For the summer of 2024, my wife and I are planning a two-week guided tour of Scotland and Ireland. This will be a first for us. Normally, we’re the type to plan everything ourselves, but driving on the left side of the road for a long time is not something we wanted to get into.
The package we have chosen costs $6,300 per person and includes: flights, accommodation, travel, access to attractions, parks and museums, and most meals.
18 months earlier, I quickly realized that this type of trip would require a special strategy to keep costs as low as possible.
Many factors have a significant influence on our strategy.
Time period to consider : 18 months of preparation and two calendar years, giving us plenty of opportunity to earn and redeem points or unlock welcome bonuses. As we often say, earning points is a marathon, not a sprint.
Before considering a points redemption, sometimes paying for your flight in cash is a viable solution. Is this the case here?
This round-trip flight, on Air Canada, costs around $1,300 in economy class (based on a simulation below for 2023). But you only get a $500 discount per person on the travel agency package by choosing this option.
So if you booked the flights yourself, you’d save $1,000 for two people, only to pay $2,600, an extra $1,600.
Another important point: a basic economy class flight paid for in cash is non-refundable in the event of cancellation. This option is therefore ruled out.
As it happens, with our travel plans for 2023 and earlier, we had quite a few Aeroplan points in the bank, and the flights for the package in question are on Air Canada.
With an Aeroplan co-branded credit card (which gives a preferential rate in points) we had carried out simulations in points for the summer of 2023 with the outward and return trips separated (thus without the multidestination option), a way of doing things that can be advantageous with Aeroplan points. This gave us in points :
From a strictly accounting point of view, saving on the flight with Aeroplan points for an economy class flight appears to be an unwise use of points; sincea good use of Aeroplan points is valued at 2 cents per point.
Note that the deal is better for someone traveling in Premium Economy or business class, because of the gains on paid seats, paid baggage and included food (and lounge access if you’re in business class).
But since my wife and I don’t travel much, saving all those points for a possible trip in 2025 without knowing which carrier we’ll be using for points whose value can change quickly, wasn’t ideal. In our very special case, using our Aeroplan points makes sense. In the event of cancellation, there is also the possibility of recovering part of the costs.
For people who plan to travel several times a year with Air Canada, the answer would be quite different.
Result: $1,000 saved on this package.
I myself am guilty of keeping my credit cards for a long time, sometimes too long. I hate changing credit cards, and to convince myself to do so, I’ve gotten into the habit of validating what a concrete travel project looks like with my current cards by establishing a starting point.
The question I ask myself is: before we start looking for new credit cards, what can we get with the ones we already have?
Marriott Bonvoy® American Express®* Card: It helped us in 2023, but will be of no use here, since the package already includes all accommodations.
TD® Aeroplan® Visa Infinite Privilege* Credit Card: If we charge all expenses to this card and keep it until we travel, a small simulation would give us the following characteristics.
Bottom line: using our current card gives us fairly good insurance protection and a gain of $853 (-25+300+100+378).
The strength and weakness of this card, which has served us so well up to now, lies in the earnings applicable to flights; but on anything other than flights, and particularly for cruise or tour packages, alas, there aren’t many earnings available.
Can we do better with Milesopedia‘s information, strategies and tips?
Let’s check this out with the next strategies.
An approach that I’ll mention here to better exclude it: there are several cards that offer generous welcome bonuses, very generous indeed.
Let’s take a card like the American Express® Business Gold Rewards Card® : You and your partner can earn over 150,000 Membership Rewards points if you spend $5,000 in three months on each card (note that American Express cards are accepted by most travel agencies). With a conservative valuation of points, get more than $2,250, for a gain of $1,850 ($2,250 – $400 for annual card fees).
The big problems with this approach:
Bottom line: it’s better to unlock the rewards of these cards with other types of expenditure (car deposit, major furniture purchase, renovations, dentist, taxes with Paysimply, etc.).
We’ve just excluded a bunch of non-travel cards, but there are still plenty to consider.
To sum up what we’re looking for here:
After our research, the card that stood out for us was the National Bank World Elite Mastercard®, which met all our criteria very well.
Let’s do a little simulation here, taking these three criteria into account:
Here’s what are able to get:
Answer: YES!
An excellent candidate here is the Scotiabank Passport™ Visa Infinite* Card.
It offers a nice welcome bonus that doesn’t require too much spending, so we can keep our main expenses on the National Bank World Elite Mastercard® (which offers better point earning rate based on our spending). It complements this very well by offering zero foreign transaction fee. A good card to use when traveling, especially if you spend a lot outside Canada.
Here’s a summary of the benefits:
It’s worth noting that this card could also have been used as a main card to save on a cruise or package tour, but when it comes to earn points, the National Bank World Elite Mastercard® is more up our alley. What’s more, access to the National Bank lounge in Montreal and the card’s slightly more generous travel credit also weighed in the balance.
Much to my surprise, I was expecting little gain from this type of trip. My little simulation showed that you can still save quite a bit (we’re talking about over $4,000 here!). ) and good insurance coverage for a trip where nothing is refundable in the event of a glitch. The 18 months of preparation made a huge difference in getting the maximum number of rewards and points and using the leverage of two different calendar years, which proves that earning points is a marathon. This demonstrates the need to have a concrete travel project to establish your strategy. As you can see, the cards I had for my previous trips were not the best for my 2024 summer project.
The results and decisions could be quite different for those who travel more often, have a different spending profile than me, deal with different banks and use different cards. If that’s the case, I encourage you to go through the same exercise as I did to find the strategy that pays off best for you (set your objectives, target your spending profile on the cards, compare with other travel-type cards, look for a complementary card).
And the National Bank World Elite Mastercard® is a wonderful discovery. I plan to keep this card after the trip and make it our main card for future projects.
Savings are here:
