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When searching for award travel, checking multiple airlines can be time-consuming and complicated to manage all possible search results. However, award search tools are available to help you find the right travel deals. One of these tools, Point.me, searches many flight programs for available award space on your chosen route. It also has several functions to help narrow your search and monitor for the best possible flight deals.
Point.me has gotten even better recently, with enhancements such as drastically speeding up the search time to return award results. Let's take a look at this tool and see how it works.
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What is Point.Me?
Point.me bills itself as “a better way to book with points.” The website tool takes basic trip details such as origin, destination, and flight date to search for flight awards on more than 100 airlines, using nearly 40 different frequent flier programs. It also includes some loyalty programs that other award search tools do not, such as ANA and British Airways.
Most major transferable points programs are also incorporated into Point.me. Even Marriott Bonvoy and Wells Fargo Rewards — which aren't listed — are still supported.
Point.me Membership Options
Point.me offers award travelers several different membership options, allowing users to purchase access up to a full year at once:
- Standard Plan:
- $12/month or $129/year. Paying by the year instead of the month offers a 10% discount.
- If you pay monthly for this plan, you receive one route-specific alert. If you pay for the whole year at one time, you will have access to three route-specific alerts.
- You can get the standard plan for just $5 for your first month using promo code AWARDWALLET.
- Also, use promo code AWARDWALLET20 to save 20% on an annual plan. That promo code drops a full-year subscription from $129 to $103.
- Premium Plan:
- $260/year (or $208/year using promo code AWARDWALLET20)
- Includes everything in the standard plan, plus:
- 10% discount and an additional $100 off concierge services
- A personalized call regarding point strategies
- Five route-specific alerts
Free ways to use Point.me
If you have an American Express Membership Rewards-earning card, you can use a slimmed-down version of Point.me for free. Eligible Amex cardmembers can search live availability on Amex transfer partners after logging in through a special Amex-Point.Me link.
Similarly, you can use a scaled-down version of Point.me if you have a Bilt Rewards account. Bilt Rewards is free to join. You can look for flights on Bilt's transfer partners using the Bilt Rewards app on your phone or tablet.
- Open the Bilt Rewards application and click the “Rewards” button at the bottom of your screen.
- Click on “Flights” and enter your departure and arrival locations and the dates you wish to fly.
- Click “Search flights” to begin the search.
- To activate the Point.me search tool, click the “Transfer” button at the top right of the screen.
Point.me concierge services
Point.me offers additional award travel services. Most of these services start at $200 per passenger. Full-service bookings, elite status-focused mileage run designs, and points strategy consulting are all advertised services on Point.me. Additional specialized services are available as well.
Searches with Point.me
Before searching, you can personalize your Point.me experience by adding your specific credit card and loyalty programs. Optionally, you can add point balances in each program to help you determine if you have enough points to book your search results.
Now, you are ready for the search. For example, here are the results for New York (JFK) to Paris (CDG) in business class for a random date I chose in July. Point.me used to take several minutes to return any search results, but now search results are typically displayed within 30 seconds. Full search results can take a bit longer.
You can also jump to other days around the original date at the top of the screen. Several filtering options include the number of stops, times to depart/arrive, and certain airports. Additionally, you can order the search results by Point.me picks, fewest points, and quickest flight duration.
Each result contains information about the flight, such as the cabin class, duration, and cash price. In the points section, Point.me shows the type of points that can be used, including possible transfer partners from loyalty and credit card programs.
Once you decide on the program to book through, Point.me continues to offer more guidance. Clicking any “select deal” options above brings up step-by-step booking instructions. These instructions describe the process, list each step, and include screenshots of what to expect.
Step-by-step instructions will help first-time award travelers immensely, but they can also be helpful for seasoned veterans. Even the most experienced travelers might book flights through a new program, so a little guidance never hurts.
Be aware that award availability can change quickly. This is especially important to remember when planning and booking award travel. While a transfer time indicator does show on this screen, AwardWallet also keeps track of transfer times in more detail. A best practice would be to search for the award space with the particular program to replicate results, especially before making any point transfers.
Point.Me Features
Apart from the searching capabilities of Point.me, the tool offers several features that stand out, making it even more appealing.
Transfer bonuses are incorporated in search
When conducting sample searches, American Express offered many transfer bonuses to various programs. Pleasingly, Point.me reflected these transfer bonuses in the corresponding search results. For instance, a 30% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic existed when the below search happened:
Point.me seamlessly incorporates any existing transfer bonuses into search results. This eliminates the need for users to do any math to figure out the final price.
Mixed-cabin indicator
Another helpful feature of Point.me is its cabin class indicator. A big plus in the screenshot below appears in the top-left corner for each option below: a mixed cabin indicator.
Point.me identifies mixed-cabin itineraries and shows the percentage of journeys spent in a premium cabin. Some frequent flier programs do not identify mixed cabin awards or do not show how much of the journey is in which class of cabin. With Point.me, prospective travelers do not wonder about search results.
Curiously, these two itineraries involve the same routing, with the transatlantic flight in business and the short hop within Europe in economy, but the percentage premium varies slightly.
Explore opportunities
Points collectors without a specific destination can use the “Explore” options offered by Point.me to find fun destinations. Though an open-ended search tool, the Explore option requires an origin airport and a date or month range for travel to get started. You can also select the activities you are interested in, such as beaches, food & wine, and adventure. Results populate accordingly on the screen below, with pictures of each destination to help entice travelers.
While this option won't show every possible destination, it will help those struggling for ideas find inspiration for future adventures.
Flight Alerts
If you have one of the paid versions of Point.me, you can set alerts on your preferred flight route to monitor for better deals. When doing your search, you can click “Track prices” on the upper right side of the screen to save the alert. A message will inform you that this search is being monitored.
To manage your price alerts, click on your name at the top right of the screen and select “Price Alerts.” Unfortunately, the only option is to delete them; if you wish to change them, you must create a new alert. The number of alerts available varies depending on the plan you have selected.
Point.me Areas for Improvement
While many features of Point.me stand out as positives, some opportunities for improvement still exist.
No option to search multiple days at once
One of the biggest complaints about Point.me is the lack of multi-day search functionality at once. Even when searching for a specific date, nearly every major frequent flier program and other award search competitors, such as Roame.Travel returns results for multiple days. These results may not appear all at once, but the option exists to toggle days in advance.
While you can click on surrounding days in the Point.me search, the search results can take a few minutes to populate. Adding something like this to fetch the surrounding days automatically would be a nice option to help in the searches. Flexibility remains key for award travelers looking to score that ideal redemption. A search option that captures such a flexible schedule would be a nice feature.
No ability to search multiple origin/destination airports
You can include various origins and/or destinations when I use Google Flights to search for paid flights. This is also true for other award search tools such as Seats.aero. Using this tool, you can search entire regions as the origin and the destination for flight possibilities. Again, flexibility only expands flight options for travelers, including airports. Unfortunately, Point.me does not allow users to choose multiple airports when searching for award flights.
Depending on the airline, search results for a specific airport in a metro area with multiple airports will return flight options for all of those airports. For instance, searching from JFK to ORD returns results from a multitude of New York area airports:
Additionally, you can use the Explore functionality in Point.me to search from a city to a region, such as Boston to Europe. Unfortunately, that does not exist with standard search in Point.me.
Limited alert functionality
While alerts are available in Point.me, you cannot edit them once they are created. To make changes to the alert, you will have to delete the alert and create a new one. Additionally, limited information appears on the profile screen as to the parameters. You cannot see if any filters have been applied to the alert.
Other tools provide alerts in their free version and many more in their paid version. For instance, PointsYeah provides four alerts for their free version and at least 32 for their paid version.
Is Point.me worth a try?
Point.me is a solid award search tool that helps you find different flight options. It is beneficial for beginners to help them step by step in booking their travel.
Since its launch, Point.me has also added functionality and improved its performance. The Explore functionality inspires those with travel windows in mind, but not necessarily destinations, and alerts to monitor for price fluctuations are a powerful feature in a traveller's toolbox.
Still, the site is not without its faults. Limitations such as single-day, single-airport searches and minimal alert functionality hamper its capabilities. Additionally, many other search tools, like Roame.Travel, Seats.aero and PointsYeah, provide more functionality and capabilities than Point.me. Finally, most of these tools cost the same as Point.me, so in some ways, you're getting fewer options for essentially the same price.
In the short time since award search tools became available, Point.me has provided good basic capabilities and shows the ability to grow. Keep an eye on this tool as a potential option to help you find your next travel opportunity!
Will you be signing up for Point.me?
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