Let’s face it, like everything else, travel is getting more expensive. So, if you can find workarounds to save money and even get free trips using points and cashback, why wouldn’t you? Well, I’m not gatekeeping this at all. Here’s my guide for using points and cashback for travel.
Points
So, let’s start off with points. These are usually airline miles, loyalty points for hotel brands, or points that you accrue with credit cards like American Express or Chase.
Earning points
When you’re earning airline or loyalty points, traditionally you’re rewarded for taking flights, booking hotel stays, or spending money on your credit cards. What a lot of people don’t realise is how much other stuff you can earn points on within these systems.
For example, I use Virgin Atlantic Flying Club as my airline miles of choice. As a result, I also have a Virgin Atlantic Credit Card that gives me one mile for every pound spent. If I just relied on this, it would take ages to build up enough for a flight.
However, Virgin Atlantic also has a shopping portal, where you earn bonus points by shopping online through certain brands. I’ve seen deals as high as eight miles per pound spent on here. Shopping online through your flying miles portal, and double-ending it by purchasing using your Virgin Atlantic credit card, means you’re stacking points on top of points.
Most airline miles groups have a shopping system like this. Avios does this a lot, especially considering you can turn Tesco Clubcard points into Avios miles with extra bonus points.
Introductory deals
If you want to boost your points using a credit card, you can often find introductory deals. This ranges based on the company and time of year, but it’s common to get an extra 50,000 points or something crazy if you spend £10k on your credit card within the first three months.
While this is a great way to get free points, it’s also a lot of money to spend in a short period of time. Make sure you have the money to pay off this amount as most points-accruing cards have higher interest rates to balance out the perks.
This might be a great deal for you if you’re going to be buying something big like a car, refurbishing your house, or planning a big celebration like a wedding, where you’re already going to be spending a lot of money anyway.
Spending Points
Okay, now we’re onto the fun part. You’ve accrued your points and now it’s time to spend them on an amazing trip or upgrade. Here’s how to get the most out of your points.
Using the right portals
Not all points portals are created equally. The ones that’ll give you the worst value for money are normally the bank-run ones like the Amex portal or the Chase portals. Usually, the best thing to do is to transfer your points to one of their partners.
Depending on your situation, you’ll have a huge list of potential partners including hotel groups, airlines, and more. If your chosen airline isn’t on the list, that’s not the end of the world. Most airlines are part of groups like the One World Alliance and Star Alliance.
So, for example, if you want to fly KLM but they’re not listed as an Amex partner, but Delta is, you can transfer into Delta and then across to KLM’s Flying Blue portal, as Delta and KLM are part of the same airline group.
Do your homework and see what different portals are offering you. I’ve seen differences of around 70,000 points and £300 between different portals, so it’s always worth having a look.
Using point-specific deal-finders
Recently, there have been companies cropping up that specialise in finding points deals. The most popular one at the moment seems to be point.me. It’s a Google Flights plug-in that let’s you know the points value of the flights you’re looking at.
This is a super easy way to compare routes and airlines at a glance. The only downside at the moment is that it’s limited to US-related airlines and routes. Hopefully, this will grow in time!
Points calendars
Most point deals come out no more than three months before. As annoying as this can be for long-haul trips if you want to bag a deal, it’s better to wait it out. You can see the approximate costs of your trip on the individual airline or hotel websites. For example, you can search common Virgin Atlantic and Delta routes from the UK on their portal to get an idea of availability and prices.
Sometimes there will be a sale on point-related trips but this is usually last-minute. Sign up to their newsletter and you should be the first to know.
It’s also worth remembering that there are different point scales for peak and off-peak travel. Check these dates as they change from year to year, especially around the Easter peak.
A disclaimer about tax and fees with points
When you buy a flight using points, you still have to pay fuel duty, surcharges, and taxes. With the fuel taxes being so high in the UK, a lot of the time, the price of the fees isn’t that far off the price of a regular flight on a deal.
For example, using points from Manchester to New York, prices range between 20k points plus £254 up to 24k points and £440 for a roundtrip ticket. Going with a low-frills airline, you can get returns to New York for between £350-450 most of the time. So, your 20,000 points are only worth around £100 in this scenario.
Paying for an upgrade on this flight from economy to premium economy is only 15,000 points, but you still have to pay some fees and surcharges. This varies by flight but you’re looking at around £150 for the roundtrip.
Cashback
Moving onto cashback. This is one of my favourite and most-used ways to save money on travel.
Cashback works in a couple of different ways, either through portals like TopCashback or Quidco, or by using cashback through your bank.
Some bank accounts like Chase offer 1% cashback on your spending, even if you’re abroad, so you’re getting free money for spending as you usually would. This gets put in a separate pot in your banking app and you can pull it out at any time.
Cashback through portals basically means that you search for a brand or website on their platform, click a trackable link and you’ll receive anywhere from 0.5% of your purchase up to 50% in some cases.
There are a huge amount of travel-related brands on TopCashback including:
- Hostelworld – often offering 40% cashback on your hostel deposits
- Viator – normally hovering around 10% cashback on your tours and excursions
- Flixbus – around 5% on your budget bus and coach journeys
The added benefit of these platforms is that you can receive a bonus of between 1-5% depending on how you take your money out of your account. If you want a BACS transfer that’s all good and you can do that and get your money out without a bonus. However, you can also pull your money out in the form of vouchers either fully or partially.
While most of the vouchers are for stores like IKEA, Sainsbury’s, Amazon, etc. there are some travel sites on there.
You can pull out your cashback in vouchers for Airbnb, Innkeeper’s Lodge, Virgin vouchers, Experience Days, and more.
