Frequent Miler on the Air - Hidden Gem Awards | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep373 | 8-28-26

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

Get 15% of on Saily E-SimsThis podcast episode is sponsored by Saily. Saily is an ESIM service app created by the security experts behind NordVPN. Instead of paying absurd daily rates to your home carrier or swapping SIM cards on arrival, Saily gives you flexible prepaid data plans in over 200 destinations worldwide. Download Saily from your app store and use our code FREQUENTMILER at checkout to get 15% off your first purchase. https://saily.com/frequentmilerIn this episode, we'll hear about the "best ever" Hyatt Place breakfast, we'll talk about where Greg should go after Berlin, and share lesser-known sweetspot awards like flights to Europe from 90 points and Scandinavian hotels from 500 points!Giant Mailbag(01:08) - Paul asks: "Is there another way to status match Flying Blue elite status or do we have to wait until it opens up again for US residents?"See our Shortcuts to Flying Blue elite status here(03:19) - Kevin writes in with some miles and points success storiesThis Week in Points(05:12) - Rove enhancements (out on Friday 8/28)(09:11) - Citi 25% transfer bonus to LHW through 9/19Personal Points(10:41) - LH multi-city via Aeroplan(13:25) - Hyatt Place AMS(16:51) - Greg's Berlin tripMain Event: Hidden Gem Awards(21:24) - Lodging(21:51) - Cottages.com for 15K Wyndham points/bedroom/night(23:14) - Preferred Hotels starting at 20K Choice/night(25:59) - Nordic / Scandinavian hotels w/ Finnair AviosLearn how to use Finnair Avios to book Scandinavian hotels here(30:15) - Flights: Star Alliance flights for 3.5K econ, 7K biz (under 600 miles)(32:27) - Air France business class to Europe with NO surcharges(36:06) - British Airways business or first class with low surcharges(43:06) - Royal Air Maroc: US to Morocco for 17.5K econ, 50.5K Biz w/ Finnair Avios(45:38) - Use Virgin Atlantic miles to fly around Europe and Northern Africa starting at 4K one-wayLearn more about Air France KLM across Europe here(50:02) - North America to Europe for 90 points via Lufthansa Miles & More(55:54) - Delta short-haul 5K Flying Blue milesSubscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderCheck out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of the Voyascape Network, a collection of some of the world’s best travel podcasts. Explore more at Voyascape.com. For advertising or sponsorship opportunities on this show and across the network, email [e-mail] or you can find more information at Voyascape.com/advertsing.

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. On today's episode, I'll share the best Hyatt Place breakfast in the world. Prove me wrong. We'll talk about where Greg should go after Berlin. And we'll discuss some lesser-known sweet spots, such as flights to Europe from 90 points, and Scandinavian hotels from 500 points. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, Hidden Gem Awards. Today we're going to talk about many different types of both hotel and airline awards that offer special deals but are not widely talked about.

Like many, many people who maybe have the points that we're going to talk about wouldn't even have begun to know that these special deals. exist. And that's what we're going to talk about in today's main event. Remember, if you want to jump ahead to that, you want to come back to something later on. You can always find the timestamps in the show notes. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give this a thumbs up, like it. We always appreciate hearing your feedback on the show. All right, let's drag out this week's Giant Mail bike. All right. This week, we have a double header. First giant mail is from Paul.

Paul wrote, I listened to the podcast over the weekend, and he was talking about the shortcuts to flying blue elite status that Tim and I recorded, and then went to status match.com and noticed that this status match, the status match to Air France, flying blue, like silver or gold status, has ended for the U.S. Is there another way to status match, or do we have to wait until it opens up again for U.S. residence? Yeah, this was unfortunate when we recorded the podcast. We didn't realize that the U.S. status match had ended. It has. We've set up a automated job to alert us when it comes back. And, of course, we'll post on the blog and we'll mention on the podcast about it coming back if and when it does. But for now, the only kind of status matchy type of thing that I'm,

aware of requires getting built platinum status. And then as we talked about on the podcast, you can transfer 10,000 points to flying blue and that will match you to gold status. So that's a great way to do it, but it does have that significant hurdle of needing to have built platinum status. Quick question, Greg. If I transferred 10,000 points to flying blue while I had built gold, and then later on I earn built platinum. Do I have to transfer another 10,000 in order to get status? You do. It's kind of the, it's not the act of transferring that triggers it.

It's like you have to kind of click the buttons that say I want to do the gold status match. And in that process, you transfer 10,000 points to enable it. It's kind of like paying for the status match. But it's cheap because you're actually ending up with miles, you know, so you're not losing much. Okay, next up in the giant mail is from Kevin. Kevin writes, We flew to Vietnam on Asiana Airlines in 2018. Great experience, but that's a long way in economy for two new retirees.

I was able to erase $600 of the cost with a Barclays' arrival card bonus, which I thought was a huge win. Sometime thereafter, in 2019, I started listening to the frequent miler. That fall, we flew Japan Airlines business class to Thailand and Virgin Upper Class on the way home from Hong Kong. We were hooked. On Tuesday, we're heading to Belgrade via Istanbul on what will be our 44th flight across an ocean and business class. We've got flights booked to China, India, and Europe. So next May to Malta will be our 50th flight in the front of the plane and all using points and miles.

This hobby is still alive and working for us. Thanks and safe travels. that's awesome i love that story kevin i appreciate the fact that you shared it uh for a lot of reasons number one because it's just so much fun like it's it's fun to think back and look at that and and say wow you know what what a change from not that erasing six hundred dollars of the flight in 2018 was a bad deal i mean that you got a good deal there in the sense that you've kept six dollars in your pocket. But what a wild difference between that and now. It's amazing what this hobby makes possible. And it's also, I think, fun to shine a light on the fact that there's still

so much possible because, you know, every now and then we focus on the devaluations. And I think it can be easy to fall into a sense of doom and gloom that, oh, this isn't available anymore. That doesn't work anymore. But, I mean, my goodness, in the last eight years here, 50 flights across oceans and business class tells me that the hobby is still alive and well. Exactly. Exactly. Love the story. Great one. All right. Let's see. This week in points. We've got some news out this week. So Rove has some enhancements that will just come out on the 28th here. So we're recording ahead. So we haven't actually tried these yet. But by the time you hear this, this will all be live. So we're going to have rove dining, which is going to be, we think, kind of similar to the other dining platforms out there, like Advantage dining or built dining where you can earn points on dining.

But you have the opportunity to earn Rove Miles on your dining by linking up a card and using that to pay at a participating merchant. They're going to be in-store shopping offers. So card-linked shopping offers. So this is going to make it more similar to like Rackaton and the Alaska shopping portal where there have been opportunities to link up cards or Simply Miles. and earn miles while shopping in store. That's great news if you like Rove Miles. Instant gift card earned. So you're going to be able to buy gift cards and earn Roeve Miles while you're buying the gift cards.

So this kind of mimics Mileage PlusX, the app from United that allows you to buy gift cards and earn miles while you're buying them. Instead, of course, here you'll earn Rove Miles that are transferable. And there's going to be a rebuilt hotel platform. And so the Rebuilt Hotel Platform is going to feature several things. Stronger mileage earning opportunities, we're told. We're told tens of thousands of additional properties. So apparently they're bringing a lot more on board.

Major expansion of loyalty eligible rates, which would be great to see because, of course, if you're not familiar, Rove Miles allows you to book hotels. And in some cases, you can pick a loyalty eligible rate where you'll earn hotel points and also earn Roeve Miles. So expanding that sounds like great news to me. I mean, all of this sounds pretty exciting. It really does. You know, Roe has built a terrific.

transferable points program. They have some amazing transfer partners and we're going to talk more about Roe in today's main event because to unlock some of the Hidden Jam awards that we're going to talk about, Roe is often the best or one of the best ways to get there. But, you know, I haven't been thrilled with some of the aspects of Roe to date, like the hotel shopping experience has been clumsy. Often I can't find the hotel I want or I can't find the rate I want. Like there's no, you know, loyalty eligible rates or, you know, different issues like that. So I'm really excited that they're apparently fixing a lot of that. Instant or gift cards, I think this is just kind of interesting because it, it means that, you know, let's say you see like an amazing deal. You find a

a flight that's bookable with, you know, a small number of miles that you could transfer from Rove, but you don't have enough Roe points to make that transfer. But you want to book this thing, you know, as soon as possible while that award space is here. Theoretically, you'll be able to, you know, buy some number of gift cards to get the number of Roeve miles you need instantly. And, and then, you know, book your trip. So, you know, an example would be, I'm buying, I don't know if they'll even have them, but let's say Hotels.com gift cards so that you get the miles needed for the flight and then you use those gift cards for your stay during the trip is one example, how that might all work out.

Yeah, that all sounds like great news to me. And like you said, Rove has some transfer partners that are worth a look and we'll talk more about that in a little bit, but it's probably worth taking another look at Roe if you, you know, have held off for some of those shortcomings that Greg mentioned to see if they've kind of fixed some of those issues for you. So we'll obviously have more about that on the blog and the, you know, next week or two as these things launch. All right. Next up, we got a transfer bonus, a 25% transfer bonus from city to leading hotels of the world leaders club through September 19th, 2026. So usually the transfer ratio is five city thank you points to one leaders club point with this

bonus, it's four city thank you points to one leaders club point, which is the same as the ordinary ratio from MX membership rewards. So let's put some on par with MX membership rewards. And that might not sound good when you hear five or four transferable points to just one leaders club point. But because the value of leaders club points are so high, this is essentially, in at least many cases, like getting about two cents per city point, which is good for lodging. It really is. That's an excellent value. So it's nice to see them competing. And if you are in a situation where you have a lot of city points and few amex points or no amics points and want to take advantage of leading hotels of world, then this is a good deal. For those like me that have a lot more amex points than city points, a lot more. You know, it's inconsequential because I would use amex for it. Yeah. Yeah. I think it should probably.

depends on what your other use cases are for either currency, you know, depending on which airlines you transfer to and whatnot. So I think it's really going to vary from person to person, but which you'd rather use, but either way, whether you're using Amex or City with this transfer bonus, it's a pretty good deal. All right, let's move forward to personal points. So we each have a couple of things to share here. First up, I wrote a while back and we talked, I think maybe last week, about how I booked a multi-city award through Air Canada Aeropl Plan to fly Lufthansa. business class from Boston to Frankfurt and pair that with an economy class leg on Air Dolomidi

from Frankfurt to Billand. And the reason I did that, of course, was because I wanted a shorter connection time in Frankfurt and the Air Dolomedi flight gave me that shorter connection time. But I was only able to book that using the Air Canada Aeroplane Multi-City Tool. I couldn't just search for a business class award from Boston to Billand. When I did that, I got other options that connected on Lafanza in order to find the connection I wanted on Airdola Media, I had to use the multi-city tool. And so I wanted to report back because we flew that recently. And so I wanted to report back on a couple of things that I forgot to put in the post as I was writing it, but I thought would be potentially relevant. First of all, the check baggage allowance did carry over.

So even though we flew economy class on the second leg, the short leg from Frankfurt to Billand, the economy, or rather the baggage allowance from the business class flight across the Atlantic on Lufthansa carried over onto Aredolomede. Lufthansa was able to check our bags all the way through. Now, that's kind of second nature for some folks in this hobby. But if you're newer to it or you just haven't tried this before, those are two things that I thought I might have asked. I might have said, well, wait, am I going to be able to check the same number of bags?

Are they going to be able to check them all the way through? So I thought, I probably should have mentioned that in the post. So I wanted to mention it here on the show this week and add it to the post as well. So that answers those two questions. then a third piece that came to mind after I published the post was that I did not use the Lufthansa lounge in Frankfurt because what I read was that the departing cabin is what matters for lounge access for the Lovtanza lounges because we were departing an economy class. What I read was it wouldn't have mattered that we had come in in business class because we were departing in economy.

We wouldn't get access to the lounge. Now I didn't test that and try it. So if any readers have contrary experience or listeners have contrary experience, let me know. Reach out. comment on this show and let us know. But my belief was that we wouldn't get access. If you have an Amics Platinum card through September 30th of 2026, you can access the Lufanza business class lounges when flying a Lufthansa Group airline. Air Dolomedi counts because it's a wholly owned subsidiary of Lufthansa, but you don't get any guests. And so my kids wouldn't have been able to get in without paying for a pass. And we weren't going to be there long enough for that. So we didn't use the lounge, but I thought that that was worth mentioning. So that's my Lufthansa.

Hans a bit. And then the other thing that I wanted to share, I want to share, one, because I was excited about it, but two, because if there's a tip that any listeners have, I want to hear it. So here it is. We stayed at the Hyatt Place, Amsterdam Airport for one night on this trip. We went somewhere in the Netherlands that I'm going to be writing about very soon. I'm excited about. But we stayed at the Hyatt Place at Amsterdam Airport. It was 6,000 points per night, which was a slam and deal versus the cash rate of around $240 a night, I think, the night that we booked. But what I want to say about this is if the Hyatt Place Amsterdam Airport does not have the best Hyatt Place breakfast in the world, I want you to let me know which Hyatt Place it is that does.

Because I was really impressed. This is not a typical Hyatt Place breakfast. Now, I'm not saying it was the best breakfast I've ever had. It's not going to compete with like a buffet in Asia at a luxury hotel. But I had in mind what I expected for a Hyatt Place breakfast. And this was not it. It was much bigger, much better. And I read, actually in reviews the night before we went, I had already booked the place, but I read a number of people that said that the restaurant was like the highlight of their trip. And I was thinking it's an airport Hyatt Place. How good can it be?

Well, let me say, the breakfast is worth the 6,000 points. I was, sorry. Tell us a little bit more. What are some of the things on this buffet that made it so? You know, it was extensive. So, you know how a Hyatt Place usually has, like, I don't know, like three. of those little hot plates that have a, you know, a little ceramic cover on them. Well, this place had probably at least eight or nine different options. So you had fried eggs, you had scrambled eggs,

and not like the instant kind that you get on the U.S. buffet. So had all that stuff, it had all of the breads and spreads that you could want, numerous pastries on the buffet. Obviously, you know, Nutella, because you're in Europe and the cream cheese with chives in it. And I'll publish pictures on the blog. So you can take a look at the post. There'll be a post coming on the blog. So you can see the pictures of what it was. And again, like I said, I'm not saying it's the most elaborate practice I've ever seen. It was not like what I expected from a Hyatt place. That's for sure. Though I will mention, by the way, we booked direct. And I booked one room in my name. I have global status and one room in my wife's name and she has explorer status. I didn't worry about attaching a guest of honor

award because it's a Hyatt place. So I figured everybody books direct gets breakfast. But at check in, they told me that when you book with points, that's not true, at least at this property, that globalists get complimentary breakfast, but others, if they use points, have to pay for breakfast, which after I saw the breakfast, they kind of understand why. But at any rate, they did extend complimentary breakfast to my wife's room also as a courtesy. So, so there you have that. If you don't have globalist status, maybe you're going to have to pay. I don't know. You'll have to check on that. But breakfast was very good. So, and And I wanted to mention it because I figured there's got to be a listener out there that stayed at some Hyatt place that doesn't seem like a Hyatt place that's got a much bigger breakfast.

It was definitely more like a Regency or even some other mid-tier brand breakfast than it was like a Hyatt place. The whole property really was more like that. So anyway, that's my rent. That's my rent on that. So if you're in Amsterdam and you need a night by the airport, stay there. Don't bother with the Sheridan in the airport. Go for the Hyatt Place. It's worth it.

Free shuttle. Okay. All right, good to know. Good to know. All right, my personal points. On a previous episode, I mentioned that I'm using some of my SaaS miles to fly my wife and I to Europe where we're going to Berlin. She has meetings there. And I've set up alerts for coming back home on the Sunday after her meetings. And at some point, and I'm still waiting for something really good. to come up. There's some okay options, but not excited about them. We've got time. We're looking late October for this. And at some point I realized we don't actually have to stay in Berlin for the weekend. So her meetings on the weekdays, we've been to Berlin before. And so, you know, I'm starting to think like, not that, you know, Berlin would be fine. I'm sure there's tons of great stuff to do. It's been quite a while since we've been there. But the same time,

there's like a bazillion or more places in Europe. We haven't been. And so I'm kind of like, where should we go? So I'm going to start by asking Nick, but feel free to write into mailbag at freakymyler.net if you have a better idea. My wife and I have spent a lot of time in Germany in a lot of different towns around Germany. So I've been thinking about other places. Like, while I've been very briefly to Stockholm, I loved it. My wife has not been. So Stockholm is one of the options I was thinking about. Prague. Neither of us have been to Prague, believe it or not. So those are a couple that are kind of top of mind for me. But if there's something like, you've got to go, like you've got to go to the Amsterdam airport and stay.

at that high place. Right. Right. That kind of recommendation. I want to know that. Yeah. Well, you know, so the first thing that comes to mind because you said it is, I mean, if neither of you've been to Prague, you need to fix that situation because Prague is beautiful. It's gorgeous. I would say that it's probably one of the three like favorite cities in the world between my wife and I. It's just, it's so pretty. And I feel like what amazed me about Prague is I felt like every time I came around a corner, I was like, wow, it's. It's beautiful here too. It's not like I just found the beautiful corner.

It just constantly, you know, amazes. So I really love Prague. Now, whether or not that's a great recommendation for you and your wife, I don't know, but I love Prague. So that would be an easy one for me. And it's not very far from Berlin. So that's obviously also, I think, another advantage there. I know that you've been to Copenhagen on one of our challenges, but oh, you've both been to Copenhagen because you've written about Philadelphia.

We have. That would have been a. And actually, that's one we're considering too because we know someone there. It would be so cool if he's available to hang out with him. But, yeah, Prague is, Prague sounding good to me or even better to me when you describe it. Yeah. You know, so that's definitely one. The other thing that, I don't know, again, I don't know if this is a good recommendation for you or not, but I've been really interested.

So years ago, we went to, we went to Lithuania, and we flew into Conis, but we really went to Velno. the capital. And I really enjoyed that trip because I didn't know very much about Lithuania. And I found it really interesting learning about the history of the country visiting. They have a KGB museum. It's dark and it's not necessarily a place that is a happy place to visit. But it was a really interesting look at the history of a place that I just didn't learn much about growing up. So I've been really interested in checking out Riga and, you know, checking out Latvia and Estonia also and seeing, and they have some SLH properties in all three of those cities that look really pretty. And so, so I might think Latvia, Estonia, or Lithuania would be a place that I would be thinking about from Berlin. I don't know if that's what I did.

Yeah, no, those are interesting picks too. We have been to Vilnius, but not to the other places. Okay. Yeah. All right. Good suggestions there. There you go. Readers, chime in.

Chime in with other stuff. Listeners, too. Yes, I'm sorry, listeners. Audience members. I always say that. Default to that, I shouldn't. But okay, very good. So if you're still listening, we'll be right back after this with our main event.

And we're back with today's main event, Hidden Gem Awards. We're going to talk through some of those great uses for points that aren't as widely known as some of the others that are talked about frequently. And we're going to start with a few lodging options and then move into flights. And hopefully you'll find this topic as fascinating as I do. Absolutely. All right. So let's get it right in here with lodging.

So the first one up in lodging is you may remember that Wyndham long had a partnership with Vakasa for vacation rentals. And that was really popular for a while and it ended. And even before it ended, it changed. But one thing you might have forgotten is that Wyndham has long had a partnership with cottages.com. And those properties are still 15,000 Wyndham points per bedroom per night. And they've stayed that way even after Vakasa changed and then eventually went away. So you can transfer from Wells Fargo one to two to Wyndham.

So you could use 7,500 Wells Fargo points per bedroom per night for vacation rentals. Now, cottages.com vacation rentals, I think the only ones that are. eligible for this or the ones in the UK. I don't know if they used to have some properties in Italy and France as well. I don't know if they still have those, but I'm pretty sure this only works on the cottages.com rentals in the UK. Is that right? I'm not sure off the top of my head. I believe that's true. I believe that's true. So anyway, it's worth taking a look. I've looked several times. Stephen Pepper has stayed at, I think, one or two cottages.com properties. Several times now I've considered it and then not ended up booking one of them. But I'm certainly curious to do

that one of these days. So if you have a trip coming up to the UK, that's a hidden gem worth looking at. Yeah. Another one, this is something I think we've talked a lot about on the show. So it probably won't be new to you if you're a regular listener. But for most people, I think this would be a surprise to hear about. Preferred hotels.

Preferred hotels and resorts are bookable with choice points, starting at 20,000 choice points per night. This is something like preferred now preferred hotels not all of them are bookable with choice points, but it's this is an example where preferred hotels has its own points program. And of course you can book some hotels with those points. So I don't consider that a hidden jam and it's not even necessarily that good of a deal anymore. But choice remains a good deal in certain situations. And so the prices range from as low as 20,000 choice points per night to 150,000 choice points per night. But you could transfer from Wells Fargo one to two, just like the Wyndham deal.

So that brings the cost per Wells Fargo point down to 10,000 points per night, up to a maximum of 75,000 points per night. and there's some really nice gems that can be booked through that program. Yeah, I was really excited. We had one booked in Switzerland this summer and we ended up having to change, but it was an Aspen Alpine lifestyle hotel, I think, is what it was called, in like the Grindalde Wald region in Switzerland. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly. But we were really excited about it was 60,000 choice points per night.

Cash rates were $700-ish a night. And so, you know, transferring 30,000 Wells Fargo points for that would have been great. And it looked like a great property in a great area. There were quite a few that we looked at in Switzerland and Austria. There's like a number of ski in, ski out type properties that I think I would be excited about if I were a skier anyway. And that I was excited to visit in the summertime for the, because Switzerland in particular has, and also Austria, I guess. They have a lot of mountain coasters and things like that. and a lot of great places to take kids.

And so I was really looking forward to that. It's worth the look. If you're going to Europe in particular, I found that there's quite a few good-looking preferred hotels with choice points. If you get out of the major cities, if you want to get out into some of those more, I guess, natural areas, I tend to find more of the footprint of preferred hotels starts to become even more appealing because you won't find a Marriott necessarily in those kind of places or a Hyatt

or whatever the case may be. but you might be surprised at some of the preferred hotels out there. So that's a very good one. All right. Next up, we've got Nordic and Scandinavian hotels with Finare Avios. So we've written about this on the blog. You'll find a link to the post in the show notes. But here's the short version of the story.

Finare Avios has some hotel booking options. There's a number of different things in there. But if you look specifically for Scandic hotels, and there's one more that's escaping me right at the moment here, another brand like Scandek Hotels, that you can buy a voucher from thin air avios using a number of avios and a cash copay. Now, whatever it is that they show in the main search page

isn't the best deal. The best deal is to reduce the number of obios to the smallest number of obios possible because you can buy a voucher for 500 obvious and like, I think it's something like 68 euros or something like that. to get a voucher for a free night at a Scandic Hotel. Now, there are a couple of different levels of Scandic hotels, so there's also a premium voucher that I think is 100 euros and 500 obvious. But either way, the value you're going to get for 500 or 1,000 obvious is really good on those. Now,

I say really good. These in general are not the super high end, like $6, $700 or night hotels, but you may very well get a $200 to $300.300 hotel in Scandinavia for 500 avios and $68 euros, which is, again, a great deal for a very small number of ovios. Now, there are a number of other hotels that, individual hotels that participate, particular hotels in Helsinki, for instance. And some of those are an okay deal. Some of them aren't a great deal. But specifically, Scandic, and there's another brand that you'll see in the post that, again,

is escaping my mind at the moment. that offer very good value. And you can transfer, of course, from Capital One or from Rove directly to Finare Avios, or with other programs, you could transfer to something like British Airways or Qatar and then move those Avios to Fin Air. So that's relatively easy to do from all of the transferable currencies, I think, except for U.S. Bank. It's the only one that doesn't transfer to any Avios program right now. And again, you can just easily transfer on from British Airways or Qatar, I would warn you off of Hyperia. British Airways or Qatar, probably be the ones you want to transfer to and then transfer on to Finair. So again, that can be a good deal. A couple things to know about

that. Those vouchers can only be used, I think, for a stay of like six months in advance. So you won't find availability more than six months in advance for the vouchers. And I believe that the terms on the vouchers say they're only valid for weekend nights. I think that's kind of a year mileage may vary type of a situation, but I haven't tested that. But what you can do is on the Finare website, when you go to their hotel partners and you look up like, for instance, the Scandek vouchers, it shows you right on the landing page. You don't have to buy a voucher. On the landing page, it gives you a link to search for availability and a coupon code to use to search to find voucher availability and then you're looking for a hotel that says one voucher instead of a cash

price. So it's not the most intuitive system ever, but it's usable and doable and you can search for availability before you buy a voucher. Yeah. And this is about as hidden of a hidden gem as it gets, right? Like this is not something that people are going to accidentally stumble upon when searching for hotels. No, definitely not. Yeah. Yeah. It's Scandic and Socos hotels. They also have a partnership with a core, but that's not the same. It's not the same thing. It's not worthwhile there. Same thing with most of the other hotel programs. Like the hotel camp or comp, I don't know how you pronounce it in Helsinki, offers vouchers too, but those are pretty expensive. So it's not always a good deal. Scandik and Socos in particular tend to be a pretty good deal compared to the cash prices.

Again, you got to reduce the number of obvious, though, because by default, it shows you like 2,000 obfios or something like that or 5,000. You got to reduce that as low as possible. in order to get the best deal. To get the best deal. Right. Okay. Well, if I end up going to Scandinavia after Berlin, maybe I'll look into this.

There you go. All right. Let's get into flight, hidden gems for award flights. Let's start with Star Alliance flights for 3,500 points. What can you tell us about that, Nick? Yeah, so Air India Maharaja Club is a one-to-one transfer partner from Roe. miles and they have access to Star Alliance Awards. Short distance Star Alliance Awards can be really

inexpensive. So they start at 3,500 miles each way in economy class, 7,000 miles each way in business class for flights that cover 600 miles or less. But then also they go up just a little bit at the next distance spans. I think it's 5,500 for up to 1,000 miles. And then there's a couple other distance spans beyond that as well. So really reasonable prices. I book. one of these. I booked Albany to Chicago for or Chicago to Albany. I don't remember which direction it is for this fall when we're going to be speaking at the Chicago Points Travel Festival. And it was easy. I transferred to Air India, Maharasia Club. The transfer went through relatively instantly. I was able to book. I didn't have any problems booking. So I was really impressed

because it was a terrific value for points for a short distance United Flight or other short distance Star Alliance flights. You know, there are some other programs like Air Canada Aeroplane or Avianca Life Miles that also sometimes offer good deals for short distance flights. And United has some short distance flights for a good deal, but nothing that competes with like 3,500 miles in economy for those really short flights. You'd have a hard time finding a better deal, I think, for the most part, because even if you, well, if you compare against the cash price to fly anywhere, 3,500 miles is going to be a pretty good deal. There was, I think, if I remember correctly, $19 in change in taxes and fees.

So I think it wasn't just the $5.60, but you have to check the post that I wrote for the exact. Still, still. That's a great deal. And at least this thing stand now when we're recording. The only way we know to get these points, as Nick mentioned on the outset, is to transfer from Rove one to one. All right, next up, Air France business class to Europe with no surcharges. So Nick uncovered this a while back when he dug into great uses for Japan Airlines miles. And not only does Japan Airlines, which is a one-world carrier, but not only do they have great award prices in many cases,

but they have partnerships outside of one world, including with Air France, and for whatever reason, they don't pass along any surcharges on flights from North America to Europe. I ran some example searches. So I found partner awards available on Houston to Paris in business class, and booking through Flying Blue. So Air France's own program, they would have wanted for that particular, flight 120,000 miles and $236 in fees. Virgin Atlantic would be a much better deal. You can use Virgin Atlantic miles to book for 77,500 miles and $165 in fees.

Japan Airlines, which has a distance-based award chart, charges only $60,000 miles and $5.60, which, of course, is the standard TSA. charge. That's really remarkable. That's amazing. That's an incredible difference. I'm also surprised that the taxes and fees that you quoted for Flying Blue and Virgin Atlantic, those are less than what I've been seeing out of New York. So I'm surprised. I was surprised too. So I'm not really sure if they suddenly got lower or there's something about that route. I don't know. But certainly as, you know, if you're looking from a place where it's much more expensive or when it goes up, that difference is going to be even more remarkable. You can get those Japan Airlines miles three ways, one-to-one from Built or Rove,

or you could transfer from Capital One, 1,000, Capital One miles become 750 Japan Airlines miles, which, you know, obviously is less than one-to-one. but if you think about the fact that Japan Air Alliance is charging fewer miles anyway, it's still a good deal because you're going to be paying less than surcharges. Like you may be paying the same number of Capital One miles as if you transfer to Virgin Atlantic. But anyway, so yeah, you'll pay less in cash. So that's a great deal. Oh, it is a fantastic deal.

And it's worth mentioning that Capital One has offered a transfer bonus to Japan Airlines a couple few times now, I think, that's made it almost one to one, not quite, but close to one to one. So it's worth keeping an eye out in case that comes back again because it seems like it's fairly likely that it will again. But yeah, I mean, the difference, especially as a family traveler, for four people, you know, the surcharges on Air France have just made it not very appealing for me. Because, you know, even this flight, you're looking at $1,000 in taxes and fees if I booked through Flying Blue.

And everything I've looked at out of New York lately has been like $350 one way in taxes and fees. So, you know, $5.60. That makes a big difference right there. Even if it were the same 120,000 miles, the savings there would be massive for a family of four, in my case. And then to also pay many fewer miles. That's just a really good hidden gem. Right. Right.

All right. The next one, it's very similar. But it's not going to erase all surcharges. But you're going to get them lower. This is about flying British Airways, business. or first class, but with low surcharges. So British Airways is infamous for having huge surcharges on their premium cabin flights. It's common for business class or first class to, you'll be charged over $1,000 in fees.

And in most cases, even if you book with partner miles, those surcharges are passers. along as well. But there's wild variability in how much those surcharges are from partner to partner. And two of the best partners that I know of are, again, Japan Airlines, but also Cathay Pacific Asia Miles are two really good ones for reducing the surcharges on British Airways flights. I'm going to give a couple examples this time. So first example, Boston to London and business class. Japan Airlines, only 42,000 miles for that flight, and $219 in surcharges. Okay.

Wow. Cathay Asia miles, 63,000 points, which is still a good deal for business class to Europe, and $235,000. All right. So how does that compare to other things? British Airways itself is probably the next best for charging not too much in fees because they give you options for how you can pay more points and less in fees. So the best deal I saw from British Airways for this was $99,000 and about $500 in fees. So, yeah.

So you're more than double Japan Airlines on both the points and the fees. Right. On both counts. You're more than double. And that's like the next best deal you're saying. Or maybe. Yeah. Although American Airlines comes in close, it depends.

American Airlines only charges $57,500 miles and $7333 in fees. So fees are going up. Yeah. Yeah, $500 more in fees and more miles than Japan Airlines and just a few less miles than Cathay Pacific. Not enough of the savings to justify an additional $500 in Texas. No, definitely not. Right, right. All right.

All right. Alaska, you can cut the mileage down to 45,000 miles. So that's getting into the Japan Airlines territory. Right. But Alaska wants $1,000 in fees. $1,000. $1,000 in fees versus $219. Yeah.

And then if you look at some of the other partners, Qatar, Qantas, you're looking at almost $1,500 in fees with them. I don't understand why the fees varies so much. It doesn't make any sense to me. But it's absolutely bonkers. So the cool thing about British Airways is that they have so many flights across the to London that, well, mostly to London, that there's often a decent amount of award space and but it's often depressing because you see the word space and then you see $1,000 in fees and you're like, oh, forget that. Well, here's a way to help with that. Yeah. Yeah, I've booked

via Cathay Pacific Asia miles before for the $230 or whatever in fees because that's a pretty good deal. with Japan Airlines even better. I mean, that's, again, if you've got the miles that transfer to Japan Airlines, that's pretty compelling if you want to go to London anyway. That's great from the East Coast, but what else you got for me, Craig? Yeah. So let's look at from the West Coast. So I've got an example from L.A. to London in business class again.

Japan Airlines, 60,000 points and $390. So the surcharges do go up. It's still, I guess, an unpleasant amount of surcharges, but 60,000 points from the West Coast, U.S. is a phenomenal points deal. Cathay Pacific, 93,000 miles plus $415. So that's $25 more than JAL, but a lot more miles. So British Airways for this flight would charge 99,000 Auvios, which is just 6,000 more than Cathay Pacific and $395 in fees. So that's what $20 less than Cathay Pacific charges and right about the same as what

Japan Airlines charges in fees. So those are your three options from the West Coast. Compare that to American Airlines, which would charge 57,500 miles and $734 in fees. Alaska, which would charge $70,000 miles and $1,000 in fees. And then some others like Katar and Qantas that would charge, again, almost $1,400. So $1,454 in fees. Yeah. Wow.

Wow. All right. So again, Japan Airlines looks like your best bet. Cathay Pacific. If you don't have access to Japan Airlines miles, Japan Airlines, again, one-to-one transfer partner from Built, one-to-one transfer partner from Rove Miles. So if you've got built points or you've got Rove miles, easy one-to-one transfers, Capital One, again, it's that thousand to seven-fifty, which can still be a good deal, as Greg pointed out. Though the flip side of that is you could transfer to Cathay Pacific from City, Capital One, Wells Fargo, built, or Rove one-to-one.

So that's a little bit more accessible in terms of the number of programs from which you can transfer. And, of course, then you can combine forces if you have some points here and some points there, you can put them together and potentially have enough Cathay-Pacific miles. But either way, booking British Airways flight is going to be a better deal via Cathay-Pacific or Japan Airlines in at least a lot of cases, maybe most cases. Yeah, yeah. So it's a great thing to know about. And this Japan Airlines stuff, hopefully they won't devalue the reward chart anytime soon. But as things stand right now, there's some just amazing deals. And it's so awesome that they're not passing along as much in surcharges as some other programs do.

That's right. That's right. All right. Next up, we've got Royal Air Morocco from the U.S. to Morocco, if you want to go to Morocco, from 17,500 miles in economy or 50,500 miles in business with Finair Avios. This is one I've never heard of. Greg, what's up here? Yeah. So, Finair has award charts by partner. So you have to go through their award charts like partner by partner. And I did that a while back. I think I did it in preparation for one of our. team challenges. I wanted to get to know the word chart to see if there's any good deals. And I found this U.S. to Morocco deal, which really stood out as like a really good use of Fin Air Avios. I didn't get to use it in the challenge. And then I forgot to write about our talk about it. So here it is now. It's, you know, a very, very specific use case because I don't even think they have that many flights on Rail Air Marraiser. from the U.S. to Morocco, but to the extent they do, being able to get their, you know, in economy for only 17,500 points, that's a great deal. And 50,500 in business classes is an

excellent deal as well. You can get those Finneravios, oh, we talked about before, transfer directly from Capital One or Rove, or transfer from almost any other program to either British Airways or Qatar Avios. And then, move the points to Finair. U.S. Bank is the one that we can think of that does not support transfer Stavius. Yeah, Royal Air Marac, as I recall, flies out of New York City. Well, I know they fly out of JFK. I believe, at least they used to fly out of Washington, Dulles and Miami as well.

So you get a couple of options. Something that comes to mind when you talk about like the 17,500 in economy, it certainly is a very good deal. keep in mind that Air France Flying Blue considers Morocco to be part of Europe. So when they run Flying Blue Promor Awards, you can also fly Air France to Morocco for 18,750 flying Blue miles. So then my question becomes, well, do you know what the taxes and surcharges are when booking Royal Air Marac through Fin Air? I do not. Yeah, that could be a deal breaker if it's very high. I don't know. Or it could make it a standout value versus even the Flying Blue promo rewards if it's quite, low. So that's worth checking into if you're interested in flying to Morocco. All right. Next up, we got using Virgin Atlantic miles to fly around Europe and Northern Africa, starting at 4,000 miles one way. Now, you've written extensively about this, and you've found some great ways to flex this one. Yeah. This is kind of like that Finare thing. Virgin Atlantic has

specific award charts for different partners. And they have this. specific one that's for Air France and KLM only. So if you're flying one of those two airlines using Virgin Atlantic miles, they have this short haul award chart. But short haul goes up to almost 1,800 miles. And the shortest of the short hauls is flights that are less than 600 miles. And that's where they have the award chart for flights that short are start at 4,000 miles off peak in economy or peak 4,500 miles, so not that different. And then business class is 8,000 or 9,000 miles, depending on whether it's off peak or peak or peak. Prices, of course, go up with longer distances. But one of the most remarkable things about this award chart is that it is specifically, the distances are specifically measured from your starting point to your endpoint, not segment by segment distances.

And that's different from every other award chart I could find on Virgin Atlantic's website. And what it means is if you fly from, you know, northern Africa to southern Spain, for example, let's say on Air France, so you're flying through Paris and then back to, so you're flying all the way north to Paris and then all the way back south to southern Spain, that whole thing might price at that lowest band if the distance between your starting airport and ending airport. report is 600 miles or less. And of course, there's not a lot of opportunities to cross Africa and Europe in that way for that cheaply, but there are a lot of opportunities within Europe to go from one city to another via Paris or Amsterdam and to keep into the lowest ban because you're ending up within 600 miles of your starting point. Yeah, yeah.

that's a great deal to kind of a great little hack. I love that little hack. But I also think it's worth calling out here that these can be a great deal even if you're just looking to get to like Paris or Amsterdam from somewhere that's not too far away. Not only because obviously it's not very many miles. I just flew one of these though a few days ago. I flew from a week ago or whatever, Bill and to Amsterdam. So Bill in Denmark to Amsterdam for it was 4,500 miles each. But what's notable here is that you're not comparing against a basic fare on KLM or a light fare. You're comparing against a standard fair because it included a checked bag. It didn't include seat selection, but it included a check bag. It included a carry on. And on those routes within Europe these days, a lot of times,

like those cheap prices you might see when you go to Google flights don't include all that stuff. So you really have to compare against a higher fare because it does save you more than what it might look like if you just look up one of those prices and you're like, oh, it's not a great sense per point. Yeah, it might be when you compare against the standard fare if you need those other things. Yeah, yeah. So if you're looking for a cheap way to get to Amsterdam to go to that Hyatt Place and get that breakfast that Nick talked about earlier, here's your answer. That's how we did it. That's how we did it.

So you need Virgin Atlantic Miles to do that, which is super easy because every single transferable points program, except for U.S. Bank, supports one-to-one transfers to either Virgin Atlantic or Virgin Red, which is really the same thing. So as long as you have Virgin Red or Virgin Atlantic points, you have the points you need to book these awards. Absolutely. Very good. All right. Next up, we've got North America to Europe for 90 points. No, that's not a, I would say typo, but is it a speako when you say it out loud? It's not a mistake. It's 90 points is the bottom line via Lufthansa, Miles, and Moore. So the cheapest economy class awards start at 90 points. And I think $414.

Is that what you found recently? Yeah, at least on some examples I looked at, yeah? Yeah. So I know that a few months ago I was looking at these and they were 88 points. So apparently they've gone up by a couple percentage points. Ouch. Big deval. 90 points.

But, you know, the taxes and fees here make it so that it's not like as wild as it sounds when you hear 90 points because Lufthansa does have high surcharges on their awards. So an economy class award for 90 points and, and let's say, $414 might not be a terrific deal depending on where you're flying from and when. So you'll have to compare a little bit and take a look around and see, well, is that a good deal versus a cash fare? But I'm sure that in some situations, particularly for close-in flights when prices are really high, you're going to get a pretty good deal at 90 points in taxes and fees, especially if you're not flying out of like New York or Boston, where there tend to be cheap cash fares to Europe, other cities can be significantly more expensive. So that can be a good deal. But is it 90 points in the other direction? No, it's much more expensive.

102 points is the least I could find from Europe to North America. So, out, right? You've been scrimping in. saving and you got up to 100 points and now you can't you can't afford to fly home. Need a couple more points. Got to fight two more points. Yeah. So so obviously not very many points required. Business class now requires like a real number of points though, right? Yeah. So so business class at least at this moment when I looked it up, I'm seeing business

class flight starting at around 49,000 points, which is good. but and 33,000 in the other direction from Europe to the North America, which is very good, but, and this is a really big butt, you're looking at about $1,000 in fees on each of those. And so I, you know, I'm not seeing the business class as a real sweet spot here. I'd rather pay some more miles with another program and have far less in surcharges. I will point out, I forgot to mention, flying home from Europe in economy, the fees are around the same. $405 is what I was saying. So that's surprising because often surcharges are higher in that direction, but not in this case.

Yeah. So you can transfer one to Lufthansa Miles and more from Rove Miles. Rove Miles, I think, is the only major transferable currency that transfers to Lufthansa Miles and more. But you do have to be aware if you got excited about those 90 points. or 100 point economy class flights between the United States and Europe, you have to keep in mind that the minimum transfer from Roe to Lufthansa is 2,000 miles. Then after 2000, you can transfer in increments of 100, but you do need to transfer at least 2,000. So you're not going to be able to transfer just 200 points to get a round trip ticket in this case, unfortunately.

Oh, that's that's 10 round trips right there. That is. Potentially. Potentially. Yes, it sure could be. So yeah, I mean, it's worth keeping in mind anyway. Also, you know, there are others of these sort of things. When I first heard about these cheap flights, like I said, they were 88 points for a while. When I first heard about that, I got looking at other regions. And at the time, I haven't looked recently, but at the time, there were some flights from Europe to Asia that were, I think, about 275 points plus the taxes and fees. Now, I don't know how many of those

still exist. Or if any of them do, some of them are a little bit. bit more. And it's worth keeping my Lufthansa sometimes offers promotions to earn miles in other ways. So a couple of years ago now, maybe they offered a big bonus on booking hotels through booking.com. I think Tim picked up a bunch of miles because it was something like 30 miles per dollar spent or something of that sort. It was a huge bonus if you had booked hotels through booking.com. So now and then there are opportunities like that. I bought a suitcase from the Lufthansa World Shop in Frankfurt last year and I earned Lufthansa Molde. miles and more miles that way. So there are some other ways to pick up Lufthansa miles, but there are no other ways to transfer to Lufthansa miles and more Rove Miles is the only show in town

for that. Yeah, yeah. And one thing I noticed that as I've been searching for actually flights home from Berlin was that the award availability on Lufthansa itself using these miles is great. And so even when, so you may be tempted sometimes. If you were thinking about, you know, paying a cash fare to fly home, it might have cost over $1,000. But, you know, an option is to spend miles plus about $1,000 with the fees to fly business class. You know, so depending on your situation, it might make sense. And so it's like one of the things that I kind of just kind of keep in my back pocket is like, yeah, if I'm really stuck, I can do that. Yeah, yeah.

I think it's a really good one to keep in the back pocket because there are potentially some really solid values to be had there. So worth keeping that one in mind. All right. Last but not least, we've got Delta short haul flights from just 5,000 Air France KLM flying blue miles. Economy Class Awards on Delta started just. 5,000 miles one way when booked through Air France, KLM, flying blue. And it goes up kind of in a pretty slow increment. So I know very short flights. I don't know exactly what the distance is, but very short flights cost just 5,000 miles when booked in advance and I think $18 in taxes and

fees. I've looked a couple of times. And even though it's a, it's only about three hours for me to fly or rather to drive to New York City. But there have been times where I've considered, I've been tempted to fly from Albany, New York, to, LaGuardia because it's 5,000 miles and 18 bucks. It's cheaper than any other way. I mean, I'm going to pay more in tolls than $18 to get there. So I've thought about it before. I haven't actually booked that one. But other other opportunities, sometimes, you know, slightly longer distances, like 6,500 miles, maybe 7,500 miles. The distance spans seem to be, uh, it seemed to be, uh, seem to increase in slow increments. So that's nice. Uh, of course, it's nice. You can transfer from just

about any transferable currency to Air France, KLM Flying Blue, even U.S. Bank. So you got lots of options to earn those miles. Something to know about this is that Delta seems to only release availability of partners 21 days in advance or more. So if you're looking to book a close in flight, I don't think you're going to find that through Air France, KLM, Flying Blue. It needs to be at least 21 days in advance. Also note that these don't always show up properly in award search tools.

There's times where various award search tools will just miss these flights. So I just manually go to Air France now and then when I'm searching a route where I think Delta could have space available. Or if I see Delta space available to Virgin Atlantic, then I'll just go to the Air France website and search to see if it's available there. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That's what I'll do. If I see Virgin Atlantic available, then you know it's probably bookable through Air France as well. The one downside to booking this way is that if you want to make a change or cancel, there's a 70 euro fee per passenger, which is probably more than those points are worth. So, you know, or about the same, you know, so it's, think of it as, kind of like non-refundable ticket.

So that's, that's one downside to it. Virgin Atlantic is much more reasonable. You just lose the taxes and fees, which are usually $5.60.60 with Virgin Atlantic. If you cancel and you do get your points back. But Virgin Atlantic charges more. At the shortest distance span, it's not much more. It's 7,500 points with Virgin Atlantic versus 5,000 points. So it's still 50% higher, but it doesn't sound like that much.

Yeah. But it starts, the difference starts increasing as you go to longer distances. So it's, you know what, this particular Hidden Jam Award is one of the things that kind of, one of the many things that make me interested in Flying Blue Platinum status, which we talked about last week. Because Flying Blue Platinum status gives you free award changes in cancellations. and so suddenly these, you know, when these are available to fly Delta, I would book them all the time and then just, you know, cancel if it turned out. I couldn't use them, whatever. But until then, I have to make that calculation.

Like, is this one, there's a decent chance I'm going to cancel? I'm going to use Virgin Atlantic Miles then. Or if it's very high chance, I'm going to make changes or whatever, then I'll probably book with Delta. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today and you'd like to get more of this in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. Join our Frequent Myler Insiders Facebook group.

And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this or give it a thumbs up. If you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for our giant mail, You can send that to Send it to Mailbag at Frequentmiler.com