This past summer, my family and I took a trip around the world to Madrid, Spain; Zurich, Switzerland; Athens, Greece; Beijing, China; and Seoul, South Korea. I planned the entire itinerary (I’m the unofficial travel agent of the family) and was able to book most of it on miles and points to minimize out-of-pocket expenses.
Redeeming Miles & Points
The total value of this trip was approximately $6,000 per person for air and hotel only. I would NEVER pay that amount because I can’t afford it, and I suspect most people can’t either. Instead, I used points to cover air, hotel, transportation, and some activities. Here is the breakdown of points redeemed for three of us:
Airlines |
585,000 miles |
Hotels |
675,000 points |
Transportation |
40,000 points |
Activities |
80,000 points |
Fees (award ticket, credit card annual fees) |
$2,090.00 |
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Total cost per person: $697. Not bad for a trip around the world.
How Did We Fly?
Our flights were booked using Delta’s Round The World award ticket, which cost 180,000 miles each. Unfortunately, this program is no longer available as of December 2014, so I won’t go into detail about how to book this award.
Delta seems to have a bad rap with regards to redeeming their frequent flyer miles, but I’ve flown on Delta since college and I enjoy their flights. Redeeming the miles required patience and flexibility since their international partner, Korean Air, had blackout dates during high season. In the end, we were able to get the itinerary we wanted.
There was one issue where Delta couldn’t book us a connecting flight on our way home from Seoul, so I used United Airlines miles to book the short connecting flight to Osaka, Japan. This cost us another 15,000 miles each on United’s partner airline, Asiana, which wasn’t so bad since they had so much leg room in coach. I want to point out that diversifying your points is good just in case one program can’t get you everything you need. Luckily we had United miles to cover one leg that Delta could not fulfill.
What Hotels Did We Stay At?
I prefer to stay in the city and near the sites or attractions. More importantly, I prefer to use hotel points so choosing a hotel also depends on how many points we have in our hotel chain reward programs. I’ll go into more details on each hotel, but this is the list of hotels we stayed at:
- Radisson Blu Hotel Madrid Prado
- InterContinental Athenaeum Hotel Athens
- Park Hyatt Hotel Beijing
- JW Marriott Hotel Seoul
We stayed with family in Zurich so that saved us points.
Transportation
We used taxis to and from the airport and our hotels. In Zurich we purchased tickets for trains, buses and trams. When available, I redeemed my Barclaycard Arrival+ points as statement credits for travel, which includes transportation. In the end, almost our entire transportation budget was covered with points.
Booking Activities
I pre-booked all our activities using the Chase Ultimate Rewards and Citi ThankYou travel portals. Both programs require eligible credit cards to access the travel portals for booking travel and activities. Chase UR has a better redemption rate for activities at 1.25 cents per point, and Citi TY is 1 cent per point (for example, 10,000 points = $125 and $100 respectively). While we didn’t have enough points for all activities, we were able to cover about half the cost of the activities we booked. Activities in the travel portals include: taxis from airport to hotel, city tours, Segway tours, half-day and full-day excursions, and more.
How Did We Earn All Those Miles and Points?
Earning 1.4 million points to book this trip required a lot of planning, at least one year in advance. We used a combination of programs to earn all our points, none of which included flying on planes or staying in hotels. I’ll go into more details in future posts.
The Final Word…
Our trip around the world was amazing. I’m grateful we amassed enough points for my family and me to enjoy a trip we would otherwise not take if not for miles and points. With flights, hotels and transportation covered, all we needed to do was budget for food, activities and souvenirs. Unfortunately, we went overboard in those categories, but it was worth it for such an epic vacation.