Top 3 Tips for Booking Family Vacations with Points

Traveling with family, especially young children can be…exciting. And expensive. I can’t eliminate all the stress, but at least we can spend less money out of pocket by using points and miles to book our trips.

Top 3 Tips

Plan Ahead

The biggest piece of advice for booking family travel with points and miles is to plan ahead. The school calendar for my kids is announced in the spring for the following year, but there are general patterns around major holidays like Christmas and Easter. Typically, your best shot at finding flights for busy travel holidays, especially for a family of 4 or more, is right when the schedule is released.

Grab my FREE Calendar Template to keep track of schedules and budget for your future travels.

If you are traveling alone and have flexibility there can be great deals within a couple weeks of travel.

How early can you book flights

Generally, airlines release their schedules 11-12 months in advance for all tickets. If you have your eye on flights from United Airlines and you have a stash of United Airlines miles, finding award tickets will be relatively straight-forward.

Partner bookings

In my post about booking direct flights, I showed how you can find exceptional value for your points by using partner awards. For example, United at some point between opening their flights to when the flight departs, releases award availability to its partners (Star alliance members). This is much less predictable – but there are ways to know if you are finding a good deal on day 1 or if you should wait to book. Here’s how:

• Practice award searches – start with an Award search tool like Points Yeah and run searches to see what kind of deal you can get. Get familiar with what amount of points is too much for the flights you are looking for.
• Set award alerts – Points Yeah, and other search tools, allow you to set up alerts for a specific date range and travel itinerary, along with a threshold for amount of points.

How early can you book hotels

Most of the major hotel brands, Hilton, Marriott, IHG will release award availability about 12 months out. This can vary greatly by specific hotel. For instance, I have found some hotels in ski resort areas will wait until the close of the current season (April) before opening up dates the for the following season (Nov-April).

World of Hyatt is one of the hotel programs where most hotels open availability almost exactly 394 days (13 months) prior. If you have your heart set on a specific property at a busy time of year, follow this strategy:

• Determine how many points you need to book the property and have your points ready in your Hyatt account
• Book one day at a time as the dates open. Do not wait until all days are available
• Call to link the reservations together after booking

Other programs such as Vacasa vacation rentals open 18 months in advance.

Find Deals

Transfer Bonuses

One of the best ways to stretch your points is with transfer bonuses. On a relatively regular basis, banks will offer bonuses of 20-40% to specific transfer partners for a period of time. I like to look at the Frequent miler website to see the patterns and guess if one might be coming up soon.

Air France/KLM Flying Blue

A great airline for getting a deal on awards bookings for kids is Air France/KLM Flying Blue. They automatically reduce award tickets by 25% for any child on your itinerary age 2-11.

Companion Passes

Southwest Airlines offers a companion pass, where you can have someone travel with you for free on all your flights, including both award tickets and cash fares. Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines also offer a version of companion fares, but not quite as generous as Southwest.

Free nights on points bookings

Many hotel brands add on a free night if you book your entire stay on points.

• Hilton offers the 5th night free for points award bookings for Silver and higher elite members (does not include free night certificate bookings)
• Marriott offers the 5th night free for points bookings
• IHG offers the 4th night free for points bookings

Know the Rules

Europe occupancy rules

When booking a hotel in Europe, know that they strictly follow occupancy rules. You will not be allowed to have more than the allowed number of people per room. Many of the rooms available to book with points are standard rooms and often cannot accommodate more than 2-3 guests.

Work around for families – after booking the standard room with points, contact the hotel to find out if you can upgrade to a suite or a higher occupancy room for a fee. World of Hyatt has several hotels in Europe that offer a discount on booking a 2nd room for families.

Passports

Kids passports need to be renewed every 5 years and adults every 10 years. Make sure you do not wait until the last minute to renew. Do it well before expiration. If your passport is set to expire within 6 months, you may not be allowed to enter into certain countries. For example, if your passport is set to expire in October 2025 and you are traveling to Europe in June of 2025, there is a chance you will be blocked at the border.

Cancellation policies

Definitely have an idea of the penalties for cancelling or rescheduling flights and hotels. Many US based airlines have minimal booking fees and reasonable cancellation policies for flight award tickets. But each award ticket is different. Generally, booking direct with an airline is the easiest to find the rules and to change or cancel your flight. It can get more complicated with partner awards and booking through a travel portal.

Follow this cancellation strategy if you are ineligible for a refund because the travel date is too soon. Try to move the flight or hotel out to a much later date that puts you in the time window that allows you to cancel without penalty.

Overall if you follow these tips you can save tons of points and money and plan more travel for your family.