free travel – Peak Award Booking

The Southwest Companion Pass -What is it, Why you want it, and How to get it.

December 8, 2020December 8, 2020 by admin

What is the Southwest Airlines Companion Pass?

Basically, the Southwest airlines Companion Pass is a level of status within Southwest’s Rapid Rewards program that allows the holder to bring their designated companion on any flight with them for free (plus taxes starting at $5.60). This is a buy-one-get-one-free pass wherever Southwest flies, even international flights (taxes are higher for these flights, but it is still an amazing deal). But wait, it gets better! Your flight can even be booked on points, and your companion can join you just for taxes. The Companion Pass also lasts for the entire year in which you earn PLUS the following year. That means if you time it right, you can get almost two years of BOGO flights from one pass!

Why you should want your own campanion pass

Being able to bring a friend, spouse, child, etc. on any flight for free is a game changer. It opens up the entire US for weekend getaways since the cost is now so cheap. Living in Colorado makes this great for us. Southwest has (at last count) 77 different destinations from Denver. But even if you don’t live in a major Southwest hub, you are still one stop away from dozens of destinations.

We’ve also used Southwest to connect us to international gateway airports for award flights. Sometimes either the award your booking doesn’t allow you to connect to your home airport, or there isn’t availability. That’s where Southwest and the Companion Pass can step in. You can now build you own connection before or after your award trip to make your award trip complete.

How to get your companion pass

Now for the hard part. It does take a little work to get your own Companion Pass, but I do mean a little. You’ll need to earn 125,000 eligible Southwest Rapid Rewards points in one calendar year. That may seem like a ton, but it is well within reach. 2021 will mark the eighth consecutive year my family has held a Companion Pass. All of those passes were almost entirely due to accruing credit card points. Almost all points you earn with Southwest are eligible for a Companion Pass. The main exceptions are points transferred in from outside programs (Chase Ultimate Rewards and hotel loyalty programs). What IS eligible is more important. Points earned from paid flights, using their shopping or dining programs and points earned from their Rapid Rewards Credit Cards. The last one is the major way to earn them because sign-up bonuses also count towards your Companion Pass!

The current bonus on the personal cards will earn you 80,000 points and the business cards will earn you 100,000. We’ve always earned the pass by combining one business card sign-up with one personal card sign-up bonus, when the bonuses were much lower. Now by completing one sign-up bonus along with a few partner offers you could get your companion pass much easier. Once you’ve earned your Companion Pass, the points are still yours to keep and use for flights. Since the points are worth about 1.5 cents each, you’ll have about $1875 in points with which to book flights. If you always fly with your companion you’ll have an astounding $3,750 in free flights!!!

Timing your companion pass

As I stated earlier, your Companion Pass is valid for the year in which you earn it and for the entire following year. By earning the pass early in 2021, you would have it all the way through 2022. If you sign up for both the Performance Business card and any of the personal Rapid Rewards credit cards, and then meet the minimum spend for just the first tier on both cards early in 2021, you would have your companion pass for almost two full years. This is how we plan our pass every two years, alternating between myself and my wife for the past eight years. It is best to apply for the “Performance” business card first, then any of the personal cards (we recommend the Priority version for its annual perks). As always, we would love it if you used our links to support the blog. All versions of the Chase Rapid Rewards credit cards can be found here.

By completing the first tier of the Performance Business credit card ($5,000 in spend in three months) you will receive 70,000 points. Any of the personal cards will award you an additional 50,000 points (after spending $2,000 in three months). Combined you’ll get 120,000 points in bonuses and at least 7,000 more points for the spend on the cards. You’ll then have your Companion Pass for the rest of 2021 and all of 2022. You’ll also have at least 127,000 points to spend on flights. Even with the current lack of travel, there is a lot of hope that things will return later in 2021, and you’ll still have all of 2022 to use the pass.

What is the first place you want to fly, once you feel it is safe to do so? Let me know in the comments!

What I Love About Chase Ultimate Rewards

June 9, 2020June 25, 2021 by admin

When people ask advice about starting in travel hacking, I almost always recommend they start with Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR). Our clients and ourselves have taken some amazing bucket list trips using UR. Let’s take a quick look at why people should almost always start here.

Chase Ultimate Rewards are easy to obtain

There are seven main cards (four business and three personal) to gain Ultimate Rewards, including four without annual fees. Sign-up bonuses alone could get you over 300,000 points! For the personal cards, they include the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve (these are basically sister cards, you can only hold one at a time and they have similar benefits), Chase Freedom Flex and the Freedom Unlimited.

On the business end there are the three Ink Cards; the Ink Business Preferred, the Ink Business Unlimited and the Ink Business Cash. In order to fully unlock the value in these points, you will need the Ink Business Preferred or either the Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve (we will get into this in just a bit).

With the right combination of cards you can really maximize your ongoing spend as well. You will be able to earn a minimum of 1.5 points per dollar on any purchase up to a maximum of 5 points/dollar! Depending on how you use these points, that could be a value of 3-10 cents back in travel for every dollar spent (I value UR at 2 cents a point). Between my wife and I, we have 12 different Ultimate Rewards cards to help us rack up UR points each and every month.

Chase Ultimate Rewards are easy to redeem

While the Freedom, Freedom Unlimited, Ink Cash and Ink Unlimited are billed as cash back cards with points worth one penny each, if you have either of the premium Sapphire cards and/or the Ink Business Preferred their potential is much higher.

With a premium card they are worth either 1.25 (Sapphire Preferred and Ink Preferred) or 1.5 (Sapphire Reserve) cents per point. This is when you redeem for travel through Chase’s own travel portal. Through the portal you can book flights, hotels, rental cars, and even cruises or tours. While this is nice, it is always the bare minimum for which you should redeem them. But if you want simplicity, it doesn’t get any easier than this.

Chase Ultimate Rewards has some great partners

The real value with UR (as well as any transferable points) is with their transfer partners. Points can transfer to 10 different airlines all at a 1:1 rate. They are Aer Lingus, British Airways, Air France/KLM, Emirates, Iberia, JetBlue, Singapore Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and Virgin Atlantic. Each of these programs provides value in different ways ranging from cheap domestic flights to outlandish international premium redemptions. Personally, we’ve booked using United, British Airways, Singapore, and Southwest. I’ve also used the others to help clients book amazing trips.

Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards
Some of our favorite flights booked with Ultimate Rewards

Chase also has three different hotel partners; Hyatt, IHG and Marriott. Out of these three the only one I would transfer to is Hyatt. The other two will most likely cause a loss in value by transferring rather than booking through the portal. Using Hyatt points we have helped our clients book $850+/night rooms for 30,000 points, a value of over 2.8 cents per point!

Why Ultimate Rewards to Start

Chase Ultimate Rewards are the best points for beginners, because of their ease of use. Between the travel portal or some of the simpler transfer partners, it is almost always easy to get great value out of the points. United may not have the best value for transferring, but they have an easy to use search tool and low taxes and fees on flights for themselves and their partners. Southwest and JetBlue are fixed value and extremely easy to redeem. They also have the only truly useful hotel transfer partner, Hyatt. Some of their foreign airline partners are where you can really find crazy value. These redemptions are always a little more difficult to unlock, which is where Peak Award Booking can help. Through the month of June, we are offering half-off all award bookings to help you get your amazing trip planned and booked!

How to start collecting Ultimate Rewards

The first card I recommend to beginner travel hackers is the Sapphire Preferred. It is the best way to get your feet wet and get you on your first rewards based trip. The current sign-up bonus is 100,000 points after $4,000 spend in the first three months (the $95 annual fee is not waived the first year). These 100,000 points would be enough for three nights at some of the nicest hotels in the world (values of over $1,000 per night), a round-trip business class flight to Europe, or $1,250 in travel on Chase’s travel portal. If you would like your own personalized plan, based off of your goals and individual circumstances, please reach out to us and we will develop your own very own credit card application strategy.

If you are a Chase Ultimate Rewards expert, what were your favorite redemptions? Share in the comments below

Our 2020 Travel Plans

January 28, 2020January 28, 2020 by admin

We already have two international trips booked and a third on the way for 2020. At Peak Award Booking we always advise to book early to find the best award flights. One of our trips was planned about 15 months ahead, this allowed us to get the credit cards and points we needed for this trip in time to be able to book at exactly 11 months out. Doing so allowed us to plan an amazing trip at the high-demand time of spring break.

Cancun all-inclusive

Our first trip is a long weekend to the Cancun area for a friend’s wedding. This will be just for my wife and myself, no kids!!! The wedding is at an all-inclusive resort that isn’t affiliated with any rewards program. We could’ve booked this using our Chase Ultimate Rewards through their portal at 1.5 cents/point, but we tend to find better value for these points by transferring to airline partners. Instead we paid cash through a third-party booking company that had a very discounted rate available. We try to book direct whenever possible, but this deal was too good to pass up. We will be using Southwest points and our companion pass (earned via sign-up bonuses on Chase’s Southwest cards) for our flights down to Mexico. We’ve been able to book Southwest flights at buy-one-get-one free for the last six years, and as soon as my wife’s points post in January we will have it again for another two years. This perk has saved us thousands of dollars. The return flights on Southwest didn’t really work for us, so we will be flying United on a basic economy ticket. Luckily (or by planning), we have the United Explorer credit card and we can check one bag each, take a full-size carry-on and board early. This negates most of the issues of booking basic economy.

maldives and singapore in luxury

Our next trip is almost exactly a month later. Spring Break 2020 will take our family of three to Doha, the Maldives, Singapore and possibly Malaysia. We booked our outbound flights using American Airlines miles gained from several of their credit cards. They have both personal and business cards from both Citi Bank and Barclay. The four options with bonuses that occasionally reach 70k miles, give lots of options to build up your balance. Anywhere in the US to the Maldives will cost you 70k miles per person, plus taxes. We completely drained my AA balance to get three seats. The first leg is just a regional jet on American in domestic first class, but our 2^nd and 3^rd flights will be business class on Qatar Airlines in their amazing QSuite configured business class. We will be spending one night in Doha before our flight to the Maldives. We had a free night award at any Marriott hotel worth a maximum of 30,000 points that we earned with the Chase Marriott Bonvoy Card. The St. Regis Doha was exactly 30,000 points, making this a no-brainer decision for a quick stay. One more QSuite flight and a seaplane trip will get us to the Maldives. Here we will be using points we gained from American Express Hilton branded credit cards as well as one free night certificate from the Hilton Aspire credit card to stay at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island. The Conrad Maldives considers their Overwater Bungalow a base room redemption, this allows us to use points and book five nights for the price of four! We will be splitting our time between the Overwater Bungalow and the Beach Villa. We’ve heard that with children that the beach villa is a much better option, but we still couldn’t pass up the option to stay in an over-water bungalow for free. Not only will we be staying for free for six nights, we also will get $500 off our seaplane flights and diamond status from our Aspire Card. Diamond status will most likely not get us any upgrades, but we will get free breakfast, happy hour (free drinks and snacks) and afternoon tea (more free snacks). The savings on food alone really adds up!

We will then depart from the Maldives and head to Singapore aboard Singapore Airlines in business class. We booked this flight as part of a one-way flight from the Maldives to Los Angeles with a stop-over in Singapore. The total cost of these flights was 109,000 miles each plus $100/person for the stop-over. We transferred points from Chase to Singapore Airlines to book these flights. Most of the points came from business card sign-ups from their Ink line (Ink Preferred, Ink Cash or Ink Unlimited). These two flights will be on their lie-flat equipped planes. We’ve already selected our meals for the flight from Singapore to Los Angeles using their “Book the Cook” menu, where you can select your meal ahead of time from a large menu of options (lobster thermidor, anyone?).

In Singapore for our “stop-over”, we will be staying at the Conrad Centennial Singapore for five nights. Again, we will be using points we earned from either new Amex Hilton cards or from upgrade offers from American Express. We used the fifth night free option again to get an extra night free. Diamond status will get us a possible upgrade, free breakfast and lounge access. While in Singapore we took advantage of an Expedia promotion that offered 50% off activities to get a lot of excursions we had already planned. We will be visiting the Singapore Zoo, Night Safari, Bird Park, River Safari, Aquarium, Singapore Flyer and more at a nice discount. We may also take a day trip over to Malaysia for the LegoLand Park. After an exhausting five days in Singapore, we’ll fly in Singapore Airlines business class to Los Angeles. Hopefully, we will have enough diversions to keep a six-year-old busy for 15 hours in a metal tube.

Upon landing in Los Angeles we’ll spend a night at the Crowne Plaza LAX Airport. We redeemed a free night from our IHG credit card to book the closest hotel to the airport. The next morning, we will trade the luxury of Singapore business class for the simplicity of Southwest. We’ll be using points and our companion pass to once again get us back home for the cost of just taxes on the flight.

african safari and victoria falls

Our last currently planned trip will be my 40^th birthday trip. It’ll be just my wife and I again. After cycling through about eleventeen different options (Venice and Rome, Hawaii, Tokyo, Bora Bora and Easter Island…), I finally found what I wanted all along… Perfect flights to Southern Africa. We will spend two weeks going through Botswana to Victoria Falls. We’ll have eight days of insanely expensive luxury safaris and three days of adventure activities in Victoria Falls. What better way to celebrate turning 40 than jumping off a bridge or rafting one of the world’s most dangerous rivers?

Our only points usage will be for flights, but they are nice flights indeed. We will have a second turn in one year on Qatar QSuites flying into Johannesburg. This is another 150,000 AA miles being used, which will leave us with only about 50,000 left (time to build those back up!). Our return was booked using United miles, from Victoria Falls back home. The long-haul segments will be on Kenyan Airways on angled flat business class seats. Not the best business class product in the world, but it made it a much quicker journey than any other options. The total of 140,000 United miles were raised from their Chase MileagePlus credit card as well as a transfer from some more Chase Ultimate Rewards.

I’m sure we will add a few more trips using our companion pass to domestic locations. We will probably try to get to Chicago to eat non-stop for a weekend, or someplace south to warm-up when it is cold (looking at Maui and the Grand Wailea). Visiting family in Wisconsin is also on our short-list too.

If your New Year’s resolution is to travel more, reach out to us here at PeakAwardBooking.com to get started. We can help you build your points, or use them to the fullest, so that 2020 can be the year you get to see the world!