Spend Less, Travel More - Booking economy with your points is worth it!
Today's post has been kindly written by Jordan Sinclair, one half of Spend Less, Travel More. Take a guess what they like to do with their points?
When people talk about points and companion vouchers, it’s usually all about aiming for that lie-flat business class seat on a long haul flight. I have to admit, that was also my goal when I first set out collecting points a few years ago. But for now, I’ve shifted my priorities. You’ll hear points gurus bang on about getting the best redemption value, but the biggest question is what it’s worth to you. It’s not actually a crime to redeem your hard earned points in economy, especially if you haven’t got a huge stack of them to begin with. And that’s exactly what we’re doing for our year of travel.
In the height of wedding planning, I was set on that dreamy business class seat for our honeymoon… until I realised two things - firstly, I naively thought I could pay for everything wedding related on credit cards to accrue lots of points quickly but, as it turns out, most wedding suppliers are small businesses and are paid via bank transfer. This meant that we wouldn’t gain enough points fast enough. Secondly, that classic all inclusive honeymoon starting with a bougie flight is just not who we are.
My (now) husband and I love quirky adventures, and we stretch every penny to travel as far and as often as we can. In the end our honeymoon was spent horse-riding and hiking in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, staying in yurts and exploring nomad traditions. With regards to points, we just didn’t think it was a worthwhile use of them for this particular flight path (London to Bishkek via Türkiye). Besides - has anyone mastered using points on Turkish Airlines?
Instead, we were hatching our next big adventure - an adult gap year, a sabbatical or a millennial mid-life crisis - whichever you prefer. Talking with other travellers in the ‘Stans, who were on longer term trips, left us craving more, and we knew we had to make it work as soon as possible. So we went back to work with post-wedding and post-holiday blues, re-evaluated our savings and gave ourselves a realistic time frame to accumulate both cash and points.
We planned our route: starting in Mexico, travelling through Central America and some of South America, before hopping back over to Spain for a friend’s wedding, and then starting the second leg of the trip across Central Asia, Mongolia, China and finishing up with some family visits in Australia.
One of our biggest tips for saving money when travelling is flexibility - often easier said than done with fixed annual leave, but being able to alter flight timings and even locations slightly can be a major advantage with big savings. We’ve also planned our route to make use of main flight hubs for more direct connections.
But we nearly fell at the first hurdle because we wanted to break another golden rule - avoid travel at peak times. The reason our trip starts in Mexico, is because we wanted to experience Día de los Muertos (Day of The Dead) festival. Unfortunately, this and the Mexico Grand Prix mean that it’s a popular time for that route and there were no reward seats available for our preferred week of travel. The cash value of the flights were coming in at an eye-watering £1200 per person one way. So we juggled our itinerary a bit, booked a week earlier and instead our economy seats only set us back 33,000 Avios and £85 each in taxes. Mental.
The taxes vary from country to country, as we found out when trying to work out the next “big flight” - our initial plan was to fly from Quito, Ecuador to Madrid but the taxes and points needed were just coming out much more than we’d expected. I played around with the itinerary a bit and found that if we added in Peru, and flew from Lima instead, it came down to 24,000 Avios and £75 in taxes per person - around half what it would have been from Quito!
Don’t get me wrong, when I first looked at our outbound flight to Mexico City, the business class avios redemption was sorely tempting, but we’re trying to stretch our points as far as possible, with the aim of paying for all of the “big” international flights with points to keep our overall budget down. It will be interesting to see how much we can save overall, but our estimate is that points are going to save us around £6000 over the course of the year.
While much of our spending during the trip itself will be in cash and foreign currency, limiting our points/miles earning potential, there are some ways we can still accumulate points during the trip. Booking with Hostelworld via the Avios shopping portal earns 25 Avios per £1 spent, which is huge! While not quite as lucrative, we’ve also utilised the portal to book the Heathrow Express, trains to the airport, and some tours. But as always, check the price first, as sometimes clicking through the portal actually increases the cost (we found this a lot with booking.com).
Our points journey is not without its mistakes. In fact, we’ve probably made more mistakes than we should, claiming to be budget savvy travellers, but when we first started out, nearly all of the information online was US based, so I was winging it at best - I wish Points Well Made had existed then!
Despite now thinking I’m better versed in the intricacies of points, I recently managed to trigger my BA companion voucher too early. Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t be an issue - you’d find a holiday to go on, but as we’re travelling for just over a year, I had intended to keep the voucher for the last flight home (it’s a biggie - Sydney to London), but, unless we cut the trip short, it will just fall outside the window by a few weeks. Nobody’s perfect.
Instead, my current plan is bagging economy Qatar or BA flights from Australia to London via Doha or Kuala Lumpur, for an estimated 45,000 - 55,000 Avios instead of around £900 each (one way).
For us, points will allow us to take multiple long flights during our year of travel at a fraction of the cost. With a finite number of points in our pot, multiple economy flights rather than one comfortable business class seat is much better value to us, and will allow us to keep overall spending down. Of course, if we were dripping in points (or I hadn’t royally cocked up the companion voucher), we’d consider an upgrade. But honestly, sticking to economy for this particular trip is the best option for our budget.
So how far will 250,000 points get us? Follow along to find out!
Jordan Sinclair - Spend Less, Travel More
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