Brian Kelly, better known as The Points Guy, predicts that 2024 will be the busiest travel year on record - so you’ll definitely want to make sure you’re getting the best deals. But how? The Points Guy sat down with TheStreet’s J.D. Durkin to discuss how you can search for and take advantage the best prices for your trip.
Full Video Transcript Below:
J.D. DURKIN: The Points Guy predicts 2024 is set to be the busiest travel year on record. Talk to me about tips and tricks that you have for travelers when it comes to finding the best deals, Brian?
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah, so the good thing is, you know, 2021, 22, we saw crazy inflation and flight prices. We were seeing 20% increases month over month. You know, everyone was shocked at 8% year over year inflation. But in travel, any traveler knows there were times when flying to LA was like flying to Europe. Luckily, those prices have come down, especially domestically. But it can be still, you know, where it's really pinching consumers is internationally. Everyone wants - I'm going to Tokyo tomorrow. Everyone wants, you know, Europe was two years ago.
Finally, we can go back now. People are going to Australia, New Zealand and those flight prices are really, really high. I think my best tip for people with points there is still so many points, deals out there, but use technology to sniff out the best points deals out there. There are a bunch of different websites now point.me, seats.arrow, expert flyer. These are tools you pay like $10 a month and they scan all the availability and they'll actually send you alerts when availability opens up. So I have a friend joining me in Tokyo and it was 200,000 miles. He's like, I can't afford that. But I said set alerts and lo and behold, United opened up 75,000 mile tickets within two weeks of departure. So to get the best deals, sometimes you got to have some cojones and like hold it out because the airlines last minute released tons of low level reward space.
J.D. DURKIN: And talk to me about some of the do's and don'ts with regards to seasonality. I'd imagine it's more expensive to fly during the summer when we're dealing with summer blend gasoline as opposed to some of the winter months, winter blend gasoline a bit cheaper on average to produce, and we see that reflected in the airfare, right?
BRIAN KELLY: Yeah so this is what I mean. So peak summer travel, Europe, you're going to get hosed if you're especially if you're buying it now and you're not willing. What I recommend to get lower prices flexibility. So google.com/flights. So everyone a lot of people use Google Flights. Here's the trick. There's a feature called explore and what you can do in Google flights, you click the Explore tab and you put in say you live in New York City and you want to go to Europe for a week in June, and it'll pull in all the different cities you can go to in Europe.
So you may be able to save half the price by flying to an airport that's within train distance from Paris where you wanted to go. So be flexible, try out a new city. And also when you book award tickets, many people don't take advantage of stopovers. For example, Air France, if you booked New York to Paris, round trip, it's the same amount of miles. If you fly New York, Paris and then add in Paris, Budapest flight and then fly home Budapest, New York, same amount of miles, a couple of bucks in taxes and fees. So it's a great way to stretch the value, see multiple cities and avoid having to pay for extra tickets when you're already traveling.
