Taking the Mystery Out of Travel Hacking

There is No Better Way to Save Substantial Money on Travel

It is absolutely fascinating to me. There are so many blogs and articles focusing on how to travel on a budget or how to save money on travel.

These blogs and articles are loaded with ways to trim your travel costs. They are full of good tips to be aware of but it always baffles me that so many people are trying to cut their costs by maybe 20% – 50% but so few people understand how they can cut their travel costs to virtually zero. Your travel can basically be free.

These budget saving tips often include recommendations like booking the lowest cost multi-leg, red-eye flights and staying in youth hostels. But what if you want to fly when you want to fly, and sleep in a nice hotel with a room to yourself? Again, for free?

What is Travel Hacking?

I know there is a lot of mystery and skepticism around travel hacking. But it is really a very basic concept.

Travel hacking is simply the strategic accumulation and use of frequent traveler loyalty program points and miles for free travel. These points and miles are accumulated through flights, hotel stays, and travel rewards credit cards, among other ways.

That’s it. And almost anyone can do it.

A Little History

Traditionally the only people who could really accumulate enough airline miles and hotel points were road warrior business travelers. Through frequent trips on the corporate dime, business travelers were able to accumulate enough loyalty points to cobble together the occasional family vacation.

But then something dramatic happened. Banks got into the game with travel rewards credit cards. In order to attract the lucrative market of business travelers, credit card companies started offering ever-increasing welcome bonuses as well as travel related perks and services to anyone who signed up for their credit cards.

These bonuses and perks have been getting larger and better with every passing year. So much so that a person no longer needs to actually travel to earn travel rewards points and miles.

When I first started traveling for business, I would travel around 25,000 miles on domestic flights in a typical year. In a busy year I would fly a little over 50,000 miles. That means it would take one or two years to earn 50,000 loyalty frequent flier miles.

Credit card bonuses now make that level of travel unnecessary. One single bonus from one credit card can be 50,000 miles. In one extraordinary situation, I earned 100,000 miles from a single welcome bonus. That’s right, by just signing up for one credit card, I earned the same amount of miles that would have taken me two to four years to earn by actually flying.

Just for reference, 100,000 frequent flier miles is worth about $1,000 when redeemed for travel.

There is Still a Lot of Uncertainty Out There

I’ve been a part of the travel hacking community for several years now, reading news and posts every single day. I also spend a lot of time reading the comments by other readers in this community. This is a very travel savvy community.

Many of the people who obsess over travel hacking tips started out like I did, as frequent business travelers. They were already spending a lot of time in airports, on planes and in hotels. They rarely talk about the cheapest multi-leg red-eye flight and I’ve never seen any comments or posts about staying in youth hostels. Because they know they don’t have to.

The unfortunate fact is that many of the people who could benefit from travel hacking strategies the most are often the most skeptical about it. In their minds there is something too good to be true about accumulating points and miles for free travel if you’re not a road warrior.

As a result, that leaves a relatively small portion of travelers staying in nice hotels and flying business class for free. Occasionally you’ll see a blog by a school teacher or student who has figured it out, but far too few as far as I’m concerned. Everyone can benefit from travel hacking, with a few prerequisites: You don’t carry credit card debt from month to month and you have decent credit.

Free Travel I’ve Booked in Just the Last Two Years

These are just a few of the things I’ve been able to do for free over the last couple of years using points and miles:

• Ten free nights in hotels in London and Paris (September 2017)
• Two free nights in Santa Barbara (September 2018)
• Fly free business class Los Angeles to Paris and free economy Paris to Los Angeles (October 2018)
• Four free nights in Paris (October 2018)
• Two free round-trip coach flights from Los Angeles to Hawaii, and three free nights at a beachfront hotel in Waikiki (December 2018)

This is just in the last 18 months. There were plenty more free trips in the past, but they were the result of me earning miles the old-fashioned way, business trips and leisure travel.

These recent trips were the result of my serious pursuit of travel hacking with credit cards, which really started September 2016 with my first travel rewards credit card. My first travel rewards credit card was the Chase Sapphire Preferred. And I’ve been off to the races ever since.

All of the above trips were booked and paid for with miles and points accumulated within two years of me starting travel hacking with credit cards. That’s a lot of free travel.

I conservatively estimate the cash equivalent of the items listed above at about $8,200 if I were paying cash. But I paid nothing, except for the occasional nominal fee or tax. Other times the fees and taxes were also covered by miles and points.

Conclusion

Travel does not have to be so expensive. In fact, travel can cost you almost nothing out of pocket. Just spend some time getting familiar with travel hacking and start small. One travel credit card with a decent Welcome Bonus of over 35,000 miles is a good way to start.

This will give you enough miles for a free flight right off the bat. Then you’ll be hooked and will want to explore as many free travel opportunities as possible.

Good luck and happy traveling.