Category: Booking Travel

Staring in October 2020, Delta will begin flying to Cape Town, South Africa! This route was announced in mid-May, but it was just put on sale today. So, we took a look at the cheapest mileage options to fly between the U.S. and South Africa on this newly-modified route — without having to pay 465,000 SkyMiles for business class.

ExpertFlyer is an incredibly useful tool for finding award availability, seat maps, flight schedules, and more. In this article, we show you the basics of searching for award availability—along with tips for how you can use this information to save miles on your next award booking.

Air France and KLM recently launched a new partnership with Virgin Atlantic, making both Flying Club and Flying Blue miles even more valuable. You'll now have the ability to book partner awards on either airline using the other's currency. In this article, we're digging into the new partner award options to highlight the best values.

Traveling doesn't have to break the bank! Learn exactly how we used points, airline travel vouchers, and credit card perks to save thousands of dollars on a family vacation.

Our family has long been loyal to Marriott, too long as far as I'm concerned. I've decided that it is time for us to move our loyalty over to Hyatt – but this requires my reluctant husband to switch over his business travel. I'm outlining my case for making the move here, are you convinced?

CLEAR claims that you can use your eyes and fingerprints to confirm your identity – helping you breeze through airports, stadiums and more. Is that really true? How much does it cost? Are their ways to save? And, are there any drawbacks?

Stopovers and open-jaws enhance the value of any frequent flyer program by allowing you to add destinations to your travel; in many cases with no additional miles required! Here's our beginners guide to how you can apply them to your next trip.

What makes a great business class experience? I think a smooth check-in, nice lounge, great seats, tasty food, plenty of entertainment options and great wine! Check out my review of the KLM new business-class experience from Amsterdam to New York on the Boeing 747-400 Combi.

On August 13th, Google Flights launched a price guarantee on selected flights booked on its platform. In a nutshell, if Google is confident that they're offering the cheapest tickets, they'll pay you the difference if they're wrong.

When it comes to selecting accommodation for your Walt Disney World vacation, there is a seemingly endless range of options. Here are five reasons to stay at a Walt Disney World Resort.

Spirit Airlines provides an affordable price point for anyone to travel in exchange for a no-frills experience. Today we focus on five tips that, up until this point, haven't been spoken which will teach you to maximize your time and experience on your next Spirit flight.

A widely known cornerstone in the travel community is that babies under the age of two can travel domestically for free as a lap infant. However, it’s not as simple with lap infants and international award tickets. One would assume that a parent could book an international award ticket and merely add their lap infant to the reservation. However, there are various forms of airline-dependent fees involved. Knowing the pricing structure before you book could save you a pretty penny, or pile of points.

Searching and finding cheap flights is more than an art than science. It can take hours and hours if you really want to do your due diligence. With time at a premium, consider using services like Dollar Flight Club when you’re looking to book flights; just don't forget to add the appropriate frequent flier account to the ticket and then leverage AwardWallet to manage the points you accrue.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) requires US airlines to allow travelers the opportunity to hold, change, or cancel an airline ticket during the 24-hour period immediately following the booking of a flight without penalty. Kristina covers the major US airlines and a couple of our favorite OTAs on their policies.

Last minute award booking fees are a penalty assessed by airlines, purely because they can. That said, there are some strategies to avoid these with a little bit of thinking outside the box.

With few exceptions, the points, miles, and rewards associated with loyalty/rewards programs expire at some point. The key is to know the policies and make sure you're never caught losing out on your hard-earned rewards. First and foremost, make sure you're keeping track of all of your rewards with AwardWallet; we'll let you know if something is going to expire well in advance of that expiration.

JetBlue has published economy, and business class award charts for redeeming TrueBlue points on Hawaiian Airlines operated flights. While you've been able to redeem TrueBlue points for Hawaiian flights, the price was correlated to the cash cost of the ticket, much like how a JetBlue award is priced, and you'd need to call up get the exact price.

There are few places on earth that evoke a sense of adventure and exploration like South Africa. In addition to the amazing national parks and the wealth of history in South Africa itself, flying into Johannesburg opens up travel opportunities...

Redeeming top value award flights can be a tricky business. Every carrier has a unique set of rules and region definitions, requiring a different number of miles for each destination and class of travel. When you add upgrades into the mix, it can start to feel like a full-time job. We dig through the weeds a bit to point out some solid options where you can get great value from your miles.

We’ve rounded up free night award change and cancellation policies for the major hotel programs, and thrown in an example to show when you need to cancel to receive a full refund of your points. Make sure you know the policies of your favorite programs so you don't get caught at the last minute and lose your points.

Some points and miles redemptions are just better than others. While a last-minute must book redemption can certainly happen, where you might not get the best value, a little planning and knowledge can help you take advantage of some of the best redemption opportunities available. We've covered 11 of them.

Having points and miles are great when it comes time to cash in for your dream trip. Don't forget though that in almost every case you can use your points and miles for friends and family without having to transfer anything to them. Simply book the award in their name.

Following up our post on why travel goals are crucial to award travel success, we're back this time with an example of the planning process. We’ve selected flying two people round-trip to Hawaii in economy for this demo.

Card providers release increased signup offers and new cards regularly, and it's tempting to apply for every 100K offer that gets released, work the minimum spend, then refresh your AwardWallet account and bask in all the zeros. But, the reality is, those points and miles may not get you any closer to your destination.

Flying in first class or better yet a suite on an airline is a luxury that is relatively unimaginable unless you've got points and miles. Spending $10,000 or more for a single flight experience is out of reach for almost anyone, but imagine enjoying that experience paid for easily accumulated travel rewards.