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I write a lot about how to get points and miles, but I don’t often write about how best to use them. The main reason for this is simply that I’m not an expert award booker. Sure, I’ve booked quite a few award flights with my Delta miles, but I have limited experience with other airlines. However, I know enough to know that if I try to book a complicated itinerary on my own I will do a ton of work, I will experience lots of frustration, and I will most likely end up with a sub-optimal itinerary. Luckily for me, and for everyone else in the same situation, there’s a simple way to make sure you get great value from your miles: use a good award booking service. Award booking services work with the points and miles you already have to find the best possible flights to suit your needs.
Are they worth it?
Typically you’ll pay an award booking service anywhere from $100 to $150 for one traveler, and usually less for each additional traveler. If you’re booking a simple domestic round trip award and can find saver-level seats on your own (25K miles in coach, for example), then there’s very little reason to look to a service. If, however, you have a complicated itinerary or a big international trip in mind, an award booking service may be a good idea. A good award booking service should be able to help you book an awesome trip for fewer miles and with much less aggravation than booking it yourself.
Here are some potential advantages to going with a good award booking service:
- Better Award Availability. Many people assume that if their airline tells them there are no award seats available, then it must be true. A good award booking service can often find the seats that don’t appear to exist.
- Save Miles & Money. A good award booking service will know which of your points can get you to your destination and back for the lowest cost in terms of both miles and cash. Ideally they know which options to avoid due to high fuel surcharges or unfavorable award charts. And, they know how to stretch your miles further by taking maximum advantage of flexible routing rules such as layovers and open-jaws.
- Better flight experience. A good award booking service will know which flights have the best seats and service and will try to get you on those flights. And, they’ll proactively find itineraries with the fewest stops and shortest layovers (while avoiding layovers that risk missed connections).
- Less Aggravation. Booking award travel can be a huge headache. Simply finding available award seats can be difficult. With some airlines, booking award travel can be extremely difficult even when the award seats are available! A good award booking service will do the hard work for you even if it means calling an airline a dozen times until they find someone who knows how to book your flight.
And the Best Award Booking Services Are…
I don’t know! I know several bloggers who offer award booking services and who sound like they know what they’re doing, but I don’t yet have firsthand experience for comparing one to another. I recently used MileValue’s service (and will review the experience soon), but I don’t have any other experiences to compare to. My plan is to use award booking services when I can, and I’ll review them according to the categories listed above (better award availability, save miles & money, better flight experience, and less aggravation).
Reader Experiences
Have you used an award booking service? If so, who did you use? Did they save you miles & money? Did you have a better flight experience? Was it significantly easier than doing it yourself? Please comment below.
Advertise Your Service
Usually when people try to advertise in the comment section, I send those comments to the spam folder. Today I’ll make an exception. If you have an award booking service, put the URL to the service in the text box named “Website” and use the big text box to write up why your service is worth checking out.
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[…] Whats the points guy? Is that within the USDM handbook A bit of a mention of it and others here: Get the most from your miles – The Frequent Miler Reply With […]
I offer a booking services for airfare and hotel bookings. You can find all the details under “Booking Services” on the Miles Momma site. Love to help plan your next adventure!
I run an award booking service. I would love to help anyone here!
Click on my name above to check out the website and submit a booking request.
I offer a 100% guarantee! Not happy? You don’t have to pay. No money up front. We operate on the honor system.
I also help for free if you have a schedule change. No gets left hanging!
[…] the post “Get the most from your miles,” I suggested that using a good award booking service is a great way to get the most value from […]
@Rich. can you or someone else provide the web page for travelawards consulting. There are to many with close similarity when I search. Thanks
[…] Get the most from your miles […]
I have done my own and also used/contacted others. I actually had cranky flier find me flights and I did the calling. Turned out to be a fantastic Lufthansa experience. Other ties I contacted Gary who said he was too busy. I contact pointpros but it wasn’t Ben and the other guy was pretty useless and could only find business class. I contact travelawards consulting and he was prompt and found first class awards for us.
Personally I think some of the bigger names tend to look harder on rewards for friends than new customers. I think they do similar things with certain other info they find out. Keep it within themselves and then release it to others later.
I deleted Rick’s blog when he starting pushing his daughter’s useless articles.
Great post and loved reading most of the responses. Some of the arrogance, the “garbage” and “pimps” were uncalled for; one can be critical without nastiness and we will all enjoy the give and take. Really have enjoyed reading FrequentMiler and I like Rick and Lucky, Ben and Gary but also read Million Mile Secrets and MommyPoints. I didn’t know a thing about this area of travel before I started reading the Blogs last May, 2011; I’ve learned a lot, collected 1.5 million points and miles and am having MileValue book a honeymoon trip for my daughter and her future husband for Hawaii next January. If he can’t book rooms maybe Tahsir can. Thanks to the bloggers both large and small.
@ Brian
I book hotels on award travel as well!
Feel free to check out my service. It’s been up and running for about three years now and have had many happy clients. Feel free to check out http://www.FirstClassandBeyond.com! 🙂
Thanks for the booking service suggestions. Does anyone know of any booking services that ALSO book your hotel for you? The ones I’ve looked at so far don’t do hotel bookings…
I agree with Milevalue here. The best part I look at when booking clients itineraries is how happy they are. At the end of the day, that’s what matters most! If the client is just content, I feel as though I haven’t done my job properly. If that means that I devote hours to book one itinerary, so be it. Happiness is better when you spend less to gain it.
@David I see my inexperience did shine through on your award. You were literally the first award I booked! And even on that award, I’m glad you were happy with the outcome. I think my customers are just as happy (or happier) with the outcome nowadays and the process is smoother since I’ve booked dozens of awards since then.
Lately I’ve been trying to do as many same-day awards as possible. By that I mean having my clients’ award booked the day they send me the request. Nothing pleases me more than solving their problem well and quickly.
I read frequent miler daily and get the daily updates via email from MileValues. I have got to say that these two are the best blog read out there. I am really happy that the author of these two bloggers are extremely friendly, and really nice. I get a response from them very quick whenever I email them a question.
As for Rick, I read your blog too. Just dont like your response today. Sounds like you don’t care if you lose readers. Good for you to be proud that you have a following, but readers like me are turned off by responses like that. Please be more humble!
I am glad boardingarea has included greats bloggers under an umbrella. Thank you
I am very happy for millionmilesecret for introducing me to MileValues.
I am also thankful for FrequentMiler for teaching me to maximize my points earning on spendings I already are making.
Lastly, milevalues it’s always nice to read your blog posts. It makes me dream of the possibility on One day on how I’ll be spending my points.
Sorry for the long response
Mark
OH LORDY!
As new to the art of travel hacking, we ended up contacting three different award booking services for an upcoming flight. Sadly, all three services did not measure up in one way or another.
I started to write out a reply detailing each experience with each service so that readers could take the information and decide for themselves, but the reply would take over this whole page. So here’s a very brief summary of our experiences.
POINTS PROS
Did not respond to us in the 24 hour period that they stated on their website. After 3 emails from 2 different accounts, we got some excuse that emails were stuck in a spam filter. We finally got a pretty good itinerary for 250K in miles, but when we replied to adjust the itinerary, we never heard back from them. After waiting more than a few days of sending more emails and not getting a response, we contacted the next booking award service. When we emailed Points Pros to let them know we were disappointed in their lack of response and that we were moving ahead with another service, WE STILL DID NOT HEAR BACK FROM THEM. IN SUMMARY: Very, very, flakey.
BOOK YOUR AWARD
Contacted Gary Leff’s service hoping for a better result. Was told we were going to hear back in 48 hours. We waited until 72 hours and then contacted them again. We got a hasty response with an itinerary that ignored our request for a different arrival and departure cities, and completely ignored our clear request for a 2 night stopover in a connecting city. Additionally, the flights would have been 340K. We emailed them to express our unhappiness with the lack of timeliness of their responses and the seeming disregard for our clearly stated parameters. At least Steve totally owned up to making the mistakes, for not inputting the proper arrival city and offered us complimentary booking for 2 on a future flight. I would have considered giving them a second chance in the future but that the flight they found us was 90K over the previous award service through what was turning out to be the same frequent flyer program that Points Pros was searching is quite the deterrent. Based on their press and accolades, BOOK YOUR AWARD did not meet my expectations. IN SUMMARY: A little flakey. 340K being best award tickets to be found is really steep and really deters me from contacting them again.
BOOK MY AWARD
Brian is very quick to respond and came up with 3 very good itineraries. He’s very expensive too ($375 each for business class tickets, $475 for first class per ticket.) But having two back to back poor experiences, I was hoping I would pay for a better level of service. Well, Brian was on top of the itinerary, responded promptly, and didn’t charge until our tickets were booked.
But it wasn’t until after our tickets were booked and his fee paid that I realized that he overlooked a very important detail of our request that was very clearly and repeatedly stated from the get go. He had reassured us that we had everything we had asked for, but when I showed him specifically the error and told him we were unhappy with the outcome, he became touchy and angry. We went back and forth, trying to convince me to spend 2K on miles to upgrade to a first class ticket (ostensibly to cover his mistake) under the guise that I would have a much better flight experience, and at the same time each email trying to goad me into a flame war. Even when we came to a compromise, HE NEVER ONCE ACKNOWLEDGED HIS MISTAKE.
Brian was formerly an attorney, and he unfortunately has many personality traits that make him a caricature of his former career. I could go into much more sordid detail, but it’s enough for me to say that it’s not worth it to pay any amount of money to deal with a personality like this. And anyhow, based on the other comments on this post, it sounds like there are much, much better options for award booking. IN SUMMARY: AVOID AT ALL COSTS.