If you have a general idea of a premium award trip you’d like to take and a general idea of a timeline but you’re flexible on the finer details, that puts you in a really good position to use award search tools like Points Yeah to help fill in the rest of your trip based on what’s available with points. Recently, Greg filmed a video of him doing some award research just like this.
Here’s what I learned about finding business class award space for summer vacation by watching Greg use Points Yeah’s Daydream Explorer tool:
You can watch the full video tutorial here, or click the timestamps below to navigate directly to a specific point within YouTube.
(00:52) – Once logged in, even free accounts can see a Points Yeah feature called “Daydream Explorer”, which helps you do open-ended searches like Cleveland to Europe for anytime within a set date range.
(02:08) – You can also set parameters for how much of your flight you want to be in premium cabin. For instance setting it to only show options with mostly premium cabin avoids a situation where your short, positioning flight is in a premium cabin but the long overseas flight isn’t.
(03:00) – To avoid including award flights with steep taxes and fees, you can use the “max taxes” filter and set an amount you’re comfortable with.
(04:24) – Clicking into a search result lets you see important details like how many seats are available, how many legs of the flight are in premium cabins, and points booking options.
(05:22) – You’ll have to click “check with real-time search” to find out whether or not the itinerary you’re looking at still as availability or not. The Daydream tool shows recent search data, but not real-time search data like the normal Points Yeah search tool.
(06:53) – During the tutorial, Greg uncovered a bug where clicking through on our Daydream option reset the search to 1 adult (instead of 4, as intended). Furthermore, this seemed to make the availability disappear, then re-appear. This all highlights how important it is to use this tool for research, then verify that research with the actual award program itself next.
(09:31) – In Greg’s tutorial, he is doing his final search on Lifemiles’ website. In the case of Lifemiles, he adds a disclaimer that the taxes and fees you see listed on the first screen may not be the final total you see by the end of your actual booking.
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Great stuff! Wish you could say West Coast….
Nice – thanks y’all!