As those following the Mrs. Millennial social media channels already know, our “big trip” this year is pretty epic: we’re taking a 9-day cruise of the Baltic Capitals out of Copenhagen, Denmark, with stops in Warnemunde, Germany; Talinn, Estonia; St. Petersburg, Russia; Helsinki, Finland; and Stockholm, Sweeden.
There’s just one issue: we have to get to Copenhagen first. And we’d prefer to do that as inexpensively as possible.
Our Two-For-One Booking Secret
Luckily, I had a points-and-miles based strategy for just such a need, and we spent most of the last year working on it. The first step was to sign up, early in the year, for the British Airways Visa Signature Card. This tiered bonus credit card offered a grand total of 100,000 bonus Avios in exchange for spending $20,000 on the card in the first 12-months of card opening.
And in fact, our goal was even higher than the minimum spending: an oft-overlooked feature of the British Airways Visa is that they will grant you a “Travel Together” ticket if you spend $30,000 on the credit card in a single calendar year. The “Travel Together” ticket is sort of like a one-time use version of the Southwest Companion pass; it grants you one free companion ticket for any round-trip flight, in the same class of service as the primary ticket.
Still, generating $30,000 in credit card spend in a year is no easy task, especially as I do not recommend ever putting more on your travel credit cards than you can realistically pay off each billing period. If you carry a balance, you’re eating up any potential travel awards you may generate in interest fees.
Instead, we had to strategically time a number of purchases to make it work: we replaced the air conditioner at our condo using this credit card, put as much of the hubby’s new car purchase as the dealership would let us on this credit card, and even paid our property taxes with this credit card.
It took us most of the year, but finally, in December, we had managed to earn the Travel Together ticket, and were sitting on top of a mountain of 130,000 Avios points to boot. So I went to researching, and eventually, had to call in to make my booking due to the complexity of the reservation.
The “catch” for this type of redemption is that you can only book on a flight —and in a cabin class—where British Airways lists award availability. And while it doesn’t matter whether you are flying on a paid or points redemption fare for the primary ticket, if you ARE trying to book the primary fare using Avios, that means you now need to find TWO available award seats in whatever flight/cabin you’re trying to book. That can be a bit tricky, especially in premium cabins.
As a result, we ended up with business class flights into Copenhagen, but Economy flights on the way home. All in all, we spent 113,500 Avios to make the booking, leaving me with ~20k Avios that I was able to use towards picking our seat assignments (something you can’t do for free unless you have status with British Airways).
The Takeaway
Had I purchased the same tickets using cash, they would have cost me $6,586. As a result of using my Avios & the Travel Together Ticket, I only needed to pay the taxes and fuel surcharge portion of both fares — knocking my out-of-pocket cost down to $1,786. That means I saved roughly $4,800 using this strategy.
One thing people often ask me about travel credit cards is whether it’s really that much more lucrative than just using a simple cash back card. And as the above example clearly indicates, the answer is YES. Had I done the same $30,000 of spending with one of the better cash-back cards on the market that generally offer a rate of 5% cash back on purchases, I would have only recovered $1,500. Using a travel card and a smart booking strategy allowed me to get more than 3x as much from my spending.
If you’re considering a similar strategy for your own upcoming travel, it’s a great time to go after the British Airways Visa Signature card. The current offer is actually even MORE lucrative than the one I signed up for; you’ll now receive 120,000 bonus Avios for completing $30,000 spending in the first 12 months of card opening, which is how much spending you’d need for the Travel Together Ticket anyways. (Just remember that while you have 12 months to complete the spending for the Bonus, you only have til the end of 2019 to complete the spending for the Travel Together pass.)
Happy travels, and stay tuned for upcoming posts about our epic 2019 vacation!
