Trading Secrets - 221. Brian Kelly: The Points Guy breaks down how to win at travel! From mastering miles to maximizing the potential of points, the expert tips YOU need to know before your next trip.

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Episode Description: This week, Jason is joined by entrepreneur, author, travel expert, and founder of The Points Guy, Brian Kelly! Brian started The Points Guy as a humble blog while working as an IT recruiter for Morgan Stanley, where he shared his thoughts and insights on maximizing credit card rewards and frequent flyer miles. Over the years, The Points Guy has grown into the leading voice in loyalty programs. Brian has transformed The Points Guy into a powerhouse travel and lifestyle media platform, now reaching millions of people around the world each month. In this episode, Brian shares the inspiration behind his new book, How to Win at Travel, and dives into a wide range of travel tips and strategies. He discusses why travel is becoming more expensive, what common mistakes people make when planning their trips, and how to navigate the complexities of booking and using frequent flyer miles. Brian also explores the role of travel advisors, how they make their money, and why it's important to know when and how to book travel insurance. Additionally, he explains how starting your journey abroad can save you money, why kindness matters when dealing with airline agents, and practical advice for what to do if you get bumped from your flight. Whether you're a seasoned traveler or just starting out, this episode offers valuable insights for making the most of your travels. Brian  reveals all that and so much more in another episode you can’t afford to miss!  Travel Resources:      Google.com/flights Point.me                                              Host: Jason Tartick Co-Host: David Arduin Audio: John Gurney Guests: Brian Kelly + ThePointsGuy.com Stay connected with the Trading Secrets Podcast!  Instagram: @tradingsecretspodcast  Youtube: Trading Secrets Facebook: Join the Group All Access: Free 30-Day Trial  Trading Secrets Steals & Deals! ShipSkis: Skip airport stress and costly airline fees with complimentary insurance, real-time tracking, dedicated support, and on-time delivery. Travel worldwide without luggage-ShipSkis delivers to 180 countries for a hassle-free, gear-free journey. For 20% off your first shipment, go to Shipskis.com and use the code TRADINGSECRETS. Robinhood Gold:  The privileges of the very privileged are no longer exclusive. With Robinhood Gold your annual IRA contributions are boosted by 3%, plus you also get 4% APY on your cash in non-retirement accounts - That's over 8x the national savings average. The perks of the high net worth are now available for any net worth. Sign up at robinhood.com/gold Tonal:  Tonal is the world's smartest workout that effortlessly fits into the busiest lifestyles and with the latest iteration - Tonal 2 - you can ensure your workout is more tailored and effective than ever. With new drop sets, Tonal 2 analyzes your movement, senses when you're fatiguing and will drop weight until your muscles are maxed-out. It's an experience you could only get in a gym—until now. For $200 off your purchase, head to Tonal.com and use promo code TRADINGSECRETS

Welcome back to another episode of Trading Secrets. Today we are joined by entrepreneur, author, travel expert, and founder of The Points Guy, Brian Kelly. Brian started the Points Guy as a humble blog while working as an IT recruiter for Morgan Stanley, where he would share his thoughts and insights on maximizing credit card rewards and frequent flyer miles. Over the years, the points guide has grown into the leading voice and loyalty programs, points miles, credit cards, and travel. Brian has grown the points guide to be a powerhouse travel and lifestyle media platform that's reaching millions and millions and millions of people around the world monthly. If you want Brian's entire full story, we got into it on Trading Secret

not too long ago. So check out that episode. But you are now labeled Forbes number one travel influencer among other rewards and accolades. And Brian, you now have a new book coming out titled How to Win at Travel, which will be out February 4th. By the way, we're buying five copies right now. So go give us your biggest takeaway from this episode. Put your Instagram handle on the review. We have five copies to give away. But Brian, thank you for being on sharing secrets. Thanks for having me. Welcome back. It's good to be back. And in studio. I think the last time, I think we did virtual. We did first. Yeah, it's much better to be in person.

You are a handsome man and you are a tall man. I know, thanks for giving me the sofa so I can man-spring. Six, seven, but true story, I actually think I've got, most people get shorter with age. Yeah. Last several years, I got into stretching. In Chelsea, there's a place called stretch space. Okay. So for an hour or week, usually I get professionally stretched, like on a heated table.

They therogon you, they stretch you. And I swear my posture's gotten better. So I, like, used to always clear a door, you know, I have like a radar. in my head, I can clear most doorways. I'm like hitting my head on things now that I didn't used to. And people that I know are like, I think you're getting taller. Now that's a training secret. I didn't expect to get from me, Brian, was how to get taller. Instead of, they actually have the crazy surgery now. Well, they'll hack your legs open. Yeah. So instead of doing that, just go get stretched. It's more enjoyable than a massage. You're one for one. That's a training

secret. I'm going to take to the bank. I could use another inch. All right. Let's talk a little bit. I mean, first of all, your book, I cannot wait to read it. I was, I was, I was reading the synopsis online. So many great tricks, tips and trading secrets in there. But I want to talk industry as a whole first before we get into some of the specific tips. So percentage change in travel. And this is by specific indexes. This is from June 2024 to 2019. We see that the travel price index is up 20%. We see that lodgings up 11%. Recreation, 17%. Food and beverage to put in perspective, 29%. And then the consumer price index is up 22%. So we're just in general seeing all things when it relates to travel, at least from these

statistics, prices going up. What are you seeing with all your research when we look in at 2025? Well, it's interesting. So if you just look at airfare, it's about even to what 2019 used to be. However, if you just say, oh, well, then airfare, we're doing pretty good, right? Yeah. But airfare is just one tiny component of the total cost of flying these days. It's the fees that airlines are raking in billions and billions. So simple things like seating assignments used to be free, and now most airlines charge for it, boarding. I mean, they're figuring, even in business class now, you fly British Airways, you use

your miles to fly British Airways, they're going to charge you to $100 to select your business class seat. So there's now, you know, you redeem cheap business class on Emirates and Qatar. They won't let you in the lounge. So they're debundling everything. So some of those statistics can be, okay, well, you know, airfare is actually still pretty cheap. But the reality is consumers are being hit across the board and paying for things that used to be free. So travel has gotten much more expensive. And I see people making so many mistakes

that instead of just constantly answering DMs, you know, people having issues, I'm like, it is time for me to write a book to just like teach you from start to finish like the core foundations of not just how to save money, but enjoy travel because it can be really fun. It seems like almost, yeah, every business that where prices have increased, they have strategically made it more complicated because the more complicated you make it for the consumer, the more profitability typically, right? That's actually like a basic philosophy of credit cards, right? Make it a complicated process. Don't educate the consumer and make a fortune off transaction fees and then also a fortune off late payments. Consumers are now getting smarter. There's AI so that gap is

getting tighter, but then they'll find other ways to make that money. And you, you already alluded to your book when you talked about some of these things, the biggest mistakes people are making with travel, as prices are going up holistically, what are some of the biggest mistakes you're seeing? I think where you book your travel has huge impacts these days. For one example, and people are just so price focused, so they'll buy the cheapest flight they see. Right. Or they'll go and just think, well, I always go to the Delta website, and that's probably the cheapest, right? At most airlines, are the same. And cheap is expensive by booking, like, you might save $20 on basic economy, but then you're paying $50 for the bag you thought that you'd be able to bring on board.

So I think consumers are looking way too myopically. They're booking via the wrong sites. You know, I really talk a lot in the book. So many people still book through online travel agencies. And they can make sense if you're saving a ton of money. But in airfare, it's pretty much all the same price. The airlines nowadays, if your flight gets canceled or delayed. If you book with the airline, they'll put you on the next one. So you might be out on the next flight one hour later. If you book through a lot of online travel agencies, you have to call that online travel agency, sit on hold for an hour. And you're panicking as that flight is now full and you're missing flights. So people, and people just don't know the difference. They'll

Google, you know, cheap flights to Atlanta. They'll land on some random airline. They're booking with spirit. They're having to pay for things where if they just would have spent $30 more on Southwest, they would have two free check bags, free changes, much more. So I think where people are just looking at the cheapest price and they're missing the boat. You know, so many times people will message me, oh, I'm going on a cruise. I booked the cheapest flight. You've got 59 minutes at Atlanta Hartsfield to connect. And people still do this all the time.

And what's going to happen? You're going to miss your flight. Even if you're on time, you know, the gate will be delayed. The agent won't open the door. And you're sprinting across one of the world's largest airports. And then guess what? When you miss your cruise, you're sobbing, your whole family trip. And I hate to see that. People are still making so many mistakes there. So, you know, I talk about it in the book. It's like build in longer connections. Like the airlines will sell a 60 minute connection, which is, in my opinion, just gnarly. And, you know, it's, and it's setting people up for failure. So I think the system, our whole travel system is, you know, the numbers are going up and up. Everyone's traveling. There's a lot of. on the system, air traffic controllers, there's not enough of pilot shortages, aircraft shortage. And back to your point on like, most businesses grow through capacity. You like, you know,

open up new branches of a restaurant chain. Airlines can't grow their capacity because they're just not enough new planes to make them more efficient. There's huge, you know, Airbus and Boeing, especially is having. So airlines are stuck in the spot where they've got to just squeeze more money out of what the existing real estate, which is why all these fees keep coming up. And that's why for consumers, like, you have to know how to play the game. I have so many questions in different directions. I want to go just in that monologue. But even what you just ended with, it's interesting. I'm an investor in Delta. I'll talk to you a little bit about my Delta status and the points. I don't think you're going to be proud of me. We're

going to talk about that. I'm going to tell you everything I got and you're going to assess the situation. But Delta's profitability and their stock keeps going up. And I always thought some of the issue was the capacity. But like you said, they are finding so many ways to make profit. One of them is a credit card. We'll get into that. But before we do, you touched on an area that no one talks about now, but I've always been curious. And it's the idea of working through a travel agency. And so it's so top of mind because my parents just booked a cruise through a travel agent. And the travel agent charged them a fee of some sort to do it. And I said to them, I go, listen, I don't know this industry well, but that doesn't seem like the norm because I know on the

back end, they're getting material commission for actually placing you. They then sent an invoice to my parents. The invoice was done the wrong way. And it actually showed it was, I think, a $2,500 commission that they were getting paid for placing. And so talk to me just a little bit about travel agents. How are they making their money? And if someone is listening to this and they do decide to use a travel agent, what are some recommendations of things to think through? I talked about that in the book. Because travel advisors is what they're called now. Luxury travel advisors can be worth their weight in gold. Because when things go wrong, airlines do not care about you. Even if you have top-tier lead status, you might get reaccommodated. Well, people don't realize

if you're flying to Tanzania on that lifelong vacation, you know, the airline loses your bags and you're like stuck in Germany. When you have a travel agent, they can actually often reticket you right away. You don't even have to wait in line at the airline desk begging to get on the next flight. you can call your top-notch travel agents, have the full ability as like an airline agent themselves. So having that ability to fix problems on these mega trips is amazing. Also, travel advisors, generally, they're getting commission on hotels. Hotels and cruises are where they're making the most money. A cruise travel advisor should not be charging a hefty fee.

For cruises, in the book I talk about, cruisecompete.com actually allows you to put in the cruise you want to go to and then allow different advisors to compete. And they'll actually dipcompete.com. So for most average cruises, if you want a travel agent to book airfare and your flying coach, most will not do it for free because they're not making any money on it. But if you're booking business class flights, fancy hotels, cruises, most luxury travel advisors would be happy to have your business. And most of the time, and this is back to my point of people making the mistake. I know so many people, I'm going on my honeymoon out of four seasons, I'm going to go to four seasons.com. here's my rate book. No, don't do that. Do not do that because you'll get the same rate going

through a luxury travel advisor. And when you go to a really good travel advisor, they have such power in the industry. And if they have a relationship with the four seasons Maui, you're going to pay the same rate, maybe less. They may even have specials. And that luxury travel advisor is going to get you upgraded because they're going to email the GM and as a big time travel advisor in the industry, that GM wants to make sure all their clients are taking care of. We've got to take care of these as clients, so the chances of you're getting an upgrade, you're going to get free breakfast, potentially thousands more in perks by booking through an advisor at the same exact price. Okay.

So on the luxury end, travel advisors shouldn't be charging you a huge fee. Some will, if you've got a really complicated itinerary, that takes them a lot of time. Some do have fees, but they should be very upfront about it. But for the most part, if you're booking, you know, an expensive trip, they get paid based on the commission. Yeah. And they want to make sure that you're happy. So when things go wrong, you got your credit card company, which we'll get into, you know,

the credit card can help reimburse your travel advisor. Your last line of defense usually is the airliner hotel itself. You want to have extra protection by booking via the right channel. Okay. Do you have like one rule of thumb with working with a travel, what'd you call it? Travel advisor. Is there like a dollar amount? Like if you, if your trip is over 5,000 or 10,000, Should you then consider a travel advisor? Like, when do you say it makes sense or it doesn't make sense? Yeah, so I think for complicated trips and travel advisors, it's more than just booking, really good travel advisors. So you want to go on African safari.

Yeah. Rour Africa is the top luxury travel advisor group in Africa. Americans who go on safari in Africa, you book through ROR because all of their agents have been to most of these lodges. And every African safari is very different. for wildlife, for amenities. So choosing the right African safari is critical. And booking it online, it's dizzying. You're going to look at websites, like, what's the actual difference?

Especially if you've never been on safari. It is almost impossible to figure out what the best safari for you is. There's no AI today that'll compare all these small lodges and big ones. So using travel advisors who are experts in their fields and have been to these places makes all the difference. So Virtuoso is the largest network of luxury travel advisors. generally you want to use a virtuoso agent and one who books a lot of travel use a successful travel advisor because they have the connections and they will call the hotel and say this is a special trip make sure you take care of these clients and if your room's not right or whatever and the

hotel's giving you a hard time if you didn't book through an advisor you're at the hotel you know that front desk agent maybe having a bad day if you're not happy with your room you call your advisor and say hey look this hotel didn't take care of me and you've got an they will rain down on the hotel. So that's like travel these days is just knowing. But if you book directly on that hotel's website, you don't have that extra course of action. I like it. We'll get into credit cards. We'll get into hotels. These are all things that are so near and dear to my heart as I constantly travel. So if you're listening for those tips, they are going to come. Let's stick on flights for a second. You kind of mentioned going to the right websites. What are the right websites to buy

if you're looking to get the best bang for your buy? Yeah. Well, you don't buy through Google flights, but anyone, if you want to be smart about how you book flights, you need to learn how to use Google flights. So, Google.com slash flights. It's a free tool, and it pulls in most airlines. So Google flights is a great tool because it'll also give you data. Another question people always ask is, oh, I got a flight to Barbados for 500. Is that good? I'm like, I don't know. I don't fly that route a lot. But Google flights will actually tell you the historical price and whether that price you're seeing is low, medium, or high. And so do you have to search for that or will it show it to you? You can search for that. So whatever your individual route is, it'll give you a bar. Like, this is a good price.

These days, if you're getting, if it says this is low or like average, that's what it is for that route. They, you know, they're able to assess billions of data sets to come up with that recommendation. But here's where it gets interesting. You save the most money on flights by being flexible. And Google flights has this tab called explore. And this is where it's freezing cold in New York City today. Yeah. I know a lot of people are like, I just need to get somewhere warm. Like I have this weekend I can take off what is the cheapest place I can go. And instead of having to search one by one every Caribbean island or Mexico, Google flights will let you put in New York City to Caribbean. And it'll show you a map of every single Caribbean island and you can filter

nonstop. You can put business class and it'll show you where all the deals are. Or you can just say, look, I want to get away a weekend in February. And it'll rank for you based on destination. So I think when buying flights, too many people will just say, okay, let me check Puerto you go. Yeah. And then you're like checking one data point. But like if you switch your flight by one day, you could save, you know, hundreds or thousands of dollars sometimes. So figuring out how to use Google flights, that's the tool most travel experts, you know, and you're at an airport, your flights canceled. You've got to get to L.A. You go up to an agent. They're only looking at that airline. Sorry, we don't, we don't have flights sold tomorrow. Yeah. Most people would sit

and we're like, oh, that sucks. But experts, and what I teach in the book is, no, pull in all different other airlines, be your own advocate. And this is why having points is so important. Whenever the airline, I'm stranded by an airline, I immediately get into action. I'll burn frequent flyer miles on another airline, two gates down, and then I'll figure out my refund later. But you have to get into this, like, aggressive mentality in travel. And I see too many people in airports. And there is a mentality. Once you're in the airport, whatever the agent tells you, when you don't have the information, you kind of assume that that's the truth.

But there's so many tools out there that'll tell you how to get to where you want to go. And then later you can get, you'll get the refund from the airline now. They canceled or delayed your flight. That's a new rule. So I teach people, what are the rules?

And also just like knowing when you're asking for a favor, so many people will scream at the airline agent. You guys always delay my flight. I'm never flying JetBlue again. They don't care, right? Like in that agent, If you're asking for a favor, you need to use much more different language. And I always people watch at the gate.

So, like, I wanted to teach people in this book. Unfortunately, in the U.S., we don't have consumer protections in the airline. You know, the airlines own it. It's terrible. So knowing that, you know, A, we have to have our lawmakers change that. So that's something we should push on them. Get to the White House. Let's get this going.

But I teach people being nice and going up and saying, hey, look, your partner airline has one open seat available in, in, coach, I just check. Can you switch me to this airline? I need to get home to my kids tonight. That's going to have a 10x more chance of you getting on that flight. When you show up, you know the data, you know what's available. So they don't even have to do the searching for you and say, hey, you know, then I teach the language of like there's one Y seat available, which is like the insider word for coach seat. It's showing Y1 on this partner flight. Can you transfer my ticket over? And you ask with the smile. And they can do it with the push of a button. But they're not going to go out on a limb for you if you're screaming at them. Interesting. And that's what I'm really excited for people to start understanding. The system can suck, but you can figure out how to win. And they do have more power than you expect.

And I know this because a close friend of mine, he had to get that. His flights were delayed and canceled. And there's one flight left for him to get back to get literally his sperm. I don't know. This story just took a turn. No, he had to get like there was a certain time. And there was like one or two eggs left. with his wife and he had to get like he had to go through the process of providing his sperm

that morning and it was that person that got him on that flight and it was that process that day that led to their now son and like they made it work so yeah that's a good turn but like it's wild to see the power that they do have and the impact they do have but listen people so they have that power but also these frontline agents are now being monitored now technology monitors is when they make exceptions. Yeah. So what I want people to know is when they go out and make an exception for you, they may have to go to their boss and explain it.

They might get dinged. They're taking a risk. So when you're asking for a favor and you're saying, hey, use a little bit of that capital you might have to get me home. I really appreciate you. You're going to change my life. That's how you ask for it. If you scream at someone and say,

I'm never going to find this airline again, they're not going to go out and use that little piece of capital that they could get in trouble by making too many exceptions. you know, the airlines, they're trying, once again, trying to squeeze value out of everyone. So they're trying to make people pay. Then airline waves a fee for you when they probably should have charged you one. If you're screaming at them, I wouldn't do it. Would you go out on a limb and you get in trouble for someone who's rude to you?

No, of course not. Of course not. It's human nature. Makes perfect sense. Makes perfect sense. We also talked about, like, getting your information from Google flights. Those were great tips, like where you can go, where you can look, different price points, low, medium, high.

Once you have all that information. you've decided, okay, this is where I'm going to go. This is how I'm going to do it. Is Google flights that, like, what is the actual best place to book? Direct with the airline. In general, pretty much. So, Google flights will tell you, okay, you know, United Airlines has the cheapest flight by 200. So you go to United.com, book directly because that, the airlines love it when you book direct.

So now, even if there's like a 20-minute delay on your flight, say you book like a connecting flight to save money, which often happens. If your flight's delayed, United, especially if you have elite status, but even if you book with them directly in their app, they'll say, hey, Jason, like, your flight's delayed today. Do you want to switch and they'll let you go nonstop? That can happen. If you book through an online travel agency, call your travel agency to rebook. And I just hear so many horrors. And often there's, you know, with weather, wildfires, et cetera, airlines will issue what's

called weather waivers, allowing you to change your flight for free. They're waiving. But when you book being an online travel agency, I know people have been in this situation. recently, the travel agency won't let you switch even though the airline is now having these really, really flexible rules. Interesting. So like for an example, though, that's like if, let's just use Delta. So if you book direct with Delta or you work to book directly with price line, it will be more advantageous for probably like consumer protection, consumer flexibility to go through Delta. You did say, though, the airlines like it better when you book through them directly.

Is that because they're saving on fees? Yeah. So they don't have to pay the travel agent, you know, an extra fee. Once again, American Airlines, just from a business perspective, they fired their former chief commercial officer because he got too greedy. And he was saying any corporation that doesn't book direct, which most big companies, you have to book their travel agency. American got so greedy. And they tried to not pay any travel advisors or companies. And it destroyed their business because enough people went to competitors and said, so American actually just this week announced their results. They're still reeling from this. They were too bold. got too greedy and they're trying to cut out all the middlemen. But the reality is luxury travelers,

corporate travel, you need to book through a travel agency. They're part of the ecosystem. American was trying to make this bold move like, well, the others will follow us. The others not only didn't follow them, but Delta said, we're going to take your flyers. We're going to take extra good care. We're going to give elite status. Come with Delta. We care about corporate travelers. It was one of the biggest mistakes I've seen made in aviation industry this decade. What about skip lag? So skip lag.com for anyone that doesn't know, it's a site that you can get if you have, I think it's like a direct flight or you're not checking a bag. It'll use all different airlines so I could fly, you know, jet blue to New York City and then southwest

to London. Like what's your thoughts on skip lagged.com? Yeah. And so yeah, to your point, so say airline pricing makes no sense whatsoever. I guess it makes sense based on your, your origin and destination. So say you want to fly Charleston to New York, it might be 500 bucks. Right. But you could fly Charleston to Buffalo, which there's a lot. of like, you know, smaller carriers with the connection in New York and it's $200. So what Skipleg allows you to do is buy that flight that goes Charleston, LaGuardia, Buffalo, but get off the plane in LaGuardia and you could save 300 bucks. Right.

And just stay in New York. Charleston to LaGuardia because there's so many business travelers and it's just a higher route. But the Charleston buffalo route's way cheaper. So what many people do is drop the last leg. So I'll get off the plane in LaGuardia. I'm not connecting to Buffalo. now you can what is my thoughts on this so it's not illegal there's nothing illegal about it the airlines hate it and the airlines say well that's against the rules if you do it once or twice or

three times generally that you know the airlines only really go after people who do this a lot okay and you also have to make sure not to check a bag because they will check that bag through buff to buffalo and people have made the mistake oh wait no I'm getting off pull my bag they're not pulling your bag off you know especially if you're doing something that hurts the airline so airlines you're not going to go to jail for this but it is possible you could get banned from an airline to close your freaking flyer mile accounts there are risks involved so i would say casually skip lagging probably okay okay but you do it a lot you there are risks involved and people should know all right listeners you're getting a lot of trading secrets here you want to save a buck with a little

risk go to skip lag dot com that seems like a good little trading secret now you talked a little bit about consumer protection one i recently found out about i'm a delta guy so i love flying delta in a rare set of circumstances. I was seeing a friend in Long Island, and there was only a direct flight out of Islet and ended up taking Frontier. That is the first time I'll take Frontier. It is the last time I will take Frontier. I booked a flight. I upgraded to what their version of first class is. And I had my ticket. And I got to the airport. And they told me that they didn't have a seat for me. I had my ticket. I upgraded. What do you mean you don't have a seat? I paid for a seat assignment. I literally paid more money for a seat assignment. They didn't

have a seat for me. So what they had told me, though, is that apparently this is a typical thing that happens with Frontier. And there's consumer protection that you will get three times what you paid for the actual flight back in the form of a check. And so I'm wondering, do you, like, what are some of these consumer protections? Even though you said there aren't many, what are some that we should know as we're flying when things happen? I don't know who told you that was an airline agent that did that. Yeah, it was an airline agent. Yeah, it was an airline agent. I think he was lying to you to get you out of his hair because... Because I was in his hair.

I was... The Department of Transportation states, if an airline delays a flight three hours or more or cancels it for any reason you're owed a refund. Okay. There is no compensation beyond that that is legally required. And what they say is if you paid for an advanced seat assignment or if you paid for a check bag and they lost your bag,

you don't have to pay the check bag fee. So, and Frontier, to the best of my knowledge, does not have a customer service policy that would, you know, give you three X. The only thing what I'm, what could be is involuntary denied boarding. So if you did have a seat on the plane, a confirmed ticket and they, the flight still went out without you, you can get involuntary. Oh, so you didn't even get on the plane at all. No, they didn't let me on the plane because they said all the seats were full. Yeah. So you can submit involuntary denied boarding compensation.

The airline should give it to you directly. If the airline doesn't pay you, then you just file a complaint with the DOT and that'll force the airline to respond. Okay. So yes, in that case, I'm sorry, I thought you just didn't get your big seat in the front. No, I just didn't get A-C. I didn't even get them. Yeah, so that's called IDB compensation.

In that case, you are owed. I don't know if it's three-x. There's like a sliding scale of compensation. for that. Okay. And what I'll say, the other is denied boarding compensation. This is when you're at the gate and the airlines ask for volunteers. Okay. If you are flexible and can take the next flight, there's no set amount that they have to pay you. Generally, it's like $200, you know, or $400 if it's like a four-hour delay. What I always recommend to people, when you take that and you're fine taking that next flight or even in Europe, if they're oversold, you can get $800, $200,

Oh, always asked to be reaccommodated on that next flight in first class. Because back to like, this is the airline asking you for a favor. So this is when you can have negotiating power. So instead of just taking the voucher and saying, yeah, I got my 400 bucks, always, it never hurts to ask. Always say to the agent, hey, I'll do this for you because you're doing them a favor. Yeah. They don't want to get into a situation where they're pulling people off like they did with you.

Yeah. Because then they have to pay for. And so, yeah, always say, well, I'll do it. And then my final negotiation point is, can you put me in first class? Because once again, click of a button, they can do it. And that's fully justified. You know, if they put you, if they bumped you to another flight, they can put you in first class. And often you'll earn tons of frequent flyer miles because it's a paid first class.

That's brilliant right there. So if you take volunteer money, make sure you negotiate first class and then get the rewards for it. But business perspective, I always say to myself, sometimes I hear him go, 900,000, 1100. How are they justifying $1,100? Like, why are they paying $1,100 for someone to give up their seat? So I talk about this in the book because it all stems from the Dr. Dow incident on United. So that was the incident. I think it was 2017.

United Airlines, they had to kick people off the plane because they needed pilots to get to Louisville, Kentucky. And back then, they didn't really have, you know, they didn't really have good compensation. Most people on the plane were like, no, I don't want to take 200 bucks. But they basically just started kicking people off the plane. And that's when the Dr. Dow refused to get off the plane. That's when the airport fake cops beat the crap out of them, taking them off the plane. And that went so viral. United settled a multimillion dollar suit.

The entire industry said from that point on, okay, let's just bump up the compensation because it's cheaper for us to give a thousand bucks than to deal with social media, craziness, et cetera, the brand risk reputation. You know, these airline vouchers aren't costing an airline that much money. You have to use it within a certain time on that airline. I'm sure there's huge breakage. So, yeah, when they really need volunteers, they're now authorize to go up to $10,000. I know people who have gotten $10,000 on international flights especially.

And one other point I want people to know, when flying to Europe, there's what's called EU 261 compensation, meaning if you're leaving Europe on any carrier, including like United American Delta, and the flights delayed or canceled, you are owed cash compensation from the airline. Okay. Most airlines don't tell you this. And when flying to Europe, if you have the choice to fly Lufthansa or United, always choose Leptonza. Generally, they're better in flight product as well. And when you fly in an EU carrier leaving the U.S. to Europe, you have those same protections.

Got it. If you're flying a U.S. carrier to Europe, you don't get the guaranteed compensation for delays or cancellations. Sounds like our protections here in the United States are bullshit. But I like it. That's another good tip there. Take any type of EU flight as opposed to United States. flight because you'll be protected on it, even if you're coming back to United States. All right, I can stay on this topic forever, but I do have to transition here in a second.

So I'm just going to rapid fire a bunch of like kind of like what I feel like could be BS or just fictional trends that you hear out there, right? So you tell me some of these that are true, some are false. I'll rattle off a few of them, but like you hear if you use a different VPN when booking on a website, you'll get a cheaper flight. If you go incognito, that there are certain days you can book. It seems like people have all these little what they can. consider tricks and tips to actually getting the best deal on a flight. Are any of those valid? Well, I used to always say this was a myth. This is conspiracy theorists. However, you know, Delta just came out there working with an Israeli AI startup that is doing predictive pricing based on your

personal information. Oh, I hate that. So they publicly came out. I mean, they didn't quite say it, but they said it that they're, because once again, back to this notion of they got a squeeze revenue. And they know that you probably have a lot more revenue to squeeze out of than, you know, a once-a-year traveler who's just trying to go to Orlando. So I think that is happening. And also I talk about in the book, booking your flights from certain airports is cheaper. And generally, booking travel. So if you flight all the time to South Africa, you want to originate in Johannesburg. The flights, if you book Joburg, Newark, it's 4,000.

But the same, if you book Newark to Johannesburg to Newark, if you book Newark, if you book, begin and end in Newark, you pay two to three times as much. Because they're pricing it on the economic. Yeah, Americans are more wealthy than South Africans. So, and I talk about it, my friends in Dubai do really crazy things called positioning flights. So Sri Lanka is like a three-hour flight from Dubai. Flights from Sri Lanka in first class on Emirates, you can fly Sri Lanka, Dubai, Geneva round trip for $3,500. But Dubai to Geneva alone is 12 grand. So by taking an extra flight to Sri Lanka, now not everyone's going to do this.

The business travelers, their companies will pay the 12K, but really savvy frequent flyers who love to travel and on Emirates will take extra trips to save thousands of dollars. These are some of the more expert tips I give in the book, but I had to kind of put in, I just want people to think differently. You're not,

especially if you're dating someone abroad, it might make sense to start all your trips from abroad when possible because you can price them starting from a city that has lower pricing power than New York City, London, et cetera, where they basically fleece people knowing they have to pay it. For the sake of this example, let's just assume just for the sake, and it means nothing, but that Rome is one of these cities where you're going to get advantageous pricing because the economics are lower, their economy, and the pay and all the things than New York City. Technically what I could do is opposed to booking a New York to Rome,

Rome to New York flight, I could book one flight, New York to Rome, and I could use like frequent flyer miles, get that for free. And then I could book the rest of my Europe travel just as Rome is the starting destination. And in this example, it would be significantly cheaper. Correct. Okay. All right. That's a good takeaway. And one other thing I want to talk about in the book, when using frequent flyer miles, you can often get extra flights for free because it's what called stopover. So when using your points, most people will say, okay, I redeem my points, New York to Paris. I'm also going to go to Istanbul on this trip or whatever

airlines like Air France will actually let you book that New York to Paris you can stop for a week if you wanted to and then that Paris to Istanbul flight for free or like a very nominal amount more so this is a more advanced topic for even if you think you know how to use your points most people are leaving money on the table

by not we call these the routing rules where you can actually stretch the value add on extra flights for free how how do you do it? You just have to, a lot of times, you just have to do multi-city trip on the airline website. Okay. But most people are like, let me just get to Europe and then I'll buy like the cheap flights in between.

But you don't have to buy those cheap flights. You can stop in Paris for five days and then book that Paris to, you know, south of Italy, Palermo flight, you know, all for free. People are needlessly. How would I know? Like, if someone's listening to it. You know by reading the book and you know, these are what the experts in the industry do. They're called routing rules.

And so anyone out there today, United States. has this thing called the excursionist perk. So if you fly to Australia on United, they'll actually let you book like Perth to Sydney. So say you want to go on a whole tour of Australia, you can fly to Sydney and then book in an extra ticket to Perth and then fly home from Perth all for the same amount of miles. Okay.

This is what takes practice, but I want to let people know, like even if you think you're a points expert, Google, Air Canada, which is a transfer partner of Amex, Chase, Capital One and city. And another big way to win in points is not just using the Delta. I know you love, Delta's a great airline. Don't get me wrong, but their miles have been devalued.

You know, you're spending five, 600,000 miles to go to Europe. What real points experts are doing is you're accruing Amex points and then you're transferring to partners like Air Canada Aeroplane, which still has 60,000-mile business class awards to Europe. Delta might charge you 250,000. So to win at the points game, these days, you have to think outside the box. The U.S. programs just keep raising the rates, crazy amounts. Okay. Once again, back to the whole theme of they're squeezing out money

wherever they can to get to hit Wall Street profits. Okay. Hold those points. I have a million questions on the points. We're coming to that in two seconds. The last question I got before we go to points. Oh, yeah, that was a long answer to a short answer. But I love it. You're just every single every single answer you get like, I need a no pad to listen to this back. And I think the listeners will too. Last thing I got on flights. You go to book. I take your advice. I go to Google flights. Maybe I use skip flag. And then I book the flight. And every single time on Delta, the big question, do I get insurance? I always proudly smack that button and hit no. Tell people why they shouldn't get insurance through the airlines. So I'm not against travel insurance. I think travel insurance can make a lot of sense, but never book it directly through the airline hotel. So often, that's not even travel insurance. It's called travel protection. And it is crappy policy you're paying a lot of money for. If you, and generally, the airlines nowadays are a positive post-pandemic rule that came out. You can change flights and get a voucher for on most fares, even frequent flyer miles. When you use points for a trip,

most people don't realize you can cancel that for free up until departure. Wow. Taking that, and I wanted to add this expert tip to people. So that friend of yours who needed to get home for that life-changing, what I do in those situations or I got a big gig, I got to get here. I'm leaving late in the day. I'm a little nervous because like if that flight gets canceled, I could be out a lot of money. I almost always will book a second flight later on a other carrier using my miles as my backup insurance plan. If my flight takes off as plan, I just cancel the other one. I get no fees. All the U.S. programs will let you cancel free of charge. Wow. So think about it. As long as you remember to always cancel your backup plan,

that's the best piece of mind because say your flight gets canceled, everyone else is in chaos, probably trying to buy seats on the flight that you already had your ticket to. Right. And if you didn't need that ticket, you cancel before departure. You get all your miles back, zero paid. So it's like having a backup plan. That's the type of insurance I buy for domestic flights. Okay.

I don't buy. I use. So travel insurance for big ticket items, cruises. Yeah. If you're going to Cabo and you need to get a villa that's like prepaid 20 grand with your friends, you're interviewing for other jobs and you're like, oh, there's a chance I might get a new job. Sure. My family member is sick.

They're like when you know that there are some things going on in your life and you're going to have non-refundable, that's when you get travel insurance. So that's my parents right now. They're doing the riverboat cruise. I think it's like in general. I say, sorry, mom and dad's filling your beans. It's around like 20 grand or something. And my mom, I know right now is saying like, hey, should I get a credit card with the best

insurance or like where do I go to find the best insurance? Ensuremytrip.com hands down. I have no affiliation with them, but it's a marketplace. So insure my trip. Marketplace is the best ways. get people to compete for you, like cruisecompete.com, insuremytrip.com, and you might be shocked. That 20,000, they can get like $50,000 worth of coverage. It might be $400 bucks. Okay.

And, you know, when you're spending 20K to just buy the $400 policy that covers you for, a lot of these will even cover you for preexisting conditions. If you've got an ailment that might flare up, you got a sick family member, a kid who might, you know, give birth early, like you might, when there's reasons brewing, and another reason inside of just like, protecting the value of the trip if you have to cancel is even if you're on the trip, travel insurance will usually cover if you get sick. Most people don't realize our U.S. health insurance, I mean, it barely covers us here, let alone abroad. You need to get medevacked. Some credit cards do have good evacuation coverage,

but having a travel insurance policy for these far-flung trips, you don't want to ever have to use it, but God forbid something happens, especially to parents. I highly recommend it's like 5% of the cost of the trip or less. It's nothing when you tack it on and it gives you that peace of mind. But insure my trip's incredible because it'll give you the best policies. And then you just have to expand. It'll give you the price on each and then what it covers. Shockingly, the cheapest policies often have better coverage than the most expensive. So price does not always equate. Let me just get the most expensive. It makes no sense, but that's the insurance world, right? You may actually be able to go with a policy that's the cheapest. It actually has like double the coverage on all the

things that matter. I love it. Every time you talk, we got big takeaways here. So insuremytrip.com, if it's insurance directly through an airline, do not do it. Consider buying a backup with points because all U.S. and most important, using the right credit card. Use a credit card with travel protections. So, you know, your Chase Sapphires, your Capital One ventures, they have built in insurance coverage. It's not as good as paid travel insurance, but it's still pretty good if, you know, you show up and your vacation rental is horrible. It's not what you looked. It's dirty. You know, you might be lucky to get a refund from Airbnb, but they're not really covering the gap of like getting a last minute rental. A lot of credit card companies will step in, fully refunds you

and may even cover the gap of having to book a last minute place. That is. But in general these days, travel insurance is good to have for big trips. That's a good transition to credit cards. So let's talk credit cards. It's a hot topic. everyone wants to know about your take on credit cards. I will even touch on insurances and other benefits. But one thing that I actually heard you say in a podcast is that 1% of the US GDP is spent on Delta logo credit cards and that credit cards are becoming a larger business than the actual airlines. Are you still seeing that trend? Oh, yeah. And do you still see credit cards and these frequent flyer programs becoming the main focus of all spending? Yeah. I open my

book saying that we're living in the platinum age of travel. And I am an optimist in general. While all these negative things might be happening in the industry, travel today is as safe as it's ever been by huge, huge margins. Even though social media make it seem like aviation's really dangerous, we are so fortunate. And travel still, relatively speaking, to the golden age is cheaper. And if you don't need to be super rich to travel like a millionaire, I mean, the points came, What I love about the points guys, we know they're college kids studying abroad, flying business class using points

because they know how to leverage their good credit. You don't need to have huge income to get a top-tier credit card. And that's, I love, I dive into credit because credit, you know, there's over a trillion dollars in credit card debt in America, which is a huge issue. But to play the points game,

it's all about being responsible with your credit, treating your credit score like an asset, protecting it. And I do know from doing this now for 15 years, when you get into the points game, you become obsessed about your credit, making sure payments, and that's how your score goes up. So credit card, that's how you win at the game today. If you're not playing your cards right, you are losing at travel because not only can you get thousands of dollars a year in sign-up bonuses from these cards. So the points are really valuable, but the perks are

potentially even more valuable. So those flight protections, when the airline cancels your flight, and you need to spend the night at the airport, if you use the right credit card, you're getting $500 or $1,000 per person on your ticket reimbursed. So you're booking a nice suite at the Westin and know that your credit card's going to refund you versus waiting two hours in line begging for Motel 6 from a crabby airline agent who might throw a voucher at you.

That's the difference of, and many of those people in that line have coverage on their credit cards they just don't know about. Right. So points are really valuable and perks as well. Now back to your point about like the Delta co-brands, another key message I want people to know, though, is that spending on an airline credit card, you're earning just one airline mile. The number one type of credit card I recommend, and any points expert worth their weight in points, in points, you have to get a transferable points credit card. So this is, this is the where the credit card industry has gone because Delta is an amazing airline, but they really have been devaluing their points.

You know, it could be a million points to go to Europe in business class. You want to get a credit card, Amex, platinum gold, Capital One, VentureX, Chase Sapphires, Biltz of the world because you earn points in the credit card currency that allows you to transfer to tons of different partners. So you're diversifying your points so that, hey, oh, this summer I want to go to Mekanos, I really want to fly that Newark to Athens flight on Emirates. If you have a, you know, a United card, and you only have United Miles, you cannot fly emirates you can't then trance so many people will come to be like well i've got two million united miles

let's fly emirates like how do i do it you can't you have accrued a very like relatively insignificant currency you should have used a chase car like a chase sapphire which gives you triple points on travel and dining of which we and then you could transfer to united one to one instantly or you could transfer instantly to Emirates or Air France or Airplane if you wanted to fly Lufthansa. You get so much more value by having credit card points than you do with airline miles themselves. One thing I've heard about transferring points is if you do have airline miles yourself, some places will transfer and they'll do a multiplier or if you have American Express points, they'll do a multiplier. Talk to me about the people listening right now that are sitting on a bunch

of points and they want to take advantage of these multipliers. How do they work? Yeah. So it's exciting because if you have points in Amex, Chase, built every month, they usually come out with transfer bonuses. And you'll never know what they're going to be. But you could get up to 40% more points by transferring to Virgin Atlantic, for example. So in Virgin Atlantic, actually, they were running promotions this year. It was like 30,000 points to fly business class on Virgin, which is fabulous. It's like Virgin's new business class, sliding doors, great vibe, 30,000 points.

But then they also had like a 30 or 40% percent. transfer bonus. It was like 20, let's just say it was 25,000 chase points to fly business class like 200 bucks in fees for like a $4,000 business class flight. 25,000 credit card points and when you redeem for gift cards is $250 or less. So I say to people, this is why the transferring game, it sounds so crazy and hard, but this is when you can get a $4,000 item or would you rather have a $250? Of course you want this shiny. And that's like why people are obsessed with points. In the old days, you had to just know this knowledge, but now there are all these tools that will do it for you and tell you which transfer partner. So point.me is now like the Google flights for paid flights. Point me is the Google flights for award flights.

So if you have Amex points in Chase and Capital One, they all transfer to different partners. It can be, I'm the expert and I get confused. I go to point.com. And if you have Amex, you go to point.comme slash amex. Sign in. And it'll tell you, instead of, you know, on a $1,000 flight, Amex Travel is going to charge you 100,000 points. Yep. But that same $1,000 flight might be available for 20,000 aeroplane points.

So point me, checks the availability in all the transfer partners. And it'll tell you, don't spend $100,000, spend $20,000 by transferring to this partner. It does all the heavy lifting for you. Guys, all these sites we will put in the show notes, the last thing I got for you, Brian, before we wrap, because I know we took a, we have you a long here. I'm going to tell you right now. I'm a diamond status at Delta. I got it up right now.

I'm a saver. That's what I tell my people on the podcast to do. Save your money, invest your money. The hoarding, I think, might be hurting me, though. I got 1.156 million miles here right there on Delta. Right now, I just don't spend them. What's the number one thing I should do with these things as we wrap? What do I do?

Spend your Delta, spend all your miles. I mean, so there's a fine balance between just, don't just blow them on any flight. So when you're redeeming your Delta miles, in general, Delta miles are worth a little over like a cent apiece. So if you were to redeem Delta miles for upgrades or to redeem flights for friends, those million miles were worth $10,000 in flights. Now, Delta miles several years ago were probably worth one and a half cents. So they're slowly devaluing. So the longer you hold on to those points, I don't know, next year they might be worth less than 10,000 if Delta keeps, because what they're doing is Delta, once again, back to the theme of squeezing value out of thin air, Delta is saying,

well, today we allow people to redeem for 1.1 cents. Next year, it might only be. one, you know, and that's sort of what they've been doing by just increasing the amount of miles. So use your points, simply put. And also, I would say, you have enough delta miles, instead of spending just on Delta credit cards, now you might need to spend on the Delta cards to keep your elite status. That's how the airlines are keeps, that's why so many people spend on the Delta cards. Your opportunity cost, so I would say to everyone is, how much is this elite status, how much value is this really bringing me? Because my hunch is, if you used cards, cap one venture, that's 2x on everything, the Amex gold, which is 4X dining and groceries, you could still transfer

those points to Delta, but no one with points, very few people with Amex points should be transferring to Delta. You're getting more value by being more loyal to your credit card that allows you to transfer. That's like where the value lies. I like it. There's a huge, huge things that I'm going to be doing. We've got to get your trading secret, Brian. Everyone that's listening right now, all of this stuff will be all the websites, all the tips. We will outline them in the show notes. We'll also recap them so you can get all this information because it's just like so much. And then we are giving five of your books away. Can you give us your trading secret? And can it be, I'm going to ask specifically, if you have something going to add to it,

sure, but can it be something also tied to the best strategy for hotel booking because we didn't get to hotels? So maybe a trading secret. If you want to give one yourself too, but like specific to hotel strategy, best places to book things to think about. Yes. So hotels. I like staying at nice hotels, boutique hotels. So for me, I mean, my tip is, okay, so for hotels, co-brands make a lot of sense because you can get more value from the perks off the bat. And what I mean by that is Marriott has a card that'll give you, I just redeemed it for free night at the W. South Beach. It was $1,200. And the card's $600 a year.

So it is so easy if you stay, even if you stay one or two nights, year at a Hyatt card, a Hilton or Marriott, the free nights that come along, as long as you use that one single perk, which are very easy, you're getting more than the value of the card. So to save on hotels, get a co-brand card for the chains that you like. And a lot of these big chains, you don't have to stay at Marriott branded. You can stay to St. Regis. Sure. So having a card, but the key, the secret is to not put all your spend on that card. It's okay to have credit cards that sit in your wallet or at home that you're not spending on a lot. Spend. Spend. on a more valuable card with transferable points,

the Sapphire Venture, built, et cetera. But it's totally cool to have credit cards that are just for the perks, just for like the elite status that you get at the hotel. Might spend a little bit to get some more perks, but, you know, these co-brand, the Hilton's, even the airline cards,

have them for the free check bags, et cetera, but be very smart about where you're putting your day-to-day spend. You want to put that on a card that gives you the most valuable points and gives you a bonus multiplier for the things you spend on, whether it's rent, dining, groceries, streaming, et cetera. I love it.

It's a hell of a trading secret. For anyone that wants more, let me tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to read his book, How to Win at Travel. And then in the recap, I'm going to give you my trading secrets that we did not cover in this episode. But, Brian, it is always a pleasure to talk to you. Congrats on all the success. This book is going to change lives and save people tons and tons of dollars. So congratulations.

Where can everyone get more of you when they want more of you and the book and everything else? Yeah. So obviously the points guy.com is the website. We've got an amazing team of writers. But me personally at Brian Kelly, the book How to Winat Travel.com. You can pre-order it anywhere. I narrated the audio book, which is 11.5 hours. So if you're flying to Asia anytime soon, I've got you.

I love it. It's amazing. We're giving five copies away. Just give us your biggest takeaway from this episode in the reviews. And Brian, thank you so much. much for being back on trading secrets. Thanks for having me. Safe travels.