Frequent Miler on the Air - Points for family travel | Ep174 | 10-29-22

Episode Date: October 29, 2022

Wondering how to leverage points, miles, and credit card benefits for a family of four or more? This week, we discuss how to enhance your family award travel. 1:30 Giant Mailbag https://frequentmiler.com/frequent-milers-next-challenge-what-should-it-be/ 6:06 What crazy thing.......did Frontier do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/frontier-gowild-all-you-can-fly-pass-coming-soon-take-unlimited-flights-for-12-months/ 12:44 Awards we booked this week https://frequentmiler.com/free-royal-caribbean-cruise-match-offer-kids-sail-free-stack-parlay-that-carnival-offer/ 18:51 Points for family travel https://frequentmiler.com/business-class-for-4-or-more-finding-multiple-seats-for-family-award-travel/ 19:25 Lap infant tickets https://frequentmiler.com/lap-infant-award-tickets-for-less-new-aeroplan-fee-is-25-cad-or-2500-miles-all-classes-of-service-partners/ 24:31 Award availability for families 28:18 Flexible stopover 32:30 Companion Tickets https://frequentmiler.com/travel-companion-tickets/ 39:03 Vacation packages https://frequentmiler.com/booking-a-flight-its-worth-checking-vacation-packages/ 42:00 Lodging - Vacation rentals (Vacasa) https://frequentmiler.com/wyndham-vacasa/ 47:42 Airbnb 51:27 Hyatt suite awards https://frequentmiler.com/finding-extreme-luxury-in-hyatt-premium-suites/ https://frequentmiler.com/my-misadventures-with-a-hyatt-premium-suite-award/ 54:00 All-suite brands 57:38 All-inclusive resorts 1:02:25 Choice Privileges 1:03:46 Rental Cars (National Executive) 1:05:12 Corporate codes 1:08:37 Airport lounges 1:11:57 Question of the Week Join our email list: FrequentMiler.com/Subscribe Music by Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, points for family travel. We're going to talk about how to use points and credit card perks to

cheapify or enhance family travel. Thank goodness we got a young dad on this podcast. That's right. You're a dad anyway. Right, right. At least part of that's true. You've probably aged quite a bit since having two kids, I guess, as well. I feel older every morning. Yes. But that was an inside joke for those who are longtime listeners from a comment from a reader on one of the podcasts that said something about how they enjoy our show. It's an elderly guy and a young dad. So I'm glorified in my young dadness, or I am at least basking in the glory of that

perception for a few minutes today as we talk about family travel. Right. And I'm very happy to take the mantle of elderly guy. That's totally fine. And from the perspective of someone in their, I don't know, 20s, let's say, more than double. So, I'm making my way towards triple, you know, about five years or so. So anyway, let's get into the giant mailbag. Today's giant mail comes in response to a post I wrote, what will be last week for you when you're listening to this, which was, I asked people to chime in with their ideas for the next Frequent Miler Challenge.

As you know, we've done various challenges over the years where we've pushed ourselves to do the most from points and miles. Our most recent one was the Three Cards, Three Continents Challenge, where we each had three credit card signup bonuses to work with and had to go to three continents. And as I did after the 40K to Far Away challenge a few years before that, I asked readers for suggestions and we got lots of fantastic suggestions. The number one theme that keeps popping up is make it about family travel. So rather than reading a specific piece of feedback you know, feedback or mail in this giant mailbag segment, I just want to say that what people want to see is us doing something with, you know, booking travel for, let's say, four people at a time, that kind of thing. So I thought that was spot on for the theme of this overall show.

But I also do want to read a particular comment, not because this one doesn't really have to do with family travel at all. I just, the other common theme, both in my post and some readers, is that they want some way to include readers in the contest, in the challenge. And I would like that too. And it's logistically difficult. Many of the ideas we've had have been logistically difficult to do. But Brian G came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea. His idea was this. My idea would be to have fixed time date checkpoints in a few of the best lounges in the world, those that have strict entry requirements. Examples might be the Cutter First Class Lounge in Doha, the Lufthansa First

Class Terminal in Frankfurt, etc. The checkpoint locations and times would be given to the contestants before readers so that they have the best chance of finding award flights that will give them access, them being the contestants. Readers would be welcome to join. It would probably be a small group of readers that can join, making the interaction more meaningful. So I just thought this was kind of a brilliant idea or sort of a framework to go by because I actually like the idea of getting into these difficult to get into lounges as Nick did in the most recent contest.

But and the idea of trying to get us there at the same time, that's a really cool idea. But really, this idea of how to allow readers to join could be pretty general. Like after we book our trips, if we know we're going to be at certain places at certain times, there's no reason we couldn't publicize some of those dates, times, places and say, hey, if you can make it here, fantastic. We'd love to meet up and then we could do some kind of informal get together, basically. Frequent miler on the go, so to speak. On the go. Oh, I like it.

Frequent miler on the go. We record a little show. Now, yeah, I think that's actually a really good idea. I saw that and I liked it, too. I thought that's a great way to incorporate people because like Greg said, we've talked about, believe me, behind the scenes, we've through the details and figure it out, it's more challenging than it seems like it would be or would require even more time than what we, you know, already pour into it. So that was, I thought, a really good idea that balances out both being able to get people involved and also is manageable. So I like that idea too. I liked a lot of the ideas. I mean, there were some really good suggestions. If you looked at that post, I don't know, the last I looked at it last night, it had like 85 comments.

And I think two or three were ones I responded to. But apart from that, it was all readers, the entire comment section. So there's lots and lots and lots of good suggestions in there. It's kind of fun to read through. If you like this kind of thing and enjoyed the challenge, you might read through it and be like, ooh, this is cool. And that's a great idea. So, so, and of course it's still open for more comments. So go find the post and contribute

your own ideas. We're going to be, when we get ready to actually define the challenge, we're going to be going back to that post, reread all the comments and decide as a team, which to do. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. All right. So my friends, that brings us to what crazy thing did Frontier Airlines do this week? Frontier, they're going wild. They're going wild and crazy. That's what they say, don't they? Go wild. Go wild with Frontier. So what's the deal this week with Frontier? Well, nobody knows. That's the crazy thing. Nobody what's the deal this week with Frontier? Well, nobody knows. That's the crazy thing.

Nobody knows what the deal is. Frontier announced this week that they are going to sell a one-year pass to fly as much as you want on Frontier Airlines. So unlimited flights, unlimited-ish flights on Frontier Airlines for a year for one set price. But you have to be a member of the loyalty program. So you have to join the Frontier Miles program in order to, well, in order to get first dibs, first crack at this annual pass.

That's crazy right there. We have to join Frontier's loyalty thing? Yeah, you do. Which I mean, it's free to join Frontier Miles. So it's not crazy at all. It's pretty easy to do. And it makes sense. If you're going to want to get this, which nobody yet knows, I'll come back's free to join Frontier Miles. That's not crazy at all. It's pretty easy to do, and it makes sense. If you're going to want to get this, which nobody yet knows, I'll come back to that in a second.

But if you're going to want to get this, you're going to probably need to join Frontier Miles because if it's any sort of a deal, it will sell out shortly, very soon after it's released. So you'll need to be a member in order to find out what the deal is. Now, there are some hints in the announcement as to what the deal is or at least what it is not. It mentioned in there one thing that stood out to me was that it said you'll be able to fly for a year on 300 plus dates. So that tells me that there's probably going to be at least two months of blackout dates. And I'm sure those are going to be around peak periods like Christmas, know, Christmas, New Year's, you know, the Thanksgiving, the times when people want to travel the most. So probably those really popular dates will be blacked out, though. 300 days does still cover a lot of the year.

So plenty of times you can travel. Steven Pepper pointed out a number of other sort of little hints in there. There was something about how flights will be confirmed in advance. And I think if I read it correctly, it said like a day in advance or something. So I think that maybe my guess, and this is just a guess reading between the lines, so that's all we can do so far, is that maybe your reservation won't be confirmed until late in the game. So you may need to have the flexibility to travel like, you know, to only know a day

in advance, though maybe I misread that or am not reading correctly into it. There was a similar thing years ago. Some people may remember JetBlue ran an all-you-can-jet promotion. This was in 2010 and 2011, if I remember correctly. And JetBlue's version was pay one price, and you flew the entire month of September that year as much as you wanted to all of their destinations. You just pay the taxes on the flights. And that'll be the same with Frontier that you'll pay the taxes on the flights for sure. And so JetBlue, when they ran it, it was $600 for

a month. And that was more than a decade ago. So I have no idea what Frontier will charge for a year. Of course, obviously, they're a low cost carrier. So flight alone does not cover your bags and all those other things that you might need on Frontier. So we don't know exactly what that's all going to look like in terms of the additional charges. The other thing that Stephen pointed out is it says you'll have access to all of their destinations. Doesn't mention that you'll actually be able to book all of their routes.

So, you know, he points out that maybe you'll only be able to fly certain specific routes. So a lot of question marks. We only be able to fly certain specific routes. So a lot of question marks. We don't know what's going on yet. All we know is they think that we want to fly on them. That's what they think. So how much would you pay? Let's say it's not too restrictive and that it really is pretty much unlimited and you can get confirmed in a reasonable amount of time. How much would you pay for that? Me, not very much because I have an airport that's got like one frontier flight and I don't

even know if it's daily. So I wouldn't get too far into this. But if you live in an airport that's reasonably served by frontier, how much would I pay for a year? I mean, because I have the flexible type of job where I can come with me and I can do it from a Hyatt place somewhere, whatever the case may be, I would probably be willing to pay, I don't know, I mean, let's say, well, at least the $500 or $600, but I can't imagine going $1,000 a passenger, which is probably more realistically what they would want. I figure $ imagine going $1,000 a passenger, which is probably more realistically what they would want. I figure five or 600 bucks, that's like 10 flights probably, right?

I mean, if you divide it by 10, that's $60 a flight. That's probably a common price on Frontier's route. So you'd have to fly quite a bit to make it worth it. And you gotta pay for your bags. I'm suddenly convincing myself that I don't really think I'm interested no matter what. I don't know what the price point is where I'd want to do it.

For me, I think I'd pay three or $400 to not have to fly Frontier for a year. So that gives you an idea how much I would pay. You'd get a bad deal because I haven't paid that and I haven't had to fly Frontier. You can get it for free can't you get it i was curious i looked at flight connections to see where um which airports most of the frontier flights fly out of i knew denver was a major hub for them and it is but i was surprised by some of the others that showed up having tons of flights like philadelphia atlanta orlando um yeah those are the ones i remember off the top of my head. So yeah, so if you're in those areas, and you don't mind flying frontier might be very well worth doing.

Yeah, I mean, we ran into Sean Comer from miles to memories just recently. And he mentioned he was flying frontier and he says he was the other one. He's totally happy. Yeah, because Vegas is another hub for them. So I mean, certainly if you live in or like to travel to one of those places like Vegas or Orlando, I know there are people that love both of those destinations and would probably happily go being appealing at the right price point. But where that right price point is, is really hard to pick since Frontier flights are often so cheap. And really, what's going to cost you is all of the extras, which it's still going to cost you for all the extras, probably. So we'll see. I don't know. Long story short, I don't know. But I'm going to keep my eye on it. I'm going to get everybody in my family signed up for Frontier Miles because maybe they'll shock me and make it something that I really want. So and maybe I'll check my airport on flight connections and find, oh, wow, now Frontier

has all sorts of flights that they added during the pandemic that I didn't know about. Probably not, but you never know. All right. So that was the crazy thing. Crazy thing is we spent all that much time talking about Frontier. Next up is awards. We booked this week and I don't think you have anything you booked this week, right? So I have something that's not an award, but it's sort of free travel. So it's connected anyway. And I said

sort of free travel because it's free in quotation marks. So I wrote a while back about my experience with carnival with, again, quote, free cruise offer. And I had gotten that cruise offer because I had Wyndham Diamond status, which I had matched to Caesars Diamond. And then I matched around to some other casino statuses. And Carnival offers a match program where you can match your land-based casino status to Carnival, and they'll potentially give you a free balcony cruise for two. There'll be a link in the show notes, or you can Google Frequent Miler Status Cruising

for that post that I wrote last year, and I recently went on that cruise this fall. Then in the comments on that post just recently, that post that I wrote originally about a year ago, in the comments on that post, somebody just in the last couple of weeks here posted a link to a Royal Caribbean match. So Royal Caribbean is offering a match where you can submit an offer you have from a competing cruise line or a land-based casino

status. Not going to want to do that. I'll come back to it in a second. A competing cruise line offer you can submit and potentially get a free cruise from Royal Caribbean. So wrote a post about that this week that I published, I hope anyway, by the time you're listening to this. And so what we did was we took the carnival free balcony status or the free balcony cruise offer and took a screenshot and sent that over to Royal Caribbean and Royal Caribbean sent us an offer for a free balcony on one of their cruises. Now the limit here is a five night cruise at max, and they have a specific

list of the cruises and dates that you can book through the end of next March. So I'm confused. Is it a free cruise or is it a free balcony? You have to pay for the cruise and you get a free balcony? No, I'm sorry. A free balcony room on the cruise to be clear. A free balcony room. Okay. So it's a sorry. A free balcony room on the cruise, to be clear. A free balcony room. So it's a whole cruise with a balcony room. It's a whole cruise with a balcony room. You get the whole kit and caboodle with a balcony room. It's not really free though. You have to pay the taxes. So you will still have to do that. And we did book one. So by the time this publishes anyway, we'll have booked one of them because I've already looked into it and had a friend who

booked one. So I know what to expect. So the taxes, depending on itinerary, are going to run somewhere in the $400 to $500 range for a family of four. If you're only two people, it's going to be less. And the reason I mentioned this now is because maybe if you're lucky and you're able to submit this right away and get the match in, you may get it in in time to be able to book while the deal is a little bit better yet, because through October 31st, Royal Caribbean has this kid sale free promotion going on. And so if you get the free room offer from Royal Caribbean by submitting a screenshot of your carnival offer that hopefully you already have sitting around because you did that a long time ago. Right. So you submit that to Royal Caribbean. They give you the free balcony room offer, which is good for double occupancy.

But if you book it before October 31st, then kids sell for free. So you get the kids for free. You will pay the taxes for them still and surely the gratuities, but you won't have to pay anything additional. Whereas on my Carnival cruise, I did have to pay a little extra for the kids.

So that can save you a little bit of money. And there's a whole bunch of itineraries. We ended up landing on one that just worked during a school break time. Uh, but you'll have to take a look at the different ones. One of them was a really expensive one, by the way, if you're interested in cruising around, uh, Christmas time, there's one just the week before Christmas that was on the list. At least when I received the list, Southern Caribbean five night cruise goes to like five different ports of call. There's no sea days. And when I looked up a balcony on that specific cruise right now, it's like over four grand for a balcony on that cruise. I assume because of the time of year that the cruise is, but also it's got some cool stops, goes out of San Juan and you could book that for like the $400

in taxes for a family of four. So pretty good deal. So check that out. Actually, I forgot that I great. And actually I forgot that I do have a, um, award I booked this week to talk about as well. So if you're all done with that one. Um, so I, we stayed at the, uh, Hyatt lodge Oakbrook village, and that's a category two Hyatt. This is near Chicago is a category two Hy two Hyatt. So regular rooms go for about 8,000 points per night. I say about because it depends on whether it's price peak or off peak, but regular suites are in the neighborhood of 13,000 points per night, something like that. So it's less than double, but what you get in a regular suite is essentially two connected rooms, both with their own bathroom.

And so I wanted to point this out because since our whole topic today is about family travel, that's a great way to get a second room, second bathroom when you're traveling with kids. The second room is not set up as a bedroom. It's set up as a living room with a sleeper sofa. So as long as the kids are okay with that, or you could bring in cots or whatever, it should work out great. So yeah, I love it when you could use a Hyatt free night, free suite night award and get two whole rooms out of the deal. Yeah, no, that is a great deal. It's nice. You know, we, we were meeting in there. So we had a great room for a meeting and also, you know, a bathroom just for the meeting. So it wasn't like we all had to use Greg's bathroom kind of a thing. So it was a really

good setting for that for, you know, if you need that type of thing, but definitely for family travel. Oh my goodness. That would be a, you know, a nice way to do it much better. I hate when, when they label something as sweet and it's just a large room, like, you know, with a couch over in the corner, drives me crazy when it's two rooms like that. It's perfect. You can close the door, not have to worry about waking anybody up. So I think that's a nice use of one. And not to mention that property is just a cool property, right? I mean, it's, it really is. It was out in the middle of nowhere, but it's really pretty. Yeah. Yeah. Especially in the fall, which was now when we went. Right. All right.

All right. So that brings us to the main event. Main event. Welcome to the main event. Points for family travel. There we go. There we go. I was going to say, I couldn't remember the title we chose. Points for family travel. So let's talk about all of the various things you can do to save money when you're traveling with a family, right? Yeah. So we have the ideas categorized by flights, lodging, rental cars, and airport lounges. Because

when you're in an airport, it'd be great to be able to get the kids into the lounge with you without having to pay more. So let's start with flights. One of the things you've written a bit about in the past is lap infant policies by airline, right? What would you recommend there? Well, domestically, lap infants are free and it doesn't matter what program you've booked an award through if you've booked an award flight. So even if you book through a foreign carrier and they try to tell you that you have to pay for a lap infant, just ignore whatever they're saying and just go to the airport a little early. Be prepared to take a little time because, for instance, if you book a United flight through Turkish, it might take them a little while

to figure out how to add the lap infant, but I've done it plenty of times and it can be done. It just might take a little extra time with the agent. But if you're booking a paid flight or an award flight, simple like an American flight with American miles or United flight with United miles or a cash ticket, again, domestically within the United States, there's no fee for a lap infant. Does that include Spirit? I mean, Spirit charges extra for carry-on bags, so they don't charge extra for carry-on kids. They don't charge extra for carry-on kids. No, they don't. And most of the domestic airlines, and maybe there's a law or rule about this, but my recollection anyway, is that a car seat will fly for free, stroller will fly for free.

So you can check those things and they don't count against check baggage allowance and Spirit will check them for free. So even the low cost carriers, you can check those things for free. And so, so, so idea for, for any entrepreneurs out there, a luggage that's shaped like a car seat would be really handy. Well, I mean, and, and that's a good tip for somebody who's a new parent out there. If you're not familiar, if you're going to bring a car seat with you, you want to get a car seat bag for it, both a, because they're going to handle it rough and you don't want the thing thrown all over the place and stuff getting ripped, but B because you can stuff a lot of stuff inside that car seat bag. So, you know, diapers and all sorts of stuff in there. There's

plenty of room that you can use that as an extra check bag and, you know, save some money on an airline like spirit. I've done it. And, you know, definitely something I would recommend because you're going to bring way too much the first couple of times. So you may as well not have to pay extra for it. So, OK, car seat, stroller free. If you're breastfeeding, breast pump is considered a medical device. So that does not count against your carry on allowance again, even on spirit. So that's a good tip to know anyway, if you're traveling and you can bring breast milk through security. So that's something I bring up again, because if you're a new parent, that's a question we have. We're like, I don't know how this stuff works.

So good to know those things. Now, lap infant friendly airlines. So again, domestically, no fee. Internationally, usually most airlines will charge you 10% of the revenue fare. And so that's 10% of a paid ticket fare. And how they calculate that is sometimes really weird. So sometimes it'll be a lot more than you expect. And international like business and first class paid tickets, especially one way tickets can be really expensive. So you know, you can be paying 10% of a five or

six or eight or 10 or $20,000 fare pretty easily with some of the things that we typically take for granted booking with miles. And you know, personally, I don't want to pay $2,000 fare pretty easily with some of the things that we typically take for granted booking with miles. And, you know, personally, I don't want to pay $2,000 for the honor of having an infant sit on my lap for a few hours. So, so if you don't want to do that, you want to book through the right airlines. So what are the right airlines? Air Canada is the best. So if you're going to book a lap infant ticket, look at using the aeropl award chart because a lap infant will only cost you 2,500 miles. And that's true in business or in first class or an economy. It doesn't matter.

It's 2,500 miles or I think it's 25 Canadian dollars, which depending on the exchange rate might even be just worth paying that or probably is worth paying that even over the miles. But either way, very inexpensive. That's the best deal in terms of a lap infant fee. Second best deal after that is typically Virgin Atlantic. They have different charts for different partners, but basically with most partners, it's 2,500 miles for a lap infant in economy, 5,000 in business, 7,000 in first. So you'll pay that, I think each way. But still again, that's much better than paying 10% of the adult revenue fair, second cheapest deal for a lap infant ticket. So that's your second best bet. Third best bet would be there are a few programs that charge 10% of the adult mileage fair, which is going to be

more probably than those other two that I've mentioned so far. But again, a lot better than paying 10% of the revenue fare. British Airways Avios is one of those that charges 10% of the adult mileage fare. I believe Emirates Skywards also is one that charges 10% of the adult mileage fare. And ANA used to charge 10% of the revenue fare. And I think maybe they give you the option of paying that still, if you want to pay 10% of the revenue fare, but you're much better off paying 10% of the adult mileage ticket with ANA.

So those are the ones that pop into my mind. Also, Asiana has the same 10% of the adult fare, but who has Asiana miles? Not very many of you listening, probably. So if you do, great. But if not, that's probably not going to be super relevant for you. So those are the best deals. All right. And then, so, so let's get into award availability for families. So people are always writing in, you know, we want to go to Florida or Hawaii, but we can only travel during our kids' school break. And,

and, you know, you know, very well that the chance of finding award availability for four to those popular destinations during those specific times is even lower chance than me buying that Frontier Go Wild pass. So what are some ways of getting around those issues? Well, the first thing you got to get around is the way you framed that was you want to go to Hawaii or Florida, and that's not what you want. What you want is you want to go where there are four seats available to go. So that's the first step is being flexible. And there's a lot of things you can't be flexible about. You can't change the school schedule. You can't change their activities. So don't focus on the things that you can't change. And you can't

change the fact that there's not going to be any award availability to fly to Hawaii during Thanksgiving break or whatever the case might be. Like those are things you can't change. There's no magical solution to make extra seats open up and airlines feel like they're not going to sell them so they can give them to you on miles. Just not going to happen. So if that's really what you want, then a cashback strategy is probably something that's going to make more sense or points that can be used for a cash ticket. Instead, what I recommend

is that you figure out, okay, well, where is their availability during the times when I'm free? And then plan your trip around that. So rather than picking one specific destination, say, you know what, I'd like to go to Europe during summer break. Where can we get to in Europe during summer break and take a look and see? OK, well, I wrote a post this week where I showed there were multiple days with nine seats available in business class from New York to Geneva, Switzerland. So ask yourself, well, would I like to go to Geneva? Maybe there's something in Switzerland that's worth seeing that you'd enjoy with your family. It may not have been the trip you initially had in mind, but you might find some fun and

interesting things and go back to a different place the next time because goodness knows there'll be something else with availability the next time. Or even better yet, probably Swiss has availability to connect onward elsewhere within Europe. So you may be able to get to other places within Europe or use other miles to get to other places in Europe from Geneva. So it doesn't have to be your endpoint. Flights within Europe are pretty cheap. Trains can be cheap when you book them far enough in advance. So there's enough ways to get other places that if Geneva isn't the endpoint you want, that's fine. I mean, for under 100 bucks, you probably fly to most of Europe per passenger. So that to me is more the way to plan trips to major continents like that. Look at the gateways that you can get to and which carriers will get you there.

And it's worth checking different gateways on both ends of the trip because you can probably get to the major U.S. gateways for a reasonable price or at least to more than one U.S. gateway for a reasonable price from wherever you are. Even if you're in a small city, there's probably more than one big city that you can get to for a reasonable-ish price. For me, living in upstate New York, New York City airports are three or four hours away. Boston airports are three or four hours away by car. Or Washington, D.C. is an hour away by flight. Chicago is two hours away by flight.

So I'll look from all of those places because I can get to all of those places relatively easily. So, um, so I, and I encourage you to do that and just look at the positioning as part of the cost of doing business. You know, that's just the way it goes when you're beholden to the school schedule, it is going to cost you a little bit more, just like traveling with four is going to cost you more than traveling with two. So I think that's just part of it. And that's where I start. Be flexible, be flexible about where you're going to go, create a bucket list based on where you can get to rather than creating a bucket list and being like, I want to get there and I can't. Yeah. Yeah. A related idea is a flexible stopover. The idea being, yeah, you might want to go to Australia over winter break, but getting a good flight from the US to Australia during winter break under normal circumstances is

impossible. But I wrote a post a few years ago where I sort of challenged myself, could I get a family for there during the break? And the way to do it at that time was, well, look, flights to award flights to Northern Asia were actually wide open to some destinations. So I could easily get four people to Japan or I can't actually remember where I had in the post, but it doesn't really matter. And then from there, like a few days later, fly to Australia. And that all worked by having that kind of stopover. So, you know, even domestically, you can think about things like that. Let's say

you definitely want to go to Hawaii, you're locked in on that. Maybe you're, you, you definitely want to go to Hawaii. You're, you're locked in on that. May, you know, maybe, uh, you're starting from the East coast. Maybe you could find a cheap flight to somewhere on the West coast, like Seattle area or something. And then I bet you could find cheap flights from Seattle to Hawaii, especially if it's not right as the, as the school break starts, you know what I mean? So spend a couple of days seeing Seattle and then fly on to Hawaii. Yeah, that's a really good tip. And the Hawaii tip is one that certainly could work out for you. The Asia tip for a way to get to Australia, for instance, I think is an important tip

to highlight, though, because we often, I think Americans often that are into miles and points think of award availability as being difficult, but that's because we're often looking to and from the United States. When you're looking at connecting other regions around the world between point A and B where the United States is neither A or B, it's typically a lot easier to find availability than it is starting or ending in the US. So if you can get to Asia, then you can probably connect the dots to get to Australia or New Zealand or wherever else it is you'd like to go. And same token, if you get to Europe, you can probably get to wherever it is you need to go from

Europe, whether that's within Europe or the Middle East or India or something else, a lot easier to get awards between other regions. So the stopover trick is a good one. And there are programs that are good for a stopover, right? Like Alaska allows a stopover on a one way for free. So you can still take advantage of some of their great sweet spots, 50,000 miles to Asia. And you can do a stopover in Hong Kong if and when Hong Kong is easily open for tourists. I know that they've been easing things up, but maybe they're not there yet. I don't know.

But that's one to keep in mind. And of course, obviously, our Canada Air Plan allows a stopover for 5,000 miles on a one way. So you can book it as part of your trip with one of those. Right, right. And if you can't, you can just look for the best award availability on one program to Asia. And it might be a totally one program to, to Asia. And it might be a totally

different program to get to Australia. Yes. That'll cost you a bit more than a single trip to Australia would if it was available, but you know, we're talking about going during prime time. You're going to have to pay a bit more. Yeah. It's going to cost you a bit more during prime time. Yeah. And I mean, and that's a really good example because American airlines charges 40,000 miles one way between the South Pacific and North Asia in business class. So you can fly Japan Airlines between again, like Japan, you can start in Japan and fly Japan Airlines business class. You fly Cathay Pacific business class. You fly Qantas business class all for 40,000 miles each way. Fiji Airways probably serves Tokyo. So you got a whole bunch of different options to put that trip together

with a different set of miles. So if you get a good deal on your flights to and from Japan, and then you use that to get to and from Australia or New Zealand, your net cost is not going to be all that much higher than an award directly to Australia, but your net chances of making that trip happen are infinitely higher if you're only looking at non-stops from the United States. So definitely, flexible stopover is good. Companion tickets. There's a lot of different ways to get companion tickets. And some of them are ones that I've written a lot about

and others are ones that you're perhaps more familiar about. I don't know. Do you want to talk about the Delta companion certificate at all? I know that's one of the many types. Sure. So if you're looking at paid flights and a way to make them much less expensive for family travel, one approach is to get certain credit cards that include companion tickets. And so if you and your significant other each get one of those cards, so you each have a companion ticket,

then four people can fly for roughly half price. I mean, some of these, like the Alaska Airlines one, requires a $99 copay plus taxes and fees. The Delta ones, if you have a Delta Platinum or Delta Reserve card, then upon the card anniversary, you'll get a certificate that you can use for regional round-trip travel. And same thing, you have to pay the taxes, but there's not that $99 thing. But it's a great way to, you know, if you're going to be traveling during school break and prices are outrageous, to book what you need. I do need to say, like, some of these, especially the Delta ones, are only valid on the cheaper fare classes. So if you don't snag that really early, like way before your trip, the cheaper fare classes are going to be all gobbled up by the time you're ready to book.

So with that one, do it as close to 11 months ahead as you can. Alaska cards, I don't think have that restriction. No. Yeah. I mean, I've booked it last minute before. So I don't think that there's any restriction in terms of the fair class. It has to be economy on the Alaska one, although it can be economy that's upgradable if you're an elite member of Alaska and you've got the MVP upgrades, whatever they call them there, then you can upgrade it to first. And I have done that before. But yeah, I mean, those can be really good deals. And keep these in mind, too. Something I should have mentioned when I mentioned flexible destinations before, and I didn't, but I think it fits in here with the companion tickets, is that

these companion tickets can be useful for positioning flights for those international things. You know, if you're going to live in New York, but you've got a position in Chicago, because that's where award availability is, you know, this time around, then these companion tickets can obviously help make that less expensive. And the tip that I wanted to put in earlier that I'm going to slide in here instead, is that I wrote in the post I wrote this week about starting from different gateways. My wife and I, we've talked now about the possibility of me and one son on one flight and her and another son on a different flight if that needs to happen.

And sometimes you might need to position to different places. Or we booked a trip to Fiji for next year where the four of us are flying out of either Los Angeles or San Francisco. I can't honestly remember which one we're out of, but we're out of one or the other. And then we've got other family members flying out of the other city on the same day because Fiji Airways serves both San Francisco and Los Angeles. So we were able to pick up four award seats on both on the flights from both cities on the same day, and they arrive within 35 minutes of each other.

So we're all going to get to Fiji about the same time. We have to position to California anyway. So it didn't really make a difference if we had some family members positioned in San Francisco and the rest of us to Los Angeles. And using companion certificates can help reduce the cost. Somebody gets an Alaska card and there you go. You get half off on the positioning flight

for that particular trip. Southwest, of course, is- And so, sorry, so the best way of taking advantage of splitting it up is to not have to travel with your kids. You let the little kids go on one flight and you and your significant other go on the other and everyone's happy, except for the people on that other flight.

Except for the people on that other flight, yeah, exactly. They are not happy. So anyway, yeah, I mean, there's tons of different ones here. Most of the ones we just talked about are like a one-time deal and there are other ones you can spend towards. There's a, you know, something Virgin Atlantic 25,000 spent. I think there's something with the British airways, obvious cars. We, some of the cards you spend 30 K and you get a travel together ticket, uh, aeroplan. If you want to spend a million bucks, you can get somebody to fly with you for free. i think each time for a whole year yeah a whole

year for all the word tickets so just you if you and your spouse each spend a million dollars on an aeroplan card then you're set for for you and your two kids alternatively alternatively if you get two southwest credit cards you can get a companion pass with Southwest and, uh, and have your, you know, at least one person fly with you for free. We could probably both do that for a better deal anyway, with, uh, with Southwest airlines. So I mentioned Southwest of course, cause the Southwest companion pass is, I think probably the best deal in domestic travel in the sense that once you've earned 125,000 as of right now, next year, it's changing to 135,000. Once you earn enough points within a single calendar year, you get a companion pass where

the second person flies with you for free, whether you booked your ticket with cash or with points or somebody else booked your ticket. Second person flies for free. They just pay the taxes, which domestically are $5.60. So we were longtime companion pass holders in my household. And if you have a family of four and you can get two of these because both player one and player two could get a business card and a consumer card, you could end up paying for two flights every time and having all four of you fly. So that can be a really good deal, especially for people who primarily want to travel domestically

and don't mind Southwest boarding process where you don't have an assigned seat, which I certainly don't. And if you're flying with a family, all the better because you don't even have to worry about early bird check-in or having to check in 24 hours in advance because people with children under six years old board after the A group. So you board before the B group does. So I haven't bothered to check in early for a Southwest flight and forever. That just burned me recently when I went to Miami because I forgot to check in and ended up with a C boarding position because I'm so used to not flying alone. Exactly. So I'm so used to flying with my family. I'm like, oh, I don't have to bother checking in for my Southwest

flight because I'm going to board after the A group anyway. Of course, like I said, that burned me when I was flying alone. But if you're flying with a family, that's a great advantage. So you don't have to worry about your boarding position with Southwest. So lots of good stuff there. I think that that particular one can be a really good one. But all of those various companion tickets can help you save money if you're traveling with a family. Vacation packages. This is one I have not leveraged very much, but you have. So I think- I have. It's been a while, but every now and then, if you look at vacation packages, especially to popular vacation destinations like Hawaii, these vacation companies, the companies that sell vacation packages have access to special like sort of special airfare. And and they make I think they make most of their money from bundling it with hotel stay.

But usually you can opt instead of instead of paying for hotel stay, you can often opt to do a car rental instead. And I have found in the past that it was significantly cheaper. In my case, it was Hawaii. I did this a couple of times for three to Hawaii, which included a rental car for the whole time we were there, then to buy three separate airplane tickets. And nevermind the fact that I wouldn't then have had a rental car at all. So I got both a free rental car basically out of the deal and saved a lot of money by booking it as a vacation package. So that's something I don't know any way to sort of discover that other than trying out the different things like Delta vacations and on Expedia, they have vacations and things like that. And just try the different ones and see if you get a great deal. Yeah. I mean, I've written in the past, it's been a while now, but I've written in the past and shown examples with American Airlines where you could book a vacation package to Europe. If you're somebody who would typically consider paying

for business class, you can sometimes book vacation packages to Europe that include a hotel. And by the way, you can edit it so that maybe you will have a two week trip, but you only book the hotel portion of the package for the first two or three nights in order to keep the price of the hotel portion down. And so sometimes you can end up with business class airfare and a hotel for a few nights for less than what you would pay just for the airfare alone. And so that works out even if you don't want to stay in the hotel. The hotel stay might be a throwaway stay for you. You may not have any intention to stay at the included hotel at all, but still save a bunch on the business class ticket

by booking through a vacations. Again, sometimes I haven't looked at that really since the pandemic. So I'm not sure where the current status is on that, but we've seen that happen quite a few times in years past anyway. So it's worth checking, especially if you're about to pull the trigger on a full business class fare, you should probably first check out the vacation packages and see, because you may save a significant chunk of change. So vacation packages are one to look at. All right. So a whole bunch of ways to save on flights. If you're traveling with family, we talked about a bunch of those, but of course, once you get there, you got to sleep somewhere and you want to sleep cheap or you want to sleep comfortably, at least with a family,

you got to think about the different ways to do that. And the first is one that you wrote about a while back, Vacasa, which is a vacation rental outfit. And I should highlight here for anybody who's not familiar, because this came up at Chicago seminars with somebody who was really surprised, who I know follows the blogs and said, he was really surprised to hear that Vacasa was like a VRBO or an Airbnb. He thought it was like the timeshare leg or the timeshare portion of Wyndham's business. And that's not it. Vacasa is like a vacation rental by owner, Airbnb type of a service. It's a competitor to those, obviously a much smaller competitor to those where people list their homes through this service. Vacicasa manages the rentals. So anyway, Vicasa through Wyndham, you were the first person, I think, to recognize the

value and write about this. Yeah, that's very possible. I was pretty excited when I saw it on Wyndham's site that there was this ability to book a one-bedroom vacation rental for only 15,000 points per night. So the idea is they charge 15,000 points per bedroom per night. And when I searched around, I found, wow, there are some pretty big one bedroom places that would cost a lot if you were paying cash. And they often have things like separate lofts that include bathrooms, you know, beds and bathrooms. So for all intents and purposes, they are extra bedrooms, but they're not listed that way. And so they're not priced that

way. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I haven't yet had a chance to do this, more or less. So there was a first floor that had a bedroom with a door that shut to it. So there's a bedroom and then, of course, a living room, a kitchen, a porch with amazing views of the mountains. And then a second level above that, that was like a loft. So it was open to the first level, but separated enough. It certainly was a second floor with a pool table and a video game console and like a dartboard, that kind of thing. So that was the second level. And that level had a pullout sofa. And then above that, there was another little mini loft that had some futon mattresses.

So, I mean, you could easily sleep five, six people without a problem. And you could probably, I mean, brought some air mattresses. Who knows how many people you could have slept in that place because it was like a full-size house, you know? So, and it had all the amenities that you would expect with that, you know, the washing machine, drying machine or dryer, dishwasher, all of that type of stuff. And like I said, just an amazing view, porches on both the first and second floor with a gorgeous view of the mountains there.

The Great Smoky Mountains are just magical in the morning when the mist is rolling through the fog. So great place to sit out and have a cup of coffee. And my stay would have been about 330 bucks a night, plus all the cleaning fees and things that you don't have to pay when you book it as an award. So for my three or four night stay, it would have been, I don't know, it was like 13 or $1,400.

It was three nights I stayed. Would have been 1,300 and change is what it was. And I paid instead 45,000 Wyndham points. 45,000 Wyndham points for a $1,300 or $1,400 vacation or all stay was great. Yeah, that's fantastic. And if you have a Wyndham earner card, there's three versions of Wyndham earner cards. You get 10% off the stay. So it actually only costs 13,500 points per night. You know, sign up, my recommendation, sign up for the Wyndham earner business card. Even if you don't think you have a business,

look up our site about why you probably do or can have one and get a Wyndham earner business card because it gives you, you know, the biggest welcome bonus usually. I think as we speak, it's around 60,000 points. So that's four nights in a one bedroom. Plus you'd have points left over because of that 10% discount. And it gives you eight points per dollar at gas stations. So if you're driving your family to one of these vacation rent, think about how much, how many points you'll earn back just from the drive over there.

So it's, it's just a great deal. And I think it also gives you what 15,000 points every year when you renew the $99 fee. So that's potentially another one of these. I mean, it's a great deal and readers have sent in success stories and tips of other places where they've used this,

whether that's Hawaii or the, you know, Northwest Pacific's Hawaii or the Northwest, Pacific Coast areas. I mean, there's been plenty of other places where people have posted some really incredible looking one bedroom Vacasa rentals. And of course, I mean, you can book a two or three bedroom also and cost you more points. And in some cases, that'll be a deal. In other cases, it might not be. But the one bedrooms really seem to be where it's at, because it's so few points. And so many of the one bedrooms, or at least there are a large number of one bedrooms that really feel like two bedroom places or even more that easily sleep a family. I mean, and that's really the comparison point here that I was like, 15,000 hotel points and

any other hotel is going to get you like a regular room, usually at best, right? Maybe two double beds if you're lucky and, you know, in a bathroom and it's going to be a little small space. And instead you can have an entire house potentially for the 15,000 points. So it's a very, very good deal. All right. So that's Vicasa.

I think that's great for families. Airbnb though is another one. A lot of people are asking us or frequently ask us about ways to save or get a better return on Airbnb. And I rarely ever book Airbnbs. What about you? Do you book Airbnb as much? Do you have tips about how to do that? Not very often, but I have done. And I do think it's a necessary part of the puzzle for most family travelers. Vicasa is only in so many places. If you're traveling internationally, especially, and you want to book a reasonably priced place

that has a kitchen and a washer and dryer, you're probably going to be looking at Airbnb. And so, you know, in that case, you know, use a, we published a post about a way to search Airbnb and see the total price after all the fees. Airbnb is not great about showing what all the fees are going to be upfront, but this one, this way will. And you start there, but then when you're ready to book, if you find one that you actually want to book, you might as well start both British Airways and Delta. There might be other places as well. They have their own sort of landing pages for Airbnb and you'll get miles for your booking. So you might as well do that and keep your eye out for gift card deals for Airbnb as well. You

see those periodically 10 or 15% off the gift card. So you could load those up to your account, use that to pay for your stay. Yeah. So, and I think it's three British areas obvious per dollar spent, and you can earn that even when you use a gift card, or at least I have, even when I've used a gift card to pay. Now, Greg mentioned gift card deals, 10 or 15% off or reaching the time of year where we're more likely to see more of those gift card deals. But keep your eye out also on things like the Amazon deals for spend one point and get a discount because we sometimes see things like 40% off on up to $100 or sometimes even better deals. And I've seen 50% off up to even higher amounts when you use one, for example, Amex membership rewards point.

And you can use those on third-party gift cards. So that can be a great time to grab yourself an Airbnb gift card. So that's a really good point. And one of the things I like about Airbnb gift cards is that if you buy them during a deal like that, you could just load it to your Airbnb account and forget about it. Whereas like often when I buy third-party gift cards or deals like that, I, you know, I forget, or, you know, I have to, I have to do something to remind myself, Hey, you need to use this thing. So I like the simplicity of that. You know, and there are some issues, make sure you Google about using Airbnb gift cards. Cause there are some issues with it. I haven't had any problems though. No. yeah. It really just things to keep in mind

is that if you do the pay half now and half later, the half later, you can't use gift cards for. So a lot of properties give you that option where you can pay 50% upfront and you can use a gift card for the 50% upfront, but you can't use it for the second payment. So if you want to be able to use your gift card balance to pay for the whole thing,

you have to pay it all in one shot all up front. So that's the main thing to be aware of when it comes to gift cards or some other limitations. But that's the main thing you want to know that don't don't load up your account and pay half now and then think you're going to pay the balance later with those gift cards. All right. So Airbnb, definitely a good option for a lot of families. I mentioned that I haven't booked many of them, but I probably will book more of them moving into the future because they do just make sense. I mean, having a washer and dryer is huge when you're traveling with young kids. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And if you don't have kids, you're thinking about having kids and you're like, really, you need a washer and dryer? Yes, you need a washer and dryer. It's really helpful. But if you are at the point where your kids are a

little bit older and you don't really need the washer and dryer anymore, but you do need the extra space, then one of my favorites, and even still at this juncture, one of my favorite ways to book family travel is Hyatt Suites because Hyatt lets you book suites with points. And that can be a great deal, as you described already. Yeah. It's the only major hotel rewards program that has suite awards built into their award charts. I mean, actually, most don't even have award charts anymore. But where most hotels that have suites, which are about 40 or 45% more point expensive than standard rooms. And then they have premium suites, which cost twice as much as a standard room.

And those premium suites can be, in some cases, out of this world ridiculous. I think Steven Pepper stayed in that presidential suite in New Mexico. Yeah. And that looked incredible. And now they also have, if you want that combination of a washer and dryer and using your Hyatt points is they have those, oh boy, destination hotels. Well, destination homes or something like that. Homes and villas, maybe. I don't know. I don't know the exact name off the top of my head, but they're sort of like, they tend to be condos or even houses that would otherwise rent out as like an entire condo, but that you can book with Hyatt points. And depending on the size of the unit, you'll probably be paying like the suite

or even the premium suite price for one of these things, but you're getting as much as a whole house. So that's a pretty cool way to doing it too. And I've seen some what look nice. I haven't done it yet, but some places that look really nice in Hawaii. So if you're looking for lodging in Hawaii, that's an option to at least take a look at. Yeah, definitely. And you know, suites didn't used to matter to me when it was just my wife and I traveling. I used to not care really about suites because I wasn't usually spending all that much time in the room, but certainly when you're traveling with a family, man, that extra space comes in handy. So it's nice to have. It's a real luxury. So it's certainly something that I'm always considering now when I'm

booking travels. So being able to book suites with Hyatt Points, fantastic, great deal. But of course, don't forget that that's not your only option. There are all suite brands out there. So there are a number of different all sweet property brands. Like for instance, residence in has become much more popular in my household. And to be honest, there's something about the residence in branding that I don't like. Like, I don't know what it is. I don't know the logo or the comforter they use on the beds with like the way it looks reminds me of a popcorn ceiling. I, yeah, it's like the comforter they use. And I don't like it. It like reminds me of the popcorn ceiling thing. I'm like, come on, let's update time, but oftentimes I've found residence

inns where they might have a studio room, but also have a one bedroom suite that is bookable as a standard room award. Now that's not the case in every residence inn, but I have found it many times where I've been able to use my points and book directly into a one bedroom suite or situations where I've been able to use a Marriott SuiteNight award to upgrade that to a two bedroom suite. Now, again, Marriott SuiteNight awards, they don't clear until a few days before you check in. So they're not always useful, but you also don't have a ton of competition for those at the residence end. So you may end up with a two bedroom suite at a residence end. And I mean, that's just an absolute luxury for a family traveling together. So I really like that.

Of course, you've got embassy suites, town place suites, a whole bunch of these. Do you have a favorite out of the? I mean, what I was just going to say is all the major chains have some all sweet brands and that's a great way to go. And a lot of those have kitchens. And so that also is really handy for family travel because as you know, eating out every meal is both can be very trying with young kids, if I remember correctly. Trying, that's a very nice way to put that.

Yeah. And, you know, and by having a kitchen, you have some place to keep and, you know, heat back up the leftovers from when the night before the kids decided, no, I don't want any of that meal that I just ordered. Or you can, of course, go to a grocery store and pick up some things. So for all those reasons, those are really great, I think, for family travel, those sweet properties that have kitchens in them. I agree. I agree. If you saw me moving around there, it's because I got to figure out my power cord. I was not plugged in. So I got to figure that out here real quick. So you may see me disappear on camera for a second, but, but let's talk about the next one. So the all suites properties, I'm becoming a big fan very quickly of those. And also by the way, I should mention Hyatt place in here because for a property

that's not an all suites brand, they kind of feel like it. And they often have extra space, quite a bit of extra space. So that's another good brand to consider. Now, if you travel domestically, by the way, one thing that I do sometimes, sometimes we bring our own pack and play. Most hotels have them. They're not always in great shape, depending on the hotel you're staying at. But if I'm doing a road trip, we'll sometimes bring the pack and play with us. Now our kids are getting a little bit older. And so we've gotten these air mattresses that have their built-in pumps and you can actually get them now for kids that have sort of they're sunken in a little bit. So they kind of have like almost like a little wall around the outside edge, which is great because then they're not rolling off the air mattress all night long, which, you know, if you've had a kid that has been waking up all night long for something like that before, you'll appreciate you'll understand. So so that can be useful again for your road trips where you're able to toss it in

the car with everything else. But okay, you mentioned before the kids deciding they don't want to eat or didn't want to eat the night before or whatever it was, and you brought the leftovers and blah, blah, blah. And that transitions really nicely into the next type of property, which is an all-inclusive resort. Have you booked any all-inclusive resorts before? And do you have any reasons why you think that might be good for family travel? I have not booked them, but it just seems to me like a great opportunity for family travel. More and more hotel chains have these all-inclusive properties. Marriott has a whole bunch of them. Hyatt recently acquired a huge slew of all-inclusives. So there's no shortage of them available to book with points these days. And of course, when you're all-inclusive,

then that means that you don't have to worry about if the kids don't like the food, you're not paying for it. You're not paying extra for it. It's just there. There are some cases where this just has to do with a little booking tip. There are some cases where the cost to add two people to a room or to move from a two-person room to a four-person room costs more than booking two separate rooms. And so depending on the age of your kids, it might be fun to, for older kids to give them their own room altogether for either the same price or even less than you would have paid to just add them to your room. And that sounds nice to me.

Yeah. Yeah. So a couple of tips on that. I'm glad you brought that up because that made me think of a few different things. So the first thing is it's surprising how difficult it is to get adjoining rooms at hotels. I, I, I've been really shocked at how difficult a time I've had when I booked two rooms to get a hotel to put them, you know, right next to each other. Frequently they're like, oh, they're on the same floor. I'm like, yeah, no, that's not what I want. I don't want to be able to put the kids to bed in the room and have them monitor reach, you know? And so if we're going to do that, cause my kids are at a young stage still. But certainly if you have teenagers, two separate rooms can be fun. But if you want to get that whole adjoining thing, there is one, I think it's

maybe Hilton that'll let you book guaranteed adjoining rooms. Yeah. And that's nice. That's nice to be able to get that because it's not always as easy as you would expect though. Certainly if that's what you want, you need to reach out to the hotel in advance because if you wait until check-in day, it's shockingly difficult to get two rooms next door to each other. So keep that in mind. The other thing about the two rooms situation that,

well, there's a couple of things worth mentioning. So one is of course with Hyatt, if you've got elite status, then you can make it a globalist guest of honor booking potentially for the second room so that they get all the Hyatt benefits. So that can be useful sometimes. And then the other thing is that you mentioned the extra charge for kids and at all inclusives, that can be an issue because some all inclusives will charge extra per person. By the way, only done one all inclusive,

but we did it when our son was very young and it was great for all of the reasons Greg said. I had never been interested in an all inclusive, did it with our son. very young and it was great for all of the reasons Greg said. I had never been interested in an all-inclusive, did it with our son and I was like, wow, this is perfect for family travel. It gets cranky, we can go back to the room and order room service, no loss. So I like that idea. But I wanna mention that there are a number of chains

that will show an extra fee for kids when you go to book online. And I've found in my experience that in general, if you just book without the kids attached and then contact the property, you probably won't get charged an additional fee for kids. Now, that's true in a lot of places, but not necessarily true in Europe. And so a couple of comments on that in a second. But for instance, Marriott is one where I've run into that a lot of times where even when I had two adults and just one kid and I'd add one child in there, Marriott would add an extra fee. And at some point I got in a conversation with a front desk agent and they said, oh yeah, the only people who pay that fee

are the people who book online for parents with kids. We don't actually see any of that fee. And so I don't know if that's universally true. It was one person at a desk that said that once, but it was an eye opener toener to me that, okay, let me just reach out and contact the hotel. And I haven't been charged a fee for kids in any of the situations where I've done that. So just book it as a two-person room and then contact the hotel and say, hey, I have this booking. We will have kids with us. Will it cost anything extra? And they'll probably say no, right? Yeah, probably. Yeah. That probably won't work in an all-inclusive though, is my guess, because-

No, definitely not. Those kids are eating extra food. I mean, it costs them more to support more people. Yes. No, not going to work at an all-inclusive. And also in Europe, you may run into issues with that because of fire codes. A lot of rooms will only offer a certain number of people per room. So you may need to book more than one room. And so that's something to keep in mind. And I have done some social engineering to get around that before. So you may still get lucky and get everybody in the door, but don't count on it in Europe.

I would have a backup plan most of the time. Right. One last thing about lodging, choice privileges. Don't forget that program. I've talked and written a lot about some gems that the choice privileges program has from Cambria to Ascend Collection Hotels. And one of the quirks of their program is that if a hotel is available to book with points, they do not charge differently for different rooms. And sometimes you'll find that suites or deluxe rooms, whatever, are available for exactly the same price. If they're available for points at all, they will be available for exactly the same

price. So it's just one of those sort of hit or miss things. Some hotels that have suites just don't make the suites available for points. That's fair, but others do. So just take a look and see if you find something good. Totally worth it. I just stayed at the Comfort Hotel Bolivar in Rome recently when we went to Europe and booked a suite for 16, the same 16,000 points per night that a standard room would have cost. So, you know, great, especially if you're converting city thank you points that convert to choice one to two. So there'll be 8,000 city thank you points, great deal for a room that'll actually fit four people since those are fairly rare in Europe. So it's an incredible deal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So that's lodging.

Of course, once you get there, you know, so you've flown there and you've stayed somewhere, you got to get around. So rental cars, what do you do about rental cars for a big family? My favorite is national executive status, which you can get executive status from the MX Platinum card. I think you can also get it from the Sapphire Reserve card and perhaps other Visa Infinite cards. So national executive status.

Nice thing is you book a standard car, like a mid-level car. It'll show you which one you got to book when you're in the app or on their website. And then you get to pick from the Emerald Isle when you get there. And so that's nice because the Emerald Isle. From the executive isle. The Emerald Isle is for everybody. The executive isle is for those with executive aisle. The Emerald Isle is for everybody. The executive aisle is for those with executive status. get an SUV, but I will almost guarantee in most cities in the U.S. that you'll be able to find a minivan on those because those are not, and I say almost guarantee, I probably shouldn't say it

quite that strongly, but I have rarely ever not been able to find a minivan on one of those emerald isles only in places where it's in really high demand or small cities. So that's a hack that I've used lots of times where I've paid for the midsize and been able to get myself a minivan. So that's been really useful for family travel. Now, another hack there is with a lot of different programs, if you've got a corporate code, you might be able to get a larger car for the price of a smaller car, right? Yeah. So using my wife's employer portal, you know, I've often looked up enterprise and national and Hertz rentals through their program, often have incredible deals

compared to what the rental prices would be otherwise. And what I've found repeatedly is that, you know, picking a much larger car than the base level is either the same price or not that much more. So I'm not going to say that's true a hundred percent of the time, but it was, it's often enough. So that's a great way. If you're, if your employer has some sort of, um, you know, rental car discount type of thing on their portal, check that out. Very good. All right. So national Emerald, uh, Emerald club, you just joined the club and you pick from the Emerald Isle. And so that's one of the hacks. Second hack would be using the corporate code, because sometimes if you have a corporate

code, you can do that. Now, I think Hertz has a similar program to National in terms of picking your car. If you got gold status, I think is what it is, which I think you can get from signing up also with them. So it's a similar-ish program, though I've had less experience with that one. Have you used that one at all? A little bit, it's inconsistent, which airports have the pick your own car. Um, national seems to be, well, national had established so much longer. Um, so most major airports with national, let you pick your own car with Hertz. It just varies. I think more and more you do. And, um, so yeah,

I mean, I, I do think that if you check out ahead of time and figure out that the airport lets you pick your car, there's a really good chance of, um, being able to find a big car like that. I have no idea, you know, how often minivans would be available. Um, yeah, I don't know if with Hertz, uh, I'm not sure, but I am glad you made that point because it's true. Not all airports have the Emerald dial, so it's worth looking. Big cities are almost always going to have it, but there are some small airports that don't. And what you can do is just Google flyer talk, national Emerald dial and your airport code that you're going to, because they have a thread for that, where people report what they've seen in the Emerald dial. So you can get

an idea of what people have seen lately. And I did know that. Good tip. Yeah. I use it all the time when I'm going places to see what people have reported recently to know if I can probably count on that minivan or SUV or not. Right. And just to clarify one more thing. So the national thing, what we were talking about before, base level, you can go to the Emerald Dial to pick out a car. If you have executive status, there is an executive aisle and that'll have better cars. And sometimes the minivans or big SUVs will be there. So that gives you more choice. Sometimes you might have to slum it in the regular Emerald Isle if that's where the minivans are. You might.

Either way, by having that status, which you could get from some credit cards, as Nick said, we'll give you more choice than not having that status. So it does. And typically in the executive area, I find that the, they have the lower mileage vehicles usually. So I've just recently, we did one of these and there were many vans in both sides,

the Emerald Isle and the executive aisle, but the ones in the executive side had lower mileage. So, and certainly some larger SUVs, like sometimes you get a really big big like Armada, you know, Nissan Armada or whatever the equivalent infinity is on the executive aisle. So we're checking out what you can get. So that's a potentially good deal. All right. Last but not least, kind of quickly, we should talk about airport lounges, because that'll save you a lot of money if you're traveling with a family, you know, versus paying airport food prices every time somebody is like, I'm hungry. Right, right, right, right. Save a ton. Yeah. So, you know, unfortunately, most airline, airline sponsored lounges have moved to a, you know, situation where yes, you might be able to get in with a credit card, but it's probably just yourself. And it just depends on the program. But Delta is a classic example. Whether you have the Delta Reserve card or the Amex exception to that. So not only if you have the card, can you bring in your entire family, but you can also add your significant other and

anyone you want as authorized users for free up to 10 people. And they can also go to the lounge and I believe guest in people as well, separate from you. And I said for now, because there was a survey that's been going out about the card asking people like, hey, would you like to spend this much for each authorized user? And so it seems like that free authorized user component of it is probably going away. And I wouldn't be surprised if the ability to guest in a lot of people might go away too. But we'll see. We'll see where that goes.

Yeah, we'll see. So for now, anyway, that's the way to get into American Airlines Admirals Clubs. The few Admirals Clubs I've ever been to have been not as good as the Delta Sky Clubs that I've been to. I'll say that much. No. But they're starting to revamp them, which might be why they're trying to limit access as well. As they become nicer, they're going to, they're going to need to, just as Delta learned. Oh boy. They've gotten so overcrowded lately. Yeah. Yeah. So, so those are all good things to keep in mind. And a priority pass has come in handy for me traveling with family numerous times, especially

with my Ritz card that offers the unlimited guests. So and that's become more and more useful now that there are more and more restaurants also on the priority pass access for those with visa cards. If you get your priority pass from, for example, the Chase Ritz card or the Chase Sapphire Reserve or the Capital One Venture card, then you can get restaurant access also in airports that have that. And of course, the Capital One lounges. I mean, man, everybody's been saying good things about those. Anybody I know who's been to one has been pretty impressed.

So I think the only one that's open so far at Dallas. But soon, I think this year, they were supposed to be opening the one at Washington and Dallas. So hopefully that'll happen. And Plaza Premium can be pretty nice too. So lots of different options there for airport lounges and that access can save you certainly money and also give you a more relaxing place to hang out and manage the kids a little bit more easily than out in the terminal. That's for sure. No doubt at all. All right. So look at that. All sorts of tips for family travelers there today for how to get there, how to sleep cheaper or at least more comfortably and how to rent your cars and have lounge access. So tons of good tips today in today's session. Today's discussion. That's the word I was looking for. is going to be a sort of a really a statement we've gotten a bunch of times, but I'm going to ask you a question about it. And so this statement came in in the feedback on the suggestions for the

next three cards trip. And it's also something I heard a lot in Chicago. And that was people frequently said in addition to the family travel thing, which is probably the biggest or definitely the biggest tip we've gotten or the biggest piece of feedback we've gotten. The second biggest was I feel like there's a lot of people who want to see an amazing race style competition where we just go to the airport and find out where we have to go and book it on the fly and get to the next place. And so there were a lot of people that suggested that. So why don't we do that, Greg? Why don't we do an amazing race style competition? Wouldn't that be fun? Is there any hesitation you have with that? No, let's do it. Nick, you've got half an hour to get to the airport and I'm going to tell you where you're going. Well, I'm going to bail right there because there's no

airport within a half an hour drive of me. So I'm done. I'm toast. The competitive part of me does want to do that, actually. I think that could be really fun and exciting. One thing that would be missing from it, though, and I think this is significant, is it doesn't give us time to research things, we'd have to use what we already know to figure out how to, you know, get to the next destination. And the chance, I think, of innovation is much lower. Now, that said, you know, I can imagine some kind of challenge that that bakes in certain amount of pre-planning as well as some amount of last minute. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Cause I mean, I think that would be a lot of fun and, and, you know, we've talked about that type of idea behind the scenes a couple of times already because it does sound fun. I mean, who doesn't want to do that kind of a thing at some point? So I think it'd be high on entertainment,

but low on long-term value for for readers probably because of what you said that you'd be relying on what you already know and just uh you know at the mercy of whatever happens to be available uh that day which you know at least if you're planning this a couple months in advance you got some time to look for the best things so uh so that's the downside of that type of idea but keep them coming because like greg said you never know what we're gonna put together and mesh together together. So even something like that, that I look at and they say, ah, that'd be a lot of fun, but not practical. I won't be surprised if we find a way to incorporate something fun like that within something that's also practical and gives us some opportunities to innovate a little bit too. So I look forward to seeing what this next challenge ends up looking like. I think it'll

be a lot of fun. Absolutely. And as one commenter wrote, they don't actually have to be competitions. We don't have to be competing against each other. Just like the Guck trip, the global upgrade trip where we traveled together and you had a bunch of challenges to complete. Imagine if we did some combination of planning challenges plus amazing race style, last minute stuff. Wouldn't it be cool? We could actually record us figuring out together, you know, talking out loud. Well, how about if we do this, that or the other? I think that could produce some great content. I think so too. I think so too. So lots of good suggestions. We'll see what we decide. We had some time to figure it out, but certainly something that is on our minds and hopefully on yours also,

if you enjoyed the last one anyway. So hopefully we'll come out with that at some point in the early half of next year. We'll see. Anyway, that brings us to the end for today's discussion. So if you've enjoyed today's podcast and you'd like to get more of this stuff in your inbox each day, each week, you wanna go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media,

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