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Travel hacking 101: A beginner’s guide to travel hacking like a pro

When I started travel hacking 11 years ago, it was an obscure “hobby” that few had heard about and most dismissed as a scam . Nowadays, seemingly everyone is doing it to some degree. Whether getting in on the latest credit card promotion or snagging a first-class seat for the price of coach, travel hacking has become more popular than ever.

It’s the easiest way to save on travel and improve your experience. Utilizing travel hacking methods, you can fast-track your way to top-tier elite status and earn frequent flyer miles without ever stepping on a plane.

There is endless information about maximizing every dollar (and mile) spent. But if you’re new to this “game” and just want a simple explanation of how it works, you’ve come to the right place.

Here is everything you need to know about getting started with travel hacking.

What is travel hacking?

Travel hacking involves earning frequent flyer miles or points through non-traditional methods and redeeming them for nearly-free travel.

The most common travel hacks include leveraging credit card welcome bonuses for premium cabin flights and taking advantage of sweet spots and generous routing rules to get the best deal on award flights.

How much are points and miles worth?

Points are worth 1-2 cents each, depending on the loyalty program and how you use them. You’ll generally get the highest value by redeeming points for premium cabin flights and luxury hotel stays. Some programs impose a fixed value on points, depending on the fare cost. For example, Southwest Rapid Rewards points are worth 1.3 cents towards Wanna Get Away fares.

The same goes for transferrable rewards. Most of them are worth at least one cent each towards direct travel bookings. For example, Chase Ultimate Rewards® are worth 1.25 cents each towards direct travel bookings for Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card  cardholders and 1.5 cents for those with a Chase Sapphire Reserve® .

The difference between points, miles, and rewards

Points, miles, and rewards are different types of loyalty currencies. There are exceptions, but airlines usually issue miles, while points come from hotel loyalty programs or bank rewards.

A good travel hacking strategy involves having a mix of all three currencies.

Transferable rewards

Thanks to their flexibility, transferable bank rewards are the gold standard of loyalty currency. You can transfer them to airline miles or hotel points, usually at a 1:1 ratio or better.

Examples of transferrable rewards include Amex Membership Rewards, Capital One Venture Rewards miles, Chase Ultimate Rewards®, and Citi ThankYou® points.

Airline miles

You might be wondering if it’s worth earning airline miles when you can just transfer your bank rewards points instead.

Well, you should earn airline miles from a co-branded airline credit card for several reasons. For starters, you can supplement welcome bonuses from airline cards with a bonus from a transferrable rewards card to reach your travel goals faster.

In addition, some airlines incentivize you to earn miles (through a co-branded credit card or otherwise). For example, American Airlines counts all co-branded credit card spending towards elite status. Meanwhile, Southwest Rapid Rewards issues the Companion Pass after you earn 125,000 points in a calendar year (which increases to 135,000 next year). Earning airline miles can pay off.

Hotel points

Hotel points can go a long way in reducing out-of-pocket travel expenses. You can earn hotel points from co-branded hotel credit cards, by shopping online, and even by participating in surveys. Hotel credit cards offer generous welcome bonuses, with perks like elite status and annual free nights.

Examples of hotel points you should consider earning include World of Hyatt, Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, and IHG One Rewards.

How to start travel hacking

Travel hacking is fun and rewarding but can also be a lot of work. There is a wealth of information about ways to earn and burn points for maximum value. But if you’re just learning and want to know the basics, here’s a step-by-step guide to getting started.

Step 1: Set a goal

Before you embark on your travel hacking journey, you’ll want to set a goal. Are you hoping to redeem miles for international travel ? Or perhaps you’re saving up for a family trip to Disneyland. Regardless of your goals, it’s important to identify them early on to determine which credit cards and loyalty programs will help you get there.

Step 2: Choose your rewards program(s)

Once you’ve determined your travel goals, it’s time to pick your loyalty programs. Start with your home airport; if you live in an airline hub city, that airline can be a good starting point. There’s no sense in earning Southwest points if you live in Alaska. You might be better off with the Alaska Mileage Plan program since the airline serves the region and offers domestic and international partners. You’ll have more opportunities to redeem miles, and if you fly the airline often enough, you’ll even earn elite status.

When choosing a loyalty program, keep partner airlines in mind. For example, if you’re saving up for a Hawaiian vacation and want to fly United, you should consider collecting Turkish Miles&Smiles instead. Turkish Airlines is a Star Alliance member, like United, and offers domestic United flights for just 15,000 miles round-trip in economy. Exploring partner programs can help you save on award travel, stretching your miles further.

Choosing a hotel loyalty program might be easier. Think about which hotels you like when traveling and which elite benefits you care about. Most hotel loyalty programs let you earn top-tier status from credit cards alone, so think about which programs offer the best perks and properties in the destinations you like to travel to.

Here’s a look at every major hotel program’s global footprint to help you choose:

• Marriott Bonvoy: Over 8,000 properties in 139 countries
• Hilton Honors: Over 7,000 hotels in 122 countries
• Choice Privileges: Over 7,000 hotels in 40 countries
• IHG One Rewards: Over 6,000 properties worldwide
• Radisson Rewards: Over 1,700 hotels worldwide
• World of Hyatt: Over 1,150 hotels in 70 countries

While it’s good to identify at least one airline and hotel program, you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. Try to collect at least one transferable rewards currency, so you’re not limited to only a few programs.

Transferrable rewards can also protect you against program devaluations — if one airline or hotel increases its redemption requirements, you can transfer your points to another.

Here are some of the most popular transferrable rewards programs:

• American Express Membership Rewards®
• Bilt Rewards
• Capital One Miles
• Chase Ultimate Rewards®
• Citi ThankYou® Rewards

Step 3: Choose a credit card

Once you’ve identified the loyalty program you want to earn points with (and incorporated at least one transferrable currency), it’s time to find a credit card.

When choosing a credit card, you should consider the following features:

Welcome bonus

A high welcome bonus will help you achieve your travel goals much faster. Some credit card bonuses are high enough to cover a round-trip international business class ticket. You’ll incur a 2-5 point credit score hit from every inquiry, so make it count. You should aim for a welcome bonus of at least 50,000 points, and plenty of cards meet that criteria.

Credit card application rules

Remember that some banks have strict application rules when applying for credit cards. For example, American Express limits welcome bonuses to one per lifetime. Meanwhile, Chase’s infamous 5/24 rule prevents you from being approved for a new card if you’ve had five or more in the last 24 months.

Be sure to familiarize yourself with these rules before applying for a card to avoid unnecessary rejection.

Travel perks

Many travel rewards cards come with valuable perks like elite status, airport lounge access, airline fee credits, and annual free nights. Think about which of these perks you’re likely to maximize every year. Doing so can help you choose the best credit card and figure out if the card is worth renewing every year.

Annual fees

Travel hacking can get expensive if you’re not careful about annual fees. Rewards credit card annual fees range from $89-$695. It’s easy to get tempted by a high welcome bonus, but annual fees can dent your travel budget if you’re not careful.

Before settling on a credit card, explore the lower or no-annual-fee version to see if it’s a better fit.

For example, the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card may seem appealing with its welcome bonus, but you’ll pay a lower annual fee with the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card .

Step 4: Other ways to earn points

Credit card welcome bonuses are the fastest way to earn points, but they’re not the only way. You can earn points from shopping portals, dining rewards programs, completing surveys, and more.

Shopping portals:

• American AAdvantage eShopping
• Alaska Mileage Plan Shopping
• Delta SkyMiles Shopping
• Free Spirit Online Mall
• Hilton Honors Shopping Mall
• JetBlue TrueBlue Shopping
• Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping
• United MileagePlus Shopping

Dining rewards programs:

• American AAdvantage Dining
• Alaska Mileage Plan Dining
• Delta SkyMiles Dining
• Free Spirit Dining
• Hilton Honors Dining
• IHG Rewards Club Dining
• JetBlue TrueBlue Dining
• Marriott Eat Around Town
• Southwest Rapid Rewards Dining
• United MileagePlus Dining

Airline companion passes

Airline companion passes are one of the best travel hacking tools to stretch your points further. Some passes are issued annually as a credit card benefit, while others have to be earned. In most cases, you can save 50% or more on airfare with a companion pass.

Here’s a look at companion passes you should consider adding to your travel hacking arsenal:

Alaska Airlines Famous Companion Fare

The Alaska Airlines Famous Companion Fare is a great travel hacking tool for west coast flyers. The pass is issued as part of the welcome bonus on the Alaska Airlines Visa® credit card and reissued annually. Considering the Alaska card has a reasonable annual fee, this is a terrific benefit.

Simply book a companion on the same flight and pay just $99 (plus taxes and fees).

American AAdvantage

You can get an American Airlines Companion Certificate from one of four co-branded credit cards. The spending requirement ranges from $20,000 to $30,000 per year. Once you’ve secured the certificate, you can use it to cover a companion’s airfare for just $99 plus taxes and fees.

• Barclays Aviator Red World Elite Mastercard: Spend $20,000 in a year
• AAdvantage Aviator Silver Mastercard: Spend $20,000 in a year
• AAdvantage Aviator Business Mastercard: Spend $30,000 in a year
• CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® Mastercard®: Spend $30,000 in a year

The American Airlines Companion Certificate is only valid on round-trip economy class tickets within the contiguous U.S. For Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Island residents, the pass is good for round-trip flights originating in those destinations.

British Airways Travel Together Ticket

The British Airways Travel Together Ticket is issued to British Airways Visa Signature® cardholders who spend $30,000 in a calendar year . This perk can take the sting out of high fuel surcharges imposed on British Airways award tickets transiting through London.

The Travel Together Ticket is valid in all cabins, including first class and international fares .

Delta Companion Passes

Delta has two companion passes: one is valid on economy class tickets only, while the one issued through the Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Card can be applied to first-class travel. You’ll pay just $80 for your companion’s ticket, which is a bargain — especially when using it for first-class flights.

Note that the Delta companion tickets are not valid on award flights or basic economy tickets.

Here’s a list of cards you can earn the companion pass with:

• Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card
• Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card
• Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card
• Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card

Iberia airfare discount

Iberia offers a $1,000 airfare discount on two tickets booked on the same flight. You can earn it by spending $30,000 on the Iberia Visa Signature® Card per calendar year. It’s valid in all cabins, providing ultimate flexibility.

Southwest Companion Pass

The Southwest Companion Pass is one of the most popular travel hacking tools out there. You can get one after completing 100 segments or earning 125,000 Southwest points in a calendar year, though the requirement is increased to 135,000 points in 2023. However, points earned from the Southwest credit card welcome bonuses count towards the pass.

It only takes one business or one personal card welcome bonus to earn the Southwest Companion Pass:

• Southwest Rapid Rewards® Plus Credit Card : Earn 50,000 points after you spend $1,000 within the first three months of account opening
• Southwest Rapid Rewards® Priority Credit Card: Earn 50,000 points after spending $1,000 within the first three months of account opening
• Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Credit Card: Earn 50,000 points after spending $1,000 within the first three months of account opening
• Southwest Rapid Rewards® Premier Business Credit Card: Earn 80,000 bonus points after spending $5,000 within the first three months of account opening

Redeeming points

You’ve accrued thousands of points and are ready to start booking your dream vacation. Now what? Redeeming points isn’t exactly easy, and that’s by design. Loyalty programs count on members not doing their due diligence to get as much out of their points and miles as possible.

While booking the first award that pops up in the search result is easy, that’s not the best way to stretch your points. Here are a few concepts you should familiarize yourself with to get the most out of your points:

Stopovers and open jaws

While a simple round-trip flight is great, you can stretch your points further by incorporating stopovers and open jaws into your flights.

A stopover is when you visit an additional destination on your way to your final destination or home. Several airline loyalty programs allow you to add a free stopover to award flights:

• Alaska Mileage Plan (free stopover on one-way awards)
• ANA Mileage Club ( one free stopover and one open-jaw on round-trip awards)
• Cathay Pacific Asia Miles ( up to four destinations per itinerary)
• Emirates Skywards (one free stopover per round-trip)
• Japan Airlines Mileage Bank ( three stopovers or two stopovers and one open-jaw )
• Singapore Krisflyer ( one stopover and one open-jaw per roundtrip flight )
• United MileagePlus (one free stopover within the same region per round-trip flight)

Open jaws are another great way to add a destination to your itinerary. An open jaw is when you return from a different destination than you flew into.

One example of an open-jaw ticket is if you fly from New York to London and then return home from Paris. Many people book this route with Avios because British Airways imposes hefty fuel surcharges on flights departing from London. Savvy travelers will take a train to Paris and fly back from Charles de Gaulle to save money.

But booking an open-jaw doesn’t have to be about saving money. It’s a great way to see multiple destinations on the same trip, especially in Europe, where connecting flights are relatively cheap. Here’s a list of loyalty programs that allow open jaws on round-trip award tickets:

Fourth and fifth night free

Some hotel programs offer free nights when you redeem points for consecutive nights at one property. These deals can help you save as much as 25% on an award stay. The most generous is IHG One, which offers a fourth night free to IHG Rewards Traveler, IHG Rewards Premier, and IHG Rewards Premier Business card members. Meanwhile, Marriott members and Hilton elites get the fifth night free on award stays.

These discounted award rates can help you save thousands of points and book extra free nights at no cost. Factor this into your award-booking strategy, and you’ll stretch your points further.

Take advantage of sweet spots

Sweet spots are awards that are significantly discounted compared to other loyalty programs. Both hotels and airlines have sweet spot awards that can help up your travel hacking game.

For example, Turkish Airlines offers round-trip economy class tickets between the mainland U.S. and Hawaii for just 15,000 miles. That’s what some loyalty programs charge for a one-way ticket, making this an excellent sweet spot award.

Travel hacking is all about finding ways to stretch your points further. You can do this with tactics like searching for generous credit card welcome bonuses, booking flights with stopovers and open jaws, taking advantage of hotel programs that offer free nights, and looking for airline sweet spots.

With a little bit of effort, you can travel hack your way to (nearly) free travel.

Happy travels!

About the author

Ariana Arghandewal

Ariana is a travel reward expert and founder of her own award-winning blog., PointChaser. She has worked as an editor and covered all things points, miles, and credit cards for over a decade across a number of personal finance sites.

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Travel Hacking 101: Beginner’s Guide to Free Flights & Hotels

R.J. Weiss, CFP®

• Updated December 20, 2023

Travel hacking has saved me tens of thousands of dollars. Just as important, it’s given my family incredible travel experiences that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to afford.

With this guide, you’ll have all the knowledge and tools you need to start travel hacking like a pro and create unforgettable travel memories yourself. 

Here’s what we’ll cover :

• What is travel hacking?
• Travel hacking and credit Impact
• How to earn points and miles
• The best first credit cards for travel hackers
• Tips for getting free flights with credit card points
• How to maximize your hotel points to get the most free nights
• My favorite award redemptions of all time

And lastly, we’ll answer some of the most common questions asked by new travel hackers.

What Is Travel Hacking?

Travel hacking is the art and science of unlocking free or significantly discounted travel experiences by strategically earning and redeeming reward points and airline miles. 

This concept encompasses various techniques, including leveraging credit card rewards, airline loyalty programs and hotel rewards to make your travel dreams a reality.

Since some credit cards offer as much as 2% cash-back, you might wonder whether it makes sense to just use those rewards for travel. The real benefit of using points and miles comes from point redemption values that can often reach 3 cents per point or more, and sometimes even go up to 10 cents per point.

Credit cards that offer generous welcome bonuses and reward points for everyday spending are the foundation of travel hacking. By using credit cards strategically, you can accumulate valuable points that can be redeemed for flights, accommodations and other travel-related expenses.

It’s not uncommon for a single credit card signup bonus to cover the cost of an international flight, making this a game-changer for many travelers.

In addition, you can also earn points or perks by taking advantage of airline loyalty programs or hotel rewards programs. By staying loyal to a specific airline or hotel brand, you can earn rewards points or perks such as free upgrades, lounge access and more. 

In essence, travel hacking is about understanding the ins and outs of the rewards ecosystem and using that knowledge to make the most of every travel opportunity. 

How Travel Hacking Impacts Your Credit and Finances

If you’re considering travel hacking, it’s crucial to understand how it can impact your credit score and overall financial health.

Your credit score is a three-digit number that indicates your creditworthiness and helps lenders evaluate your risk as a borrower. 

Several factors determine your credit score, including:

• Payment history (35%)
• Credit utilization (30%)
• Length of credit history (15%)
• New credit (10%)
• Types of credit in use (10%)

Signing up for credit cards is closely tied to many factors that carry the most weight in your credit score. Therefore, it’s not whether travel hacking will affect your credit score but how it will affect it.

To ensure a boost to your credit score while enjoying travel rewards, remember to:

• Choose credit cards you plan to keep long-term.
• Aim to hit the minimum spend requirement without overspending.
• Keep your credit utilization less than 30%.
• Space out new credit card applications.
• Pay your balance in full using auto-pay to avoid missing payments.

Much of this is familiar to anyone who has managed their credit responsibly. But if you’re new to managing your credit, check out our article titled “ How Travel Hacking Impacts Your Credit and Finances ” for a more in-depth guide. 

How to Earn Points and Miles

Points and miles are the currencies of the travel hacking world. When you know how to earn them efficiently, you’ll be well on your way to ticking off dream destinations from your travel bucket list.

Fortunately, with the right travel hacking strategies, you can earn points and miles toward your dream vacation without spending a fortune. 

The top strategies for earning points include :

• Credit card sign-up bonuses . By strategically choosing a card with a great bonus, you could find yourself enjoying a premium flight experience or a free hotel stay.
• Optimizing your spending through bonus categories . Many credit cards offer bonus rewards for specific purchases, such as travel or dining. Using the right card for each purchase can help you accumulate points faster.
• Shopping portals . You can earn rewards at popular online stores. Many credit card issuers, airlines and hotels have their own shopping portals.
• Maximize points earned while booking travel . Frequent travelers can optimize their rewards by taking advantage of loyalty programs offered by airlines and hotels.
• Refer friends and family to credit cards . Referring friends and family, including a spouse, to credit cards can be a rewarding way to earn additional points or miles.
• Open a business credit card . Business credit cards often have some of the most lucrative signup bonuses, making them an essential part of beginner travel hacking.
• Earning points with bonus transfers . Bonus transfers can be a powerful tool for quickly reaching your rewards goals. Many credit card issuers and loyalty programs offer periodic promotions, where you can transfer your points or miles to partner programs with a bonus.
• Promotions and offers . Promotions and offers can encompass both limited-time and ongoing incentives, which involve activities such as adding authorized users, making purchases at specific merchants, linking your loyalty accounts with certain merchants, or completing one-time tasks, such as meeting a spending threshold within a specified timeframe. These offers vary by credit card issuer and card type.

By implementing these strategies, you’ll effectively accumulate rewards and transform them into unforgettable travel experiences. 

To learn more about these strategies, read our detailed guide on earning travel rewards: Earning Points & Miles: The Best Ways to Earn Travel Rewards .

The Best First Credit Cards for Travel Hackers

As a beginner, choosing a card that offers long-term benefits, has a quality signup bonus, and has reasonable minimum spending requirements is essential.

Our top choices for first-time travel hackers include the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card and the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card, among other outstanding credit card offers we’ve curated for your convenience.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred Card offers a reasonable annual fee of $95, making it a great value. It also provides a consistently great signup bonus worth hundreds of dollars in travel rewards. 

With this card, you can redeem your points at a rate of 1.25 within the Chase travel portal, or transfer your points to various airline and hotel partners (including popular brands such as United Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Hyatt Hotels).

The Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card is another excellent option for beginners. 

With this card, you can earn unlimited 2X miles per dollar spent on every purchase, making it easy to accumulate rewards quickly. It also offers a consistently high signup bonus, which can be worth hundreds of dollars in travel credits. 

One unique feature of the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card is that it allows you to use points to erase purchases categorized as travel on your credit card without using a travel portal.

You can then benefit from a larger sign-up bonus and other travel perks the card offers, like lounge access, TSA credits and the option to transfer points to travel partners for potentially higher value. This combination of features makes the Venture card more appealing for travel enthusiasts compared to a 2% cash-back card.

Overall, both cards offer flexibility in using your rewards, making them worthwhile even if you don’t have a specific travel destination in mind.

We’ve partnered with CardRatings to give our readers access to top credit card products. By collaborating with CardRatings, we ensure all data is accurate regarding the credit card products available, as it changes frequently. To discover these and other top travel card offers, see their “ Best Travel Cards ” page.

Airline Miles for Beginners

If you’ve never done it, booking flights with points can feel intimidating. With so many airline programs and transfer partners, knowing where to start and how to get the most value for your points can be challenging.

So let’s start with the basics. There are two main ways to use your points to book flights:

• Through an airline’s mileage program . Using an airline’s mileage program means you redeem points or miles earned through that airline’s loyalty program. Each airline has its own award chart and pricing, which determines how many miles you need to save for a free flight based on the destination and class of service. 
• Using fixed-value points . These points hold a set value, typically measured in cents per point. You can use these points to book flights or other travel expenses at a fixed redemption rate. For example, if you have 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points and the Chase Sapphire Reserve , you can use them to book a flight at a rate of 1.5 cents per point, which would be worth $750 towards the cost of the flight. 

When trying to maximize the value of your travel rewards, booking flights with miles can offer outsized rewards compared to fixed-value points. However, there are certain situations where fixed-value rewards can come in handy.

At the same time, booking flights with reward points is more challenging than booking flights with fixed-value rewards, as award space availability can be limited. 

When you’re ready to book your flight, check out our step-by-step guide to redeeming points for airfare . Plus, see our rankings of the best free tools for award flight searches to help save time. 

Exploring Your Accommodation Options: Hotels, Vacation Rentals and More

Booking accommodations like hotels, vacation rentals, and other types of lodging with reward points can be a great way to save money or even splurge on a luxurious stay. 

Similar to flying, when it comes to redeeming points for lodging, there are two primary methods: 

• Hotel loyalty programs.
• Fixed-value rewards.

Earning points by transferring them from credit card companies is one of the fastest ways for you to book hotel stays. For example, you can earn a signup bonus with a credit card issuer like Chase, then transfer the points to a hotel loyalty program like Hyatt. 

This allows you to earn points fast and potentially stay at a higher-end property than you would be able to afford if paying with cash. 

Additionally, some hotels offer co-branded credit cards that allow you to earn points directly with the hotel, and often offer free nights or room upgrades.

Using fixed-value rewards to book hotels offers flexibility to those who prefer to avoid committing to a specific hotel chain. The Chase travel portal, for example, allows you to book hotels at a rate of 1.25 cents per point with a Chase Sapphire Preferred card or 1.5 cents per point with the Chase Sapphire Reserve . 

Capital One offers many redemption options, including booking hotels through deal sites like Priceline or vacation rental sites like Airbnb. 

After making bookings, which can be done outside of Capital One’s travel portal, you can use your points to effectively “erase” those purchases from your account statement. The key is that they must be categorized as travel.

Remember that leveraging the power of points and rewards to create meaningful travel experiences is the core idea of travel hacking. Whether you’re looking to save money or splurge on a luxurious stay, booking accommodations with points is an excellent way. 

Check out our Booking Hotels with Points Made Easy guide for more tips and tricks.

Discover My Favorite Reward Redemptions

Curious about the real-world potential of travel hacking? Don’t miss my article on my favorite reward redemptions . 

This piece dives deep into some of the most incredible travel experiences I’ve had, all thanks to strategically using points and miles. From first-class flights to five-star resorts and unforgettable family vacations, these examples will give you a glimpse of what’s achievable. 

Let this article inspire you, whether you’re just starting out or looking to take your travel hacking to the next level.

Traveling Hacking FAQ

Yes, travel hacking is legal. It involves strategically using credit card rewards, airline loyalty programs, and hotel rewards to get the most value for your points and miles. However, it’s essential to follow the terms and conditions of each rewards program and credit card issuer to avoid potential issues; while violating these rules is not illegal, it could get you kicked out of the program and may result in the forfeiture of any accumulated points or progress.

When done responsibly, travel hacking should not ruin your credit. In fact, it can even improve your credit score. Ensure you pay your credit card balance in full every month, keep your credit utilization low, and avoid applying for too many cards in a short period.

The time it takes to earn enough points for a free flight or hotel stay depends on various factors, such as your spending habits, the credit card you choose, and most importantly, how you plan to use the rewards. With the right strategy and card, you could potentially earn enough points for a free flight or hotel stay within a few months. 

The Chase Sapphire Preferred card is most often recommended for beginners. The card offers flexible rewards, reasonable annual fees and a valuable signup bonus. But make sure to check out the best current offers for other cards that might match your travel goals, in addition to making sure you’re a good fit to hit the minimum spend and having a good enough credit score. 

Unlock Your Next Adventure

Travel hacking is all about leveraging the power of points and rewards to save money and create meaningful travel experiences.

To dive deeper into specific topics, be sure to check out our related posts:

• Travel Hacking & Credit Impact
• Earning Points & Miles
• Choosing a Travel Rewards Credit Card
• Airline Miles 101
• Maximizing Hotel Loyalty Points and Programs

With these resources, you’ll have everything you need to take your travel hacking to the next level. 

Happy travels!

Travel More, Spend Less

From international business class flights to nearly free family vacations: unlock it all with points through our free 7-day travel hacking course.

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A Beginner’s Guide To Travel Hacking : Earning a Free Flight In Under 15 Minutes

by Jason Moore

How To Earn a Free Flight In Under 15 Minutes

* This article will help you avoid wasting time visiting a million different websites and provide all of the nuts and bolts of travel hacking so you can get started today.

Disclosure: Zero To Travel has partnered with Daily Drop for our coverage of credit card products. Zero To Travel and Daily Drop may receive a commission from card issuers. We appreciate your support.

A free flight in 15 minutes? You probably think I’m full of horse doo doo.

Just another idiot dude on the internet with some outrageous claim that can’t possibly apply to my life.

Not so fast!

Well ok, I do act like an idiot sometimes. But nobody is perfect, right?

But here’s the deal – it’s entirely possible to earn enough points for a free flight in under 15 minutes.

Before we dive in, a little education on travel hacking is necessary to provide a game plan that fits your lifestyle and current financial state.

There will be plenty of juicy nuggets along the way including a resource below that can take your game to the next level, so stay with me.

What is Travel Hacking?

Travel hacking involves working within the existing rules set up by airlines, credit cards, and hotels, and using them to your advantage to earn free travel including flights, lodging, and other upgrades.

Travel hacking is not a new thing. According to Wikipedia, the first frequent flyer program was created in 1972 for United Airlines. Loyalty programs have existed for decades.

Heck, I earned my first free flight about 14 years ago.

Travel hacking certainly is a hot buzz word of the moment. It seems like there are more people attempting to hack travel than there are people traveling.

The term ‘hacking’ in general, is overused…sort of like the plot-line to those Rocky films (blasphemy coming from a Philly guy, I know). Hacking implies some kind of matrix unauthorized access.

The truth is that travel hacking is completely legal and much less complex than an NSA spy algorithm.

Although travel hacking sounds sexy and dangerous, in actuality it’s pretty simple to earn free flights on a most basic level.

Is it hard to become a travel hacker?

Getting into travel hacking doesn’t require skeleton keys, retina scans or super-secret knowledge possessed by those lucky few with enough money and time to play the game.

It’s relatively simple to earn free flights and hotel rooms without much disruption or increased difficulty added to already complex lives.

For people who want to jump right into the game without having to weigh the countless options available or do hours of research, the following offers a basic plan to get started immediately.

If travel hacking becomes a hobby, it’s good to follow a few select resources dedicated to the subject. Since credit cards, airline rules and promotional offers are constantly changing, it makes sense to pay attention to maximize mileage and rewards points earning potential. These resources are provided at the end of this article.

For now, let’s keep it simple.

The Beginner’s Guide To Earning Free Flights

Do you know that story about the tortoise and the hare? In Aesop’s legendary tale the tortoise wins due to persistence. The hare could easily win due to his speed, but he becomes overconfident and takes too many risks.

Sometimes speed doesn’t matter as much as consistency over time.

Just like this classic fable, the race to earn free travel can take two approaches.

The difference is, implementing both strategies is key to racking up free travel. Becoming both the tortoise and the hare allows for optimal rewards points hoarding.

The Tortoise Travel Hacker: Earning Rewards Points Over Time The Old Fashioned Way

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second-best time is now.” -Chinese Proverb

This is true for most things in life if not all. Whether it’s starting a business, getting in shape, or earning free travel, if you haven’t gotten started yet then now is the time.

Here is an easy two-step process for Tortoise Travel Hacking

Step 1 – Sign up to join all rewards and frequent flyer programs

All of these programs are free. Don’t waste time signing up for every airline and hotel right this second. When you stay at a new hotel chain or fly a new airline, make sure to sign up for their program at that time to earn credit. Never take a flight or stay in a hotel without earning some type of points or miles.

To go a step further, you can always check the hotel or airline’s website before you book and see if they are running any promotions that can earn you bonus miles/points.

A List Of All Airline Websites

Over time you’ll end up with many frequent flyer and hotel rewards accounts. To track them all join Award Wallet , which is a service that helps to manage personal loyalty program accounts.

Here is a partial screenshot of my account.

The reason why I suggest joining Award Wallet is that it will help you track everything in one place. Plus, they will alert you when points or miles are about to expire.

I have foolishly lost miles in the past (pre Award Wallet) because I simply couldn’t keep track of my accounts. With Award Wallet’s help, I’ve been notified and was able to purchase small amounts of miles and points in order to avoid losing them all.

Step 2 – Be a repeat customer

Fly the same airline and stay in the same hotel chain as much as possible.

Loyalty programs were created for this specific reason, and it works. Find the companies you like and stick with them. It’s not always possible due to cost or availability but try your best to be a repeat customer. Over time these points add up to earn you free travel and hotels.

Again, this is the slow boat to earning free travel. To kick things up a notch you’re going to have to get into the travel rewards credit card game.

Now, let’s put you on the fast track to earning a free flight anywhere in the world.

The Hare Travel Hacker: Credit Card Travel Rewards

I’ll admit, it’s sort of boring to read about credit cards (yuck!). Why is it important? This is, by far, the fastest way to earn free flights, hotel rooms, and other travel-related goodies.

If you want to get off to the races fast, the only way to earn tens of thousands of miles for free flights without having to sit on hundreds of hours of flights is to sign up for credit cards that offer bonus miles or points.

Here is a regularly updated list of the Best Travel Rewards Credit Cards .

Credit card companies get a new customer, and you get free flights or rewards.

In my opinion, earning free travel via credit card rewards is not a game you should be playing if you cannot figure out a way to do these 2 things:

1. Pay your credit card bill in full every month and carry absolutely no credit card debt.

Are you fiscally responsible?

If you carry credit card debt does it make any sense to get another credit card and go into more debt? I would say no. I’m not a professional financial advisor and don’t pretend to be, but part of active travel is not running yourself into a financial hole!

If I were dishing advice, and I guess I am, then I would only take on new credit cards if I had the ability to pay my bill in full monthly, and no existing credit card debt.

When it comes to credit card spending, start conservatively. Earn a free flight or two and make sure the extra responsibility of added credit cards isn’t a burden.

After that, you can step up your game. After all, what’s the point of earning all of this free travel if you can’t afford to take the trips!

2. Ability to meet the minimum spend requirements to earn the points.

When you sign up for a travel rewards credit card you must meet their minimum spend requirements in order to earn the points bonus. For example, my favorite travel rewards card is the Chase Sapphire Preferred . This card requires you to charge $4000 in the first 3 months but you will receive 60k points. You can learn more about this card here!

That’s a lot of freakin’ money!

I know..but don’t worry.

Notice it’s charge $4000, not necessarily spend. Charging on your card is not the same.

More on that shortly, first…

What Are You Waiting For?

The bottom line is this; if you are currently carrying a credit card and it doesn’t earn you any rewards points you are wasting a huge opportunity.

Living in the United States, options are nearly unlimited when it comes to rewards credit cards.

If there is a card in your wallet that gets used and does not benefit you in some way, it’s time to pay it off, cut that sucker up and sign up for a card that actually benefits you.

Travel hacking with rewards credit cards can get complicated due to the sheer volume of choices in rewards credit cards. Not to mention keeping track of all the rules, minimum spend requirements, balance due dates and more.

However, by signing up for multiple credit cards, spending and transferring points you can rack up hundreds of thousands of miles and save big time money on flights, consumer goods, hotels, sports tickets, and pretty much anything you can think of.

You could google search travel hacking right now read every blog post, review and website on the net to find out which credit cards are the best but I’ll save you the time. They all reach this conclusion:

Credit Card Travel Hacking Simplified: The Best Travel Rewards Card To Get

Option #1 the consensus choice for travel rewards credit cards – chase sapphire preferred (annual fee: $95/year).

I’ve had the Chase Sapphire Preferred card for as long as I can remember having travel rewards cards. This card offers the best overall deal for personal cards.

Current Offer: Earn 60,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 within the first 3 months of account opening. Learn more

• 10X miles on hotels and cars booked through Capital One Travel
• 5X miles on flights booked through Capital One Travel
• Unlimited 2X miles  on all other purchases
• No foreign transaction fee

The Chase Ink Business Preferred is the best overall deal for business cards. Learn more!

Current Offer: Earn 100,000 bonus points after spending $8,000 in the first 3 months from account opening.

• 3X per $1 on the first $150,000 spent on total purchases for these categories each year (then 1X per $1 after): shipping purchases, advertising purchases, internet, cable, and phone services,  and travel
• 1X per $1 on all other purchases

Both cards allow you to easily redeem points via Chase Ultimate Rewards for flights and hotels, among many other things

If you are going to roll with one or two cards, check these out and see if they will work for you & your needs. Avoid the annual fee by canceling before the end of the first year, if you wish.

Note: The Chase Ink Preferred is a business card . If you don’t have a formal business you can apply as a sole proprietor which is essentially just claiming that you are a business. It may require calling the credit card company and explaining to them what you do. Having a small side hustle could qualify you for a small business card like owning a blog or selling on Etsy for example. Learn more!

Check out How to Start a Sole Proprietorship (note you don’t need to fill out any legal papers) Consult with a tax professional for more details. If you apply as a sole proprietor your Tax ID number is your social security number.

Option #2: The Hotel Rewards Card with Miles Transfer Opportunities – Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card (Annual Fee: $95/year)

Runner up according to popular opinion, blogs and the like is the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card f or the opportunity to book some higher-level lodging and the ability to easily convert and transfer points to a designated frequent flier account and earn even more miles in the process. Learn more!

Additional Benefits

• Enjoy a Free Night Award every year after your account anniversary (valued up to 35,000 points)
• Earn 1 Elite Night Credit towards Elite status for every $5,000 you spend
• Receive 15 Elite Night Credits each calendar year
• Progress to Gold Status when you spend $35,000 each calendar year

Option #3: Choose a Card Based On Your Local Airport

If you live near Philadelphia, that airport it is the hub for US Airways then it may make sense to keep your eye on US Airways cards deals if you love flying that airline.

List of Hub Airports

The reason why I prefer Option #1 and #2 is because it’s easy to transfer points to many different airlines so why limit to one card that is dedicated to only one airline?

Keep It Simple

But we are keeping it simple. Want to test the waters with credit card travel hacking? Move forward and:

Learn more about the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card

Able to handle another minimum payment and want double points? Jump in and:

Learn more about the Chase Ink Business Preferred Card

When applying, I spread out my applications to avoid the burden of spending massive amounts in a short time.

If you like Option #2 or want to add more cards into your rewards portfolio go ahead and:

Learn more about the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card.

After Signing Up

Track all cards and rewards programs.

Sign up for Award Wallet

Meeting the Minimum Spend

This can be tricky, but as I mentioned earlier think of this as a charge. There are ways to charge this money without actually spending your own.

How is that possible?

Check out this article on meeting the minimum spend for your travel rewards credit card and it will make sense.

10 Creative Ways To Meet the Minimum Spend Requirements

Another very basic way to avoid stress with minimum spends is to just time your rewards card applications with a big purchase you need to make.

For example, planning on buying a new computer? Snag a rewards card before that purchase so it goes towards the minimum spend.

There are plenty of other creative ways to meet the minimum spend so don’t let this seemingly large obstacle intimidate you.

Earning a Flight In Under 15 Minutes

Circling back to my promise at the beginning, here is how I earned a flight in under 15 minutes.

First I applied for a Chase Ink Business Preferred Card , which took about 10 minutes.

Secondly, did you know that you could pay your taxes with a credit card?

Since I paid virtually no taxes during the year I owed a lot of cash money to the feds.

Thankfully, the money was set aside. Once the Chase Ink Business Preferred card arrived, my federal taxes were charged on it and the balance was paid off immediately.

Even without owing taxes the same principle can apply by again, timing rewards card applications with a big purchase.

Where To Pay Taxes With a Credit Card

Travel hacking with credit cards isn’t complicated, and certainly nothing to be intimidated by. Start with one card, and get going. For more advanced strategies:

The Final Word

It’s worth noting that when rewards points are used for miles for ‘free’ flights you may still be responsible for paying taxes and fees. However, this cost is minimal.

Sure, all of the tracking, spending and applying for cards or mileage points can be a bit tedious when the time comes to book a flight and rewards points

But when the time comes to book a flight and rewards points land you halfway across the world for virtually nothing, the minor effort is more than worth it.

Sit back, smile and enjoy your free flight. Safe travels my friend.

What do you think about travel hacking? Do you have any tips or strategies? Leave comments below.

Want to save thousands of dollars on travel? Tune into the Zero To Travel Podcast, with over 12+ million downloads worldwide you’ll discover plenty of new and affordable ways to explore the world.

Subscribe to the Zero To Travel Podcast Now

*Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed,  approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.  Zero To Travel has partnered with Dialy Drop for our coverage of credit card products. Zero To Travel and Daily Drop may receive a commission from card issuers.

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• Work With Us

Helpful Apps and Websites for Travel

Written by Dan

Updated on April 26th, 2024

Here are some new ideas for the best and most useful websites, apps, tools and services that make your life easier during travel. Our top travel apps are subscriptions, free services and crowd-sourced data apps that provide cool travel hacks.

This article may contain affiliate links. We earn a small commissions when you purchase via those links — and it's free for you. It's only us (Becca & Dan) working on this website, so we value your support! Read our privacy policy and learn more about us .

Table of contents

• The best insurance: World Nomads Travel
• Priority Pass Airport Lounge Access
• The best travel VPN: ExpressVPN
• Venmo (or PayPal)
• Free ATM Debit Card like Fidelity or Schwab
• Currency Exchange by XE.com & XE App
• Clarity Money
• YouTube Premium
• Prime Video
• Google Flights
• Secret Flying
• Going (formally Scott’s Cheap Flights)
• Chase Ultimate Rewards
• City Mapper
• Google Maps

MyFitnessPal

• Google Translate
• How to book hostels on the go: Hostelworld

Booking.com

• Google Photos
• Adobe Lightroom
• Amazon Photos

Worldtimebuddy

• Traveling Mailbox
• OOTD: the Office of the Day App
• Authentic Jobs
• Hacker News: Who’s Hiring?
• BBC en Español

Traveling is hard. Really hard (OK, sometimes). Before apps existed, we used to do it ourselves with paper, pen, fold-out maps and notes scribbled on paper.

Luckily, times have changed, and now apps can do so much that there’s nearly always “an app for that” (where did that saying come from?).

Are you planning to travel as a digital nomad or do something specialized like gluten-free travel ? There are apps that can help you do things like pin down specialty food, coworking spaces , mapping, communication and more.

As we describe in our story of how we dated long distance through travel , apps played a huge part in our relationship… and still do!

Apps can also help you do things on the go. You can look up live exchange rates as a travel money hack , try to save money while traveling by using photos as your souvenirs and even learn a new language for travel with some helpful — and fun — new apps.

Let’s see the apps that have helped us most and the ones we are currently using.

Useful Travel Apps for Convenience and Travel Hacks

Google Fi is one of my top-recommended services that you can get if you’re interested in traveling. Whether or not you’re about to go on a short trip or a long trip, Google Fi can help you. Actually, if you want an awesome cell phone plan for home, Google Fi works for you as well.

If you are already sold on Google Fi. You can sign up using this link !

The most useful feature of Google Fi is the ability to use the same phone and the same phone number in most countries. Every time I land in a new country, I take out my phone and I have service right away, with Google Fi. There’s no need for me to find local SIM cards or struggle to find WiFi.

When I’m not traveling full-time, I have a cellphone plan as part of a family plan, at home in the US. I keep that phone around when I’m home because there is more data attached to that plan. During these times, when I am not traveling, I pause my Google Fi plan and it saves me a little bit of money.

I used my Google Fi phone plan to tether local data when I was working from a small cabin in Argentina and needed to check something for work. The data can get expensive because you pay for your usage. The good news is that if you use a lot of data, Google caps how much you’ll pay. You’ll never be surprised with a $300 phone bill.

Now that Google is rolling out other phones to use with Google Fi (before now, it was only Google phones that you could use!), there’s no reason to not try it out for your next trip. It even works in most off-the-beaten-path destinations that you might be considering.

The best insurance: World Nomads Travel

Travel insurance is important to have when you’re on the road, whether for a short trip or during long-term travel. Outside of the United States, you can pay out-of-pocket for some medical expenses and it can equal the amount of a standard doctor co-pay; however, if there’s ever an emergency, hospital visits or emergency evacuation can be expensive.

Luckily, World Nomads is a well-trusted and an amazing travel insurance provider.

Outside of health coverage, World Nomads helps cover other travel-related struggles, like lost baggage, theft and injury.

Priority Pass Airport Lounge Access

Becca and I wouldn’t know what to do in an airport without Priority Pass . We intentionally show up to airports early in order to get to the Priority Pass lounge, whenever we have a travel day. We’re lucky enough to have received Priority Pass through our credit card, Chase Sapphire Reserve.

Every airport lounge is different, depending on where in the world it might be located or depending on which airline or company runs it. Airport lounges give you a nice place to sit and relax before your flight.

Some airport or airline lounges offer nap rooms, showers, full meals, drinks, WiFi and so much more. We’ve been to a lounge in Hong Kong that has a noodle bar!

Some airport lounges aren’t as luxurious as others, and might offer simple snacks and drinks, like nuts and water. We’re not luxury travelers, but our Priority Pass membership is one of our main luxuries that we have come to love.

If you’re interested in trying Priority Pass , you can take a look at the stand-alone version of membership, or check out the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card, which includes a membership in the annual fee.

The best travel VPN: ExpressVPN

A VPN is a good tool to have if you’re visiting websites that aren’t encrypted (HTTP only) or if you’re in a country where there are firewalls that block many websites (like China). You can also use a VPN to get benefits, like spoofing your location and watching location-specific shows online.

I use my VPN for two major reasons:

• YouTube Premium is the only content that I watch. I don’t subscribe to Netflix, Hulu or any other service. Some countries don’t allow downloading YouTube videos, so you can download videos using a VPN!
• Some websites restrict functionality if you’re not located in your home country (for example, music sites, banking sites and some others). For those cases, I’ll connect to a VPN in order to proceed with my task.

Try ExpressVPN!

The Best Apps for Money Hacks While Traveling

Venmo (or paypal).

Venmo and PayPal are two useful ways for paying friends while you’re traveling. Consider the typical situation of when you go out to eat: the bill is huge and the server is unable to split the bill.

If you’re traveling in a country and you only have big currency or no cash at all, it’s typical for someone to either cover you so that you can pay him or her back later, or pay for the entire bill.

Venmo and PayPal are the standard ways to pay a monetary amount from your bank account to other people’s bank accounts. It’s important to mention that Venmo is only supported in the USA. If you try and get Venmo in another country, you’ll probably run into issues. I suggest getting Venmo before you leave, if you don’t already have an account.

Free ATM Debit Card like Fidelity or Schwab

Ready for my travel money hack ?

I use two bank accounts as my primary checking accounts when I travel. I have a checking account with Fidelity and Charles Schwab . These bank accounts don’t charge an ATM fee when you withdraw money. This is useful for taking out smaller amounts of money whenever I want to. I avoid trying to optimize each visit to an ATM and it eliminates this type of stress.

I automatically deposit a small amount of money into these two checking accounts every month. I do this so that I never have to worry about empty checking accounts!

I should mention that both of these accounts reimburse ATM fees 30 days after a fee is charged. So, while my ATM receipt shows that I got charged a foreign bank fee, this fee gets reimbursed by the bank within about a month. No pain here!

Currency Exchange by XE.com & XE App

I’ve used Currency by XE.com in the past, but Becca actually uses this currency service a lot (it’s free to use!).

You can track how your home currency is doing compared to the currency in the country where you are traveling. I usually use Google, so I’d input, for example, “200 COP to USD.” From here, I get the conversion for what 200 COP equals in USD. This is a great money and budgeting hack while on the go.

Another trick is to remember the simple math to convert a currency. For example, the Peruvian Sol is always approximately three per 1 USD. So, I try to remember which values equate to which values in my home currency.

Another example is the Colombian Peso. To convert Colombian Pesos to United States Dollars, you divide by 3000. This won’t give you exact results, but it will give you a good ballpark and you’ll start to understand the value of what things cost, instead of always using your phone’s calculator or free XE.com app.

Clarity Money

Becca uses the Clarity Money app to track expenses and manage a budget. Clarity is an app with a nice interface that can help you clearly see what you’ve spent and which categories it falls into.

The best feature it has is that it has an easy search function to, for example, see what you’ve spent at [X store] over [X period of time]. That’s a cool way to see if you’ve spent excessively on shopping or non-necessities and that you need to slow down.

It can also help you budget and be sure you’re setting aside money in different types of buckets for certain goals (like travel, of course).

Mint is another money-tracking app that puts all your accounts together (if you give permission to link them) and you can see things like how much you’re saving over time and your net spend or gain over a month, for example.

When you open Mint, you can see your recent transactions (if you link your credit cards) and you can double-check the categorizations that have come up. In this way, you can see how much you’ve spent on “Restaurants” in the month of June, to give an example.

The best thing about Mint is that it sometimes notifies me if I’ve gotten charged a fee by a bank, before the bank even does. This has helped shift finances when I get back to a laptop, or notify and inform my bank I’d like to arrange a time to discuss.

Using Honey can help you save money when you buy anything online. It’s a browser extension that runs in the background and automatically applies coupon codes and notifies you when there is a deal or a sale. Super cool!

Entertainment Apps for Travelers (TV, videos, music, etc.)

Youtube premium.

I mentioned above that I watch a lot of YouTube videos . YouTube Premium enables ad-less playback of videos and supports downloading videos to your phone. Before a long flight, I’ll usually download some interesting videos to watch (sometimes I do this from the Priority Pass lounge).

I use YouTube instead of Netflix and I’ve never had any issues nor do I ever feel like I’m missing out on anything.

Netflix is great to have when you take long flights or have a rainy day where ever you are. You can download videos onto your phone when you don’t have access to the internet or cell service.

We’ve totally been on long bus rides in Colombia with nothing to do for 8 hours. If you’re traveling internationally, you can use a VPN to spoof your location to another region.

If you’re into new movies, a subscription to STARZ can help you be the first one of your friends to see what’s out.

If you get tired of the shows on Netflix, you can try Hulu ! Hulu will have different programming than some of the other streaming services. If you watch a lot of TV/shows/movies, check out Hulu.

Prime Video

Prime Video is great if you already pay for Amazon Prime. It’s great because it’s free. You don’t have to pay for Prime Video if you already pay for Amazon Prime . Check it out to see if you like the show and movie selection.

Keep an eye out for Prime Day to get the best Amazon Prime deals for travelers !

Spotify helps me get through repetitive tasks while I’m working. I’ll usually have Spotify open throughout my day of work. I’ll download a few songs to my phone and I will use that playlist when I go running or want to listen to music on a flight.

Do yourself a favor and get some bluetooth headphones like AirPods .

Best Apps for Travel Hacks During Flights and Transport

You can book a plane ticket or train ticket, or, you can do a lot of fun research beforehand to make sure you’re getting the best price, best connecting flight , best flight time and best airport.

Why not check out these apps and websites for flights and travel hacks while you’re on the go, or planning a trip? A single app can change a whole travel experience.

Before a flight, I’ll check my seat selection with SeatGuru . It will tell you things like, “the seat doesn’t recline.” Fun fact — I almost never recline my seat. I’m a good person to sit behind! These tips don’t work for every single airline and flight path, but they can save you from an uncomfortable experience.

Google Flights

When I do my flight research, I like to search via Google Flights . The search is fast and the site is really simple and easy to use. There’s not much of an upsell to rent a car or stay in a hotel, like with some other booking sites. Google Flights is a good way to get a benchmark of flights before you choose where or when to go.

Remember that if you’re aiming to use up an airline voucher , this has to be done through the airline website itself. Don’t worry though, because Google will always take you there when you click into a flight.

Secret Flying

Secret Flying is completely free and claims it will find you the cheapest deals online. This includes mistake fares or errors fares, and how to find these types of flight deals that come from mistakes made that are not yet corrected.

To browse error fares, head to the “Error Fares” section of the website, but the key is to get these fares while they’re hot and before they expire (or get corrected by the flight company or airline).

Going (formally Scott’s Cheap Flights)

Going is a membership-based website where by subscribing, the company claims you can save around $550 on average.

To get 20% off your first year of a Premium subscription to Going, use our exclusive code: HALFHALF20 , when purchasing.

You’ll get email alerts about cheap flights that depart from your favorite airports, and the flight deals you receive are vetted by Scott’s vetted flight experts. Two million people around the world use Going and many say that they’re able to take trips three times a year, for the price of one. This is cool to consider if you plan to fly frequently.

So, are you ready to have a new way to save money on flights and airfare? Sign up for Going here.

Rome2Rio was originally a very useful and popular website among the backpacker crowd, and now it’s an app. Rome2Rio shows you every mode of transport to get you from one city to another, or one place to another. In the app, you can see the prices and you can book transport if it’s in a service that exists online.

Up there with the legacy fame in the way that Rome2Rio has been an indispensable website for travelers over the years, Seat61 seems to be the original train travel hack website.

With a new focus on train travel as the eco-friendly and sustainable alternative to airplane travel, Seat61 helps you travel affordably by train (or ferry) in places where ‘you thought flying was the only option.’ Cool!

Kiwi.com is an excellent service if you want to get a general idea of how much it costs to fly to a certain region. I’ve used Kiwi to help determine how much it costs to go to Europe from New York City, for example. Most flight-booking engines give you price from city to city. Kiwi enables you to find the cheapest flight to “somewhere” South America from Chicago, for example.

Priceline can help you find the best deals for hotels, flights car rentals and vacation packages. It’s best to shop around when you’re pricing out your travel logistics. Priceline is a great tool to allow you to see prices from various vendors.

Chase Ultimate Rewards

I mentioned above that I use my Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card to get Priority Pass .

The same credit card gives miles per every dollar spent. Those miles start to add up when you buy things that qualify as purchases in travel, food and other expense categories. You can redeem those miles for travel services like flights, cars and hotels.

You can also transfer those points to travel or airline partners, like United and JetBlue. Using Chase Ultimate Rewards has been helpful in saving money when taking long flights. I’ve used my points to book flights all the way from Europe to New York, and from New York to Vietnam .

Travel cards like the Chase Sapphire (and Freedom) credit cards are the best way to start travel hacking . You can really get hooked. Once you start accruing miles and points, you’ll never travel without thinking, “How many points will this flight cost me?” again.

Best and Most Useful Map, Transport and Location Apps

I like Maps.ME as an alternative mapping app. The app’s main focus is offline mobile maps, so this combo is perfect for getting to your destination without using any data.

I’ve found that the maps and directions are better in Maps.ME than in any other map app - the directions are easier to follow, in my opinion. Despite this helpful feature, I still find myself using Google Maps because it’s what I’m used to.

Maps.ME helped out during my hike in Iceland . One of my friends had the app installed and used it to find a hot spring in the middle of nowhere. Well, the hot spring was well-known, but it was an adventure for us to get there!

Maps.ME does a better job helping you get through trails and other places that don’t have roads.

Don’t fall into the same trap that I did! Give Maps.ME a try.

City Mapper

I’ve used City Mapper in the past when I was visiting London. The Tube stations and reliability was better than any other map app at the time. All of my friends in London used it and recommended that I use it, too.

Google Maps doesn’t always have to be the go-to mapping app. Sometimes a city has a general preference for another app based on what features it can offer.

Moovit is a popular app in Israel .

When I was in Israel, Google Maps had trouble with GPS and determining where addresses were in relation to where I was. Moovit fixed that problem! It made walking around and getting directions much easier.

Moovit “knows” everything about the buses in Israel, specifically. If you want to go anywhere in Israel by public transit, download Moovit in order to get there in the best way!

During my travels in South America, Uber has been one of the only taxi apps that I can use. Uber is much safer than regular taxis, specifically in Latin America.

Taking Uber is also easier if you’re not as comfortable speaking a language other than your own. Uber allows you to set your pickup and drop-off location, and everything else is taken care of.

I’ve heard from locals in Mexico and Colombia that using Uber has helped them go out at night and get to otherwise geographically-challenging locations. This means that the app has changed people’s lives, for the better!

When Lyft is available, I prefer to use Lyft. What can I say — I have a soft spot for pink mustaches.

Lyft, Uber and other ride-sharing apps generally do the same thing. They allow you to set your location and easily get to your destination. When I was in San Francisco, Lyft was often used in place of public transportation. A Lyft ride can be about the same cost as a one of their public transportation methods.

Also, in San Francisco, there are special Lyft programs for people that take Lyft to work. There’s a specific route that you can jump into with other passengers. This helps keep the cost down, and you can rely on the route in order to get to work efficiently. Seems more eco-friendly, right?

Taxify tends to exist in cities that do not typically have Lyft or Uber available. This isn’t always true, but I’ve found this to be the case most of the time.

I mainly have used Taxify in European cities. The same strategy for having a safe and easy ride is true here. The difference with Taxify is that regular cabs can use the app. This is because Taxify isn’t necessarily a “ride-sharing app” like Lyft and Uber are.

Grab is the equivalent of Uber in places like Vietnam . The difference is that you can pay by credit (set up the credit option from your home country before you leave, to be safe) or cash, upon the completion of the ride.

Google Maps

Google Maps is the most common app for getting around. It handles walking, biking, driving and public transportation options. I like to use Google Maps to create stars and labels for some of the places that I frequently visit. This makes it easier to get back to those locations easily.

One of my favorite features is the ease of download of offline maps. Downloading offline maps is helpful in saving data if you’re using Google Maps outside of WiFi. Also, if you don’t have any data, you can still use maps when you’ve downloaded the data.

I’ve been using Swarm since before it was Swarm. Swarm used to be a part of Foursquare by way of “Foursquare Check-ins.” They broke it off into a new app that creates a gamification layer to visiting new places. These places can be cafes, bars, hotels, cities, airports and more. You get stickers and points for the places that you check in to.

Your friends can also see where you visited and where you currently are, if they use the Swarm app as well.

My favorite feature is to be able to look at where I’ve been in the past. If you ask me, what’s that cool restaurant that you visited in Belgrade? I’ll be able to search through my Swarm history and tell you the name and location of the restaurant. I checked, and the restaurant that I was thinking about is called Smokvica .

Best Apps for Health for Digital Nomads and Travelers

We like to focus on health when we travel. During long-term travel, you may go through spurts of a high interest in health and activity, counteracted by periods of when you don’t care so much. Not everyone’s interested in health, but some people define their lives and progress by it.

Google Health now has metrics like active minutes per day, miles or km walked in a day, heart health and more.

The app tracks ‘Heart Points’ and ‘Move Minutes’ to help show how much activity you’ve had in a day, and then shows a bar graph of your steps over a week. This can be cool to see if for example you walked 7 miles a day like we did, in Barcelona, Spain .

This app is also on Google Play Store .

If you’re interested in what you consume in a day, MyFitnessPal helps you track calories and consumption activity through an app that helps total these metrics. It can be really interesting and can give some clarity to your habits.

If you’ve been indulging in lots of pizza and pasta in Italy, excessive empanadas in Colombia or too many bowls of pho in Vietnam, you might start with a resolution to get more fit and drop some pounds while traveling for a while.

WeightDrop helps track your weight, if you have a scale nearby. You can see over time how your weight changes, if you like to measure your progress in that way. This is not for everyone, but can be an interesting thing to track over a year.

Best Apps for International Communication While Traveling

Communicating across oceans used to cost a ton of money or take a while. Now, you’ve got either instant communication, or asynchronous communication , and there are tons of ways to do both.

If you’re going to be abroad and out of your home country, why not try a few different ways to communicate with friends and family back home, and with travelers you meet along the way?

Google Translate

English is becoming spoken and understood in many different cities and countries all over the world. I’m really grateful that English is my first language.

Whenever I am in a new place where people do not understand English, I try to learn my hellos, goodbyes and thank yous in the local language. I’ll usually have Google Translate open on my phone to help translate words from another language that I am not familiar with.

My favorite feature about Google Translate is its ability to translate text from an image. A perfect application of this is in translating a menu. You can take a picture of the text on a menu and then you can understand it!

WhatsApp has been forever useful in communicating with everyone. I use it every day to talk with friends and family, but I have also used it to communicate with locals that I meet.

It’s a universal text message application that almost everyone around the world uses. WhatsApp is incredible!

It’s amazing that once you leave the USA, many people use this instead of iMessage or regular text messaging.

Slack is how I keep in touch with more professional contacts. I am a member of several Slack communities that all offer different things.

Slack by itself is nothing. You need an invite from a specific group, organization or company to make something out of Slack. You’re able to join as many communities as you want, after you get that invite.

The workspaces and Slack communities that I belong to help me find work, stay in touch with other travelers, talk about photography and so much more.

Most meetings that you take for interviews and work calls with be on Zoom . A fun tip for Zoom, is to explore within the video settings and remove your background. Instead of superimposing a background of a beach, you may actually be at a beach.

Krisp can block out background noises for you and the person on the other end of the call. This is great if you are in a noisy cafe or airport.

Best Apps for Booking Accommodations While Traveling

If you want more information about how we book accommodations, feel free to check out our article that we wrote about finding accommodations .

Airbnb has been helpful when booking places to stay for a trip. Airbnb has one of the better filtering systems out there. You can choose a place to stay based on a number of different options. Do you want a kitchen? Do you want a single home? Do you a queen-sized bed? Cool. Airbnb can be how you find an optimal place to stay, whether that place is an apartment, a house, a room in a hostel or room in a guesthouse.

VRBO is a great tool when you’re looking for something more like a vacation. You’ll find some of the best vacation rentals when you’re looking to get away. You can also use this to connect with home-owners if you’re interested in doing any long terms stays somewhere.

How to book hostels on the go: Hostelworld

I use Hostelworld to get an idea of where the cool neighborhoods are in a city. This is sort of a flawed system because sometimes the hostels are in the party part of town. This is usually true in Europe, but it’s helpful in Central and South America, because hostels are usually also located in the safest parts of a city.

We also use Hostelworld to find out which cities in a country are best to stay in. Hostelworld helped a whole bunch when we went to Colombia, Argentina and Portugal.

I’ll use Booking.com if Hostelworld and Airbnb do not return quality results. When I was in Patagonia, I noticed that Booking.com had way better options than AirBnb did. Hostelworld and hostels were not as popular for the smaller towns. Booking.com helped us a lot in the coasts of Portugal during our road trip, and in Sri Lanka, where hostels are not yet a huge thing.

Trying to decide between all the types of accommodations? Check our guide for Hostels vs. Airbnb vs. Hotels .

Productivity and Data Management For Travelers On the Go

If you’re a digital nomad or remote worker on the go and you’re looking for travel apps to make your work life easier, check out these suggestions.

Dropbox is great for a professional setting. You can use it to collaborate with others by sharing files and keeping shared assets organized. I use Dropbox for sharing files with clients and keeping my own files organized and backed up. By the way, if you use this link to sign up for Dropbox, you’ll get 500MB of storage for free!

For traveling, I like to use Dropbox to keep a copy of important documents, like a copy of my passport and other banking records. It makes finding these items really easy if you’re like me and can’t remember your passport number. You can quickly open Dropbox and browse toward the location in which you’ve saved those documents.

I’ve been using 1Password for almost five years. I have over 400 logins saved. It’s incredible that I’ve even logged into 400 different websites. Nevertheless, each one of those websites uses a different password.

Because every website has a different password, if that website’s data were ever compromised, my password that the hacker would get is basically useless for logging into any other account that I have.

1Password is essentially a flexible database. You can store whatever you want inside of 1Password. At a high level, it’s a secure vault that can keep varied types of information. You can store credit card information, phone numbers, lists and more.

Storing your credit cards and other information is a good idea if your wallet ever gets lost or stolen. Having a record of your credit card numbers is incredibly useful if you need to call a bank and report the card as lost or stolen.

Over the years, I’ve bounced around using a few different to-do apps. I used Teuxdeux for a few years before switching to Todoist . The reason that I switched was because I wanted to have more control over my to-do items. I use to-do lists to plan my day and Todoist provides a lot of functionality.

When you’re traveling, you can plan on-the-fly itineraries of your trip using Todoist. Let’s say that you want to visit 10 interesting sites in total. You can spread them out throughout your stay and use a simple to-do app to track your progress or plan.

In my case, Trello is sort of like Todoist, except that it’s for more long-term, non-time-sensitive information. I put big ideas into Trello along with long-term goals.

You can use Trello to plan a list of things that require feedback from other people, and you can plan lists of items that include images and other attachments. Imagine that you’re planning to take a three-month trip. What are all of the steps that you need to take in order to leave? It’s different for everyone, but planning the steps in an app like Trello can help make that process easier.

Backblaze is my favorite product to talk about. Most days, I forget that I have it running in the background. It keeps all of my data safe and gives me peace of mind that I’ll never lose a file or a photo.

If you take a lot of travel photos or do a lot of writing when you travel, making sure that your data is backed up, especially if you’re saving everything to an external hard drive, is an important part of traveling. It’s easy to lose a hard drive or damage a hard drive. Backblaze has a simple interface that backs up all of your data in the background.

Best Apps for Photography for Travelers on the Go

Google photos.

Google Photos is an incredible tool for organizing, viewing and storing your photos. If you have an Android phone, like a Google Pixel or something else, photos automatically backup to Google Photos. iPhones require you to download the app before using the service.

My favorite uses for Google Photos are the search and the assistant. Being able to search for locations is so useful. I can search for something like, “Jamaica,” and easily find photos from my trip to Jamaica back in 2012. Even though I didn’t geo-tag those photos or even have cell data, Google can predict that I was there based on other factors and show me those photos.

Google Photos has an assistant that shows you cool information. It can make GIFs from your photo bursts and can make a collage of photos based on similar other ones. If you have a large volume of photos like I do, this type of information is fun to look back at!

As a tip, Google Photos is crucial to have for working out storage on your phone. Even if your iCloud is enabled, you might find that your photos have “filled up” your phone storage. If that happened to you recently, fix your iPhone’s photo storage with these tips.

Adobe Lightroom

Lightroom is my preferred tool for editing photos. Without a computer, I can take photos from my camera, edit them on Lightroom Mobile and then share them on social media. I don’t typically do this, but sometimes I do.

Lightroom is a good way to catalog all of the photos that you take when you travel. Lightroom CC has a similar search process to Google Photos. You can search for generic terms like “dog” and get a bunch of dog photos.

Amazon Photos

Amazon photos won’t let edit your photos, but you can use the service to help backup and view your photos. It comes free with Prime. Amazon Prime will also be useful if you want to watch Prime Video.

Virtual Remote Work and Digital Nomad Apps

The apps below make work possible when you’re away from home, or when your home is ‘away’ from home all the time.

Working remotely is a big part of how I am able to travel for long periods at a time. At any time when I need to sign a contract, DocHub can help. You can have your signature ready to go and you can easily drop it on a line that requires your signature. You can than export that document as a PDF and send it off to where it needs to go. So cool!

A big part of travel is understanding how to deal with time zones. It’s currently 10:45 pm here in Mexico, but in New York City, it’s 11:45 pm. In Dubai, it’s 8:45 am. Good morning, everyone!

When you have to set up a meeting with someone in another time zone or figure out what time it is back home, Worldtimebuddy can help. You can add a few different cities and easily see an overlap of what time it is everywhere.

Traveling Mailbox

When I was traveling full-time, I used Traveling Mailbox on a weekly basis - this service allowed me to receive physical mail while I was traveling. In the past, I sent mail to my parents’ house or let it pile up in the location where I was staying.

The Traveling Mailbox service was especially useful because I run my own business. I often get sent mail that is associated with my business, and I’m able to see a physical scan of my mail items online.

This has been helpful in permitting me to not rely on others to collect my physical mail.

OOTD: the Office of the Day App

This app knows where you are (if you give it your location), and it’ll find you a place to work, as recommended by other digital nomads .

Depending on where you are, you can search (for example) for a place to work in Los Angeles, or Bangkok, Thailand. Each entry comes with ratings for features like WiFi, outlets, ability to make/take phone calls, credit card usage and outdoor space.

Recommend it to a friend, as it gets better as more people use it!

Remote Work Job Boards for Digital Nomads

For a more comprehensive list of work from home websites , check out our full list on remote jobs!

RemoteOK is one of the more popular job sites for finding remote work. It has a simple interface for browsing and searching for different remote jobs. All of the jobs are remote, so there isn’t any remote or location filter like you’d see on other job sites.

Most of the jobs on this site are developer-focused, but you will find jobs for marketing, customer service and a few other types of industries.

Every year or two, I give Upwork a shot. I am curious as to which types of jobs you can apply for and which skills are in demand. It takes a lot of time for someone to become popular on the Upwork platform. You’ll get rewarded for the work that you do and how often you get hired.

I personally haven’t had too much success with Upwork. Most of the proposals that I submit as a developer often go unnoticed because there is a lot of competition. If you’re looking for work, give Upwork a try and let me know how it goes!

I’m on Fiverr . There, I said it. It took me a long time to create a gig and give the platform a shot because Fiverr has a reputation that I didn’t want to be associated with. However, times have changed and I’ve found the platform to be interesting.

There is a lot of competition for certain types of jobs or gigs, but it’s fun to play with the market and AB-test various different gigs to get a sense for what is popular.

The more and more that I played with Fiverr, the more I realized that you get rewarded for using the site more. The more your gigs get ordered, the more you appear in the search results. Depending on many 5-star ratings you have, the more you will rank higher for high-competition gigs. It makes sense: Fiverr wants to reward quality people because the company takes a cut of your income, per job.

Authentic Jobs

Authentic Jobs has been a place where I’ve searched for jobs for so many years. I can’t remember the first time that I heard about Authentic Jobs, but it’s been there with me for a few different career hires.

Authentic Jobs has a filter for remote positions. My favorite filter is actually displaying types of roles, like part-time, full-time and contract roles. There aren’t too many positions listed, but the ones that are listed are usually high-quality. The jobs that are posted are mostly design and development jobs.

For my entire career, I never took LinkedIn seriously. Until recently, my tag line was, “Hire me for pizza advice.” I mean, you can totally still hire me for pizza advice. When you visit my LinkedIn profile now, it paints a more professional picture. There’s a time to be playful, but I started to realize that LinkedIn wasn’t the place for that.

You can share your professional knowledge about travel through LinkedIn. After traveling with Remote Year, I realized that sharing specific travel-related advice on LinkedIn is an effective way to find a new travel community and a way to attract readers to your content.

Hacker News: Who’s Hiring?

I’ll admit that my consumption of Hacker News articles has dropped off significantly. I’ll still vouch for the quality that their monthly job posting has. The best part about this job board is that it’s crowd-validated. The posts get up-voted, so the most popular and interesting job posts bubble to the top.

If there’s a really obvious question about the posting, someone probably answered it in the thread below the post. There’s no filter for remote jobs because it’s a text-only service. However, good ole’ CMD + F “remote” always returns a few interesting positions to check out.

Helping You Work Remotely

Even if you think you have remote work down to a science, it’s never too late to add a new work hack to your work and travel life. While we list lots of tips for working remotely on our website, check out the tools that make it work for us below.

When I was living in New York City, I started working remotely from my neighborhood on days with bad weather. After doing this during a few snow storms, I quickly realized how effective I could be by not going into an office. I started working from home more frequently because of the productivity benefits that I saw.

I quickly got bored working from my living room. I started to look for more cafes to work from near my apartment in Park Slope. After stumbling on a few cafes with bad WiFi and limited power outlets, I found Workfrom .

Workfrom has crowd-sourced a global network of cafes that share helpful stats like how many power outlets exist, how fast the WiFi is and if the cafe has good food or coffee. I added a few of my favorite neighborhood stats to the Park Slope map!

I like how simple Nomad List is. It gives you a generalization for how it is to travel to and live in a city that might be really far away. If you’re going to Hanoi , you can see criteria about how safe it is there, how the internet is there and other helpful stats like air quality.

While it’s an average of a lot of different data points, you can get a good idea about what it’s like to be there.

If you subscribe to Nomad List, you can enter in all of the places that you’ve been to and also connect with other travelers with the Nomad List Slack community.

News Apps: How to stay in touch with what’s going on

Usually when we’re traveling, Becca refreshes the NYTimes app every morning. It pre-loads, at least in summary form, so if we’re on a train or bus without WiFi for the rest of the day, she can still skim through headlines in each section and get briefed on what’s going on.

There’s nothing worse than being out of the loop. With phones, apps and WiFi, you can now stay connected anywhere (even when you don’t feel like it - ugh!).

Also free, but with no limits on articles per month like the NYTimes app, the CNN app has tons of articles. It doesn’t pre-load as well, so expect to use it only when connected to WiFi.

BBC en Español

Maybe you read the BBC in English, but Becca reads it in Spanish. If you don’t read Spanish, and you’re not looking for a way to practice Spanish, what we do suggest is getting a news app in the language you ARE trying to learn. This helps with word recognition and key words, even if you skim for only a few minutes per day.

Apple News is one of the default apps that comes with the iPhone. It creates an aggregation of top stories drawn from many news sources, so you get variation. You can also choose which ‘beats’ you’d like to see, from travel to science to fashion.

Apps for selling stuff and downsizing before travel

When we decided to travel for 10 months on a remote work digital nomad trip , we sold all our furniture. And got rid of a lot of clothes (that we could have made money on if we had just taken the time to sell it all).

We also got rid of things like coffeemakers, bikes, electronics… you name it. We had to downsize, and because we had just decided to go on Remote Year , we had to do it fast.

It’s too bad that we didn’t discover Poshmark until we saw ads for it on the subway after we got back from our trip. The way we started selling on Poshmark was because we went through our belongings after getting back from our trip, and realized we (awkwardly) hadn’t missed some of it. So we started posting listings for our name-brand items on Poshmark.

Poshmark is an app that lets you create listings with photos and details for clothes, shoes, bags, accessories and jewelry. It’s mostly for people who want to buy (and sell) name-brand things at a discount if it’s gently used. We had the most luck with Poshmark after returning from travel, but that’s because we didn’t know about it beforehand.

We recommend Poshmark if you have a lot of name-brand or luxury items you can part with, and you’re downsizing your wardrobe before setting off on the road for a while.

Mercari is like Poshmark but it’s for “anything.” You can sell electronics, bags, luggage, household items and more, in a type of marketplace where buyers can barter. You can also set your settings to ‘eat up’ the mailing fee, or charge it to the buyer. There’s lots of options. We haven’t had luck on it yet, but we’re trying to get rid of a few things we’re done using.

While not an app (yet?), Craigslist was a way we sold our furniture before we ended our lease in order to travel-long term. We also used the ‘Free’ section to get rid of things we couldn’t sell and didn’t want to have when we returned (like the coffeemaker mentioned above!).

Craigslist works by setting up listings, adding photos and locations, and then waiting for buyers to contact you via email. Because we sold furniture over Craigslist, and the world is a big place, we recommend meeting buyers in public places if you can, if the item is small. If you’re selling furniture or something large, have someone else in your home with you when the buyer comes for pickup.

Best apps for learning a language for travel

Did you ever want to learn a new language for your trip ? We often do, and we often have picked up some basics in a very new language while traveling. We know how to say ‘carrot’ in Vietnamese, ‘thank you’ in Lithuanian and ‘tap water’ in Portuguese. These can be super important!

Drops came as a surprise, and we found it while looking up ways to learn some Vietnamese on the plane ride over to Hanoi . Drops is like a swipe-right swipe-left app, but with simple words in another language.

This makes learning a new language really fun!

Looking to learn a new language for your upcoming trip? Try Duo Lingo , which is a fun way to brush up on basics for a language or learn a new one.

As you’ll find in our article about tips for learning languages , there are lots of ways to learn languages, but doing it on the go is easy. With an app like Duo Lingo, you can get some vocab in during a flight, bus ride or taxi ride.

Pleco is the #1 easy dictionary for English-Chinese and Chines-English. It’s great for when you’re in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. It’s like a dictionary made fun again.

Mondly is a free app that comes in lots of languages. We downloaded it for some languages to learn before we went on trips!

We hope these apps helped improve your travel experience. Now that you’re ready to go, check out our checklist for what to do before going on a trip .

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The Best Apps and Websites for Travel Hacking (and Travel Savings)

by [email protected]

You have a lot you want to accomplish and do in your life. And your goals probably look different than the goals of the person sitting next to you — with one exception.

Almost everyone I talk to shares the desire to travel more. It seems like traveling is the one thing we all want to do, whether it’s taking an exotic vacation, backpacking through a foreign country, or just experiencing and seeing new things.

The thing is, no matter what kind of traveling you want to do, it’s going to cost money. But your travel plans don’t have to break your budget if you know how to leverage the tools and resources available to you.

There are some amazing apps and websites out there that can not only make planning your trip and enjoying the sights better and easier, but also save you some money in the process.

Before you head out on your next adventure, try out my favorites for travel hacking (and money saving along the way!).

Your budget is what it is. Instead of fighting it (or just blowing it), work with it. Wander will help you do just that, by suggesting destinations based on what you can realistically spend.

Even if you feel like you have some flexibility on your spending, Wander can still be a useful tool for brainstorming future trips. Let the app suggest new places to go that you might not have considered on your own!

2. HotelTonight

Some of the best trips are the spontaneous, last-minute ones — but if you like to jump on last-minute plans, you know that approach can sometimes backfire. Prices can be sky-high if you want to book a room close to your travel date (and that assumes there are rooms available at all).

But if you use HotelTonight , you can still play your travels by ear and find the hotels offering last-minute rooms for really low prices. Hotels share their available rooms on the app, and then you can book one to stay within the week for a reduced rate.

3. HostelWorld

Making on-the-fly decisions doesn’t work for everyone. You might not have that kind of flexibility in your schedule — or leaving important travel details, like where you’re staying, up in the air until the day-of might just drive you crazy!

You can still save money on accommodations if you’re willing to check out hostels instead of hotels. But finding a good one can be stressful. You want to save money, but you might not want to stay in what feels like a throwback to your college dorm days.

HostelWorld makes the search easier, helping you connect with hostels that offer the amenities you want or can cater to your needs. The app allows you to search for specific features, like private rooms or bathrooms.

And of course, there are always sites like Airbnb and Kayak that can help you find other good deals on places to stay while traveling.

4. Trusted Housesitters

Why bother looking for “cheaper” when you could just stay somewhere on your travels for free?

It’s possible to do if you can connect with a homeowner that needs a house sitter for a period of time. Trusted Housesitters does just that, helping people who own homes but may be away for extended periods of time find people they can trust take care of the property while they’re gone.

To make this travel hack work for you, you do need to have some experience, references, and knowledge on how to set up a profile that appeals to homeowners. There are lots of resources and blogs that can help you learn more, like The Money Smart Nomad . And Trusted Housesitters runs their own blog that can help teach you how to get started .

Yes, Twitter is a social media app and not a dedicated travel or money-saving tool… but there are a lot of accounts on social media dedicated to finding and sharing travel hacking tips, deals, and savings tips.

Follow accounts like Airfare Watchdog to find good prices on flights across airlines, or someone like The Points Guy if you want to make the absolute most of those credit card points you accumulate through your everyday spending.

6. Scott’s Cheap Flights

Cheap flights are out there. But finding them can take some time and effort — and you’re busy. You don’t exactly have the ability to spend hours and hours to search every corner of the web for the best airfare.

That’s what Scott’s Cheap Flights is for. The site offers both free and paid memberships, and sends great flight deals to subscribers of all plans on a regular basis.

7. Your Credit Card’s Rewards Program

If you can manage your credit wisely, choosing a credit card that offers powerful travel rewards can be a great way to save money on your trips and travel costs. Instead of paying cash, you could redeem points for hotels, flights, and more.

This is probably not a good money-saving tip if you…

• Already have a lot of credit card debt
• Tend to overspend when you use credit or struggle to stick to your budget
• Buy stuff just to get points (rather than using your card to earn points on purchases you needed to make anyway, like groceries or your bills)
• Have a low credit score and are focused on improving it

You might want to discuss your options with your financial planner before you actively use a credit card as a way to travel hack or save money on your trips. But if you use your credit cards responsibly, good rewards programs could save you a lot of money.

Nerdwallet can help you compare different travel rewards cards, so you can get the one that works best with the kind of spending you do most often.

Want More Travel Hacking and Money Saving Tips?

Be sure to check out past posts I’ve done on this topic, like this one here . That will give you even more suggestions on apps and tools you can use to plan out your travels and save money along the way.

Or, if you want to really level up your travel and financial planning, we can work together to create a solid financial plan that makes space for what you care about most — like adventures, the ability to explore, and trips that allow you to see more of the world.

Click here to learn more about how it works !

See important disclosure information.

Mary Beth Storjohann, CFP®  is an author, speaker, and financial coach who takes a fun, no-nonsense approach in working with individuals and couples across the country, helping them make smart choices with their money.

Privacy Overview

Some U.S. travel websites knocked offline after Russian hacker group calls for attack

At least 13 U.S. air travel websites, including those for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport — two of the busiest airports in the country — were inaccessible Monday morning after a Russian hacktivist group named them as targets for cyberattacks.

There is no indication that any airport operations were affected, and the type of cyberattack the hackers claimed to use doesn’t do any lasting damage. But it was a sign of how an increasingly effective pro-Russia group, Killnet, can cause mischief for U.S. websites. Last week, Killnet targeted the websites of several U.S. states , successfully knocking Colorado.gov offline for more than a day and briefly interrupting Kentucky.gov.

Killnet specializes in Distributed Denial of Service attacks, or DDoS attacks, which overwhelm a website with internet traffic. While DDoS attacks are generally considered little more than a nuisance, they can knock websites offline for hours or even days.

Killnet frequently posts lists of targeted websites on its Telegram channel, encouraging fellow Russia supporters with entry-level hacker skills to join it in trying to disrupt them. On Monday morning, it posted a list of websites for 49 airports and other air travel sites, most of them in the U.S., as its latest targets.

A spokesperson for Los Angeles International Airport said in an email: "Early this morning, the FlyLAX.com website was partially disrupted," but that it didn't affect flights.

"The service interruption was limited to portions of the public facing FlyLAX.com website only. No internal airport systems were compromised and there were no operational disruptions," the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, the federal government’s main cybersecurity agency, said that "CISA is aware of reports of DDoS attacks targeting multiple U.S. airport websites."

"We are coordinating with potentially impacted entities and offering assistance as needed," the spokesperson said.

The U.S. Department of Transportation declined to comment. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport didn’t respond to requests for comment.

An NBC News survey of the 49 websites posted on the Killnet Telegram channel found that the websites for many airports did not load properly, including Atlanta International; Montgomery, Alabama; Los Angeles International; Long Beach, California; Delaware Coastal; Southwest Florida International; Central Illinois Regional; Indianapolis International; Des Moines International; Jackson Municipal in Mississippi; and St. Louis Lambert International.

Some of Killnet’s targets indicated a lack of understanding of U.S. airports. It listed the city of Chicago’s general air travel website, flychicago.com, which was inaccessible Monday, but not that of its major airports, like O’Hare International or Midway International. Similarly, it targeted Hawaii’s state website for air travel, which was also inaccessible, but not Honolulu International.

Kevin Collier is a reporter covering cybersecurity, privacy and technology policy for NBC News.

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6 Confessions of an Avid Travel Hacker

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It starts innocently enough. You open one travel rewards credit card to help subsidize an upcoming trip. While on that trip, the flight attendant announces that you can earn enough miles for two round-trips with a new card, and you jump at the chance to apply in-flight.

From there, you’re hooked. Once you learn how to harness the power of points and miles for travel , you want to do it more and more often. You join the ranks of rewards optimizers and fall down the proverbial rabbit hole. One card leads to another, and before you know it, you’ve amassed a large collection of loyalty accounts, credit cards and free hotel night certificates. You might even wind up with elite status in multiple programs.

From the diary of a self-proclaimed “travel hacker,” here are six realizations you may also have if you fall head-over-heels for points and miles.

1. It's hard to go back

After you've learned how to score lie-flat business class tickets to fly across the world for "free" using your points and miles, it's hard to go back to that cramped coach seat that barely reclines. Once you get accustomed to luxurious hotel suites , that standard room seems sad by comparison.

On those occasions when you can’t score a seat toward the front of the plane, or when you get stuck in a small hotel room with no view, travel disappointment kicks in. If your children are sometimes lucky recipients of the fruits of your travel hacking, their disappointment hits you doubly hard.

“Normal” just doesn’t cut it after you’ve experienced the finer things in life.

» Learn more: How to choose a travel credit card

2. Trips with non-travel hackers can be tough

When you're flush with points, it's easy to book that expensive hotel without a second thought. For your friends who're shelling out cash, it's a different story. You don’t want to be that friend, so you agree to the modest select-service hotel on your weekend away together. But inside, you suffer. (See point No. 1.)

If a group of friends suggests a ski trip, you shudder at the thought of booking a condo. Sure, you can all enjoy a shared space, but you can't use your hotel points to cover the cost and will — gasp — have to pay in cash. Then, your friends have the nerve to complain when you want to charge everyone's lift passes on your credit card to get the points, and ask them to pay you back in cash.

3. Home life FOMO is inevitable

When you're using your stash of points and miles to take off on weekend adventures, that means you're often not at home. Your neighbors stop inviting you to their BBQs because “you can never come anyway." The kids miss soccer practice, yard work piles up, and your suitcase remains perpetually half-packed on the floor. Your cat gives you “the look” every time she realizes you’re getting ready to leave again.

But all that is forgotten when you spot a wide-open three-day weekend on your calendar. The travel bug strikes and plans are quickly made. After all, who wants to pick weeds when you can check out the Japanese Gardens in Portland or walk through the tulips in Amsterdam?

» Learn more: Why you should resist the temptation to hoard your miles

4. Trip planning can be harder than it needs to be

For non-travel hackers, planning flights and hotels for a trip probably involves light research and a few booking platforms. Non-travel hackers book the cheapest flight, find a reasonable hotel in a good location, and call it a day.

For travel hackers, though, planning a trip comes with endless decisions, like:

Do I want to use my free night certificates that expire in a few months, or should I pay cash to earn triple points with the latest promo ?

Should I use a modest number of Avianca LifeMiles to book a just-OK flight, or should I use a larger number of United miles to book a flight with a better travel time?

Should I use my rewards to book through a credit card travel portal, or should I transfer those miles to a partner airline?

Should I pay a little bit more to book my room directly through the hotel so I’ll earn my elite night credit ?

Whew. Talk about analysis paralysis.

5. Destinations can become secondary to maximizing value

When your cup runneth over with hotel points and certificates, the travel planning process can work backward.

Rather than first thinking about where you'd like to go and then figuring out accommodations, you start with the hotel. Which cities have a nice IHG property where I can get the best value out of my free night certificates? Where are the best Hyatts to use my suite upgrade awards and enjoy my status to the fullest?

And when you have a pile of airline miles, it’s tempting to think first about what routes are best on that airline from your local airport.

You may have thought that you wanted to take a scenic trip to the Scottish Highlands. But now, instead, you really want to head to Chicago to get the best possible hotel experience at the best possible value. Or … do you?

» NEW: NerdWallet’s airline partner award bookings tool

6. You'll have constant travel envy

Enthusiasts of many hobbies are known to seek each other out and build a community, and travel hacking is no different. Once you get hooked on points and miles, you’ll find you have a bunch of new friends to nerd out with.

And no matter how much you travel, someone in your circle is always traveling more. A whole lot more. When you're proud of your week in Hawaii, someone else is doing a month-long round-the-world trip , stopping in England, France, Japan and the Maldives . And they’re plastering pictures all over your social feed. Every. Single. Day.

Then, of course, you're compelled to book more travel for yourself. Ah, the vicious cycle of travel hacking.

How to maximize your rewards

You want a travel credit card that prioritizes what’s important to you. Here are our picks for the best travel credit cards of 2024 , including those best for:

Flexibility, point transfers and a large bonus: Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

No annual fee: Bank of America® Travel Rewards credit card

Flat-rate travel rewards: Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card

Bonus travel rewards and high-end perks: Chase Sapphire Reserve®

Luxury perks: The Platinum Card® from American Express

Business travelers: Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card

on Chase's website

1x-5x 5x on travel purchased through Chase Travel℠, 3x on dining, select streaming services and online groceries, 2x on all other travel purchases, 1x on all other purchases.

60,000 Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $750 when you redeem through Chase Travel℠.

1.5%-6.5% Enjoy 6.5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase Travel; 4.5% cash back on drugstore purchases and dining at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery service, and 3% on all other purchases (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year). After your first year or $20,000 spent, enjoy 5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase Travel, 3% cash back on drugstore purchases and dining at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery service, and unlimited 1.5% cash back on all other purchases.

$300 Earn an additional 1.5% cash back on everything you buy (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year) - worth up to $300 cash back!

on Capital One's website

2x-5x Earn unlimited 2X miles on every purchase, every day. Earn 5X miles on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel, where you'll get Capital One's best prices on thousands of trip options.

75,000 Enjoy a one-time bonus of 75,000 miles once you spend $4,000 on purchases within 3 months from account opening, equal to $750 in travel.

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The CabinZero Military Backpack 28L lacks the features of a pricier pack but utilizes high-quality materials and hardware—a bonus for a budget-friendly bag.

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The hard-side Calpak Ambeur Carry-On Luggage rolls smoothly over many surfaces and has easy-to-use organizational features, though some get blocked by clothing.

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The Best Travel Hackers Blogs That You Need to Follow

A travel hacker is someone who uses all sorts of tips, tricks, and insider knowledge to find ways to make traveling more affordable.

There’s hundreds of blogs all across the internet dedicated to travel hacking, but like with anything online, it’s tough to sift through the noise and find what’s actually helpful.

To learn everything you need to know about travel hacks and get a head start on globetrotting, here’s our list of the best travel hacker blogs you can visit right now.

Each one is filled with tons of useful information on how to get the best deals out of all aspects of travel, from places to stay, things to do, and especially how to get there.

For the websites below, I've tried to also included their social profiles.

Quite often, the best way to stay in the know and up-to-date on daily travel hacks is to follow these travel bloggers Twitter and RSS feeds.

1. One Mile at a Time

Website: https://onemileatatime.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/onemileatatime

At One Mile at a Time, Ben Schlappig aka. Lucky talks about his adventures while traveling. Lucky started when he was 14; he definitely knows his stuff. 

In between his stories and Q&A time, he also shares tips on how to get the most out of credit cards and collect airline miles , among other helpful topics.

The must visit (among many) Travel Hacking page on Lucky's website is the Tips & Tutorials . Enough said, check it out for yourself.

2. The Flight Deal

Website:   https://www.theflightdeal.com/

Twitter:   https://twitter.com/TheFlightDeal

The Flight Deal is your one stop shop for daily cheap flight information.

As they discover cheap flights, they post them on their blog, sharing the information with their readers and subscribers. Its a free service, so best to take advantage of it.

Do yourself a favor and subscribe to their RSS feed and Twitter. If one of their daily flight updates suits your fancy, act quick, the deals don't last long.

3. Nomadic Matt

Website:   https://www.nomadicmatt.com/

Twitter:   https://twitter.com/nomadicmatt

Matthew Kepnes aka. Nomadic Matt is an American travel expert and probably the most famous travel blogger. (just my personal guess/opinion)

His blog essentially covers everything related to budget travel.

Some of his favorite include practical travel tips like how to buy insurance , choosing a backpack, and basic advice for beginners. He also makes lists of his favorite spots to visit or places to stay in different locations.

Matthew is a New York Times best selling including a book dedicated to....Travel Hacking. I haven't read it myself but if you want to check it out, here is his book page .

His short article on booking cheap flights is loaded with great advice.

If in the future you aspire to become a full-time travel hacker/blogger, Matthew Kepnes blogging business model is the perfect example on how to do it right, on how to make money online while travelling the world on the cheap.

If you want to learn how to make money online, don't buy a course, just mimic the people who make money online. 

Watch the video below to get some insider insight (not sure if I'm allowed to use those two words together) into how he got started and grew his travel blogger business over time.

4. Frugal Travel Guy

Website:  https://www.frugaltravelguy.com/

Since 2007, Rick Ingersoll has been blogging about how to travel cheaply.

Some of the highlights of his long and storied career include his rookie FAQ, detailed explanations of different travel terminology and how to take advantage of it, and how good credit can benefit you in travel .

As you get more familiar with travel hacking, you will quickly see the cheap travel most travel hackers are relying on, comes from the reward and signup bonuses of varies credit cards they acquire.

To qualify and receive the bonus signup bonuses from these credit cards, you need to meet the 'minimum spend' requirement set forth by the credit card issuer.

This article by the Frugal Travel Guy explains many different ways to meet the minimum spent .

5. TripHackr

Instagram:   https://www.instagram.com/triphackr/

Twitter:   https://twitter.com/triphackr

TripHackr’s Clint talks about his adventures from over 122 different countries, sharing the things he’s learned over his travels. 

In addition to tips on how to get good flights and better rates, he takes things a step further by discussing how to spend your money wisely on trips, even customizing different guides for specific cities .

Here is interesting article taking a different angle, on how to meet minimum spend .

6. PointChaser

Website:   https://www.pointchaser.com/

PointChaser is staffed by Ariana Arghandewal, a lifelong traveler who wants to share the tips and tricks she’s picked up over the decade and a half adventuring from place to place.

She writes all kinds of different posts covering the basics of how to rack up points at different venues and from different ways to her experiences in new places.

She also posts a monthly checklist  detailing how to gain the most amount of points possible.

Another term you going to see a lot associated with travel hacking, and this is where we start to dip into the 'grey' area, is manufactured spending .

This blog gives a lot of information on this very subject.

7. Sorin.tv

Best Article:   https://bit.ly/2tNLiD6

Sorin Mihailovici is a busy guy. The above article is a must read, packed full of really good travel tips. His #9 tip puts a whole new perspective on long layovers.

8. Scott's Cheap Flights

Website:    https://scottscheapflights.com/

If you follow more than one travel hacker's blog, you going to start seeing a pattern, everybody recommends Scott's Cheap Flights.

We also recommend you subscribe to Scott's email list and follow him on Twitter. You want to be to act quickly to his daily finds to maximize value.

Scott has also written two books on finding cheap flights, you can download them to you kindle.

Here is a link if you are interested. (not an affiliate link, just spreading the love)

9. Canadian Kilometers

Website:    https://bit.ly/2AWgaGx

Jeff runs the Canadian Kilometers blog.

Since I'm a fellow Canadian, this website is perfect for me because the tips and tricks he teaches are for....Canadians.

The website is choked full of advice.

The article I was most interested in, was on how to Avoid Foreign ATM Fees . ATM fees from both your home bank and the foreign ATM machine can be immense, a lot more than most people probably expect.

10. The Points Guy

Website:   https://thepointsguy.com/

No travel hacking list would be complete without mentioning the Points Guy. ( Brian Kelly )

I've visited this website for many, many years and I'm sure many of you have too. The Points Guy is quite often a daily website visited by many fellow travel hackers each and every day.

If you are completely new to the ins and outs of airline loyalty programs, start here .

11. FlyerTalk

Website: https://www.flyertalk.com/

FlyerTalk’s main appeal is its interactivity, being a community forum for travelers all across the world to share their secrets on all aspects of travel.

The last time I checked the website, there were 6855 other users currently using the website.

There’s also up to date news on happenings in the airline industry and blog posts on a variety of subjects, several of which commonly include how to earn extra rewards points  at different hotels or airlines.

12. Million Mile Secrets

Website:  https://millionmilesecrets.com/

At Million Mile Secrets, there’s a wealth of information to be found on earning rewards points. Specifically, much of their advice involves learning how to make credit cards work for you.

They also provide airline, card, and  hotel reviews  specifically geared around them being extra cheap or even free because of your points.

The main reason I love this travel hacker website; awesome navigation. Its a very easy website to use, thanks guys for the awesome user experience.

Check out their  how-to travel guides .

13. Travel Codex

Website:   https://www.travelcodex.com/

Travel Codex was set up by veteran traveler Scott Mackenzie, known for all sorts of travel hacks featured in his book, ”Hack My Travel”.

His blogging content is similarly stellar, with more tips as well as in-depth reviews of each of his travel experiences .

Want to learn how to upgrade to a better seat? Follow the Travel Codex's in-depth guides here .

Scott was the first travel hacker I read that shared the concept of  Fuel Dumping  to us novices. Other fuel dumping resources  here .

Unfortunately, he has recently decided to cut back on his blogging, but not to worry, the site does feature lots of awesome guest travel bloggers.

Enough about Scott, it's Caroline and Drew's turn.

14. Travel is Free

Website: http://travelisfree.com/

On Travel is Free, Caroline and Drew discuss their history of travel together and neatly breakdown their expenses to help you find ways to save. 

There are tons of helpful graphics and charts that make everything easy to understand paired with basic explanations of travel fundamentals, perfect for new travelers looking to get their foot in the door of adventure. 

This article has our #12 interviewing our #14, enjoy its very enlightening!

15. There and Back Again

Website: https://bit.ly/2KJm25H

There and Back Again is a blog consisting of stories from all the places Shanna Schultz has traveled (helpfully broken up by country and continent) and different travel hacks she’s picked up along the way. 

She and her family have traveled all across the world and have helpful tips for all sorts of things, like packing lists, opinions on the most seasonally-appropriate clothes for the area, and much more.

This is a great resource for family travelers.

16. PointsNerd

Website: https://www.pointsnerd.ca/

At PointsNerd , travel reviews combine with in-depth breakdowns of how to earn and spend rewards points from all kinds of different businesses.

Like Canadian Kilometers, this a great source for Canadians.

In addition to content related to negotiating credit card fees, when and how to book trips for the best deals, and some helpful basics, there’s also a handy section for Travel Hacking Dictionaries to help you learn the lingo.

17. Hey Nadine

Website: https://www.heynadine.com/

Hey Nadine, you're number seventeen.

You might recognize Nadine Sykora from her YouTube channel, meaning you’re likely already familiar with her blog.

At Hey Nadine, she discusses her travel experiences and the things she’s learned over her years of adventuring, with both blog posts and videos on topics like  saving money while traveling , how to work abroad, the importance of insurance, and safety tips for women traveling alone.

18. Ausreiser.com

Website: https://www.ausreiser.com/

David is a German traveler who writes about his experiences going to other countries on a budget.

On Ausreiser.com, he talks about all sorts of topics with an entire section dedicated to travel hacks, with a particular focus on what and how to pack  for your trips.

19. The Blonde Abroad

Website: https://theblondeabroad.com/

The Blonde Abroad covers the ongoing journey of Kiersten as she explores the worlds of travel and fashion, blogging about her adventures and spreading her wisdom to her readers.

She has all sorts of posts related to where to find specialized foods for diets and health conditions while abroad, packing essentials, and tips for traveling with a toddler .

20. Legal Nomads

Website: https://www.legalnomads.com/

Jodi Ettenberg used to be a lawyer but realized her real passion was travel blogging.

Discussing the foods, cultures, and accommodations she experiences on her journey, she provides pages worth of helpful information related to local foods, safety tips, and packing essentials  that will serve you well while you’re out exploring the world.

21. Travel Addicts

Website: https://traveladdicts.net/

The titular Travel Addicts of this blog are Lance and Laura, two professionals who love to travel and write about creative ways to make the most out of minimal vacation time.

In addition to posts about the places they’ve visit, the two also review hotels, recommend supplies for certain trips, and provide a thorough breakdown of how to get the most out of your rewards programs .

22. Global Grasshopper

Website: https://globalgrasshopper.com/

Global Grasshopper is a blog curated by Becky, a traveler intent on exploring the lesser known places of beauty throughout the world.

In her blog, she talks about restaurants, unique hotels, places of interest, and even how to volunteer all while providing helpful hacks related to what to pack, navigating cities, and the importance of VPNs while on the road.

23. Mommy Points

Website:   https://thepointsguy.com/family-travel/

Mommy Points is a part of the larger The Points Guy website where Summer Hull talks about everything you need to know related to traveling with your children and all the good and bad that comes with it.

In addition to resources on how to save money, earn extra rewards points, and reviews of places she’s traveled to or stayed at, she also discusses topics related to kids, including preparing them for their first flight and booking hotels for families, plus news related to airlines, credit cards, and more.

24. Head for Points

Website: https://www.headforpoints.com/

Just like how Canadian Kilometers is blog for Canadians, Head for Points is a blog designed for UK travelers.

The website is run by Rob Burgess, writing mainly about Avios points and British Airways. If you live in the UK, this is the travel hacker blog you are going to want to follow.

25. Globe Guide

Website:  https://www.globeguide.ca/

Tamara at Globe Guide provides tons of content on travel, from rankings of the best attractions she’s experienced to guides on things like brewing coffee. 

She has several  aggregate list-type posts  collecting numerous travel hacks in one place, making it convenient to browse her blog if you’re looking for as many ways to save as possible.

26. Mighty Travels

Website: https://www.mightytravels.com/

Mighty Travels is run by Torsten and Salina, two travelers looking to help people enjoy new experiences in a safe and affordable way.

Their posts include tips on saving money, getting good deals,  travel essentials like VPNs , and ways to game the system in your favor.

They also boost deals and other time-sensitive money saving options on the regular.

27. The Art of Non-Conformity

Website: https://chrisguillebeau.com/

Staffed by  Chris Guillebeau , The Art of Non-Conformity is a collection of his personal musings, reactions to news, discussions about the books he’s written, and much more.

Many of the blog posts on his website are related to travel, too, including one mapping out  how much it would cost to visit every country on the planet .

28. Loyalty Traveler

Website: https://bit.ly/2OPEsVz

Ric Garrido runs Loyalty Traveler to shine a spotlight on different deals and rewards programs offered by airline companies and hotels.

He also posts  reviews  of all the places he’s stayed at or companies he’s flown with, typically a large number at a time to give a very eclectic view of different businesses you could choose when planning your adventures .

29. FlightNetwork

Very Worthy Article:   https://bit.ly/2M1dexr

This isn't really a travel hacker blog, but the above article is awesome, so we made room for them in our list.

30. Well Traveled Mile

Website:  https://welltraveledmile.com/

On the Well Traveled Mile blog, Rand Shoaf  discusses everything he’s learned about credit cards, airline rewards systems, and saving money on travel.

Unlike other travel bloggers in this list, Rand really focuses his blog on product reviews and comparisons,  posts on supplies you might need while on an adventure, detailing the pros and cons of different types of products.

Maybe if we sweet talk him, he'll review one of our travel wallets ??

31. Extra Pack of Peanuts

Website: https://bit.ly/2AYY4Uj

Travis and Heather run Extra Pack of Peanuts as a resource for travelers.

Going a step beyond simply just writing blog posts and articles on how to save, they also make a  podcast  and offer a free eBook to anyone who visits the blog.

As for tracking hacking advice, check out their comprehensive knowledge on  cheap car rentals .

32. Zero to Travel 

Website: https://bit.ly/2dBzNIi

Zero to Travel’s Jason discusses how he got his start in travel, tips like how to quickly  earn free flights , and tons of other topics.

He’s also got a podcast that covers all kinds of helpful information, including travel, safety and jobs.

Here is Zero to Travel's  beginners guide to travel hacking .

33. View from the Wing

Blog:   https://bit.ly/2sJCP2b

At View from the Wing, Gary Leff details what he’s learned regarding rewards programs during his lifetime of travel.

He breaks down different airlines companies and their specific rewards programs, providing strategies and  expert opinion for making the most out of them, plus news articles on any changes to policy that might affect these programs.

34. The Cranky Flier

Website:   https://crankyflier.com/

Bretty Snyder of The Cranky Flier blogs about everything airline related.  

From trip reviews and small anecdotes to industry news and flying advice , his blog is a wealth of knowledge with a humorous spin. OK, he's not a travel hacker, but he's very knowledgeable when it comes to the airline industry.

35. Packsmith by Tortuga

Website: https://bit.ly/2nsTggi

It stands to reason that the makers of travel-friendly backpacks might know a thing or two about travel. 

Packsmith by Tortuga is an entire blog dedicated to different travel tips including an entire section on travel hacks specifically, with gems like  how to book flights at the last minute at good prices , getting the most out of your rewards points, and how to get access to airport lounges easily.

36. Johnny Jet

Johnny Jet writes a lot about flying as that name would imply, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

His blog posts are a combination of flying tips, from how to get the best seats in coach to ways to earn extra points for flying, and guides on what to do once you’ve landed, such as different hot spots in places he’s been to or ways to make your stay more comfortable.

37. The Travel Hack

Website: https://thetravelhack.com/

Twitter: https://bit.ly/2MwGJDq

The Travel Hack is a blog about how to get the most out of your travel experience.

Run by Monica, it focuses on a variety of tips related to luxury travel, packing, family adventures, and more.

Even enjoying listening versus reading text, check out her video section where she goes more in depth on various topics.

In Summation

If you’re going to travel, do it right. Travel hacking is a skill anyone who’s invested in seeing the world should learn, and these bloggers are a great resource for learning the ins and outs of how it’s done.

Take a look around, see what you can find, and get ready for an adventure at an incredibly affordable price.

JooJoobs Writing Travel Articles?

I know what you are asking.

Why is there a travel hacking article on a leather wallet website.

Two reasons:

Protect your Most Valuable Travel Asset!

Secret Pocket Built into the Belt's Lining

• We do make travel wallets and our hidden pocket belts offer some great utility for the world traveler.
• We're planning our own big adventure and since we were already studying travel hacking, we wanted to share all we have learned (and still learning), and help give some extra exposure to hard working bloggers.

Travel Hacking Vlogs

Everybody has a blog (boring, j/k) but these cool cats have Vlogs!

Other Noteworthy Websites and Travel Links

• https://www.airfarewatchdog.com/
• https://www.momondo.com/
• https://www.skyscanner.net/
• https://www.secretflying.com/
• https://www.endlessvacationrentals.com/
• to be continued...

Lazy Travel Hacking Guide

https://bit.ly/2vAs43x

Kelly Fitzsimmons

In 2010, Kelly left the corporate world behind, sold all his stuff and hit the road. Now 'based' in Chiang Mai, he works exclusively on the JooJoobs marketing efforts. JooJoobs is always open to partnering with bloggers, so send us an email, let's talk!

Nomadic Matt's Travel Site

Travel Better, Cheaper, Longer

Points & Miles 101: A Beginner’s Guide to the Process

These days, there are a million and one ways to make budget travel a reality. From embracing the sharing economy to working overseas or volunteering abroad to hunting down cheap flights , traveling has never been easier or more affordable. Even with the pandemic-related price increases, travel is still relatively cheap and there are lots of deals out there to be found.

But the most incredible way to lower your costs even further? Points and miles .

It’s something I’ve been doing for years, which has enabled me to earn more free flights and free hotel stays than I can count. And if you’re not doing it, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table and paying way more for travel than you should be!

What are points and miles?

Collecting points and miles involves signing up for travel credit cards and collecting credit card points, hotel points, and/or airline miles you can cash in for free flights, flight upgrades, hotel stays, transportation, and much, much more.

While there are a ton of advanced tips and tricks to out there (and we go over a lot of them in my guide on the subject), many people don’t even know where to start. The process seems daunting because of all the programs and credit cards out there. Which card do you get? How do you know you’re maximizing your points? And just how do you redeem them for rewards?

It’s a lot to wrap your head around.

But it’s a lot easier than it seems. By just tweaking how you pay for groceries, gas, and dining out, you’ll be able to start earning points and miles toward free travel today .

In this points and miles 101 guide, I’ll explain the basics, so you can stop leaving money on the table and start making your travel dreams a reality.

Here is how you get started:

Step 1: Figure out your goal(s)

The first thing you want to do when it comes to points and miles is to figure out your goal(s). What are you looking to achieve?

Are you saving for a big family trip? Do you just want the odd free economy flight or hotel here and there? Or are you more interested in a huge first-class upgrade? Or are you an avid flyer who wants perks, like lounge access and free upgrades?

There’s no wrong answer, so spend some time pondering this. If you just go into points and miles without direction, you’re going to get lost.

You’ll need to do this because it will help you pick the cards and spending strategies that will get you closer to your goal(s). There are hundreds of travel credit cards to choose from, and they all have their own pros and cons.

For example, if you’re a loyal flier with American Airlines, the best cards to start off with would be those that are AA branded. That way, you can jump-start your point balance as well as get the perks that those cards come with (free checked bags, priority boarding, etc.).

If you’re looking to go to Europe on a United partner, you’ll want to apply for the cards that get you United or Star Alliance points.

Always like staying at a specific hotel chain? Get that particular brand’s card.

If you just want points to spend wherever you choose, get a Chase, Citi, Capital One, or American Express® Card, because you can use their points with a variety of travel companies.

Once you decide your goal(s), you can figure out the cards and programs that will get you there.

Step 2: Get a travel credit card

Once you know your goals to and what perks are important to you, you can start to browse for a credit card.

Note: Collecting points and miles is impossible without a credit card. You just cannot get enough points otherwise. Here’s everything you need to know about credit cards and why they aren’t as evil as society makes them out to be.

While many introductory cards are free, the best travel credit cards usually have an annual fee. However, this fee, which can range from $99 to $500, is usually waived for the first year. You can also often get it waived in subsequent years if you call and threaten to cancel the card. I do that often to avoid the fee.

Some things to remember before you apply for a card:

• There is no perfect card — each has its pros and cons based on your goals. Don’t listen to blogs touting some card as “the best.”
• Aim to get a card with a low annual fee and no foreign transaction fees (so you can use it abroad without paying extra).
• Make sure the welcome bonus is attainable (more on that below).

Remember that you need to pay off your monthly balances to make it worthwhile, so only apply for a card if you’re able to pay off your expenses each month.

Here’s what the ideal card should have:

• A huge welcome bonus – The best travel cards all offer a sizable introductory bonus. It will be these welcome points that jump-start your account and get you closer to a free flight or hotel stay. Typical travel credit card welcome bonuses range between 40,000 to 60,000 points, though sometimes they can be as high as 100,000. That’s why cards are so great: you get an instant balance of tens of thousands of points for very little work.
• A low spending minimum – Unfortunately, in order to get the great welcome bonuses these cards offer, there is usually a required spending minimum in the first few months. I typically sign up for cards with a minimum spending requirement of $3,000 USD in a three- to six-month period. While there are ways to temporarily boost your spending, it’s best to get the bonus using normal day-to-day spending. Only apply for a card or cards that you can meet the minimum spend(s) on to qualify for the welcome bonus(es). (More on minimum spending requirements in the next step.)
• An added category spending bonus – Most credit cards offer one point for every dollar spent. However, good credit cards will give you extra points when you shop at specific retailers, use their online portals, or, if it is a branded credit card, shop with a particular brand. This will help you earn points much more quickly.
• Special travel perks – All of these travel credit cards offer great perks. Many will give you a special elite loyalty status or other perks. Collecting points and miles is not just about just getting points and miles, it’s about what else comes with the card that makes your life easier!
• No foreign transaction fees – Credit cards are great to use overseas because you get the best possible exchange rate from them. But if you are paying a fee every time you use the card, then it’s less good. Nowadays there are so many cards offering no foreign transaction fees that you should never, ever, ever have to get one with a foreign transaction fee.

Step 3: Earn the welcome bonus

As mentioned, the most important part about signing up for a new credit card is to make sure you earn the welcome bonus. Most cards offer this bonus if you spend a set amount within the first few months of receiving a card (usually the first three months). These offers can be huge, often equal to the cost of a round-trip flight.

Obviously, it would be silly to pass up the chance at a free flight, so make sure you can meet the minimum spending requirement for the welcome bonus before you pick a card. If you can’t meet the spending requirement, there’s no point in signing up just yet.

That might mean waiting until your next big purchase (e.g., waiting until you need a new computer, a new couch, etc.) or waiting until a big holiday like Christmas or a loved one’s birthday, so you can earn more points than your normal spending.

If even that isn’t going to do the trick, you’ll need to get creative.

For example, when you go out for dinner, pay for the bill on your credit card and have everyone pay you back. That way, the cost will go toward your minimum spending requirement. Additionally, if any friends or family are planning big purchases, ask them if you can put them on your card so you can get the points. That’s another easy way to meet the minimum spend without having to shop til you drop.

Step 4: Maximize your category spending

Most travel credit cards offer category bonuses. That means that instead of getting just 1 point per every dollar spent, you might get 2 or 3 or even 10 when you shop in particular categories. Restaurants, supermarkets, and gas are three of the most common ones, but there are lots more too.

To maximize your points, always use the right card for each purchase.

If you just have one card to start, just put everything on that card to maximize your points. Once you start branching out and have a few cards, just keep track of the main category bonuses so you don’t miss out by using the wrong card. Earning double, triple, or even 10x the points can drastically speed up your earnings, so don’t skip out on the category bonuses!

Step 5: Redeem your points and miles

It’s time to cash those points in and make your travel dreams a reality! Depending on your spending and financial situation, maybe you’ve been able to save up enough in just a few months. Maybe it’s taken you a couple years. Either way, it’s time to reap the rewards! (If you want to learn more on how to do that, get this guide I wrote .)

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Now that we’ve laid out the steps, I wanted to answer some common questions I get about collecting points and miles.

Can non-Americans collect points and miles? Yep! While the US definitely has the best travel cards, many other countries have similar cards too, including Canada, the UK, Australia, and most of Europe.

Start by checking with your local airline to see if it has a branded credit card. You can also check in with your bank and ask what cards are available. Every country is different, so you’ll need to ask around to get the ball rolling.

Here are some posts to help you get started:

• How to Collect Points & Miles in Canada
• How to Collect Points & Miles in Australia & New Zealand
• How to Collect Points & Miles in the UK

Do I need to pay off my bill every month if I want to do this? Yes. Credit cards charge huge interest fees, which will eat up whatever small benefit you get from the points.

Can you collect miles even if you have bad credit? Yep! You’ll likely need to start slow, with a card that doesn’t have amazing perks. However, over time, you can build your credit up as long as you’re paying off your bill every month. If you have bad credit, start with a prepaid or secured credit card to build back your credit.

Does opening a new card hurt my credit rating? Opening or closing a lot of credit cards at once can hurt your credit. However, applying for a few credit cards over a period of time won’t ruin your score. Sure, it will slightly dip every time there is an inquiry, whether for a credit card or home loan or car loan — that’s how the system is set up. But so long as you space out your applications and pay off your bills each month, you won’t find any long-term damage to your credit. I have dozens of cards and apply for and cancel them regularly, and my credit score is excellent.

Collecting points and miles can be intimidating, but it’s really just the art of being smart with your spending on the right one or two credit cards. You don’t really need to do more than that. While you can also dive much deeper in the game (some people really go down the rabbit hole on this!), it’s not all that necessary.

Don’t leave money on the table. Get a card, earn the welcome offer, maximize your points — and then do it all over again! Eventually — with no unnecessary spending — you’ll reach your goal and get to enjoy some awesome travel perks!

Book Your Trip: Logistical Tips and Tricks

Book Your Flight Find a cheap flight by using Skyscanner . It’s my favorite search engine because it searches websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is being left unturned.

Book Your Accommodation You can book your hostel with Hostelworld . If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as it consistently returns the cheapest rates for guesthouses and hotels.

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:

• SafetyWing (best for everyone)
• Insure My Trip (for those 70 and over)
• Medjet (for additional evacuation coverage)

Want to Travel for Free? Travel credit cards allow you to earn points that can be redeemed for free flights and accommodation — all without any extra spending. Check out my guide to picking the right card and my current favorites to get started and see the latest best deals.

Need Help Finding Activities for Your Trip? Get Your Guide is a huge online marketplace where you can find cool walking tours, fun excursions, skip-the-line tickets, private guides, and more.

Ready to Book Your Trip? Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel. I list all the ones I use when I travel. They are the best in class and you can’t go wrong using them on your trip.

Got a comment on this article? Join the conversation on Facebook , Instagram , or Twitter and share your thoughts!

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above may be affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I earn a commission if you make a purchase. I recommend only products and companies I use and the income goes to keeping the site community supported and ad free.

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What the Hack: The Best Travel Hacks From the Pros

Flight attendant Florian Schwebel is always prepared for anything on his travels. He shares his best travel hacks with us

In my job, I quickly learned one thing: most of the time, you never need all the clothes you've packed in your suitcase. That's why I choose what I take with me very carefully. Especially when I'm only in one place for 24 hours, as is often the case. 

Travel Hack #1: Jogsuit

I always have a "jogsuit" with me in a basic color like grey or blue. These are suits made from jogging trouser fabric, which are available from various brands. They don't have a pleat, don't crease and look very casual in combination with sneakers. You can put them in the washing machine when you get there and you're instantly styled if you want to go out in the evening shortly after your arrival.

Travel Hack #2: Longsleeve made from merino wool

A merino wool longsleeve is also always on my packing list. The material has the advantage that it is sweat-resistant and regulates the temperature well. This is very practical if you don't know what weather to expect when you get there. Just like a super-light, compressible and waterproof jacket that can be folded up into a small package. 

Travel Hack #3: Moisturizing spray

To make sure I look fresh and awake after a long flight from Germany to the USA, I like to spray moisturizing spray on my face. It works wonders.

Travel Hack #4: Duffel bag

On short trips, I usually only have a small duffel bag with me instead of a hard-shell suitcase. It's easier to squeeze into the overhead compartment on the plane. And in case I have time to go shopping on the road, I always have a foldable mini travel bag with me. You never know what you might discover.

Florian Schwebel is a flight attendant at Lufthansa. He travels both intercontinental on long-haul routes and within Europe.

Ready to discover the world?

Book your flight and find new inspiration – wherever the journey may take you.

​ Find flight

GOBankingRates

11 Travel Hacks To Avoid in 2024

Posted: February 26, 2024 | Last updated: February 26, 2024

When it comes to traveling, frequent and casual travelers alike often look for ways to save money and time, or make the trip the best it can be. Common travel hacks include searching for flights in incognito tabs, traveling during the off-season, and using hotel booking sites to score the cheapest accommodations.

Read Next: Dave Ramsey: 7 Vacation Splurges That Are a Waste of Money Learn More: 6 Genius Things All Wealthy People Do With Their Money

While some of these travel hacks have served people well over the years, many of them either don't work anymore or don't work like they used to. Sometimes, these so-called travel hacks end up costing more money in the long run -- or they detract from the entire experience.

Before you book your next trip, here are 11 travel hacks to avoid in 2024, according to experts .

Hidden City Ticketing, aka Skiplagging

"Booking a flight with a layover at your actual destination, and then skipping the connecting flight will backfire because the airline will cancel the remaining parts of your ticket, leaving you stranded or facing additional fees," said Kat Fleishman , a luxury travel expert and CEO of Do-Tell PR .

This so-called travel hack referred to as "skiplagging" might seem more cost effective than booking a direct flight. However, you won't be able to check any bags if you do this. It's also technically legal, but could result in lost miles or lifetime bans from that specific airline.

Check Out: 8 Tips To Fly Business Class for the Price of Economy Trending Now: 11 Expensive Vacation Destinations That Will Be Cheaper in 2024

Sponsored: Owe the IRS $10K or more? Schedule a FREE consultation to see if you qualify for tax relief.

Buying a Cheap Flight Over a Pricier Train Ticket

You might save money by purchasing a cheap airplane ticket over a train ticket, but money isn't everything when it comes to traveling.

"Some train journeys may cost more than a cheap flight but the beauty of a train ride is the greater flexibility from the booking system to being able to jump off at a certain point in the journey -- much less stressful and also enjoyable," said Jessica Dante , a leading travel expert at Love and London. "Boarding is much also less hassle, there are no luggage restrictions and inevitably more leg room."

Plus, you could save money -- or at least break even -- by taking a train over a flight. Luggage fees can add up when you fly, and many airports are located far from the city center, which means you'll need to spend more money on a taxi or public transport to reach your destination.

Explore More: I'm a Luxury Travel Agent: 10 Destinations My Wealthy Clients Are Booking for 2024

Exchanging Money at the Airport

"Using currency exchange services at airports or hotels can be convenient, but they charge higher and hidden fees with really bad exchange rates compared to local banks or ATMs," said Fleishman. "It's better to withdraw local currency from ATMs or exchange money at local banks."

Traveling Only During the Off-Season

Off-season travel is often less expensive than any other time, but not always.

"There has been a lot of talk around the benefits of off-season travel recently, which presents this as a travel hack for getting the best prices. In some cases, visiting during these quieter periods can offer a unique and more affordable experience. However, sometimes, they are just less popular times to visit for a reason," said Jan Luescher, CEO of luxury travel social network, ASmallWorld .

"Visiting certain destinations during their quieter periods significantly limits what you can do there and causes you to miss out on some of the best things to do and see because they are not open or safe to visit at this time," she continued.

If you miss something you really wanted to do, it might require a second trip to the same place. Or you might not enjoy yourself quite as much as you'd hoped.

Booking Non-Refundable Accommodations Early

"While early bookings can secure lower rates, committing to non-refundable accommodations too far in advance puts a damper on flexibility," said Fleishman. "Plans can change, and unforeseen circumstances always arise, leading to potential financial loss. Always better to book a hotel with a flexible cancellation policy if you are booking in advance."

Be Aware: 9 American Travel Brands to Stay Away From

Buying Cheap Airline Tickets but Ignoring Layover Times

"Traveling further afield often means catching a connecting flight and a common hack or tip for planning an indirect journey is checking the layover time to ensure it gives you enough time to disembark one flight and get onto the next," said Luescher.

But even if you account for the layover time, you might be forgetting a very important detail: The size and layout of the connecting airport.

"It's easy to get lulled in a false sense of security that because these connecting flights are available to buy, the layover time must be fine," Luescher continued. "However, each airport and airline can have very different rules for connecting travelers that require you to set aside different lengths of time."

Most international airports, for instance, have additional security checkpoints or requirements. You might even have to claim and recheck your luggage during the layover, depending on your destination. This can cut into your layover time quite a bit.

Some airports are also massive, so it could take you even more time to get to your gate. If you don't account for all of these factors, you could end up missing your flight -- and having to buy a new ticket.

On the flipside, if your layover time is substantial, you could end up wasting valuable time that cuts into your trip.

Getting Bulk Airline Miles

Airline miles, or frequent flyer points, rack up for frequent travelers. When you have enough of them, you can redeem them for discounted future flights, rental cars, accommodations and more.

But don't buy them in bulk to try to get more points quickly.

"Buying airline miles or loyalty points at a discounted rate is not OK by the airlines and there's a risk of having your account suspended or worse," said Fleishman.

Searching for Flights in Incognito Tabs

"A common travel tip people have been following for years is that you should search for flights in private Incognito mode and clear your browser cookies to see the lowest fares," said Mercedes Zach, travel expert at ASAP Tickets , part of Trevolution Group.

"This approach comes from the belief that airlines are using browser cookies to track your searches and will show you higher prices if you do several searches for a particular destination within a short period of time," Zach continued. "In reality, airfare pricing is dynamic and constantly fluctuates and Incognito mode has no impact on it."

Just because a price drops for a specific flight doesn't mean it's because of the way you searched for it. If you want to get the best fares, set up alerts on Google Flights or a similar platform.

Discover More: 7 Cheap, Beautiful Places for a Winter Vacation

Using Free Wi-Fi

There are lots of hidden fees when it comes to traveling, so you might be tempted to find even small ways to save money. One such way is to use free Wi-Fi, but there are many scams that can end up costing you.

"Beware of hackers who set up fake Wi-Fi networks with names similar to legitimate hotel networks to trick travelers into connecting," said Fleishman. "Using unsecured networks can expose personal information. It's safer to use a hotel's official Wi-Fi or a virtual private network (VPN) for added security."

Booking Flights on Tuesdays

If you've been booking flights on Tuesdays in the hopes of saving money, chances are it isn't actually working.

"I have been with a flight booking agency for several years now and I cannot say for sure that Tuesdays are cheaper than other days. Flight fares are dynamic and constantly fluctuate," said Shreya Patel, marketing manager at Lowest Flight Fares . "A flight from Austin to Boston may cost you around $114 on a Tuesday and $89 on a Saturday."

Instead of booking flights based on the day of the week, compare different options around the time when you want to travel. Patel also suggested booking between 21 and 115 days before your trip for the best prices.

Dressing Nicely To Get Upgrades

Some travelers swear by this travel hack, but there's not much proof that it actually works.

"What you are wearing at the check-in counter has no influence on the agent. Moreover, the airline already decides where its passengers are going to sit before they even leave the house," said Patel.

"For example, British Airways' check-in automatically upgrades passengers if it is required, based on the ticket cost, frequent flyer status, whom you are traveling with or if you have any special needs," Patel said. "The agents on the ground can no longer upgrade you."

More From GOBankingRates

• 7 Home Items To Avoid Buying in 2024
• I'm a Costco Superfan: These Are the 5 Highest-Quality Kirkland Food Items
• 7 Things the Wealthy Elite Do With Their Money (That You Should Be Doing, Too)
• The Biggest Mistake People Make With Their Tax Refund -- And How to Avoid It

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