74. Unlocking Sweet Spot Awards: Scoring Amazing Flight Deals with Allison Tackette

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.

Welcome back to the podcast everybody. Today, I am joined by points enthusiast and award travel expert, Allison Tackette, to explore one of the most fun topics around using points, and that is award sweet spots. On today's episode, Allison and I dive into what sweet spots are, what makes them so special, what are some award flight sweet spots that you need to know about, and how to take advantage of them. We cover a lot of ground in this episode, and I hope it helps give you some ideas for fantastic points deals to seek out for a future points adventure. Please enjoy today's conversation. 

Devon: Welcome to the podcast, Allison. I'm so excited to have you here today. Before we dive in, can you just start with introducing yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and how did you get started in points and miles for travel? 

Allison: First off, thanks for having me. Super stoked to be a part of this episode today. So I'm Allison. You probably know me on Instagram more as @luckytictac. It has nothing to do with points, but it is what it is. It's not changing. I'm happy with it. I'm always going to be @luckytictac at this point. 

But I've been doing points and miles for about 10 years now. Back in my day, I hate saying that. Back in my day, it was a lot harder than it was now. There wasn't podcasts. There wasn't influencers teaching on Instagram or TikTok or Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it today. I had to do it the hard way. I had to read all the blogs. 

I had to go to all the individual airline websites to find everything, which I still tend to do that already just because I'm used to it sometimes. Sometimes I don't adapt to the tool. But that's okay. There's some really great tools out there. I'm sure we'll talk about it at some point.

But I got into points and miles probably is like a lot of people do. You're trying to find ways to save money because either you spend too much on travel and you want to save, or you're not making a lot of money. You're trying to still find ways to travel. That was my case. 

So I used to be a high school teacher for a couple years, was not making a lot of money, was trying to plan a trip with my friend to go to D.C. for Easter weekend. We just couldn't make it happen because it was too expensive. So, I got angry, and I literally googled how to fly for free. That took me to the TPG website. Because I have zero chill, I dove right in into it. Within like, I don't know, 24 hours of finding out, I had my first two cards applied for and everything. So that's how I got into points and miles there. 

Devon: Yeah, I can relate to a lot of that. I've been in points and miles for about the same amount of time. I have a lot of nostalgia for what it was like to learn just about the existence of this hobby 10 years ago, but also that learning curve as well. Going to those really classic blogs and websites. Again, this was, at least for me, very free kind of social media, pre a lot of the tools that, like you mentioned, we have such amazing access to that makes this so much easier to do for so many people, which I love.

But yeah, there were a lot of, I think, really great things about learning about points and miles 10 years ago. One of the things that I was so excited to have you come on here to talk about today because you do have so much experience in this hobby. This is now the thing that you do as your profession. It's obvious that you have so much interest and passion for it. Is that in the whole entire like landscape and scheme of points and miles, there are clearly so many different ways that we can use our points to travel.

One of the things that we've not yet tackled on this podcast, which is why I wanted you to come here because you're the best person to talk about this, is this area of sort of, I think about them specifically as award flights. I'm sure there are some in hotels as well. But we brought you on today to talk about them in terms of the award flights is this idea of sweet spot awards.

So not just using your points and miles to book any flight, or especially to move your points and miles outside of your credit card account and into an airline transfer partner account and be able to take advantage of their value there, but specifically zeroing in on sweet spot awards. So can you just kick us off by telling us just how do you define sweet spot awards? Or how do you think about these?

Allison: I probably am going to take a small controversial opinion when it comes to sweet spots, okay? So the true definition of sweet spots is going to be the absolute ideal price point that you would pay for a flight. So you're trying to get from point A to point B in X class of service. You should expect to pay Y price on that as a sweet spot. Anything more is not worth booking, anything less than that ideal number, that's just saving points right there. Okay. So that's going to be like the true definition of sweet spot. 

I might say you're going to have like the ideal price point, but maybe you pay slightly more for something just because you're either going to pay slightly more for that perfect nonstop route, or you're someone that has a boat ton of points that you can afford to pay a little bit extra so you're not having to take three or four connections to get there. Which, honestly, connections, total separate side of sweet spots, honestly. But I don't like to take extra connections when I have to. Just who does? 

Devon: Yeah, absolutely. I love that you give, again, like a very sort of classic definition of sweet spot award. I have a much broader, more liberal definition of sweet spot award. I think that's what's going to be fun about talking about this because maybe what I consider to be a sweet spot award, you don't, or vice versa.

But I think traditionally, the way that I kind of understood and learned about sweet spot awards is basically something that's a deal, something that's a great deal. So, like you said, let's say that there is a kind of standard you would expect to pay for a given award. So let's just take as a ballpark, like you're trying to fly from the U.S. to Europe in business class. So there's going to be a range of points that I think a lot of people would agree is a, quote unquote, regular or reasonable amount of points to spend for that given award.

Again, we could probably argue about this, but I'm just going to propose that let's say one way business class flight for one person from the U.S. to Europe, I would say if you're spending between 50 and 70,000 points per person, I would call that, quote unquote, regular. Like, wow, that's great. I would be very happy to book that award.

So to me, a sweet spot is wow, if you can fly from the U.S. to Europe one way, again per person, for 35,000 points per person, that to me is a really, really good deal. That's a sweet spot compared to what I would regularly or typically find. So that's kind of how I started understanding sweet spots is where does a great deal exist in terms of the number of points that you can expect to pay, again, for a given route or a given class of service.

But now that I've been doing this a bit longer, I said I had a very liberal definition of sweet spot. I also consider a sweet spot award just really any kind of deal. Part of what I look at too is in terms of using your points, there are a lot of airlines or a lot of routes where I think it is not typical to find multiple well-priced premium cabin award tickets on the same exact flight. 

So, for me, part of a sweet spot deal is I also think about where are the opportunities where it's not almost impossibly difficult to get three, four, five business class tickets all on the same flight, again, not for a million points per person. So I just think about sweet spots as deals. 

You kind of mentioned this in terms of how you got into points and miles. I think a lot of us do this because we are looking to save. We're looking to save out of pocket cash cost. We're kind of deal hunters. The excitement that comes from just using points to save money, I think, is great. Sweet spots, I think, are even more fun because these are the best of the best of deals in terms of points and miles. 

But a lot of people aren't aware that these exist, or what they look like because these are not readily available. You're not going to find a, quote unquote, sweet spot award on every single route on every single airline. So that's what we're going to talk about today. What are the sweet spot deals that people can still look for today, which may not be the same they were five years or 10 years ago? What should they be looking for? How do they look for these things? So, first of all, I'm just curious to hear, do you want to argue about our somewhat differing definitions of sweet spot awards? 

Allison: You know, I don't feel the need to argue with that, to be honest. The reason why I feel that way is just because we all have different opinions of what the sweet spots are. We're both essentially saying the same exact thing, just packaging it different ways. I'm still hunting that deal at more of an ideal price point whereas you're hunting a deal to get to where your destination is regardless of the class of service that you're trying to find. So both valid points, both are going to get you to your destination. We're just going to look at it in different ways. 

Devon: Yeah, and I agree. That's what I love about points and miles. There's no one right way to do anything. Based on what your goals or your preferences are might not look the same as someone else. I think that's an amazing thing because it means that we're not all trying to book the same exact thing at the same exact time, but we do want you all to know what are some of the sweet spots that are out there so that you can look for them, you can find them, and you can understand. If you are really wanting to find a deal, this is what some of them can look like. 

So Allison, there's so many different ways that we could try to categorize these or break these things down. we may get into that a little bit more in the episode. But let's just start, I'm curious if you just have any favorite sweet spot awards that you like to book for yourself or that you think are just really, really great opportunities for other people to look for?

Allison: Yeah, absolutely. Before I answer that, I actually just want to like put a caveat to sweet spots. One thing I think would be really important just for context with sweet spots is you may not be booking those price points, right. But the sweet spot, it's important to know what that is to give the individual context for their redemption, right. 

So you may find we may say, this route should be x amount of points. Well, when you go do your search, you're finding x squared amount of points. That's not a good deal right there. So that's where the sweet spots comes in, at least provides context to how much you should expect to use for that flight so you're not wasting a ton of points. Because ultimately, we still don't want to waste a ton of points. We want to try and stick to the sweet spot as much as possible there. 

Devon: Yeah, thank you so much for providing that context. I think that's an absolutely amazing point for everybody to keep in mind.

Allison: Okay, awesome. Now remind me of the question is you're asking like what some of my favorite sweet spots are. 

Devon: Yes. Like I said, we're going to go into, I think, a little bit more like categorization in terms of different areas of the world that have sweet spots or domestic versus international sweet spots. But before we start kind of breaking these things down, I just want to hear from you what are some of your personal favorite sweet spots? 

Allison: Oh, man, there's so many awesome sweet spots. I'm a big fan of the Virgin Atlantic sweet spot for ANA first and business Class. I know a lot of people know about that, but it's hard to pass up. 

Devon: I want you to assume nobody knows about that. How would you describe that specific sweet spot? 

Allison: Okay, so that specific sweet spot, we're talking about booking ANA first class and business class through their partner, Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. Why  we care about that is it actually allows us to save like 50% of our points by going through them. So if we went through one of ANA's other partners, like Air Canada, we would expect to pay X amount of points, but by booking through Virgin Atlantic we're actually only paying 50% of that. So we can get round trip for the same amount that we would pay one way through another partner. 

So that's one of my favorite ones there, it's kind of hard to do that one just because there's not a lot of space. I don't know what it is. But recently, I feel like Virgin Atlantic's been blocking close in ANA first class space for some reason, which is like a huge bummer for me Because I want to book that myself. So now I'm going to have to like scoop it up way in advance now, which is okay. I can do the far away stuff as well. But that's one.

I'm also a big fan of stopovers when it comes to sweet spots as well. So you've got your sweet spots, the ideal price point, stopovers extending the amount of value that you're getting from that sweet spot. So you can try and go from point A to point B, but you're going to do a stopover in point C, right. That's what I'm doing on my next trip for that, which we can probably talk about as well. So stopovers, the ANA one, those are going to be my top two favorite sweet spots, I think, actually.

Devon: Yeah, I think that those are both really, really great examples. Again, for people who are maybe a little bit more beginner in terms of their experience using their points, I think it's also just helpful, again, to provide context that this is a very different way of thinking about using points. 

If the only way that you've ever used your points before, which is the way that I think almost all of us starts because it's the only way that we know exists, is to just use your credit card points to book travel directly through your credit card's travel portal, right. That feels very similar to how you probably used to booking flights in cash. Like you run one search, you see the options, you pick one that you like. 

What we're talking about here is really starting to leverage some of these unique opportunities that exist when you move your points out of your credit card account and into a frequent flyer account and also some of the unique opportunities that exist among airline alliances or partnerships. 

So, Allison, what you were talking about is your first favorite sweet spot is on ANA, which is an amazing airline that's based in Japan. Booking flights on ANA, but not actually using your points transferred necessarily to ANA to book but using credit card points transferred to an ANA partner, Virgin, because you can actually save so many points by booking that flight than if you were to book the same exact flight booking through a different partner airline. So that is one great example of a sweet spot award. 

Now, one of the things that you mentioned as you were talking about that is you very kind of quickly said that something along the lines of but this is an award that recently hasn't had the most amazing space. I think that this is something that's really important to acknowledge and that I kind of wanted to like tease apart for people is that this is true of sweet spot awards. It's also true of just what we call, quote unquote, regular awards, just using your points to book different flights is that it's one thing to say here technically is the number of points you need for a flight. That sounds all well and good and amazing. 

But then there's the reality of availability and that we see all these different trends in terms of just because a flight exists theoretically almost doesn't matter if it's a flight that no one can ever find. No one can ever book. Right. So let's talk a little bit about in terms of sweet spots, are there ones that you think on that whole scale of easier to book or easier to find availability. 

Do you have any favorites that fall into that so that someone who's kind of beginning, we can give them an idea of a sweet spot award that might actually be a lot more attainable to book? Versus one where there might be one award available over the next 11 months, and they may not know how to find that one single award booking date. 

Allison: Yeah, absolutely. I loved how you talked about saying sweet spots are great theoretically, but you may not run that search and see that price. You may see it much more expensive. It might not even exist in that. I think that's what sometimes gives people either like the wrong impression with points and miles, and they start to think it's a scam, or they get a little bit demotivated and disillusioned with points because the first time that they're trying to use it, they're not finding that.

So think of points and miles, everyone, as like a long term game. Okay. You're not likely to see a sweet spot the first time that you run a search. You may need to monitor for a month to six months, a year, depending on what you're trying to actually accomplish with that. 

Then I also loved how Devon brought up, she's talking about what's an actual obtainable beginner sweet spot. Because do you want to go out and try and spend 5,000 points for a specific flight to get from U.S. to Japan? Not possible to do that. I'm just using that as like a crazy example. But yeah, let's think of it as like those beginner ones. What can we do? 

One of my favorite beginner sweet spots is going to be through the Air France KLM Flying Blue promo, and Devon, she's getting excited. She knows exactly what I'm going to say. But Flying Blue has done a great job over the last year kind of revamping their loyalty program. In an age where we're seeing prices get higher, they're actually lowering their prices. 

So now it's fairly easy to find 50,000 point flights in business class from the U.S. to Europe, on Air France and KLM. That's not just nonstop flights. That could be JFK to Budapest. That could be San Francisco to Berlin. Anywhere that Air France and KLM are flying, you could expect to find 50,000 point sweet spots with them. 

Now on the flip side, you're also going to find those 400,000 point ones as well. But if you're patient and be a little bit flexible where you're flying out of in the U.S. or maybe where you're trying to get to in Europe as well, it's fairly easy to find those 50,000 point business class flights. Air France KLM Flying Blue, they also do a great job with their promo rewards from the U.S. to Europe. You can consistently find economy flights for like 10,000 points per passenger each way.

So if you're someone that's I want to fly economy. I want to save my points and take more trips. That's okay. You're easily going to be able to find 10,000 point flights with Air France KLM Flying Blue program. Then there's a transfer bonus, it's even cheaper. Oh, man, there's almost always a transfer bonus to Flying Blue most of the time. 

Devon: Yeah, I agree with you. There's so many things that I love about that frequent flyer program. I've talked about it on the podcast before because I think it is just so easy for people to be able to do. So, again, we might end up touching on some of the sweet spot awards that are like amazing deals, but I would not classify as easy in terms of finding availability or booking it or especially finding multiple tickets if that's what you're looking for. 

But I think Air France Flying Blue really ticks all the boxes. I think it's an easy program to search. I think they have amazing, especially premium cabin business class availability from a lot of different U.S. cities to a lot of different European hubs. Again, it is not a situation where there may be two dates over the next 12 months that offer a really, really strong points priced flight. There's obviously ups and downs. 

You're not going to be able to find a 50,000 point one way business class flight every day of the year on every single route through Air France Flying Blue, but they have really, really solid, amazing availability. So this is not the type of ticket where it's going to come up once and you need to rearrange all your travel plans in order to be able to take advantage of that, which we can give examples of different awards like that. Which may not, I think, make them unreasonable for so many people to take advantage of.

So I do love Air France Flying Blue. This to me is just a tried and true program for folks who do not have all the flexibility in the world. You can't leave and plan a trip seven days in advance, or you can't, yeah, only fly on some random Wednesday. I think Air France Flying Blue is just such a great program. Again, it's so great for beginners as well. So I love that as a sweet spot award. 

Can you think of other examples, especially of international sweet spot awards, where if you are based in the U.S. and you're trying to fly internationally, can you give us some other kind of flights or ideas about where are some of the opportunities that exist? 

Allison: Yeah, there's honestly, Europe is like a really great place for Americans to get to on sweet spots as well. We kind of touched about in the beginning where like your definition of like what a sweet spot was for going to Europe, you would expect to say between 50,000 to 70,000 points is a good sweet spot when we're talking about a one way business class flight to Europe. That's like another option. That is through the Air Canada Aeroplan program. You're not necessarily flying Air Canada on their redemptions. But Air Canada has a ton of airlines that they partner with that you can find those redemptions on. 

You're typically going to find a lot more space on Swiss and Lufthansa operated flights. Even Brussels Airlines and United as well. They have a lot of space. If you're someone with a big family, just like with the Flying Blue program, you can consistently find five to nine seats on one flight in business class through the Aeroplan program on other operated flights. 

Devon: Yeah, I think that's such a great point to make. When I think about sweet spots, especially from the states to Europe, like you've been talking about, I think one of the other things to know about sweet spots is that they come in all sorts of different kind of flavors. What I mean by that is the example that we just gave about Air France Flying Blue, one of my favorite things about it is that it is so widespread available in terms of Air France services so many different airports in the U.S. from the West Coast to the East Coast, the Midwest. Obviously, you can reach a lot of different major European hubs from there. 

Now, there are going to be some other sweet spot examples that are much, much, much more limited in terms of the specific route. That doesn't make them bad. They can still be an amazing opportunity in terms of saving points. But I think it's really good to understand that when we talk about sweet spots, it doesn't always mean that it's going to be, again, every single flight that's operated by a carrier.

One of those examples is if you are flying, again, looking to fly from the states over to Europe, there's a very, very narrow, very narrow sweet spot, but it does exist, in between two specific airports. So this is, I think, a great example of how narrow a sweet spot can actually be. It's literally flying one way. So it's not even either direction. It's one direction, one way in between two very specific airports. 

This is if you are flying from JFK Airport in New York and you are flying specifically to Lisbon, the airport in Portugal on the main Portuguese airline, which is known as TAP Portugal. Literally that one flight, just JFK to Lisbon, only in that direction, not in the other direction. But you can sometimes, when it's available, you can book a one-way business class flight from JFK to Lisbon on TAP Portugal for 35,000 points.

So what makes that a sweet spot is the fact that 35,000 points for a one-way business class flight, to me, is an extraordinarily good price. I've booked domestic economy flights that are not 35,000 points. But what makes it this sweet spot, again, is it's a great deal, but it is incredibly limited and restricted in terms of, again, the actual route that you can fly. 

So it doesn't make it a bad deal. It's just one of those things that you have to understand about some sweet spots. Again, what makes them so sweet is that you have to be willing to take advantage of them in the way that they exist. Kind of another similar sweet spot, and then Allison, I'd love to hear kind of your thoughts on these, is I think that's a great example of kind of the narrowest type of sweet spot that exists. 

But also flying from the States over to Europe, sort of a sister airline only because they're countries that are right next to each other. Spain has a major airline called Iberia, and there are some really nice sweet spots that exist on Iberia Airlines getting from the States to Europe. These are actually bi-directional. So you can also go from Spain back to the States.

I think that to fly one way in economy, some of these routes, including like New York, Boston, Chicago to Madrid, which is where Iberia is based. Some of these sweet spot awards can look like flying economy one way for 17,000 points or flying business one way, again, for 30,000 to 40,000 points. So much less than what I would consider kind of like the standard economy or business class flights to look like. 

So from the perspective of these can be very highly discounted points flights compared to what we, again, expect to see on these types of routes, those are some really, really great sweet spots and kind of what you might have to give up in terms of flexibility, where, again, you may have that deal available only from one to four specific airports. What you give up in some of that flexibility is what you gain in the points saving. So Allison, I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are about those two examples or anything you would add. 

Allison: I love those two sweet spots. I tend to forget about those just because number one, I don't have a lot of, oddly enough, I don't have a lot of people coming to me and asking about Lisbon. So I tend to forget about that JFK to Lisbon one a lot of the times, and that's through Avianca LifeMiles, again. So hard to pass that up. 

Sometimes, I know I have searched from like IAD to Lisbon and even Miami to Lisbon before, and they don't follow the typical 63,000 point range that you would expect to see. I think one time I saw Miami to Lisbon was like 50,000 there. So that's some more savings on that one as well.

But yeah, when you can hunt those very specific ones, you're gaining a ton more points back in terms of the value that you're getting from them. So you've got the Iberia 34,000 point one-way business class flights from the Northeast. For some reason, they classify Chicago as part of the Northeast. Don't ask me. I'm not a geography major, but I know enough about U.S. geography that it's not located in the Northeast. It's a Midwest city not far from where I'm from. 

But you're going to find those during off-peak times. If you're trying to go during summer, you're not going to find 34,000 point business class flights. But if you're someone that wants to go see those Christmas markets, it's a great way to save some points. You're often going to find during those off-peak times as well, there's going to be more availability. So if you want to take the whole family to Europe for Christmas, it's a great way to save points and do it in the process. 

Devon: Yeah, 100%. Now, you and I so far, we've just talked about some sweet spot awards to Europe because there are so many great ones that exist. You kicked us off by talking about one of your favorite sweet spot awards, which is flying ANA. So those are obviously going a little bit in the opposite direction towards Japan or farther in Asia. But let's expand it even more from there. 

So beyond those examples, can you think of other international sweet spot awards either in economy or business class that exists for people who want to go to South America or to the African continent or India or larger zones of Asia than just specifically Japan? 

Allison: Yeah, so let's talk South America because I was actually just doing some award searches for that the other day. Every time I see someone start to talk about South America, for some reason specifically Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, there's just for some reason not a lot of award space to those destinations. But I was looking at stuff for like August and there was like a ton of award space. I was super shocked that there was award space for that. 

So when we talk about our sweet spots for that, one of my favorite ones is actually on LATAM Airlines. You book that through Virgin Atlantic. It's only 45,000 points. You can also get it through Qantas for like 60,000 points. So if you have some Qantas points sitting around, use those, but much rather go through Virgin Atlantic for 45,000 points for those flights. 

Devon: Yeah, and I think that that's such a great one because, like you said, just when we're comparing just inventory in general, there are far fewer routes, fewer carriers, fewer options to book flights from the U.S. or just from North America going down to South America than to some other areas in the world. 

There's a lot of times what I've noticed too when looking for other people or looking for myself for awards from the States to South America is that, again, there's just not as many routes to pick from. I think because airlines know this, especially the domestic airlines like American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta. If there are awards available, they're always astronomically priced, like to the extent that almost none of us would genuinely consider paying 200,000 or 300,000 points per person one way to get from the States to South America.

So I think having that example of, and I'm never sure if it's LATAM or LATAM Airlines. So I apologize, whichever way I'm mispronouncing that, but this is an airline that does actually have really good award availability. Again, not limited to just a single U.S. airport. I think that, again, depending on what you can find out there, you can go from the West Coast or from the East Coast and then fly to a couple of the major hubs in South America. 

So this is not nearly as constricted an example as the TAP Portugal one I gave just between New York JFK and Lisbon. That on the LATAM flights, you can actually go, again, I think it's LAX, SFO, Miami. There's probably more airports. I didn't actually write down the entire list, but you can get down to Lima in Peru, Santiago, Chile. You can get into Argentina. Then from there, oftentimes, you can take shorter connecting flights if you want to travel more around the region. 

But to be able to get to South America on points for not a million, billion points per person. A lot of these flights, if you are looking specifically at business class, they have a true lie flat business class product, which is the other thing that's very unique.

Because a lot of the flights that are operated by a lot of the domestic U.S. airlines, if they are business class, a lot of them are operating what we're used to seeing as the domestic business class product, which is a recliner seat. Which is more room and more comfortable, arguably, than economy. But a lot of the domestic airlines are not operating flights to South America with the true lie flat business class seat that a lot of us are looking for, especially on a flight that can be 10, 11, 12 hours. 

So I love that example to South America. I think that it is more challenging to find great awards period to South America. So the fact that there are some awards that, again, I think are relatively easily findable and bookable, especially at a sweet spot, is really, really fun. How about some other areas of the world? 

Allison: Yeah. Let me talk about a non-sweet spot because you talked about lie flat seats to South America. They're not that common. So I know Emirates just launched their Miami to Bogota flight on the 777. I know everybody, they're like super excited about this flight. Don't get me wrong. Emirates business and first class, it's honestly really great. If you've never experienced it before, you absolutely should try and experience it once in your life if you are someone that loves to fly premium cabins. 

If you are going to do it, maybe try the Game Changer 777 versus the old one because you're going to get a much better experience. Or especially if you're going to do first class, do the A380, get your shower experience once in your life. I always have to tell people if you are in Emirates first class on the A380, you are required to take a picture of yourself with shampoo in your hair. It's a requirement. Not the point of the sweet spot, just my little tangent on that one. 

But yeah, everyone's like super excited about this Miami to Bogota route with Emirates. Business in first class on this route is going for like 50 to 80,000 points on it, which is absolutely insane on like a sub three hour flight. Like I'm not going to waste my points on that. I probably wouldn't even use my points in economy for that flight because it's only a three hour flight. I will suffer in the middle seat on that flight in economy if I had to, to fly that. 

But yeah, if you're someone that's flying back and forth between Miami and Columbia, it's a really good option. Better airline to fly. Don't think I'd waste my points on that, to be honest, though.

Devon: Yeah, I think that's such a great thing to bring up is like the anti-sweet spot. A flight that is probably very comfortable but where's there not a great deal to be had. So I think that that is a really, really good example. Unless, again, somebody just wants to experience that flight, of course. Use your points however makes you happiest. But talking specifically about sweet spots and where do deals exist, that is probably not the best one that we can take advantage of. 

But moving beyond South America, are there any other international sweet spots that you love, that you're hoping to book, or that you think are good opportunities for other folks to look out for? 

Allison: Yeah.  Absolutely. Another place I've been trying to like get more to this year, I haven't been successful at it, is like Africa as well because there's not a lot of nonstop routes from the U.S. to Africa. There is a couple like with United and Ethiopian. But outside of that, there's really, I think Kenyan has one, and that's like the only ones that I can think of off the top of my head right now. Well, there's some to South Africa, as well, but they're always astronomical in terms of pricing. 

That's the downside of there being only a handful of airlines that fly to a destination from a continent. Or if there's just like one airline fly that route. They've got a monopoly on it. They're really not incentivized to drop prices, whether in cash or points on that flight.

So really, when you look at trying to get to Africa, you're pretty much guaranteed to take at least one connection through that, whether or not you're going through Europe to get there or the Middle East, Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, to get there. 

Some really great sweet spots with that is you want to fly to South Africa, you can fly Qatar Airways through booking through their own program. 95,000 points from the U.S. to South Africa. That includes both Cape Town and Johannesburg of that.

Emirates also flies that it's going to be around 315,000 points for two passengers total. That's a little bit expensive points wise to me. But the way that I justify that is actually doing a stopover in Dubai. With that, Emirates will allow you to do a free stopover in Dubai. So I split up the flights, spend three or four days in Dubai then continue on to Africa for that.

Or if you're trying to book something like Egypt Air and try and go to Egypt, you can book that through Air Canada for 90,000 points one way in business class. Economy for that would be 45,000 points on that one. 

Devon: Yeah, that's a great example. I have been very, very fortunate to fly that specific Qatar route from Chicago through Doha to Johannesburg twice now. Not only is it an absolutely amazing flying experience, but it actually, since Qatar has joined sort of the Avios currency family, I think in some ways it has become more bookable. 

So here's a really good example of two different ways that you can book and not necessarily the cheapest way being the best. So traditionally before, I can't remember exactly when Qatar joined the Avios family, but it's been at least a year or two. So kind of pre that time, this was a specific kind of award sweet spot that really only existed through one specific airline booking program. That was American Airlines. 

So back in the before times, American Airlines was kind of the best place to book these amazing business class awards on Qatar through, again, either stopping in Doha, or beyond Doha, the route network that Qatar has, which is really incredible to a couple of different huge hubs across the African continent, India. You can go all the way from Doha through and continue on to Asia. So really great opportunity.

You could book and you still can. It's just they never make them available anymore. Theoretically, you can book Qatar Q-Suites or any of their business class products from the States to Doha for 70,000 American Airlines miles in business class, which again, one way is a really, really incredible price. Now, what Allison is talking about is being able to book that same exact flight, but through Qatar's program itself for 95,000 Avios or points one way is still really, really amazing.

The difference is availability. That it used to be fairly common to be able to find good business class award availability on Qatar through American Airlines. Recently, that has not been my experience. It seems like there's been a complete drought where you almost can never find Qatar availability to book through American Airlines.

So this is a great example of a sweet spot that exists in theory, but in practice may or may not actually be available. Sometimes this is just a trend where for a couple months, we won't see some great availability and then an airline will release a lot of award availability in a given sweet spot. 

This may be something that's more permanent, a shift, as we've seen Qatar really align itself with the other airlines within the Avios currency. So this might just be a permanent trend that we don't see a lot of Qatar availability on American Airlines moving forward. But nonetheless, because you can access those business class flights and economy flights bookable directly through Qatar, that does remain to be a really, really great opportunity. 

Now, Allison, before we try to talk about or focus on some actual domestic examples of sweet spot awards, I'm wondering if there are any other sweet spot awards that you can think of specifically from the States to Asia. Because I think right now there are so many people who are so excited to travel to various parts in Asia. Japan, I think, especially post-pandemic has been just soaring in popularity, always an amazing place to go. 

But I feel like more than ever the last year or two, I think everybody, it feels like, is trying to get to Japan or to the greater Asia, Southeast Asia region. Are there any other sweet spots that you can think of that people might want to take advantage of? 

Allison: Yeah, Japan is always a good one. It's one of my favorite countries in Asia, honestly. Like you mentioned, everybody and their brother and sister and their kids and their kids' friends is trying to get to Japan right now. So it's really hard to find availability with that. Not saying it's impossible, but that's one where I like to recommend people, let's try and lock in a plan B flight. Whether or not that's an economy or something on a fully refundable cash fare if you're someone with a lot of disposable income. 

Then as you get closer to departure, somewhere around two to three weeks prior to departure, consistently you're going to start finding a lot more like Japan Airlines flights available through American Airlines or even British Airways, or United starts to drop their pricing and makes it start to become available through their partners like Air Canada where you can get it for just 75,000 points instead of 80,000 points through United with that. So that's another good sweet spot. 

Another good one, especially if you want to go to like Southeast Asia, and I'm going to include that as like Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam. Those are the classic ones, but also I'm going to include Taiwan in this as well. You can get from the U.S. to those using Air Canada points for just 87,500 points with that. 

That's going to include like kind of this really weird niche one that probably most people aren't going to want to do, but that's going to include the Singapore to JFK route, which is the world's longest flight, 19 hours. They only fly premium economy and business class on that route. That's what I'm trying to do this year, just for the research. Okay. For the research. 

But if you were to book that same flight through Singapore, you're going to expect to pay 150, upwards of 150,000 points. So if you're a little bit patient and wait for it to become available through Air Canada, or at least flexible on when you go, you can get that through Air Canada for 87,500. So there's going to be the top like Asia sweet spots. 

You'll notice I talk a lot about Air Canada, and that's just because Air Canada has, hands down, probably the number one loyalty program around to redeem your points with in terms of the amount of airlines that they partner with, not just domestically here in the U.S. but internationally and in Canada as well. I mean, I think you can get to literally every destination with Air Canada points at least.

Devon: Yeah, I agree. That's such a fantastic program. Not only do they have, again, a huge range of airline partners, but it is so diverse. It's not like it's limited to just one area of the world. They're a great transfer partner of multiple transferable points currencies. We oftentimes see transfer bonuses from the transferable points currencies over to Aeroplan. It's an easy program and an easy platform to look for flights and book them. So I agree. I love Air Canada Aeroplan.

Before we move on to some domestic U.S. sweet spot awards, I just wanted to kind of round out this conversation about getting over to Asia because I think that there are two examples of, again, what I consider to be sweet spots at different ends of the spectrum. 

So at the end of the spectrum of just where does an amazing deal exist in terms of number of points needed to get somewhere? I think that traditionally, American Airlines, again, has had a great sweet spot award from getting from the States to Asia on Japan Airlines, which is one of their partner airlines. 

What's been really great about this sweet spot award is, again, it's not limited to just one specific route. You can oftentimes theoretically find these rates on the routes that Japan Airlines services to the U.S. So major cities like Dallas, Chicago, New York, the West Coast hubs. 

You can fly from the States to Japan on Japan Airlines for either 60,000 points one-way business class on Japan Airlines, or you can even oftentimes fly first class. That's only 80,000 points one-way. 80,000 American Airlines miles to fly one-way first class on Japan Airlines, which I've actually flown. It was an extraordinary experience. It was really, really amazing. 

Now, the caveat with this, and the reason I say this is at one end of the spectrum, is because just in terms of points needed for the number of hours of flying time and the experience, it's an incredible airline. This is an amazing example of a sweet spot award because of the price of the ticket itself. 

Now, one of the things that we have unfortunately seen, again, I think very recently, and I've seen this, Allison, I don't know if you've experienced the same thing. But I feel like this is happening kind of globally across American Airlines. What used to be really, really amazing partner airline award availability is it seems to be dropping compared to what it used to be. 

So I think of this as an amazing sweet spot in terms of the number of points that you need to fly this route. I don't consider it currently an amazing sweet spot in terms of actual availability. I think this is a sweet spot that people have been trying to find and book, again, because of the popularity of flying to Japan, and the availability just does not seem to be there. 

So I think it's important when we do talk about sweet spots to acknowledge, again, there's a disparity sometimes between the theoretical existence of an award and how accessible it actually is to book. So before I talk about my second sweet spot to Asia, I'm curious to hear if you've seen the same thing with American partner availability, specifically with Japan Airlines or other ones or just your opinion about that. 

Allison: Yeah, I have seen definitely a lot less availability with Japan Airlines, and I'm not sure if it just has something to do with more people trying to fly to Japan, or if they've reduced what's coming into American Airlines, or if it's just more people trying to take advantage of that sweet spot as well. If I was to guess, it's probably a combination of all three of those. 

I know the last couple of times that I've flown Japan Airlines first class, the cabin was completely full, which used not to be the case. You usually have it about half full, but all eight seats in their first class has been full. With their introduction of their new first class product as well, it's become even harder to get that first class and business class because they're not really offering as much awards on those. When they do, people are gobbling them up so fast. It's like I don't even see alerts fire off for these because I've been trying to scoop them up for myself. 

Devon: Yeah, I think it is a combination of a couple of different things. Again, sometimes it's hard to tell is this just one of those regular sort of normal lulls that we see where there will be a couple months of kind of lower award availability and then it swings the other way, and we start seeing a lot more. So I don't have a crystal ball. 

Unfortunately, I don't have a backline to any of the executives for any of these airline programs. So I don't know exactly what's going to happen in the future. But assuming that Japan Airlines award availability continues to be made to American Airlines, being able to book specifically business and first class on them is an amazing sweet spot. 

But talking about this spectrum of what I consider to be a deal, this next sweet spot that I'm going to talk about is one that I don't consider to be a deal from the perspective of it being bargain basement lowest prices that you can expect to pay for points for a given flight, but I do consider this to be a sweet spot for other reasons.

Kind of, this is the mirror example, mirror opposite of specifically that JAL flight bookable through American Airlines is that this is a sweet spot to me because it is, again, readily available, very easy to find, very easy to book for folks who are looking to travel internationally in premium business or first class cabins, especially business class cabins. This has great availability. 

So unlike right now, what we're seeing with JAL award flights, this is an example that, again, I don't think it's hard to find availability, especially for folks who are looking to fly multiple people in business class. That is usually a very, very challenging thing to do. So this is my last example of what I consider to be a sweet spot deal from the U.S. to Asia and vice versa. Because, again, amazing availability, easy to find, bookable for multiple people in business class. 

This is Singapore Airlines. Specifically the route that I really like that I recommend to a lot of people talking about how popular travel to Japan is recently is that Singapore Airlines actually operates a direct flight that goes from Los Angeles to Tokyo. So you don't fly through Singapore on the way to get there. 

So you can book, it's like 11 and a half hours, I think, from LAX to Narita airport in Tokyo. You can book that through Singapore Airlines, and you're flying Singapore Airlines. That if you can find the saver availability, which is the lower price point availability, was about 104,000 points per person one way. 

So, again, this is not what I consider a sweet spot deal from the lowest points option perspective of where you can get from one region to another. But I do think it is a great sweet spot in terms of actually being a flight that you can book. Which is for most people who are in points, I don't actually think there's a lot of people who operate, Allison, you and I do to like the extent of the, end of the spectrum that we are on about what we're willing to do to fly a certain airline product because we really want to try it out or what we're willing to do to chase down one very specific deal. 

I think the vast majority of people who are in points and miles are what I consider to be regular people. They want to earn points for the money they're spending. They want to be able to use their points for travel that they otherwise might not want or be able to pay out of pocket cash for. They want to be able to do it to where it is not going to require that they make it a full-time job. 

So I'm always thinking about what are the awards that really fall in that amazing middle zone. It may not be the absolute best points price you're ever going to find, but they're flights that you are going to be able to find. You are going to be able to book. Especially for people who travel as part of a group or a family, sometimes you want to be able to find a flight where you can have all four of you, all five of you on the same exact flight. So, to me, that's what makes this an example of a sweet spot deal. 

Allison: Love it. Love it. Love it.

Devon: Yes. I got the thumbs up. I got a seal of approval from Allison, the award expert. So that makes me really happy. But now that we have covered all of these different various international award sweet spots, and I also want to say, we didn't talk about every single one of them. So please don't think these are the only examples of sweet spots. 

These are the ones that either we really like, that we think offer amazing deals, or that we do want you to know about, but please know there are examples of other international sweet spot awards. It's just that we don't want you all to have to listen to us talk about these things for three and a half hours, even though we could do it. We really wanted to highlight just some great examples of sweet spot awards.

So now that we've covered some of those internationally, let's come a little bit closer to home and talk about some domestic sweet spot awards. What are some of the ones that you can think of off the top of your head or that you find yourself doing a lot of searches for to help other people find out? 

Allison: I'm going to start off with the classic one, Southwest. Southwest has amazing award availability. They literally will offer every seat on their flights to be able to be booked with points, no matter how cheap the flight is or how expensive the flight is. 

So that's the one downside with Southwest is it is dependent how many points you need on what the cash cost is. So if you can get those cheap, want to get away fares, you're going to get a lot more value. But if you're someone that has a lot of points or is just trying to save some money and you're looking, you're going to see award space on that flight, even if it departs tomorrow, just because they offer every seat available on their flight. So Southwest is always a good option. 

You can easily find flights to Hawaii for under 10,000 points each way per passenger. So that's a great way to get to Hawaii with the entire family. Easily you're talking one way, got five people, 50,000 points, a hundred thousand points all together. That's one signup bonus from a card right there. You don't have to get 12 credit cards to earn all those points. Just get the right one. It's going to get you to Hawaii if you book at the right price point with them.

On the other side of that, we tend to give them a hard time about their pricing, but Delta is another good option for domestic travel and even the Caribbean. I'm specifically going to call out their economy redemptions versus their business or first-class redemptions because those are absolutely atrocious 90% of the time. 

To be honest, the only time I've ever seen it not atrocious really is if we're talking about one or two hour flights, like think Salt Lake to Los Angeles. I've seen it for 20,000 points in first class. But you can easily get their economy redemptions for five, 10, 15,000 points throughout the entire U.S. So Delta is also a really good option. 

Then the third one is going to be British Airways. They have been increasing their prices a little bit. But if you live in a city or in trying to get to a city that has a nonstop route operated, that's going to be the sweet spot with British Airways because British Airways awards price at each segment. 

So if you've got to take a connection, British Airways really probably isn't your best option just because you're going to be paying the price for both. It's also distance based, meaning the further you fly, the more you're going to pay. But if you're taking a short nonstop route you're looking at about under 15,000 points ideally in British Airways for economy travel there. 

Devon: Yeah. When we're talking about British Airways, for some of you who are thinking like wait a minute, I've never seen a British Airways flight operating from Miami to the Caribbean, or I've never seen a British Airways flight operated from Chicago to New York. What we're talking about here is, again, leveraging another one of these really incredible airline partnerships. 

So within some of the major airline alliances, one of them is called One World and it includes a lot of different airlines, but two of the airlines that live inside of the One World Alliance right now are American Airlines and British Airways. 

So what happens is that oftentimes American Airlines, if they have awards operating on their flights that fall within what's called the saver level, which is just the lowest points price level of points flights. That oftentimes at that saver level, you can book an American Airlines operated flight but instead of booking it straight through American Airlines, like Allison is saying, you can actually book it through British Airways. The benefit of doing that is twofold. 

Number one, British Airways, because it is a distance based award chart. It means that shorter distances cost very, very few points to fly. So you can pay fewer points for an American Airlines operated flight when you book it through British Airways instead. So that's number one. 

The second thing that I think is really great about that opportunity when it exists is that when you look at the different transferable points currencies right now, as of very recently, again, American Airlines is a very, very challenging airline program to accrue tons and tons of miles compared to other frequent flyer programs.

The reason being that right now, American Airlines is not a transfer partner of any of the major transferable points currencies. For a little while, they partnered with Citi. That went away. For a little while, they partnered with Bilt. That very recently has gone away. 

So for a lot of people, it can be challenging to build up a large balance of American Airlines miles, but British Airways is exactly the opposite. There are lots different points currencies that transfer to British Airways. So you may not even have access to American Airlines to book award flights, but if you have access to British Airways and American Airlines has given award space for their partner over to British Airways, then you can oftentimes book American Airlines operated flights through British Airways. 

That can be an amazing sweet spot, Allison, like you were saying, especially in economy class and especially for shorter distance flights. So this is not going to be your transcontinental flight from LA to JFK. But one of the areas, as you mentioned, that this can be really, really useful is flying to the Caribbean because there are very few airlines, again, speaking just about inventory and routes. You're not going to find as many airline flights that go from the U.S. to the Caribbean. 

There are so many more that fly from the U.S. to Europe. These are really concentrated. They tend to be American Airlines flights that are operated out of their hubs, like Miami or Charlotte, Delta flights that are operated out of Atlanta. Maybe there's a couple of other examples, but there's not that many options when it comes to flying from the States to the Caribbean.

So to be able to get a really, really competitively priced flight, again, even economy, that can be a great option. Miami down to the Caribbean. These are not terribly, terribly long flights, but they can be priced outrageously in terms of the cash cost of them. So I love that being able to use either American Airlines through American or booking American flights through BA on some of these short haul flights can be awesome.

Hey, everyone, I'm going to interrupt myself here for just a second to give you all a quick update. A few days after Allison and I recorded this podcast, British Airways announced a no notice devaluation of American Airlines awards, meaning that the award sweet spot that we just mentioned is no longer as sweet as British Airways has increased the points price of these flights. 

However, it is still worth checking BA for short haul award flights on American as this might be your only way to access American award flights if you don't also already have a stash of American Airlines miles handy. Okay. Back to the episode. 

Last example of a domestic award. I'm curious to hear from you if you've ever tried to book this or where you would rank this again in terms of that scale of feasibility. Is this something that exists amazingly in theory but in practice is useless and people should not even try to go for, or is there some opportunity here? You're kind of laughing. I wonder if you can read my mind, and you know what I'm going to bring up. I want to ask you, what do you think I'm going to talk about, and I'll just tell you if you're right or wrong. 

Allison: You're going to talk about Turkish. 

Devon: Yes, of course I'm going to talk about Turkish. So let's talk about Turkish. So since you already knew that I was going to bring this up, tell me your opinion of the, quote unquote, Turkish Airline sweet spot. Again, what is it in theory? Then in your experience, is this something that you think actually exists in practice, people should try to look for, or they should just use this as entertainment and then never think about it again?

Allison: I feel like the Turkish program is like a double edged sword. Okay. I'm going to explain why I feel that way. But I feel in theory, it's a great way to utilize your points, especially if you have a ton of Citi points or Capital One points that can transfer to Turkish. Okay. 

So, again, we're talking about domestic travel. Turkish doesn't fly between Miami and Houston, but their partner United does. That's what we're trying to book through Turkish, especially for this domestic and Caribbean stuff. It used to be it was only going to be like 15,000 points for a round trip economy flight. Now it's like 25,000 points for an economy flight round trip. 

In theory, the Turkish program is great to accomplish this when you can find that saver award space on United. It's going to say it when you search. It's going to say saver on it. Okay. That's going to be your key for the economy flights. you take that information to the Turkish website. In theory, it should populate. Okay. 

The downside of Turkish is they don't always populate online like it's showing on United. Even if you were to search Air Canada, United's other partner, also partners with Turkish, you might see it on Air Canada, but you don't see it on the Turkish website. 

To still be able to do that, you got one of two options. You can either try the email method with Turkish, or you can try the call-in method with Turkish. This is my big complaint with Turkish is when you have to start going that route. Their customer service is absolutely atrocious. 

You will expect to have to take forever to get a response from their emails. They're going to say I don't know what you're talking about. You call in, they're going to be like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Miami isn't even an airport, something like that. That's an actual conversation I've had with a Turkish phone rep before.

So the one time I actually tried to redeem points with Turkish, and it didn't work online, I must have spent five hours all together trying to figure this out. I told myself I would never book through Turkish again if I could not get it to populate online.

So if it works online, please go book through Turkish because you're going to save some points, especially if you got Citi or Capital One points. They do frequently have some promo rewards as well where you can find it even cheaper domestically. So that's always a good option as well. But when it doesn't work online, not worth pursuing. Just go find through Avianca or Air Canada instead.

Devon: Yeah, I really love hearing your personal experience with that. I have never actually booked one of these, quote unquote, sweet spot awards that exist for domestic United flights through Turkish before. I have only booked Turkish operated award flights through Turkish, which I think is a much more straightforward and easy process.

So I wanted to bring up this program though, again, just to give everybody sort of that idea of all of these different opportunities that exist. The reason that the Turkish Airline sweet spot is one that I think gets written about a lot and people do talk about a lot is because from the perspective, again, of a really, really great points deal is that those do exist through this program, especially for people thinking about wanting to fly to Hawaii. 

This is again, domestically, I think in an area that has always been popular. There are always people looking to take vacations to Hawaii, and it can be challenging to find competitively priced cash flights or competitively priced award flights to get over there. 

I think that was one of the real advantages of this potential sweet spot is that even though Turkish in the past year has kind of revalued their points system, this still is potentially a great deal. I'm looking at an example here where you can fly a United flight from Newark to Honolulu when that is available on United Airlines as a saver level flight, you can book that one-way economy flight through Turkish Airlines for 10,000 miles. I really don't think that a better deal, a better potential deal exists. 

But I think it is really important to acknowledge, as Allison very appropriately did, that it can be hard to find just these awards to begin with, and it can be hard to book them. So this to me would fall into the category of I would not recommend trying to find a book a domestic Turkish sweet spot award for the beginners in points and miles, or for those of you who are faint of heart. 

You need to have either a lot of experience using your miles, running award searches, or just a tremendous threshold for patience. That's not going to be every single person. But for those of you who really, really like a challenge, you will be rewarded greatly if you are able to leverage the Turkish Airlines domestic award sweet spot. 

So I hope that we've given you all just a really, really broad overview of some of the amazing deals that do still exist in points and miles. We've tried to hit on domestic awards and international awards and economy awards and business class awards. What I hope we've shown you is that, again, there are still so many really, really great deals that can be had with points and miles.

But before we wrap up today, Allison, of course, I want to thank you for your time, for sharing your expertise. I'm curious if there's just any last tips or tricks or pieces of advice that you want to offer to everybody when it comes to finding and booking sweet spot awards.

Allison: I actually wanted to call out and thank you for mentioning two very specific things. You were talking about the ease or the lack of ease in booking Turkish. If you want a challenge, go for it and go do that, or maybe just go the easier route. I loved how you called that out because it is very challenging for that. 

But I also wanted to acknowledge how you were talking about the American Airlines sweet spot with Japan Airlines. Because you notice I didn't talk about that. I specifically didn't mention that because AA miles are so difficult to earn, which is why I also didn't mention one of my other programs to redeem points through, Alaska. Because it's even harder to earn Alaska miles to do damage with and have ammo to redeem for those premium cabins. So I didn't even acknowledge those because they are hard, and they have so many great potentials with that.

But yeah, I really wanted to just thank you for calling out. Some redemptions, a lot easier to do than others. Other ones are super hard. Those are ones that you see it, you book it, you ask questions later, and you rearrange your entire schedule around those type things. That's how I got Starlux. Not necessarily difficult to get, but it's one that I wanted to do. So I changed my entire summer schedule just to take that one flight. So I just wanted to thank you and acknowledge those two things. 

Devon: Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I think especially for this initial conversation, you and I chatted about this. I wanted us to cover things that, again, are going to be as usable as possible for the most amount of people. 

Now, what we can always do is a second edition of this conversation where we take it to the other edge, and we talk about some of these more niche programs, for people who have a little more experience or a little more patience or really love a challenge, and they want to get the best of the best deal. That can look like a very different conversation. 

Like you said, talking about grabbing some of those sweet spot awards that exist within Alaska Airlines, that exist within American Airlines, or some of these programs that, again, aren't as easy to accrue a lot of points and miles in or maybe require just a little bit more skill in order to find and book. So that could be an amazing conversation we can have another time.

But I'm really glad that we started with just a more broad overview and made it a point to try to include examples of flights that, again, I think the vast majority of people are going to be able to access. But for everyone who loved listening to this today and wants to know more about you, learn about what you do, Allison, where can folks find you online? 

Allison: You can find me mostly on Instagram @luckytictac. I also hang around in a bunch of points groups on Facebook as well. I have my own award travel vacations. So those are going to be the two places that I'm at. If you want to come find me in the wild, come down to Travel More in November. Both Devon and I are speaking there.

Oddly enough, we're both going at the same exact time. We have a little challenge. I don't know if she knows this, but I'm putting the challenge out there right now. I'm going to take count of everyone who's there and see who has the bigger audience. I don't know. I'll buy you dinner one night when we're out there for whoever has the biggest one. 

Devon: No pressure. I have no doubt that far more people are going to come attend your talk than mine. I am completely at peace with that. But thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for sharing your expertise. We're going to go ahead and link up in the show notes in the episode description, all of those places where folks can find you online. Allison, thank you so much. This was a really fun conversation. I hope a lot of folks learn something new from our talk today. So I hope you have a fantastic week. 

Allison: Awesome. Thank you. Appreciate having me.

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.