Membership Rewards, etc.) are flexible because they can be used in many ways. The best ways to use these points is often to transfer them to airlines or hotels or use them in lieu of cash when booking travel directly from credit card’s travel portal. The points can also be redeemed for gift cards or cash, but you will not get as good of a value from these redemptions as you would when booking travel.

Booking award tickets is the best use of your airline miles. To book a flight with a specific airline’s miles, you must go to that airline’s website to search for your ticket. You can book economy, business and first class tickets using miles. Generally, you will extract the highest value out of your miles when you fly in premium cabins because those seats are usually very expensive when paid in cash.

Regardless of where you purchase your flight (e.g., airline website, Expedia, Kayak, etc.), input your frequent flyer number so that you earn miles for the flight. After you complete your flight, the miles will be credited to your frequent flyer account within a specified timeframe (differs by airline). If you forget to input your frequent flyer number at booking, you can either do it at the airport or after your flight. Just don’t wait too long because airlines have varying policies on how far back they go for crediting miles retroactively.

Although the world of miles and points can seem daunting, it doesn’t have to be. The best way to get started is to apply for a travel credit card that matches your needs. Then, learn how to maximize earning travel rewards.

The last step is knowing how to redeem points for the best redemptions, though this is more of an art than a science. There is no right answer and no ideal redemption that is right for everyone. However, getting started can put you on the path to traveling the world for nearly free. Think of travel rewards as another currency to add to your portfolio.

How to maximize your rewards

You want a travel credit card that prioritizes what’s important to you. Here are some of the best travel credit cards of 2024 :

Flexibility, point transfers and a large bonus: Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

No annual fee: Wells Fargo Autograph℠ Card

Flat-rate travel rewards: Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card

Bonus travel rewards and high-end perks: Chase Sapphire Reserve®

Luxury perks: The Platinum Card® from American Express

Business travelers: Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card

on Chase's website

1x-5x 5x on travel purchased through Chase Travel℠, 3x on dining, select streaming services and online groceries, 2x on all other travel purchases, 1x on all other purchases.

60,000 Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.

1.5%-5% Enjoy 5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase Travel℠, 3% cash back on drugstore purchases and dining at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery service, and unlimited 1.5% cash back on all other purchases.

Up to $300 Earn an additional 1.5% cash back on everything you buy (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year) - worth up to $300 cash back!

on Capital One's website

2x-5x Earn unlimited 2X miles on every purchase, every day. Earn 5X miles on hotels, vacation rentals and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel, where you'll get Capital One's best prices on thousands of trip options

75,000 Enjoy a one-time bonus of 75,000 miles once you spend $4,000 on purchases within 3 months from account opening, equal to $750 in travel.

• November 24, 2023

How to make the most of reward points for discounted travel

Brian Kelly, “The Points Guy,” is here to explain how to cash in points and where to find great travel bargains.

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For those who enjoy maximizing their travel rewards and collecting frequent flyer miles, The Points Guy newsletter is an invaluable resource. This newsletter goes beyond just deals and offers comprehensive insights into the world of travel rewards programs, credit cards, and loyalty programs. Stay up to date with the latest strategies to earn and redeem points, ensuring you get the most value out of your travel experiences.

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Written by Richard Ascough

Tripcurated offers a hand selected collection of the best travel websites and resources from across the web. We find the best travel websites including flights and airfares, accommodation, travel planning, car rental, cruises, tours and tickets, travel finance and more.

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