Miles & Points for Families: Strategies for Redeeming

Welcome back to our third installment of our Miles & Points for Families series. Hopefully you’ve had the chance to read our introductory post on Miles & Points for Families that details how this pursuit can help your family travel better and for less, and the post Strategies for Earning to help you get started on accumulating points for your next trip.

Once you have a good amount of points, the next challenge is often how to redeem them. This is a huge topic that deserves a series of its own, but to get started, we’ll use this post to touch on some basic principles for how families can best redeem points.

Redeem Points for Travel

Using points for travel may sound intuitive to you if you’re reading this post, but lots of people will often redeem their points for many things other than travel.

Let me start off by saying that there is no wrong way to redeem points. Redeeming points for a new Dyson or a gift card for the movies could make sense for you because you would have spent money on these items anyways, so redeeming points for them instead means less money out of your pocket.

You also may think that whether you save a dollar on travel or a dollar off an appliance, it doesn’t really matter because in the end it’s still a dollar saved. However, since most people have a limited number of points, and since earning them can be challenging, it’s important to maximize their value as best you can.

Most loyalty programs are set up in a way so that the value of each point varies depending on how you choose to redeem it, and the common trend is that you usually get the most value from your points when you use them for travel.

For example, let’s say you’ve earned 10,000 Membership Rewards (MR) points on your American Express Cobalt® Card. Depending on your preferences, you could use these points to book travel, you could transfer them to partnered airline and hotel loyalty programs, or you could redeem them for statement credit, gift cards, or merchandise.

You can, for example, redeem 1,000 MR points for $10 (all figures in CAD) in statement credits towards all eligible purchases charged to your card. This means that if you make a $100 purchase at Roots, you could offset that cost by redeeming 10,000 MR points against the charge. This essentially works out to a value of 1 cent per point.

Alternatively, if you were to redeem your MR points for merchandise purchased directly through American Express, like for a $100 Roots gift card, it would cost 13,000 MR points. This works out to a value of 0.76 cents per point, which is less than what you would get when buying directly from the Roots store and redeeming for a statement credit, as shown in the first example.

Now, let’s look at the value you could get by using these same points to make a travel redemption. Imagine you need to make a one-way flight award booking from Toronto to Chicago in economy. In cash, the price of the flight is $362, inclusive of $154 in taxes and fees.

Booking through Air Canada Aeroplan, the same flight costs 6,000 Aeroplan points (or 6,000 MR points since MR points transfer to Aeroplan points at a rate of 1:1) plus $154 in taxes and fees. This means your 6,000 MR points essentially covers the $208 cash base fare, giving you a whopping value of 3.47 cents per point!

Plus, if you were to make a business class redemption, the value could be even higher, and in some cases you could net upwards of 10 cents per point in value.

Finding Award Space

Hopefully we’ve now convinced you that redeeming points for travel is the way to go. The next challenge is how to go about redeeming for travel, especially when it comes to finding adequate award space to accommodate a whole family on flights and in hotels.

Finding award space for hotels is generally much easier than for flights, and so we’ll focus the discussion in this article on flight redemptions.

The one thing I will mention about hotel redemptions is that most hotel loyalty programs only allow their standard, lowest cost rooms to be redeemable on a reasonable number of points. These rooms will accommodate two easily, and sometimes up to four guests depending on the number of beds in the room and occupancy restrictions of the hotel.

Take for example, the Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam, which prices standard room rewards at 120,000 Hilton Honors points per night (the cash rate is typically over €1,000 per night) but will only accommodate two guests.

Higher room categories and suites will either not be bookable on points or will require an astronomical amount of points to book. If you have a large family, you may find yourself needing to book two rooms or to rely on status benefits and awards with hotel loyalty programs to upgrade yourself to a larger room when travelling outside of North America.

Now back to redeeming points for flights.

The most common misconception people seem to have about flight redemptions is that every seat on all flights are bookable on points. Although this is true when it comes to booking Air Canada flights with Aeroplan points, Air France or KLM flights with Flying Blue miles, and WestJet flights with WestJet Rewards, it doesn’t hold true for all airlines.

Most airlines don’t release multiple award seats, especially when it comes to business class. Even with airlines that do allow every seat to be bookable on points, there are often a limited number of seats that are bookable at a reasonable, lower redemption rate (or “saver”-level seats). Once those seats are booked, it’ll cost more points to book additional seats in the same cabin class.

Take for example a flight from Toronto to Paris in economy on Air France. If you book early enough, you can snag an award ticket for only 20,000 miles; however, if you book too close to your travel date and all the “saver”-level seats have been booked, that same economy seat to Paris may cost 90,000 miles!

To complicate matters, some airlines release award seats predictably, while others do not. EVA Air and Air France are two examples that release multiple seats reliably. EVA Air will release three economy seats and one business class seat at 355 days out through the Aeroplan program, while Air France releases up to nine “saver”-level economy and business class seats at 359 days out through its Flying Blue program.

When setting a redemption plan for you and your family, it’s best to stay flexible with travel dates if possible, especially if you’re hoping to fly in a premium cabin. For unpredictable airlines, set up seat availability alerts through tools like Roame, and for predictable ones, start looking 330–360 days out or extremely close in (like two weeks out) to give yourself the best chance of finding 3+ award seats.

Additionally, if your children are old enough, you may also consider flying them in separate cabins or even on separate flights to the same destination. Depending on both the age of your child and the airline, you may need to book an unaccompanied minor service to do so. If this option interests you, read our more detailed post on the subject, Can You Fly in Separate Cabins?

Take Advantage of Discounts for Infants and Children

When travelling as a family, it’s always worthwhile to look for discounts that apply to infants and children as these can make your travels all the more affordable.

For instance, most airlines allow parents to add a lap infant to their booking at a reasonable cost. A lap infant is defined as a child who is under the age of two when they fly and who will sit on the lap of an accompanying adult. Air Canada Aeroplan and British Airways Avios are two programs in particular that offer great cash pricing and award redemptions for lap infants.

With Aeroplan, no fare is charged for a lap infant ticket if travelling between Canada and the United States. For all other itineraries, it will only cost $25 or 2,500 Aeroplan points per direction of travel. With British Airways Executive Club, 10% of the Avios and 10% of the taxes and fees of an adult ticket is charged for a lap infant.

Read our post on Infant Flight Awards for more information on flying with an infant.

If you have slightly older children, then you’ll want to take a look at the Air France KLM Flying Blue program which offers a 25% discount on award redemptions for children aged 2–11 when travelling with an adult. However, take note that this discount only applies to flights operated by Air France and KLM, and unfortunately, not for flights with their partner airlines.

Looking once again at the example of flying from Toronto to Paris, if I were to add a child onto the booking, the total price of the award redemption would now be 35,000 Flying Blue miles (20,000 miles for the adult and 15,000 for a child).

Learn the Sweet Spots

One more way to help you get the most out of your points when travelling as a family is to learn about and utilize the available sweet spots in each loyalty program.

Sweet spots refer to redemptions offered by an airline that are comparatively lower than booking through other programs for the same flight. For example, redeeming for a First Class flight on Japan Airlines from Chicago to Tokyo will cost 135,000 Cathay Pacific Asia Miles but only 80,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles.

Learning about and keeping an eye on these sweet spots can help you gain access to incredible travel experiences for fewer points, which means you won’t need to accumulate as many points to get you and your family booked on your next trip.

Conclusion

Compared to dependent-free individuals, it seems like the odds are stacked against families when it comes to funding trips on points.

First, you need to earn more points, then when it comes to redeeming, you need to find award space for multiple passengers, which can be quite challenging.

The good news is that redemptions are possible, and many families have made amazing redemptions to travel all over the world. This means that with a little effort and persistence, you can too!

If you find this all too overwhelming, don’t fret – you’re not alone. If you need a little assistance or guidance in your points journey, help is readily available through our Prince of Travel Facebook group or if you prefer a private session, you can book a call with one of our expert consultants.