19. Tips for Rewards Travel to Europe in Summer 2024

Welcome to Point Me to First Class, the only show for employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are looking to optimize their higher-than-average expenses to travel the world. I'm your host, Devon Gimbel, and I believe that your expenses are your greatest untapped asset if you know how to leverage them. Ready to dive into the world of credit card points and miles so you can travel more, travel better, and travel often? Let's get started.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to podcast. This week I wanted to talk to you all about some thoughts, some ideas, and some tips for those of you actively looking or considering booking family travel to Europe next summer, which is summer 2024. I wanted to talk about this on the podcast for a couple of reasons. 

First, I'm currently in the middle of planning a weeklong trip to Rome for my family of four next June. So I am eyeballs deep in tracking down award flight options and hotel options. Although I consider myself reasonably experienced in booking award travel, I have encountered a few obstacles while travel planning for this trip. I want to talk about those obstacles so that you can navigate around them more easily if you're also planning family travel to Europe next summer. 

Second, as you are probably aware, a little thing called the Olympics are being held in Paris next summer. Even though they won't be going on for the entire summer, I do think that event is going to have significant impact on travel to Europe, including cash and award availability for flights and hotels that will impact travel even beyond the few weeks that they're actually going to be held and for destinations even outside of Paris and France in general. 

Third, I know that a lot of you are also considering traveling to Europe next summer, whether it's specifically to attend the Olympics or just for holiday or family events. So I wanted to offer some of my thoughts on how to use points to bring down your out of pocket costs. You don't have any time to waste because the award booking calendars for flights and hotels are already open for June 2024 and will soon be opening for July and August 2024. You do not want to wait to start getting your travel booked. 

I have a feeling that availability is only going to go down and prices are only going to go up as time goes on. So now is the time to start making your travel plans if Europe is on your wish list for travel next summer. I'm going to walk through our general travel plan for next summer, the hotel and flight bookings that I've made so far and why. Then I want to talk about some of the general themes that I'm seeing with or travel to Europe based on my searches and offers some tips that I hope will set you up for points travel success. 

But before I dive into the details of the specific trends that I'm seeing in award availability to Europe next summer, I wanted to start by offering European summer travel tip number one. Which is if you don't have to go to Europe next summer, don't. This kind of reminds me of when I was in medical school. 

As a third and fourth year student, you rotate through the major medical specialties before deciding which one you want to pursue for your residency. I clearly remember being told as a medical student on my surgery rotation by the surgery residents and attendings that if any other medical field interested me, I should pick that over surgery. 

These were people who loved what they were doing, but they wanted medical students to understand that the training path to becoming a surgeon and then actually practicing as a surgeon for your medical career was incredibly demanding. That unless it was the only thing that you could envision yourself practicing happily, you'd be doing yourself a favor by pursuing another specialty. 

That's kind of how I think about traveling to Europe for next summer. There is such high demand for flights and hotels that prices are really high. Airlines don't need to make as many award seats available because of this high demand for travel. Many people are working with constrained schedules, especially if they're traveling specifically for the Olympics. 

So if there's anywhere else in the world that you would be equally happily traveling next summer, go there instead. But if you are intent on getting to Europe in the summer of 2024, and you're interested in getting especially multiple people over there, there are still ways to make it happen. This is where European summer travel tip number two comes in. Book your award flights and hotel stays as far in advance and as soon as possible. In general, I plan our family trips about a year in advance for a couple of reasons. 

First, if we're traveling as a family, I try to plan our travel around breaks in my kid’s school schedule, which ends up being just a few distinct weeks or months during the year which limits the times when it's easiest for us to get abroad. Second, because these tend to be popular times for travel, and we need plane tickets and hotel accommodations for four people, our chances of getting good award prices for travel are higher when we're able to book as the flight and hotel booking calendars open, which is usually around 11 to 13 months in advance. 

Looking ahead to next summer, my kids have about a week break in June between when their school year ends and when they start summer camp. So that's an ideal time for us to try to get away. Up until now, our family trips have been either domestic or close by international trips to Mexico or the Caribbean because frankly I have been too terrified to try to take them on a long haul international flight. 

While my seven year old is getting to an age where I think that he'll do pretty well on long flights, my four year old has a personality that can best be described as a cross between a mongoose and a honey badger. The thought of being trapped inside of an airplane with her for more than a few hours has just seemed far too risky so far. 

But my husband and I are naively optimistic that in another year, the chances of her traveling well on a long flight will be higher. We really want to start taking our kids to more international destinations to experience other countries and other cultures. So we decided to give traveling to Europe next summer a shot since it's not as far as some other locations. Generally, we have a lot of options for flights from our local airport, which is O'Hare in Chicago. Specifically, we are aiming to spend a week in Rome next June. 

Now when it comes to family travel, I personally have a couple of priorities. For long haul international flights, I really want to fly business class with lie flat seats. For accommodations, I highly prefer being able to book a hotel that offers a layout with a separate bedroom that can be closed off from the living area, which usually entails booking a suite of some sort. 

I'm a huge proponent of flying business class with young kids because of the increased amount of space that premium cabins offer as well as access to lie flat beds where there's a much higher chance of people being able to actually sleep on overnight flights. The probability of someone melting down, specifically either my children or secondarily myself, is significantly lower when everyone is more comfortable and able to rest on long flights. 

Similarly, one of the things that's really important to me in booking a hotel stay is being able to get a suite that has a separate bedroom that can be closed off from the living area. This has been the probably single biggest aspect in maintaining our sanity when traveling as a family since our kids are still in different sleep schedules than each other and from me and my husband, and having a separate bedroom allows us to put them to sleep without our also having to go to bed at 7:00 p.m. It makes it much more likely that everyone's able to fall asleep and stay asleep than if we were all sharing one big common room. 

But if you've ever looked at booking multiple international business class flights and one bedroom hotel suites, you know that these do not come cheap. For a family of four a weeklong trip to Rome with round trip business class flights and a hotel suite could easily cost over $25,000. This is where points come in. 

Because my goal for this trip is to keep our out of pocket expenses to $5,000 or less, including all of our travel, activities, and food costs for the week. So I started our travel search by looking for a hotel in Rome that we could book using points. Usually my go to hotel program for booking award stays is Hyatt because I have the highest level of status in their program, which is called globalist status. That gets me lots of incredible goodies. But I also love that Hyatt offers the ability to outright book suites using points when they're available for award stays. 

However, Hyatt has a much smaller global footprint than other major hotel chains. So one of the main drawbacks of their loyalty program is that there tends to be fewer Hyatt properties worldwide, including in large cities. But Rome actually has a few different Hyatt hotels that have availability the week that we are planning on traveling. 

But this is where I hit the first snag in our great European summer travel planning adventure. That is that none of the Hyatt properties in Rome have any rooms available for four people to book using points during our travel dates, much less rooms or suites with a separate bedroom. 

Now, European hotel rooms are not only small by North American standards, but they're also notoriously strict on room occupancy, which at many properties seems to be limited to two to three people per room. Because I'm generally risk averse and a compulsive rule follower, I really don't want to book room for three people and then try to get away with sneaking in one of my kids as an extra or worse just outright being denied being able to check-in for the room because we show up with more people than they are willing to let stay in one room. 

So my only real option to book a hotel, a Hyatt property, using our points for this trip would have been to book two hotel rooms for two people each, which is obviously going to cost double the number of points of just booking one room. I have actually done this in the past when we've booked at a property with really strict room occupancy limits. 

But in addition to not really wanting to spend double the points in order to book two rooms for this trip, the other limiting factor is that the properties available in Rome don't have rooms that directly connected to one another. Which means that we could book two rooms on points, but they would be totally separate from each other. Given the age of our kids that doesn't make a lot of sense for us, since I'm not really comfortable putting a five year old and an eight year old by themselves in a totally separate room next door. 

So as much as it pains me to not stay at Hyatt hotel, I had to look at other options. I also happened to have a large stash of Marriott points. Even though there are many more Marriott properties than Hyatt properties in Rome, I ran into the same problem of there not being any points stays available to book for four people all in one room or suite using points. 

So here is European summer travel tip number three. If you want to use points to book accommodations for a group of more than three people, your traditional points properties might not be options so you have to consider alternative options. One of those options is to book accommodations using points through Marriott that aren't traditional hotel rooms at their traditional hotel properties. 

In addition to offering conventional hotel bookings, Marriott also offers something called Homes and Villas by Marriott. Homes and Villas by Marriott is a global home rental platform that allows you to use Marriott points to book apartments or houses in cities around the world or earn Marriott points by booking stays at these properties using cash. 

These are not properties that are owned by Marriott. Rather, they are properties that are owned and managed by property management partners of Marriott. The benefit of booking a property through Marriott Homes and Villas is that you're not getting a traditional hotel room. Rather, you have access to an entire apartment or house which offers the benefit of having one or more bedrooms and bathrooms and additional amenities like a kitchen or an outdoor terrace or a washer or dryer. 

So while you don't have access to full service hotel amenities like a restaurant or a gym or spa, this option can be fantastic for families or groups traveling together who want a bit more space but still want to be centrally located without having to book multiple hotel rooms. 

For the dates that we are traveling, I found several one bedroom apartments located near the major sites in Rome at prices ranging from around 200 to 300 euro per night. When you book through Marriott Homes and Villas, you can actually choose to pay for your stay entirely in cash, entirely in Marriott points, or by using a combination of cash and points. 

For instance, I found a one bedroom two bathroom fully equipped apartment near the Coliseum for our stay that came out to either around 2,000 euros for the week to booking cash or 365,000 Marriott points. Which if you're into calculating redemption value for your points comes out to a fairly abysmal points value of 0.5 cents per point in value. 

Marriott points generally aren't worth as much as other points currencies like Hyatt points or Chase or American Express points, but 0.5 cents per point is definitely lower value than what you can get four Marriott points. So I would honestly qualify this as a rather poor points redemption value. I usually cannot tolerate with parting with my points at such a low value. 

But I'm actually okay with this redemption because I've been sitting on a bunch of Marriott points for years since the old SPG program was cannibalized by Marriott. I haven't found a compelling use, personally, for spending those points until now. One of my priorities for this trip is to keep our out of pocket expenses as low as possible.

So while this is admittedly not a fantastic use of points from the perspective of the value that I'm getting from them, I'm perfectly content to use these Marriott points this way because it's gonna allow my family to rent an entire apartment in central Rome for a week and save us a couple thousand bucks while also having a lot more room to spread out then we would get in a traditional hotel room.

I also like being able to stay in an apartment with a full kitchen so that we don't have to eat out at restaurants for every single meal. Instead, we can bring in groceries from a local market. Having a washer and dryer in the apartment is also really great for us so that we can bring fewer clothes and pack carry on only but without having to worry about my kids inevitably getting their clothes dirty or needing frequent outfit changes. 

This brings me to European summer travel tip number four, which is not every points redemption has to be an amazing one in terms of how much value you're getting from each point if you're happy with what your points are getting you. When it comes to booking accommodations for a family or group, using your points for a “low” value redemption can still be a great use of points if it opens up options for staying somewhere that's more comfortable or better equipped than a traditional hotel for your particular needs. 

Once I'd figured out how we could use points to book our accommodations in Rome, it was time to start looking at options for booking flights for my family of four. Compared to other parts of the world, getting to Europe on points is usually pretty easy from the states given the number of airlines that operate routes between the two regions and the number of international airport hubs you can travel in and out of. 

Particularly when looking for multiple business class award flights, Air France’s Flying Blue program has traditionally been my go to favorite frequent flyer program for booking flights. There are so many great aspects to the Flying Blue program. Not only do they routinely offer multiple business class award seats on their flights, which is pretty rare honestly, but you can also often find really great award prices for their business class flights. 

Flying out of Chicago, I can usually find business class award flights to Europe connecting through Paris or Amsterdam on Flying Blue for anywhere from around 55,000 to 70,000 points per person one way. An additional great feature of the Flying Blue program is that kids between the ages of two and 11 get a 25% discount on flights including award flights. So it's even cheaper to book an award ticket for a child. 

Flying Blue is also a transfer partner of all of the major transferable points currencies, which is great because you can effectively combine points from different points currencies all together in your one Flying Blue account. But so far award flights to Europe through Flying Blue for the summer of 2024 are not looking as attractive as usual. 

Instead of finding one way business class award flights for 70,000 points or less per person, most of the routes that I have been checking from Chicago to Europe in June are pricing out at 150,000 points or more per person, which is not at all attractive especially considering that I need for tickets to book. 

Now I did manage to snag for business class award tickets for our return flight through Flying Blue for 92,000 points per person, which came out to 322,000 points and around $1,300 in taxes and fees for two adults and two kids flying one way. The cash price for those four one way tickets looks like it's over around $13,000. So that's about a 3.8 cents per point redemption value for that booking. 

But even more important than that to me is that we got four business class tickets home on a day that works really well for our schedule. That's a really reasonable itinerary with only one short layover. But that still left us without flights going from Chicago to Rome, which brings me to European summer travel tips number five and number six. 

When booking award tickets, book one way flights, and know your options for airlines and frequent flyer programs you have access to for award tickets, especially which ones more frequently offer multiple business class award tickets per flight if business class is your preferred class of service. 

Now, if you have no specific preference for business class and are perfectly happy flying in economy or premium economy, that is wonderful because you will have far more options for award flights at lower points prices then if you're as picky as I am about having a lie flat seat. But I want to speak specifically to those of you who do want to book business class flights using points to a high demand region of the world during a high demand period for travel to show you that there are options. 

So back to European summer travel tip number five. When booking award tickets, book one way flights. There are a few advantages to booking award flights as one way instead of round trip itineraries. One way itineraries allow you to mix and match different airlines or frequent flyer programs to book your outbound and return flights so you're not bound to finding both of your flight segments all within one airline or frequent flyer program. 

In my case, Flying Blue had a good award option for our return flights, but all of the points prices for the outbound flights from Chicago to Rome for our travel dates were obscenely high. Booking one way flights allows you to find the best points deals per portion of your trip. Importantly, unlike cash fares, there's usually no price advantage to booking a round trip award flight versus booking two one way award flights. 

The other advantage of booking one way award flights is that it allows you to grab outbound award flights as soon as the award booking calendars open up before return flights are even released to be booked. This means that you won't potentially lose out on booking your outbound flights while you're waiting for the airlines to start releasing award seats for return flights. 

Moving on to European summer travel tip number six. Know your options for airlines and frequent flyer programs that you have access to for award tickets, especially the ones that more frequently offer multiple business class award tickets per flight if business class is your preferred class of service. Again, this is less important if you're searching for economy or premium economy award tickets simply because there are more of these available per flight than business class award tickets. 

But if you want to snag multiple business class tickets on the same flight, you have to be familiar with which airlines or frequent flyer programs you have access to booking flights on with the specific points or miles currencies that you have. As well as understand that some airlines and frequent flyer programs have a much higher probability of releasing multiple business class award tickets per flight. 

As I mentioned earlier, one of the many reasons that Air France’s Flying Blue programs is one of my favorites for flying to Europe using points is because they frequently release four or more business class award tickets on their flights. They can have some of the most competitive points prices for those award flights. 

But they're not the only frequent flyer program to make multiple business class award seats bookable. Other airlines that often released multiple business class award seats on their flights are British Airways and Virgin Atlantic as well as some Star Alliance carriers like Brussels Airlines or Turkish Airlines, which are bookable through Air Canada's Aeroplan program. 

One huge drawback of booking business class of award flights through BA or Virgin is that you will end up paying much higher out of pocket cash for the taxes, fees, and surcharges charged by those airlines, which can amount to close to $1,000 per passenger on a one way business class ticket. 

Now, spending close to $2,000 out of pocket for a round trip business class flight booked using points probably does not sound all that appealing. But if your priority is to travel to Europe in business class on points and if it's in your budget to pay that, it can still represent significant savings over paying cash for a full price business class ticket on the same airlines, which can easily cost close to $5,000. 

Again, if you're traveling alone or just with one other person, you will probably have more options of different airlines are different frequent flyer programs that you can find business class award seats on. But if you're flying as a group or family and you need four or more business class award flights on the same flight, there are not that many airlines that are going to offer you the ability to do that. 

So in this case, it can be a tradeoff of being willing to accept some of these higher out of pocket costs in terms of taxes and fees and surcharges if that is going to be your best or your only option for securing the number of business class award tickets that you're looking for. 

But it is also possible to get award flights at lower points prices if you can take advantage of European summer travel tip number seven, and that is to leverage transfer bonuses offered by your transferable points currencies to decrease the number of points needed to book and award flight. For example, right now through August 31st of this year American Express is offering a 30% transfer bonus when you transfer membership rewards points from your Amex account to your British Airways Frequent Flyer account. 

That means that in order to book a one way business class flight on BA that is priced at 90,000 points, you only need to transfer 70,000 American Express points to British Airways. With 30% transfer bonus, those 70,000 American Express points become 91,000 British Airways Avios representing a significant savings on the points cost to book that business class award flight. 

Right now several transferable points currencies are offering transfer bonuses to frequent flyer programs, including American Express, which is offering a 30% transfer bonus not only to British Airways but also to Iberia through August 31st.  Chase which is offering a 20% transfer bonus for points transfers to Air Canada's Aeroplan program through July 31. Capital One which is offering a 20% transfer bonus to Air France Flying Blue through August 31, and Citi which is offering a 15% transfer bonus to Cathay Pacific through July 22nd.

Just remember to not transfer points from one of your transferable points accounts into an airline frequent flyer account until you have confirmed that flight award space is available on a flight that you actually want to book. 

Now, while I personally would love to take advantage of one of those points transfer bonuses that are currently being offered, I ended up finding an even better option for our outbound flights from Chicago to Rome. That was booking for one way business class tickets on Lufthansa Airlines through their Miles and More frequent flyer program for a total of 273 points and $112 for the four of us. 

Lufthansa is another airline that tends to offer multiple business class award seats on their flights only though if you're able to book directly through them. Because Lufthansa is not a direct transfer partner of the major transferable points currencies, you won't have access to booking award flights directly through their Miles and More program unless you've accrued miles by flying Lufthansa or partner flights on paid flights, or by earning miles through credit card spend with the Miles and More credit card. 

Which brings me to European summer travel tip number eight, which is don't forget to check smaller or more niche frequent flyer programs for award availability if you happen to have points or miles accrued in specific airline frequent flyer programs that might be outside of the transfer partner options of the transferable points currencies that you have access to. 

You might not have a bunch of Lufthansa Miles and More miles sitting around, but you could have a stash of miles in Alaska Airlines or Aegean Airlines or another program if you've credited miles from paid flights to those programs, or have co-branded airline credit cards that earn you points or miles in those programs for credit card spend. 

So all told, I've been able to book for round trip business class flights and a week in an apartment in Rome next summer for a total of 960,000 points and $1,412 out of pocket cash. Considering that those points are saving me over $25,000 on the cost of airfare and an apartment rental during a peak travel time, I'm really happy with that.

That brings me to European summer travel tip number nine, which is when it comes to using points for family travel or to secure multiple business class award flights to Europe next year, perfect is the enemy of amazing. I know very well the urge to continue searching for flight or hotel options that might offer a slightly better redemption value for points or a slightly better travel itinerary. 

But don't let a great booking options slip through your hands by waiting to book something in search of a perfect option. If you're looking to book travel to Europe on points next summer, I encourage you to book a flight or hotel as soon as you find an option that works for you. Then stop searching for something that might be slightly better. 

Finally, European summer travel tip number 10. If you have your heart set on going to Europe next summer, the single most important thing is to remember to be flexible in your award search. You may not be able to find fantastic points options for the exact dates that you want to travel and the exact route and itinerary that would be ideal for you. But know where you can be flexible in your travel plans in order to expand your award search and potential options. 

This could look like being flexible with your dates of travel. This could look like being flexible with which airport you depart out of or fly into. Especially when traveling to Europe, if you can get to any major hub airport, you can usually book a separate short connecting flight to your final destination or take a train ticket from one major city to another. In fact, this can actually be an amazing opportunity to explore another city that's not just your destination city. 

Being willing to look at flights with connections instead of nonstop flights. If you're traveling in a group and don't all have to fly on the same flight, your chances of finding great business class award flights will increase if you can split into groups and take different flights that both depart and arrive on the same day as one another, for example. 

Most of all, remember that the best use of points is the one that makes you happy. So for those of you hoping to use points to travel to Europe next summer, I hope these tips make it a little bit easier for you to find award travel options that make you happy to use your points. So good luck summer travel planning everybody. I will see you back here next week. 

Hey, if you enjoyed this episode and you're interested in using points to fly business class to Europe next summer but you don't know how to find business class award availability, I want to invite you to attend my Secrets to Finding Business Class Award Flights to Europe workshop this Saturday, July 15 at 2:00 p.m. Central Time. 

In this workshop, I'm gonna be diving deep into the specific airline frequent flyer programs that are offering good business class award availability to Europe next summer, including how to find and book business class flights using points for multiple people. Join the workshop for free to hear my top picks for which airlines are offering multiple business class award flights to Europe next summer so that you can get your flights booked before they disappear. 

Attend the workshop live and you can also ask me anything about how to find award flights for yourself and your family. Or pay $25 to get a replay of the workshop sent straight to your email inbox that you can watch anytime if you can't attend live. 

Now is the time to start getting your award flights to Europe for next summer booked. If you don't already have your award flights booked, you won't want to miss this workshop. Simply go to www.pointmetofirstclass.com/Europe2024 for more details and to register for the workshop. That’s  www.pointmetofirstclass.com/Europe2024. I’ll see you there. 

Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of Point Me to First Class. If you want more tips on turning your expenses into travel, visit pointmetofirstclass.com to learn more. See you next week.