Ticket Sites Make It Easy to Track Frequent-Flyer Points
Sometimes, I spend money in spite of myself. A year or so ago, a new restaurant opened near my house and as a promotion, they were handing out coupons for free sandwiches. I managed to collect four of them. Sadly, three of those four coupons are still sitting unused in my wallet!
The sandwiches are delicious, and the place is literally within walking distance of my house. All of those moments when I was wondering, "What should I eat for lunch today?" some bizarre mental barrier kept me from connecting the dots.
Perhaps I simply struggle to keep an accurate mental inventory of the contents of my wallet. On another occasion, I discovered that I had enough points from using my Visa check card to exchange for a $100 gift card at a local wine shop.
My wife asked whether I could use those points for travel instead. Sure enough, after logging into the Rewards site for my Visa card, I saw that I had, indeed, earned enough points for a $75 airline coupon -- and I had no idea I had done it!
I didn't even know my debit card had such a program, yet I was enrolled and earning points in it.
When Spending More Costs Less
In other ways, it's my awareness of a favorite travel program that keeps me from saving money on discount travel sites.
I like Kayak.com and similar sites, but I rarely buy tickets from them. In most cases, they are cheaper than the airlines' own websites, but they don’t take into account my frequent traveler status or point accumulation. Therefore I browse Kayak and invariably head straight back to Delta to buy the more expensive ticket. I reason that (for example), the extra $50 is worth the ticket price, because I’ll gain 2,000 more frequent flier miles. And I need those miles if I’m going to make Platinum status.
Wouldn’t it be great if your favorite discount ticket site would track, monitor, and report your point totals from frequent flier programs and credit card reward programs? Wouldn't it be even better if those sites conducted their searches with your specific interests and standings in those programs taken into consideration?
Travel Sites Track Your Miles
Finally, mercifully, they are starting to do just that!
Check out these two sites: Superfly.com and MileWise.com. They allow you to enter your point program credentials, and they will automatically stay aware of your latest totals. This allows them to search for deals specific to your usual travel providers, and they will tell you (for example) that you have enough credit card reward points on a particular card to earn a ticket discount.
Of the two sites, Superfly is easier to configure to suit your particular needs, and it has more programs available. MileWise has fewer programs available (they’re missing American Airlines, for one glaring example), but their search algorithms are much deeper and will present you with more options for leveraging your points and miles.
I subscribe to both sites. I have conducted several test searches on them, and I'm very impressed! There were coupons in my "travel wallet" that I didn't know I had! Who knows? You might find your own "free sandwich!"
EXTRA: Please feel free to leave comments on this article! If you have questions for Ken regarding business travel, hotels, airplanes, etc, please send him a "Tweet" on his twitter account. You can also follow Ken on Twitter @foodbreeze!
