To be the most successful at the travel rewards hobby, you must be flexible in your reward travel planning.
If you’re not flexible, you will limit your successful reward redemptions. By being flexible, you open up the opportunity to save thousands on airfare, hotel stays, and other travel.
The three most important areas to maintain travel flexibility are:
- Flexible dates
- Flexible airlines
- Flexible departure and destination
Flexible Dates
To be successful at booking excellent travel rewards, start thinking about when you want to travel in terms of months or seasons, versus certain days.
If you know you can only take leave in a very constrained time during the summer or a week around Christmas, it’s harder to book reward flights, but not impossible! You just need to start planning early.
Flexible Airlines
If you have racked up a lot of AMEX or Chase transferable points, being flexible with your airline will open up many more flight options.
Take the following as an example: I live in Washington state and want to fly to Florida to see my family in the winter.
Rather than just looking at flights out of Seattle I’ll also look at Portland. And for my arrivals I’ll look at Miami, Ft Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach, since my family lives on the Eastern side of the peninsula.
I’ll look at flying from a different airport on the return and not limit myself to the same airport both ways. And I won’t limit myself to a particular airline if I have flexible points to transfer.
I’ll start my research 12 months out and look at all the availability in January and February in both directions. I might even book a ticket one way with points and one way with cash, if there aren’t any good redemptions or if I find a direct flight at a great time.
So you can see I kept my entire itinerary flexible to maximize my travel redemption. I kept the following parts of my itinerary flexible:
- Departure airport
- Destination airport
- Travel dates
- Airline
If you can’t be flexible, there are other options.
Personally, if I know I can take leave in a certain time period because work isn’t forecast to be busy, I will book that travel with cash. I will save my points to book Saver Level rewards to get the most cash value for my points.
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