Free Travel for Beginners: Getting Started With Points and Miles
Think free travel is reserved for celebrities and social media influencers? Think again! Thanks to travel rewards programs (points and miles), free stays at luxury hotels and free first class flights are within reach for just about anyone. All it takes is knowing the secrets to travel hacking… and a little time and effort.
I’ve been taking advantage of these travel hacks for over 15 years and have a wealth of knowledge to share. I’ve taken $6,000 international business class flights and stayed in $1,500 overwater bungalows for free and I’m here to show you how you can too. If you’re new to points and miles or just want to learn a few tips and tricks to best earn and use them, this article is for you!
How To Travel for Free With Points and Miles (TL;DR Summary)
Interested in how to travel for free with points and miles, but don’t have time to read through all the details? Here’s a TL;DR summary of the few simple steps towards never paying to travel again.
Click the links below for more details on how to get started with points and miles.
What Exactly Are Points and Miles for Free Travel?
Unless you’re completely new to travel, you’ve probably at least heard of credit card or hotel points and airline miles. But just in case you are new to points and miles, here are some simple definitions.
Points and miles are essentially “currency” tied to travel rewards programs that can be used to book free travel. That’s it, it’s really that simple! More specifically, points are associated with either credit cards, travel sites like Expedia, or hotel chains. Similarly, miles are associated with airlines.
How to Use Points and Miles for Free Travel
Using your points and miles for free travel is easy in practice, but not always straightforward. To use your points and miles, simply access the travel rewards section of the hotel or airline website. You can also usually find links titled “reward booking” or “redeem points/miles” on each website as well. You can search for hotel reservations or flights, but the “price” will be displayed in points or miles instead of your local currency.
What Are Travel Rewards Programs?
Travel rewards programs exist to reward customer loyalty. They’re sometimes referred to as frequent flyer programs when referencing airline programs. Every major airline and hotel chain in the US has a travel rewards program. Many credit card companies also have their own travel reward programs. Most large travel companies outside the US now have rewards programs as well.
These programs are free to register for and usually have various tiers. The more you fly with an airline or stay with a hotel chain, the higher your tier. The higher tiers often come with all sorts of perks like free upgrades on flights and late check-out at hotels. Here are some of the most popular travel rewards programs in the US.
While there are many similarities across travel reward programs, there are a few key differences in how they’re structured. It’s important to understand this to help you decide which are the best programs to focus on. As you’ll see soon, certain program types are more valuable than others.
Fixed Redemption Programs
Fixed redemption programs assign a dollar value to each point. These programs are less common with airlines and hotels, and more common with credit card programs. An example that I’ll discuss much more at length later in this article is Chase Ultimate Rewards, which assigns a value of $0.01-$0.015 (or 1-1.5 cents) per point if you redeem through Chase. This will make much more sense later.
Fixed redemption programs are the simplest, but tend to offer the least value. This only applies when booking directly through the credit card program rather than transferring those points to airlines or hotels. By transferring credit card points, you are essentially converting them from fixed redemption to one of the other types. More on this later!
Dynamic Redemption Programs
Dynamic redemption programs require different amounts of points or miles depending on how expensive the redemption is. For example, a flight between two US cities may require a different amount of miles with the same airline depending on the number of stops, the date, and the time of day. Also, flights between cities with the same airline may require different amounts of points even if those cities are nearby. For example, flights from Newark to Los Angeles on United may require a different amount of miles than flights from JFK to Los Angeles even though Newark and JFK are only 40 miles apart. This works very similar to how flights are priced when paying cash.
Dynamic redemption programs are much more complicated than fixed or reward chart programs. It’s also much more difficult to maximize the value of points and miles with dynamic redemption since the redemption rates tend to be tied to the price of travel. That said, dynamic redemption programs still offer much more value than fixed redemption programs. Most hotel and airline rewards programs have moved to a dynamic redemption format in recent years.
Award Chart Redemption Programs
Award chart programs publish tables with fixed redemption rates for different types of travel. For example, a domestic round-trip flight in economy class may require 25,000 miles with a particular airline. An international business class flight between the US and somewhere in Asia may require 160,000 miles with that same airline. Similarly, hotel chains may divide their properties into categories. More expensive, higher-category hotels require more points to book than lower categories.
Award chart programs tend to be the easiest to maximize the value of your points, but sadly most programs have moved away from award charts. Those that still have award charts have added a dynamic component to them. For example, Hyatt’s World of Hyatt program still breaks their hotels into categories, with different amounts of points required depending on the room type and time of year (i.e., whether it’s peak travel season at the hotel location). Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan is one of the few airline programs that still uses an award chart.
Not All Points, Miles, and Travel Rewards Programs Are Created Equally
If there’s one thing to take away from the beginning of this article, let it be this: NOT ALL POINTS AND MILES ARE CREATED EQUALLY! In other words, miles with one airline aren’t worth the same as another. Ditto with hotel or credit card points. This is important to know when deciding between travel credit cards with big sign-up bonuses. It’s also helpful if you’re trying to pick a particular airline or hotel loyalty program to favor.
By now it’s hopefully clear that the value of points and miles depends on the type of rewards program. To make matters more complicated though, the value of points and miles also varies by airline and hotel. Determining the value of points and miles is easy for fixed redemption programs. These programs very clearly publish how much each point is worth. However, it’s pretty complicated to determine the value of points and miles when it comes to dynamic and award chart programs.
How Much Are Points and Miles Worth?
Thankfully popular travel sites like The Points Guy conduct extensive studies to approximate the value of points for each program. For example, the latest valuation lists United MileagePlus miles as being worth $0.0145 (or 1.45 cents). Compare that to Delta’s SkyMiles miles at $0.012 (or 1.2 cents).
Why is this so important to understand? Well, for a few reasons. One, it can help you pick which rewards programs to focus on. And more importantly, it can help you decide which travel credit cards to apply for.
Travel credit cards usually come with big signup bonus offers, and it can be easy to get enticed by these offers and apply for the wrong cards. For example, the Delta SkyMiles Gold Amex Card is currently offering a 70,000-mile signup bonus, while the United Explorer Card is offering 60,000 miles. Using The Points Guy valuation, 70,000 Delta miles are worth $840, while 60,000 United miles are worth $870. Of course, there are so many other factors you need to consider when comparing credit cards, like the annual fee, how much you need to spend to obtain the sign-up bonus, and additional perks and benefits. I’ll talk more about travel credit cards later.
Chase Ultimate Rewards: The Best Program for Free Travel
It wouldn’t be right to put together a beginner’s guide to free travel without mentioning the best travel rewards program, Chase Ultimate Rewards. Chase Ultimate Rewards is a flexible credit card travel rewards program with an assortment of credit cards to choose from. The program includes a travel portal, shopping portal, dining program, and more.
Not only are Chase Ultimate Rewards points the most valuable, they’re also some of the easiest to earn and redeem. But what makes Chase Ultimate Rewards the best travel rewards program is the combination of having some of the best travel credit cards and a robust list of hotels and airlines as transfer partners.
Chase Ultimate Rewards Transfer Partners
Instead of earning points or miles with one company, Chase has 11 airlines and 3 hotels as partners. You can transfer Ultimate Rewards points at a 1:1 rate, in 1,000-point increments. In other words, you can easily turn 10,000 Ultimate Rewards points into 10,000 United Miles for example.
Earning Points and Miles for Free Travel by Booking Travel
The simplest way to earn points and miles for free travel is by booking travel! As long as you’re registered with the travel rewards program, you’re eligible to earn points and miles when you stay or fly.
Every major hotel chain and airline has a travel rewards program, and they’re all free to register for. Registering only takes a minute, and you’ll be assigned a travel rewards number (sometimes referred to as a loyalty number or frequent flyer number). Just provide your number before or during check-in to earn points for your stay or miles for your flight.
To make it even easier to earn points and miles, you’ll be provided with a login tied to your number. As long as you’re logged in to the hotel or airline website before booking, your number will automatically be applied to your reservation or flight. Even if you don’t travel often, there is no reason to not spend a minute registering before your next trip. You never know when you might want to start traveling more frequently and you’ll regret not taking advantage of the free points and miles when you had the opportunity!
Booking Travel on Other Travel Websites
This method works with rental cars and travel aggregator sites like Booking.com as well. Some sites like Expedia sometimes offer discounts when you register for their program through a referral. For example, you can save $30 by registering for Expedia One Key and making a reservation on their mobile app.
Just about every website or app where you can book travel either has a rewards program or partners with another program (e.g., AirBnB partners with airlines). I’ll talk more about earning points and miles through partners in a bit.
How Many Points and Miles Do You Earn by Booking Travel?
The amount of points or miles you earn towards free travel first depends on the hotel brand or fare class. It also depends on your rewards program tier. The higher the tier, the more you earn. This is why it’s beneficial to pick a hotel chain and airline as your favorites and enjoy the rewards of your loyalty.
For hotels, I’ll use Marriott Bonvoy as an example. The Marriott hotel chain has over 30 brands, from the Fairfield Inn to the Ritz Carlton. Most brands award 10 points per dollar, while some award 5 points per dollar. Marriott Executive Apartments award 2.5 points per dollar. Marriott then applies up to a 75% boost based on your Bonvoy tier. If you’re one of the highest tiers (e.g., Titanium), you’ll earn 17.5 points per dollar.
For flights, I’ll use United MileagePlus as an Example. United awards 5 miles per dollar on most tickets in economy class. However, they reduce the miles awarded by up to 75% on deeply discounted fares. On the other hand, United increases the miles awarded by 50% if you book first class. United then adds up to 6 bonus miles per dollar based on your Premier status tier. If you‘re Premier 1K and book a first class ticket, you’ll earn 13.5 miles per dollar (50% increase of 5 miles/$, plus 6 bonus miles/$ for being Premier 1K).
Earning Points and Miles for Free Travel with Travel Credit Cards
What if you’re not a frequent traveler? Well, don’t be discouraged! Because the best and easiest way to earn points and miles for free travel doesn’t even involve traveling. The best way to take advantage of free travel is travel credit cards. There are two types of travel credit cards, co-branded travel cards and flexible travel cards.
Both types of travel credit cards often come with lucrative sign-up bonuses, usually at least 50,000 points or miles. Besides the sign-up bonuses, travel credit cards award points or miles for every dollar you spend. Not to mention, these cards typically include all sorts of travel perks like free hotel stays or free checked bags. Here’s a description of each type of travel card to help you decide where to start.
Co-Branded Travel Credit Cards
Co-branded travel credit cards are credit cards tied to one hotel or airline. Most major hotels and airlines offer co-branded credit cards through partnerships with major banks or credit card companies like Chase and American Express.
Earning points and miles with co-branded credit cards is pretty straightforward. You earn a set number of points or miles per dollar spent with the associated hotel or airline. For example, the Delta SkyMiles Gold Amex Card awards 2 miles per dollar on Delta purchases, and 1 mile per dollar on other airlines. Most cards also offer bonus points for other categories, like groceries or restaurants.
Flexible Travel Credit Cards
Flexible travel credit cards allow you to earn points that can be used at various hotels and airlines. These cards are tied to credit card rewards programs, like Chase Ultimate Rewards and American Express Membership Rewards. Each rewards program has various card tiers that offer different points for different spending categories (e.g., travel, gas, groceries, dining, etc.). These points can simply be treated as cashback, or used to book travel through travel portals.
In my experience, it is pretty rare for it to make sense to use points to book travel through travel portals though. When booking through travel portals, your points are redeemed at a fixed redemption rate. This essentially turns your points into cash to book travel. For example, you can redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards points for $0.01 per point (or $0.015 with the Chase Sapphire Reserve).
Instead, you can transfer these points to various partner hotels and airlines. Points usually transfer at a 1:1 transfer rate. For example, 10,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points can be converted to 10,000 United MileagePlus miles. You can almost always find much more valuable redemptions by transferring your points directly to the hotels or airlines.
Chase Sapphire Reserve: The Best Travel Credit Card
If you’re serious about free travel, the one travel credit that needs to be in your wallet is the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Though the annual fee for this card is on the high end ($550), it comes with a high earning rate and all sorts of travel perks and benefits. Plus, the Chase Sapphire Reserve refunds up to $300 a year on travel spend (and they’re very generous on what they consider to be travel, even including Uber/Lyft and parking). Assuming you take at least one trip a year, it shouldn’t be very hard to hit $300 in travel spend per year, reducing the annual fee to $250.
Chase Sapphire Reserve Travel Perks and Benefits
While the $300 annual travel credit is nice, what makes Chase Sapphire Reserve special are the perks and benefits. The full list of perks and benefits is too extensive to cover here, but here are some of my favorites.
Chase frequently updates perks and benefits. Some of these offers may no longer be valid beyond 2024.
Other Travel Credit Cards With Lower Annual Fees for Beginners
Picking the best travel credit card is a fairly extensive topic. I’ll dedicate a future post to helping you choose. For now, here are a few of my favorite travel credit cards for beginners.
The above offers are as of March 14, 2024, and could change at any time. Make sure you check out the latest offers with each card before applying.
The Chase Trifecta: The Holy Grail of Free Travel
The Chase Trifecta is a little more complicated and advanced, but it’s worth mentioning to help you understand why Chase Ultimate Rewards are the easiest to earn. After you earn your sign-up bonus with the Sapphire Reserve or Preferred, the next step is to pair it with a couple of other Chase cards that also earn Ultimate Rewards without an annual fee.
First, is the Chase Freedom Unlimited. This card earns 3 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent on dining and drugstores and then 1.5 points on all other purchases. The 1.5 points on all other purchases make this card so valuable! This is the card to use on everyday purchases that don’t fall into one of the elevated Sapphire categories like travel and dining. Instead of earning 200 points on your $200 grocery bill with the Sapphire, you will 300 points with the Unlimited, a 50% boost!
The final card of the Chase Trifecta is the Chase Freedom Flex. This card earns at least 5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent on new categories every quarter (capped at $1,500 in purchases per quarter). For example, in Q2 of 2024, you can earn 5 points per dollar on Amazon purchases and 7 points on dining. Capitalizing on these bonus categories each quarter is one of the best ways to rack up Ultimate Rewards points!
Chase Trifecta Simplified
Once you have all three cards, it’s just a matter of using the right card for the right category. It might seem a little cumbersome at first, but it becomes second nature. Here is a summary to help you maximize your Ultimate Rewards earnings.
- Check the quarterly Flex bonus categories and use your Flex on these categories.
- Use your Sapphire on all travel and dining purchases.
- Use your Unlimited on all other purchases.
That’s it! It’s actually pretty simple once you get the hang of it. Just keep up with the rotating bonus categories each quarter and remember which card to use for which purchase. That’s all it takes to conquer the Chase Trifecta!
Don’t be confused by the cashback offers. Both of these cards are technically cashback cards unless they’re paired with a Sapphire card. When paired with a Sapphire, 1% cash back is the same as 1 Ultimate Rewards point.
What About the Other Credit Card Reward Programs?
Chase Ultimate Rewards isn’t the only credit card rewards program. There are three other credit card rewards programs and I’ll briefly touch on each below.
American Express Membership Rewards
Amex Membership Rewards is the only other program for free travel that rivals Chase Ultimate Rewards. Many travelers prefer Amex over Chase for a few different reasons. Amex’s high-end card, The Platinum Card, comes with even better perks than the Chase Sapphire Reserve (especially access to Amex Centurion Lounges). But it also comes with a $695 annual fee and a much higher spending requirement to earn the sign-up bonus. I also find it to not be as easy to earn Amex Rewards compared to Ultimate Rewards. If you prefer flying Delta, Amex is a better option as Delta is one of their transfer partners.
Capital One Rewards
Up until a few years ago, I wouldn’t have even bothered to mention Capital One Rewards in this article. Prior to 2018, Capital One Rewards was only a fixed redemption program with no transfer partners. Even though they’ve added transfer partners, they’re missing some of the better US airline programs like Delta and United. They’re also really lacking with hotel transfer partners.
I personally wouldn’t prioritize Capital One Rewards, but it’s not bad as a secondary option if you want to take advantage of sign-up bonuses or some of the international airline transfer partners. It’s also not as easy to rack up a lot of Capital One Rewards points and the perks and benefits of their cards don’t quite stack up to Chase or Amex.
Citi ThankYou Rewards
Citi ThankYou Rewards is another program that really isn’t worth consideration other than as a backup or to take advantage of sign-up bonuses. Their transfer partners are similar to those of Capital One, missing some of the better US programs. Plus, they no longer offer a high-end rewards card to new applicants.
Earning Points and Miles for Free Travel Through Partners
Earning points and miles through partners is done a couple of different ways. First, there are travel partnerships between certain companies across different industries. For example, Uber and Marriott Bonvoy have a partnership that allows you to earn Bonvoy points for certain Uber rides and Uber Eats orders. All you have to do is link your accounts, which takes less than a minute and costs you nothing. These types of partnerships exist across various industries. For example, Delta has a partnership with Starbucks that awards 1 Delta SkyMiles per dollar spent at Starbucks.
Another type of partnership is across airlines under the same alliance or rewards program. For example, American Airlines falls under the oneworld Alliance. The oneworld Alliance includes 12 other airlines, such as British Airways and Alaska Airlines. Let’s say you fly American Airlines often and have a bunch of miles, but have to fly British Airways for a one-time international flight. Instead of earning British Airways Avios, you can enter your American Airlines AAdvantage number at booking and earn AA miles. You can take advantage of a few other major airline alliances, and the earnings rate depends on the particular partnership.
Earning Points and Miles for Free Travel Through Shopping Portals and Dining Programs
The last method of earning points and miles for free travel is through shopping portals and dining programs. Many travel rewards programs, particularly airlines, have shopping portals and dining programs. Technically, these are two different methods, but they’re closely related enough that I lumped them together for simplicity. I say they’re related because in both cases, you earn extra points and miles by spending money on things other than travel.
How Do Travel Rewards Shopping Portals Work?
Shopping portals are a pretty simple way to earn points and miles towards free travel by adding a couple of simple steps before you buy something online. If you plan to buy something online, just check a shopping portal first to see if you can earn bonus miles by shopping with that company or website.
A great example of a shopping portal is United MileagePlus Shopping. You can search over 1,100 stores and websites across popular categories like clothing, outdoors, and entertainment. For example, United is offering 3 miles per dollar spent at Adidas. Just head to MileagePlus Shopping, sign in, and search “Adidas.” Follow the link to the Adidas website and shop as you normally would. You can also link any credit card to most shopping portals and then shop in-store to earn the same points or miles you’d earn online. You can usually only link a card to one shopping program though, so choose wisely.
Shopping portals are not always widely advertised and oftentimes buried in websites. The easiest way to find these shopping portals is to head to the rewards program portion of a company’s website and then navigate to the “Earn Miles” section. Once you find your way to the shopping portal, just save it to your favorites so you don’t have to remember how to get there.
How Do Dining Rewards Programs Work?
Dining programs work similarly to the in-person version of shopping portals. Just navigate to the dining rewards section of a travel website the same way you did for shopping portals to enroll and link any credit card. You can then search nearby restaurants that are enrolled and as long as you use your linked credit card, you’ll earn bonus miles by spending at that restaurant.
You can usually have the same credit card tied to both a shopping portal and a dining program, but you can only have one dining program per card. In other words, if you have one credit card tied to United MileagePlus Dining, you would need to add a different credit card to American Airlines AAdvantage Dining.
Closing Thoughts on Free Travel for Beginners
You should now know just about everything you need to know to begin your journey to free travel! There is so much more to this topic, and I will be posting more tips and tricks regularly.
I hope you found this beginner’s guide to free travel with points and miles helpful. Love my advice? Completely disagree with me? Leave a reply below and let me know your thoughts!
Disclaimer: All opinions expressed in this article are my own. I am not being endorsed by any airline, hotel, or credit card reward program. I may receive a referral bonus if you are approved for some of the credit cards mentioned in this article.