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Today, we’re talking about travel goals and why they are essential to successful award travel. With so many options for rewards cards in the U.S., how do you choose which credit card to apply for?
Credit card issuers regularly release increased signup offers and new cards. It can be tempting to apply for every big offer, meet the minimum spending requirement, then refresh your AwardWallet account and bask in all the points and miles. But, if you aren't careful, those points and miles may not get you any closer to your dream trip. Why? Because you didn't earn the right type of points currency for that trip.
We field reader questions every day in AwardWallet's Facebook community, such as “Which credit card should I get?” or “Which rewards program should I focus on?” The best responses we can give are in the form of a question: “Where do you want to go?” and “What are your goals?”
Without a travel goal, you can’t create a plan to get there. Without a plan, you’re just collecting points that could be devalued at any time. This is why you hear the phrase “earn and burn” used frequently in the world of points and miles. If you hoard points and miles in any program, chances are those rewards will devalue over time. Instead, you want to consistently earn and then use (or burn) your points.
To that end, let's go over why having goals is essential to rewards travel success.
Planning a Successful Travel Rewards Strategy for Beginners
This post is aimed at those just starting their points and miles journey. If you’re an experienced points traveler, you've most likely built up a small arsenal of tips and tricks. However, if you are new to award travel, a successful strategy involves a few key factors:
- Understand the basic beginner information, like what's covered in our Start Here guide.
- Pick a high-traffic destination. Generally, these destinations offer a range of airline and chain hotel accommodation options so it's easier to find award availability. Think big cities, such as New York, London, or Tokyo.
- Start checking out the different programs to better understand which combination of points and miles will work best for your goals and spending habits. Searching early and often helps you gain a better understanding of how points and miles work. Plus, you'll get an idea of how much things will cost.
- Put together a rewards card application and spending plan, work on your minimum spending requirements, maximize points promos and category bonuses, and track your credit card rewards.
If you apply for every card offer you can find, you surely be able to string a trip together. However, it will take you longer, you’ll spend more, and you may end up with orphaned points and miles in programs that are of little use to you.
As you better understand award travel and the programs you enjoy using, you’ll dig deeper into how those programs work and how to maximize the value you get from your points and miles. Over time, you'll learn more, and the process will become second nature.
Putting Your Rewards Plan into Action
Focusing on one particular travel goal and building out your plan is a great first step. Next, you need to put your plan into action. Here's a summary of the steps:
- Picking your destination. For your first trip, consider high-traffic destinations. There are more options to get there, and you're following in the footsteps of those who have used points and miles to get there in the past. High-traffic destinations will have online guides, trip reports, and how-to posts from other travelers. This will save you time and allow you to wrap your head around planning, collecting miles, and booking trips with points and miles before tackling harder-to-reach destinations.
- Picking a program to get you there. When you're new to award travel, figuring out which points and miles to collect is one of the trickier aspects. Often overlooked are airline partnerships and alliances, which admittedly can be a bit tricky to learn. To learn more, we have a post dedicated to explaining them.
- Learning what points transfer to your chosen award program. No two points currencies are the same, and not all points transfer to the same program. Understanding which points and miles you need to collect helps ensure you can actually use them. Need help figuring out your options? AwardWallet maintains a transfer partners tool with all transfer partnerships that we know about.
- Making a card application and spending plan. Once you know which points and miles to collect, you can plan how to accumulate the points and miles needed for an award. This can be a combination of welcome offers on new cards, maximizing card promos and bonus spending categories, and optimizing your everyday spending so that every dollar accumulates points toward your goal. Our top recommendation for a first travel rewards card is the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card due to the ease of earning and using points and its excellent travel benefits.
- Booking your award. Searching for award availability and booking an award can be confusing, and the process varies by program. It takes practice to learn how each one works. Thankfully, earning points and miles also takes time, so you can use that time to do research before actually booking anything. Once you have your points and miles in place, put that practice to use and book an award trip!
Final Thoughts
Collecting points and miles without a plan on how to use them is like buying a bunch of ingredients at the supermarket before you’ve decided what you want to cook.
To make an amazing dish, you have a recipe, buy ingredients, and follow a plan. For successful rewards travel, choose a travel goal, plan what program will get you there, focus on the points and miles that will get you there, and follow your plan.
Your travel goal is the mark on the map you want to go to, and your points and miles plan are the directions to get you there.
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This is great advice as we are currently getting into the travel business and want to max out our benefits. Always plan ahead!
Great advice. I do have a question that I’d like to present. What’s the best situation to do in the following scenario. I have an AAdvantage account which has a pretty decent balance in it and year end I’m planning to join in on a family trip which is on a discounted CX fare which yields 0% mileage. Does it make sense to collect these miles on another OneWorld member account or to not worry about collecting these miles?
I would look at WhereToCredit.com and figure out how much you’d earn. Is it worth the effort, I’d say yes, purely from an educational standpoint to learn about the potential value in another program.
there are soooo soooo many options.. find a couple ones that work for you and go with it.
I like the cooking and the ingredients metaphor.
I find it’s like a rabbit hole. The further you go down, the more paths you discover. And no one knows how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Great article, I’m one of those people who pick the destination first and then work towards finding the best way to get to the destination.
It has been working for me so far, hopefully it’ll work for others as well.
It’s all about focus, focus, focus! In our case, my husband and I have booked a cruise on the Rhine River from AMS to BSL. We are flying internationally on miles in business class, spending five days in AMS ahead of the cruise and staying in AMS hotels on points, then following the cruise staying in hotels in BSL on points, and knowing full well were it not for advance planning and dogged intentions, no trip like this would be in our budget. We have found there’s a rhythm to collecting miles/points and once we’re in the redemption stage, we immediately focus again on our next travel goal and strategize every dollar charged. I’m intrigues by D L ‘s above post regarding Fiji/NZ/AU. Sounds good to me!
nicely done!!!
It’s a great article. Thanks.
I always keep some transferable points from all four major programs in case the trip I planed needs some extra points due to unexpected devaluation. or should I said expected devaluation 🙁
My next plan is Fiji-NZ-AU in business for family of three. 330k Alaska MP. Long way to go.
I agree with making a plan, but sometimes a plan can be let’s see where the wind blows us. IGH Pointsbreaks for example. Maybe I don’t have a bucket list to go to Hot Springs, AR or something like that, but if I’m flexible I might make a trip out of it with the wife and have more fun than I could have imagined.
Absolutely, but that is a plan! And, of course, you understand the value of IHG PointBreaks 🙂
This is great advice. I need to make a plan.
That’s so true about the importance of planning travel ahead of time and then working toward it. Otherwise, you’ll end up spending so much more time (and money) looking for what to spend your points and miles on. I’ve been there!
good summary of how to attack this thing
I mostly focus on the most fungible points systems.