When you find award space that fits your travel plans, it feels great to click the book button and secure it. But even if you’ve already redeemed your points or miles, you might still be able to score a better deal without disrupting your travel plans.
Did you know you can potentially save points and miles even after you’ve redeemed them for the same flight or hotel?
Here’s a simple strategy I use.
Related: How (and why) to calculate award redemption values
Know your program’s pricing levels
In the early days of points and miles, loyalty programs offered a limited number of airline seats or hotel nights at fixed redemption rates (usually through award charts). If a seat or night was available, you could book it for a set price that would not change.
Nowadays, redemption pricing has become much more complex. Many programs now utilize dynamic pricing to adjust redemption prices in response to demand. This does mean that on peak dates with high demand, redemptions can be eye-wateringly high; however, it’s not all bad news.
With many programs now having the ability to flex prices substantially based on their confidence in filling the seats or hotel rooms, you might be surprised at how prices can and do drop closer to departure.
For example, flights to Australia are traditionally some of the hardest flights to find premium-cabin award seats at affordable prices. If you redeem American Airlines AAdvantage miles or book almost a year in advance (around when the seats are first released), you can expect to pay hundreds of thousands of miles to fly to Sydney Airport (SYD).
AMERICAN AIRLINES
Related: How much will your vacation really cost? The scourge of dynamic pricing is spreading like wildfire
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However, closer to departure, the AAdvantage program may reduce the cost of some awards for flights operated by American Airlines if the flights are unlikely to be full, and even a destination like Australia can become significantly more affordable.
AMERICAN AIRLINES
I’m not suggesting only booking travel at the last minute, as this spontaneity (and level of uncertainty) won’t work for everyone.
Instead, there’s a way to combine peace of mind with potential savings.
How to save after you’ve already redeemed
I recently redeemed Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles for a long-haul flight operated by Singapore Airlines next year. Unfortunately, I wasn’t flexible on the route or date.
Singapore Airlines’ KrisFlyer program offers two levels of award redemptions: the cheaper, strictly capacity-controlled Saver awards and the higher-priced but more readily available Advantage awards.
When I went to book, the Saver awards were sold out, so I booked a more expensive Advantage seat instead. It wasn’t an amazing redemption, but it was an acceptable mileage price I was comfortable with and fit my rigid travel plans.
Once the booking was confirmed, I set an alert through Seats.aero, my favorite online tool for finding and tracking award pricing. I entered the date and flight number of my flight and the program I used to book it, and then set the maximum cost in points just below the price I had paid for my Advantage award.
SEATS.AERO
As the flight is not for several months, I can then “set and forget,” and if a Saver seat opens up on this flight (at a lower price than the Advantage seat I already booked), Seats.aero will notify me via both app notification and email.
If the flight is not full closer to departure, KrisFlyer may decide to open up additional Saver seats to fill up the plane. Although this is not guaranteed, I was able to set the alert in just 30 seconds.
If I receive an alert, I can cancel the Advantage award online and rebook the Saver award immediately for a significantly lower mileage price. Although redepositing the KrisFlyer miles to my account costs $50 for a canceled Advantage award, switching to a cheaper award would save me tens of thousands of miles, making it well worth it, especially since I don’t need to monitor availability every day; I can wait for an alert to come through.
ZACH GRIFF/THE POINTS GUY
Some hotel programs that use dynamic pricing do something similar, lowering some nightly award rates if occupancy softens. If you set an alert, you could be notified of price drops and rebook to save points.
Related: How to use Rooms.aero to find the best hotel award availability
Bottom line
Once you’ve redeemed your points or miles, don’t assume the price you have to pay is set in stone.
While partner awards are usually fixed in price, it’s worth investigating whether the program you are booking through uses dynamic pricing for select flights or award nights, or has tiered prices, such as Saver and a higher-priced tier (e.g., Advantage/Flexi, depending on the program).
While the price you can pay right now might be an acceptable deal, booking and then setting alerts for the right programs to be notified if redemption prices drop closer to departure can save you thousands of points and miles with very little effort.
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