Family Trip to Europe with Miles Tutorial: Overview
I am in the middle of planning a two week family trip to Europe for my parents this summer. The vacation will be for three people and cover three different cities in Europe. As an added bonus, they decided to include a trip to Saint Martin in the Caribbean taking advantage of a “better than free” one way trick to save on American Airlines miles. Just about everything (flights, hotels, fuel surcharges) will be paid for with points. The flights alone source miles and points from several different programs: American Airlines, United Airlines and fixed-value points like FlexPerks/Citi ThankYou Points/simple cash back.
Series Index:
As I go through the planning, I am realizing I am personally tackling many questions that readers typically ask about their own vacation plans. How do we search for availability efficiently? How do we plan itineraries for multiple people? What do we do if we can find flights there, but not back? How do we add free one-ways and use the right miles to get back? How do we go through all these steps and book everything and not get overwhelmed by all the options and planning and research?
That said, my experience and actual planning process may be helpful to many and I am going to discuss my step-by-step reasoning through my parents’ trip on my blog. I’ll cover the following aspects:
- Searching for award availability in the right place and in the right way.
- Flying a family of 3 or 4 on one itinerary.
- Booking tickets and using points to pay taxes and fuel surcharges.
- Finding opportunities for free one-ways (where you can get a one-way flight to the Caribbean or North America and save miles).
- Booking the return from the free one-way.
- When to book “big flights” (across the ocean) and when to book “little flights” (intra-Europe).
- Using miles and points for hotels.
The Itinerary
As it stands right now, we have the big flights booked, but not hotels. They will be flying to Saint Martin in April for a five night trip and returning home to New Jersey. In June, they will start their European two week vacation landing in Rome and finishing the trip in Vienna. While the flights are booked and we have a rough idea of hotels and itinerary, that’s where we are at this point. No intra-Europe flights, no train tickets. That’s the next part. Which brings me to my first tip on planning trips…
Keeping It Simple: Plan One Step at A Time
One of the big challenges for planning a big multi-city trip with miles and points is putting together each part (long flights, short intra-Europe flights, hotels, etc.) People may find award tickets to fly to the destination and then go off to research hotels or shorter flights. By the time they come back to book the award flights they’ve found, the tickets are gone. They get frustrated that all their planning has gone to waste and put off planning that European trip another month. In the end, they may give up and just buy tickets or just not take the trip altogether. Or they may end up paying the “standard” award price in miles.
I find it works out better to have a rough idea of your itinerary (do a little research on relative prices), but not book everything at once. If you’re planning a trip covering three cities and adding a trip in North America as a free one-way, then you just can’t get it all done and booked within a few days. I know everyone wants to secure everything at once, but in reality, it may work out better to work through the plan and secure one step at a time. As an example, if you’re planning a two week trip to Europe, chances are that you are not going to spend your entire vacation in one city. It’s ok to book a miles ticket to the city you’ll start your trip in and then work out the ticket back later on once you’ll decide your ending city. That said, some programs give an advantage when booking round-trip itineraries so you want to be mindful of that. As an example, US Airways and United Airlines each give you a free stopover.
Big Flights First
Collect miles for big flights and plan “big flights” first. The big flights across the Atlantic or across the Pacific are ones where availability is hard to come by. The “how to use miles to cross the ocean” will be the single biggest problem you’ll be faced with on your vacation plan, most likely. Think about it. If you were paying with cash, flights to Europe for three people is likely to cost $6,000 in summer at the cheapest. On the other hand, you can likely spend $2000 on hotels for 10 days. Looking at it that way, tackle the “big expense” first. A European city has probably hundreds of hotels, but only a few airlines you can use miles on.
That’s why I’ll be starting my next post in the tutorial with how we first found flights to Europe…
I am also planning a trip to Europe this summer.
Is there any way that I can use points or miles to
pay for a Viking River Cruise? Thanks, George
The Barclaycard Arrival will cover any travel related expense. You just put it on your credit card and redeem the miles as a statement credit.
Thanks for the great suggestion! George
Great article! I am also planning a trip to Europe in May 2015. Can’t wait till your next post! :)
I’m also planning a trip to Europe for me and my family, total of 3 people too! We live in San Francisco and plan to go to Rome, Florence, Venice , Milan then Paris. Then will fly back to SFO from Paris. We want to avoid London if possible since we scared of high fuel surcharges and tax that they charge there.
So far I have accumulated Southwest, US Airways, and AA miles. If as you said that US Air and AA are offering one free stopover in the US gateway city, it would be awesome as an added bonus into our trip! We would like to go to Caribbean, which one you think is good city in Caribbean to visit, Aruba or St. Martin? And is it counted as US gateway city by US Air or AA?
From SF, is it better to go to Carribean first then Europe, or better to go there on our return flight back from Europe to SF?
What a great itinerary! American Airlines is the program that allows free stopovers in the North American gateway city but, unfortunately, San Francisco is not a gateway city to any cities in Europe among the oneworld and American Airlines partners. So a free one-way is not possible with San Francisco and American Airlines miles. US Airways will allow you a free one-way before your big trip and I’ve explained on this post how to add this: http://milesprof.wpengine.com/2013/05/17/us-airways-dividend-miles-free-one-way-rio/. You’d then plan a trip to the Caribbean before your trip to Europe and you can follow what we did there.
I’ve been to Aruba and it has a great beach! I have yet to visit St. Martin, but my parents chose that. Both have an opportunity to use Club Carlson points for hotels, which is what my parents will be doing. Aruba has more hotels with points (Marriott, Hyatt, Radisson) whereas St. Martin has just the Radisson Blu and Westin with points. I’d see where you can find availability and go there!
Awesome! thank you for the suggestion, it’s decided, we will go to Aruba then!
Also, please pardon if I am slow in understanding when I read your comment that SF is not a US gateway city to Europe. I do have some questions that I hope you can help enlighten me up, I will break them into points so it’s easier for you to answer on each point:
1. Does Aruba (AUA) considered as US gateway city stopover by AA or US Air?
2. The only flight connection to Aruba is from Miami and from Miami can go to Europe too. How can we get into Europe if we are DEPARTING from SFO (since we are living in SF)? Can we do SFO-MIA(connection)-AUA(stopover)- Europe? If so, how do we do it, is it by AA or US Air?
We got the idea after reading this blog:
http://milesprof.wpengine.com/2013/03/17/american-airlines-aadvantage-off-peak-europe/
If you have any better alternative or idea, please let me know!
3. I am just new into the CC game and I am wondering what a good credit card to build up hotel points for our free hotel stays in Aruba and Europe? If you have any good deal on CC that gives the most hotel points sign up benefits, please share and I would be more than happy to use your link as a way to say thank you!
Excellent! Aruba is very nice :)
1. US Airways is not concerned with gateway cities. It will let you stop pretty much anywhere along the way. For the purposes of American Airlines, a gateway city is the city from which you leave the region and do not touch North America afterwards. As an example, there are flights to Asia on American Airline partners from San Francisco. But not to Europe. I go over what a gateway city is pretty thoroughly in this post: How to add free one-ways on American Airlines awards.
2. Aruba is not considered a gateway city and you can’t stop there on American Airlines miles. You can, however, use it as a stopover on the way to Europe with US Airways and, until they leave the Star Alliance, can even book Star Alliance flights. United flies there from DC, Chicago and Houston. Just make sure not to go through the same airport twice on the same leg (e.g. you cannot fly SFO-MIA-Aruba-MIA-Madrid to get to Europe).
3. Aruba has many point hotels, but the best value are probably the Radisson or Hyatt there.
– Radisson is under Club Carlson and these points are easy to collect plus you get a free night as a U.S. Bank Club Carlson card cardholder on every award stay of at least two nights. You get 5 points per dollar spent and the top Radisson Blus in Europe (even Paris) are 50,000 points a night. The bonus right now is 85,000 points.
– For Hyatt, you can get two free nights with the Chase Hyatt Credit card and any Ultimate Rewards points also transfer to Hyatt Gold Passport (the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Ink Bold are offering 40,000 points as a sign-up and 50,000 points, respectively).
Among these options, I’d probably go with Club Carlson specifically for Aruba/Europe as they have far more properties in Europe than Hyatt.
Hi. How r u? Took your advice about Hawaii but I need your advice. I booked Grand Hyatt kauai with cash and points for 5 nights. I tried to use a diamond suite upgrade, but as of now, there are no suites available. The AAA RATE comes to a total $2,055. My cash rate comes to $981. Points 62,500. Should I pay the $2055 complete or keep it as cash & points? Also, Costco had a deal for 5 nights for $2000 for 2 people, including a car. Is a trip booked through Costco eligible for a diamond upgrade?
The Costco rate, unfortunately, does not earn points and also is not eligible for Diamond suite upgrades. You may also not receive a stay credit with that. though it may not be so relevant considering suites for an upgrade are not available. When I was there for four nights, a car cost me about $200. I also did not have a suite upgrade as none were available, but I did get moved to an ocean view room and was pretty happy with that. I spent very little time at the resort as the island was so great!
So let’s look at points value: If you went with the AAA rate, using Hyatt points instead would receive a value of 1.71 per point or $1074 for 62,500 point. That’s quite a bit of money so I’d probably use the points there (unless you have a more valuable points use in mind).
If you went with the Costco rate, assuming a car is around $200-250, you’d be receiving 1.25-1.3 cents per point and I’d likely pay at that point and save the points. Again, it all depends on your future planned point uses.
Booking with Costco will, of course, still allow you to have your Diamond benefits, just not the Diamond suite upgrades. Hard to say what to do… I’d probably have a dilemma between the Costco and Cash + Points…
Thank you. It has been a dilemma. Even though Costco is a better deal, I already purchased enough Hyatt certificates(10% off before 12/31/13) & I have the points. So no further outlay of money as I would need to do with Costco. I am going to try & do your Ny-Hawaii-Singapore- Thailand- Tokyo trip in January. I guess I should start preparing. My husband thinks I’m a bit obsessed with miles & points. Lol.
Thank you for the suggestion! I guess I have to start applying for Club Carlson card and Hyatt card, and I when I do, I would like to use your referral link as a way to say thank you.
Some questions:
1. I read in your post titled From Caribbean in Winter + to Europe in Summer for 20,000 American Airlines miles, that you said “A stopover can be created by connecting a segment back from the Caribbean to your home city and then from your home city to Europe. In my example, I will explain how you can fly from Aruba to Los Angeles in February and also from Los Angeles to Berlin in August all for 20,000 miles!”
My question on your example above is: How do you fly to Aruba in Feb (if you live in LA), if you start from Aruba then back to LA (so this is considered as free one way trip back to your hometown after visiting Aruba) before you start another one way trip from your hometown (LA) to Berlin in August? Do you have to book another one way award seat from LAX to Aruba separately in February? If so, wouldn’t that cost more miles or money ?
2. My dilemma now is that I don’t have enough US Airways miles, I only have 35,000 miles so far now. But I have 110,000 AA miles and 110,000 Southwest miles (CP status). How can I get around this to book 3 people total to Aruba then to Paris from our hometown, San Francisco?
Can you please write down some examples of better itinerary for SFO or any gateway city to CDG (Paris) which allow us to stop over in Aruba for free ?
Please pardon me because I am new to this award booking, appreciate your help.