the BEST tools TO HELP YOU MANAGE AND REDEEM YOUR MILES AND POINTS
Ever wonder how all the travel pros are flying around the world in Qsuites but when you search for award availability you can never find it? Well, it’s because the travel pros are all using the tools below, setting alerts and snatching those seats up before you can. Good news! These resources are available to anyone and most of them are free to use or very inexpensive.
TO KEEP TRACK OF YOUR CARDS
Travel Freely: This app keeps track of every single credit card, sign up bonus, annual fee and 5/24 status. It will even help you choose your next card based on the cards you have on your goal trip. You never have to enter your credit card information in either.
TO KEEP TRACK OF YOUR POINTS
Award Wallet: This site will keep track of all of your points and free night certificates and their expiration dates. Once you start accumulating points across all programs/airlines and hotels, this takes a lot of work of keeping track of them. You do have to enter your login for each loyalty program.
Cardpointers: This is another great app that keeps track of your cards and annual fees. But, it goes one step further and shows you what promo offers are on your card and tells you what card to use for a specific purchase based on the category. For instance, if you enter in gas or car rental, it will tell you what card to use to earn the most points from that purchase. Super helpful.
TO HELP YOU REDEEM YOUR POINTS
Point.me: This award flight tool searches for award flights by entering specific dates and shows you what points transfer which is helpful. Pro Tip: BILT offers a free version of point.me on their website or app and you do not have to have a BILT card to use. Just click on “travel” then make sure to click on “Transfer” so you get the transfer valuation and not the “if you book in the portal” valuation.
Award Hacker: This site is awesome because it makes me think outside of the box and it shows me the absolute cheapest way to get from Point A to Point B with my points in economy and business class. You just enter in your departure and arrival city, the class of service you want to fly and it will tell you every airline and points program that flies that route and will even show you where to transfer and how to book! It, however, does not show you award availability, but it gives you enough information to run those searches on your own. Best of all, it’s free!
seats.aero: This award flight search tool has become my go-to for flight searches. Very user friendly. You can search by departure city, filter by what points you have and a one month pass is just $9.99. Try to the free version first. I have been very pleased with this search tool.
rooms.aero: By the people that brought you seats.aero, this is a hotel award search tool. Completely free and easy to use. Worth trying before you pay for others.
roame.travel: This award flight tool is fairly new and very user friendly. You can search for flights by specific dates and I like that they have a free version and a monthly subscription option so you don’t have to commit before you try it.
awardtool: This award search tool is for flights and hotels. it has a paid version at just $11/month
Seatspy: free searches for economy flights only. On this award flight tool, you search by airline, rather than by points program. Free trial available and premium subscriptions start at $3.32/month
Awayz - This hotel award search is $11.99/month or $199/year. It allows you to search by date and even by using your annual free night award or search for the 4th night free which I haven’t seen any other site do. A Trip Pass is only $4.99 and allows you to have up to 50 searches in a 72 hour period which is a great day and I would consider this when I was ready to book rooms.
Staywithpoints: This hotel award search tool allows free searches with up to one alert. Subscriptions begin at just $4.99/month.
PointsYeah: This is a flight and hotel award search program. I actually think this is a good search tool for beginners. Try the free version before you choose to subscribe.
maxmypoint: This hotel award search saves me hours searching for open award dates. It currently shows award availability for Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott and IHG properties. I love that I can set alerts to be notified when a room opens up. Give it a try!
maxmypoint.com shows you which nights have award availability
Open Hotel Alert: This is similar to Expertflyer, but for hotels and you can use it for award nights. Just set up an alert and you will receive an email when a room opens up. If you have your eye on a certain hotel but can never find availability, this is a great app. It’s completely free to use.
Expertflyer: Are you looking to book the elusive Qsuites to the Maldives or the Singapore Suites apartment but can never find availability? Did you know you can set up seat alerts to notify you when seats become available? I have also used this site to find award seats for our family of six on our two European trips. You will need to subscribe to the paid version to create seat alerts. And they do offer an option to try it free for five days. My suggestion is to try the free version and really get to know how to work it and look up flights and seats. Then you can decide if it’s worth paying for. Try the desktop version as it’s much easier to navigate.
TO MAKE SURE YOU PICK THE BEST SEAT ON THE PLANE:
Seat Guru: This one hasn’t been updated in a while, but I still like to check it before I pick a seat. Ever sit down in your seat and look over and you have no window? Before you book your next flight, head over to Seatguru.com to make sure you pick the best seat.
aeroLOPA: This is a new site that has an accurate layout of each plane depicting what the seat layout is, what kind of seat, where the window is, etc. I feel this is more for those looking for a specific business/first class seat and configurations. The layout is not clickable and doesn’t tell you if a seat is in a bad location or not. I would probably still refer to Seatguru for that. It’s free!
Seatmap: This one is fairly new and very similar to seatguru above in that it includes reviews of the seat (unlike aeroLOPA). It’s free to use and very user friendly.
seatmaps.com shows actual seat and window placement and includes flight reviews
