Miles & Points for Beginners: Why Flexible Points Matter

In the second part of our Miles & Points for Beginners series, we dove into the importance of setting a goal to help guide you to the right credit card and the right loyalty rewards programs.

Here in part three, we steer the ship towards the earning side of this endeavour.

More specifically, we focus on transferable points and loyalty program points, and what makes them so powerful.

Loyalty Programs

Nearly every airline and hotel chain has a loyalty program.

In North America, some of the better known airline programs include:

The top hotel loyalty programs are:

Unfortunately for people who are newer to the Miles & Points game, learning the ins and outs of loyalty programs can potentially be quite overwhelming.

This is because every loyalty program has different pricing structures and different rules and requirements when it comes to redemptions.

For example, World of Hyatt has a fixed redemption chart that slightly fluctuates based on peak season and low season.

Marriott Bonvoy, on the other hand, has a dynamic pricing model which means that the cost for a night at a hotel will rise and fall with demand, and may be different from one night to the next.

Air Canada operates its loyalty program on both a dynamic and fixed pricing model. When booking Air Canada flights, the cost in Aeroplan points is dynamic, but when booking partner airlines, the pricing is fixed.

With over 100 airline and hotel loyalty programs around the world, it’s not practical to learn everything about each one. Instead, the best practice is to invest some time in learning about a couple of the key loyalty programs that will be most useful to you.

By diving into a select three or four airline programs and learning their sweet spots, you’ll have a much better chance of booking the flights you want at the best price.

Given this, the next question is: what airline programs should you choose?

How To Choose A Loyalty Program

Most airlines belong to one of the three major airline alliances:

• Star Alliance (26 airlines)
• Oneworld (19 airlines)
• SkyTeam (13 airlines)

For the most part, if you collect points/miles with an airline’s loyalty program, you can redeem your points/miles from this program for award flights on all the other airlines that are in the same airline alliance.

For example, Air Canada and United are both members of Star Alliance….