| | Best tools for searching award travel | | by Brian Kelly | |  | This has been a great summer for travel. Even with some initial hiccups in Newark, the U.S. saw its busiest travel day so far June 22, with 3.1 million passengers screened at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints. Airfare is down around 10%, and award availability is plentiful, especially to Europe, so it’s the perfect time to search for some late-summer travel deals.
The key to finding the best award availability is knowing which tools to use. Here are a few of the tools I use the most:
No. 1: Point.me
Point.me is probably the site I use the most, especially if I need to fly on a specific day and have less flexibility. It searches far and wide. It’s the only search tool with direct official connections to the airlines, so while it takes longer sometimes to run searches, you can usually rely on the results.
Bilt and American Express both have partnerships with Point.me. Eligible Amex cardholders can use the service for free, and Bilt members can enjoy what Bilt calls “the Bilt Transfer Partners experience” by using a Point.me-powered search in the Bilt app (full disclosure: I’m a Point.me and Bilt adviser and investor).
Point.me will also help you decide which program to transfer your points to — sometimes, even I can’t remember all of the transfer partner options (here’s TPG’s transfer partner cheat sheet).
No. 2: Seats.aero
Seats.aero is a clever tool that allows you to search by city pairs and displays award seat availability on long-haul, international flights. You can even search by a singular program, like Emirates Skywards, for example. It searches for open award space every few hours, results are provided for up to a year in advance, and you can filter routes to find first- and business-class availability. This is where flexibility is key. I highly recommend finding the award availability first and then booking your trips around it. If availability doesn’t exist, you can always set alerts to get an email or text if anything becomes available.
No. 3: MaxMyPoint
MaxMyPoint is a great tool for finding hotel award space and pricing on a month-by-month basis. It even has a map feature that allows you to search multiple hotels in a destination. It’s a game changer that has saved me a lot of time — and it’s free!
Bottom line
While many of these tools offer free versions, there are a few that I pay for the premium version because by finding the best awards, I’m able to save thousands of points, making it totally worth it. There’s a lot of great award availability out there; you just have to be flexible and know how to find it.
Have a great weekend,
BK
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