This. I got 60,000 air miles for signing up for a Hawaiian Airlines card with a $100 annual fee when I knew I was going to Hawaii (twice now). I got something close to that for signing up for an American Airlines Advantage card (I don’t recall the number of miles right now).
I have no interest in accumulating points and miles, I’d rather just get the cashback every month.
No, by that I do mean the exchange rates themselves differ from day to day.
Like on August 1, Flight 1234 might cost $100 USD or 15000 points (1 to 150).
On August 7, Flight 222 might cost $100 USD but 12500 points (1 to 125).
It’s weird, right? You’re buying one ticket on the same flight regardless, so it doesn’t change the capacity at all. The points can be worth more or less dollars depending on the specific flight.
Unless maybe the first search (with points or dollars) affects the pricing of the second search a few minutes later (the other currency), which it very well might. As in “oh hey, there’s more people interested in this flight now than there was 15 min ago (even though or maybe especially if it it’s the same person), let’s see if we can jack up the price 15%”. But the first currency is still at the same price.
Shrug. It’s all evil algorithms all the way down, as with most things in life now.
Here’s one cite for that:
Simply put, the award price you’ll pay for a specific ticket will vary by factors including, but not limited to:
Route Seasonality Cabin load factor Number of award tickets already redeemed in the same cabin Number of tickets desiredThe way it works is as follows:
An airline will create fare buckets for award tickets, just like for revenue tickets. These are commonly referred to as award levels or award buckets. An airline will allocate a certain number of seats to each award level. As travelers book these award tickets, the number of seats in each award level will decrease, with the cheapest award buckets disappearing first. As the number of travelers booking award tickets increase, the lowest available award level will get more and more expensive.
So within the same flight, the award (point redemption) tickets can have their own “bucket” and thus their own economy, separate from the cash prices. So in effect it creates a cash to points currency exchange; some days it’s better to use the points to buy a flight directly, other day it’s better to redeem the points for cash (also differs by promotion) and then buy the tickets with that cash.
It sucks.
Edit: And your redemption possibilities also depend on your own status tier, and the situation gets even more complicated if you’re earning or redeeming on partner airlines — you’ll need a literal matrix of possibilities to see where the best current ratios are at at any given time (and they will dynamically fluctuate).
We’re just victims in their giant spreadsheets.
Suppose you’re looking at a flight (JFK → Heathrow) on a specific airline (British Airways) on a specific day. If you buy it through BA it may cost 25,000 pts + $200 in fees, but if you buy the same ticket through a partner airline (American, Iberia, Finnair, Alaska) it may only costs 12,000 pts + $400 in fees. It’s a constant battle that involves checking several sites early and often. Maybe AI will solve the problem for consumers soon.
Or the AI will harvest all your info and sell it the airlines so they can jack up the prices of the places you really want to go to when it thinks your next vacation is.
Airlines have been enshittifying for decades now; there’s certainly no reason to expect them to suddenly get better… they’re already more of a financial marketplace and gambling system than a simple carrier at this point.
ISTM most of e-commerce is going (has gone) that way.
Unless heavily regulated and policed there’s no reason for e.g. Amazon to charge a single fixed price for anything in their inventory. Ditto Wal*Mart and all the rest.
The money to be made with dynamic personalized pricing is simply so huge that any company not doing it will be bankrupted by those who do.
I agree with someone up-thread who said they don’t want to spend their time on this sort of thing.
Beyond that, this whole discussion sort of saddens me. Reminds me of when I found out as a teenager that movie theaters don’t make money from selling tickets - they make their money through selling popcorn and soda. Similarly (I’m told) gas stations today don’t make money on gas, but rather on mini-mart purchases.
Can’t any industry make an honest living any more? Can’t anyone just sell a product or service without playing games with points and perks? If my credit card wants to give me some points that I can use as cash, fine. But I’m not going to strategize about it and jump through their hoops to apply it to other purchases.
That said, when I was traveling for a living I accumulated a s**t-ton of hotel points, which benefited me. But as also noted up-thread, that was only useful because I booked hotel rooms in industrial quantities, over 100 nights a year. Hilton points were only good for free stays at Hiltons, while Marriott points could be easily converted to purchases. I say “easily” because I knew the web site to go to for that, but it was not widely published.
Not when the majority of consumers make their buying decisions on lowest price over everything else. There’s a reason basic economy fares show up on searches first.
Air Canada moved to variable pricing for AC flights a few years ago. A return flight between Toronto and Tokyo is business class is about CAD$8000 or 500K Aeroplan points. I managed to book the same flights but with a US stopover and the overseas segment on ANA for 170K Aeroplan points since some Star Alliance partners have fixed value awards through Aeroplan.
The difference is that every AC flight has available Aeroplan seats, possibly at a high price. ANA makes just a few seats available on AC at the fixed rate and if you don’t grab them 360 days in advance at 9AM Tokyo time, you aren’t getting them.
Learning the ins and outs of these details (when each rewards program puts tickets for their own and other airlines up) and keeping track of the random special deals can be a full time job. Most people aren’t interested in tracking all that stuff down, but right now I find in fun. We’ll see how long I keep it up.
I agree with much of this. Airline miles or points are regularly devalued by the airlines. I’ve read that collectively, people have accumulated trillions of miles so that most of it will never be redeemed. Free checked bags are a worthwhile perk; some airlines have increased the fees to fifty bucks. So if you regularly fly a particular airline, it might be worth getting the associated credit card for that reason alone. The credit card can also help you acquire higher status in the airline’s loyalty program. That might mean upgraded seats on some flights or early boarding. And yes, from everything I’ve seen and read, the airport lounges are over crowded today.
I’ve spent the last four years traveling for work and one thing I recommend is to join the loyalty program for every airline, hotel and rental car company you use. As far as I know, none charge a fee simply for membership and the perks are nice. If, for example, you’re a member of Hertz’ Gold+ Rewards program, at many airports, you can skip the rental car counter and go directly to the parking area. There will be a sign directing you to an area (President’s Circle, Five Star, Gold Plus, etc) and you can choose any car in that area. The keys are already in the cars and you just need to show your driver’s license and credit card to the person at the booth on exit.
OP, here’s a nice guide to points and miles. It’s a good blog too, but Ben is a nerd about miles/points and luxury travel, and he makes money off affiliations like everyone else does.
I downgraded my Chase Sapphire Reserve to Chase Sapphire Preferred during the pandemic, and haven’t looked back. Our goal was cheaper travel in business class, and that includes lounge access already so we don’t need Priority Pass most of the time. The CSR annual fee was getting ridiculous, and additional benefits marginal beyond the lounge access.
I don’t know much about cruises, but agree the best value is international flights, hopefully in higher classes. Chase Ultimate Rewards is one of the best “transferable currencies,” meaning you can transfer your points to many different airline and hotel programs. Ben’s blog attempts to place a value on each transfer, meaning a point in United, say, could be worth 1.5 cents vs. 1 cent on another airline. It helps you determine the value of a transfer. For example, if you’re looking at paying $1000 for a flight or 50,000 points for the same flight, calculate based on those valuations to see if it’s a good deal to use points over cash.
My most recent find is Pointsyeah. Its free version helps you see how many points it might take to get from point A to point B under various programs, even including Chase transfers to United, for example. I found a nice flight to Europe that way, in business class, and I keep reading their email spam in case they come up with new ideas of how to use my points.
I agree all the points are becoming less valuable, and my husband is encouraging me to start using them up.
Oh, on that note… if you are really traveling a lot and on different airlines/hotels/etc., many of the top-tier travel credit cards (the ones with annual fees that are like $800+, like the Reserve) will give you automatic high status in several hotel and car rental chains (fast-tracking you to elite-ness even without spending there), and even higher if you do spend an annual amount on the card itself. This is independent of your spend with that chain, i.e. you could rack up $100k in groceries (I dunno, maybe you really have a thing for gilded strawberries) and still be promoted to the highest tiers just from that alone.
That’s like if you’re made of money or own a business and travel a lot on the company dime. You’ll rack up status like crazy just from that one card, no matter where you stay.
For us regular peasants, though, the crazy annual fee likely never pays for itself if you just travel 1-3 times a year and stay a few nights.
And of course if you’re an actual billionaire, you don’t need to play games with credit cards like this; they go out of their way to court you instead with unlimited credit lines for your assistants to use and probably a fast-track straight to Epstein Island too.
If I can make a related hijack here, I would not recommend Norwegian. We just took our first cruise on Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL), and didn’t enjoy the experience.
My wife and I have cruised on many different lines, but our favorite by far is Viking ocean cruises. (We haven’t tried their river cruises yet.)
Of course, much depends on your destination and what you’re looking for in a cruise. We are over 65, and not into drinking, partying, or gambling. If that’s what you want, Viking is not for you, and you can stop reading here.
But if you want a smaller ship (less than 1,000 passengers), no kids (Viking is 18+ only), enrichment-based offerings like lectures and port talks, and more mature and refined fellow passengers, you will like Viking.
I know what you’re going to say, “Too expensive!” But I’m not really sure that at the end of the day, our NCL cruise really was that much cheaper than a comparable Viking trip.
That’s because Viking is very nearly all-inclusive, while NCL nickels-and-dimes you for Every. Little. Thing. For example:
Water. Viking puts a large jug of bottled water in your cabin and keeps it filled every day. And they hand you small bottles of water every time you get on and off the ship. All FREE.
NCL will sell you bottled water in aluminum 16.9-oz bottles, 12 for $20, 24 for $35, 48 for $50. And you’re not allowed to bring your own bottled water on board.
We used our own refillable metal water bottles and filled them in our cabin bathroom or at the buffet water dispenser (even though you’re not supposed to).
Alcohol. Viking includes beer and wine and soft drinks at every meal. They have a drinks package that gets you premium drinks, but it wasn’t worth it for our level of drinking.
NCL has several different drinks packages, but it’s that or pay retail for every drink, in the restaurants or at the bars. A soft drink is $4 plus a mandatory $1 tip. Other drinks are $15 plus mandatory tip for basic pours, and up from there. We paid retail and drank less.
Extras. Here’s what NCL charges for that Viking doesn’t:
Although I haven’t done an actual line-by-line comparison, I’m convinced that the total price of a Viking cruise is not that much more than on NCL or one of the other lines that throw on additional charges every time you turn around.
ETA: I forgot to mention that the food on NCL is much worse than Viking’s. NCL’s premium restaurants, for which they charge up to $60 per person, are nowhere near as good as Viking’s regular restaurants. And Viking doesn’t charge extra for their premium restaurants, although the number of meals you get in them is based on your fare level.
Feel free to DM me or start a new thread if you’d like more info.
You know what, I’ll take you up on that! Tell me about cruises, especially more laid-back, "educational" ones
Thank you, but a) the NCL package I’m looking at includes a drink pass and some extra perks, so yes I’ll still be nickel and dimed but not as much, and b) Only Carnival and NCL are sailing out of New Orleans when I want to go. I would choose Carnival in a hearbeat but for the fact that, as luck would have it, Carnival Liberty is the only Carnival vessel sailing out of NO that week, and I’ve already sailed on Liberty. So I’mma take the risk in favor of a new experience. Besides, I’m less about elegance and all that, and more about the fun atmosphere. NCL wins on all counts.
*Why are you so hellbent on sailing out of New Orleans, Homie? Because my late mother loved New Orleans and so Mrs. H and I are scattering her ashes there. And also, because I’ve been to NOLA a few times and was always jealous of the people getting on a cruise ship. So I’m going to honor Mom by spreading her ashes in The Big Easy and then getting on a sailing vessel from there.
If you know what you’re looking for in a cruise and NCL provides it, great!
I haven’t cruised with Carnival, so I can’t say whether it might be better or worse than NCL.
Let us know what you think after the cruise.
Carnival is rightly called “KMart of the Caribbean” NCL is definitely a step upwards from there.
Whether the OP would prefer KMart or Target is up to them; but that’s the difference.
Back to the OP topic of perk-filled credit cards and “not leaving value on the table” …
I have an airline-affiliated card I use heavily. I just got a solicitation for a special just for me (yeah right) promo deal. Click the link to sign up for this “exclusive” bonus feature on your card.
The special bonus you ask? Spend $20K in any billing month of May, June, and July, and get 5000 additional free!1! miles for each qualifying >$20K month. Do that all three months and get an extra 5000 miles to boot, 20K miles total.
Yep, spend $60K to get a freebie worth ~$200. Be still my greedy freebie-seeking heart!
If you’re the sort who already charges $20K/mo on credit cards, why not sign up for $200 worth of free miles? But the idea of buying extra stuff or even bringing purchases forward into those months for a paltry $200 spiff doesn’t really pass the laugh test. But that number of 20,000 sure sounds impressive.