Award booking services - a list and some reviews
 

I tried about 5-6 different search combinations before I posted this and couldn't come up with any threads more recent than 2005-2007.

Is there a service that I can hire to make award bookings for me? I am a frequent reader of TPGs blog and would have hired him to keep income coming into a product that I use regularly but his blog states that he is no longer taking new award booking clients.

I am probably wasting my time posting this but please do reply that it is something I can do myself for free. I work 60-70 hours a week and have neither the time nor the patience to search the various airlines websites that I have mileage balances with hoping to find some combinations of days that would work. For me, it is money well spent to hire someone to do that for me.

Thanks for all the forthcoming suggestions.

go to www.viewfromthewing.com. Gary Leff is a well known and very savvy blogger who is possibly the best known of the award bookers. Full info on his site.

I believe he charges $250 for two tickets and doesn't charge if he can't deliver. He's a good guy and you would do well to contact him.

Actually, TPG has posted on his site that he is still doing award bookings for Premium members, at quoted from his blog:

"Price: Generally $125 per person. Due to capacity I am not taking new award booking requests for new clients at this time. I will still book awards for new and existing Premium and VIP program members."

Per his site, for Premium membership, you get:
- Daily email of posts, ad-free, generally before they post to everyone else
- Email blasts of breaking deals, like mistake fares and limited time offers (these emails will be rare, but when they are sent, they will be valuable)
- Choose either 1) Award booking benefit: 2 award tickets at 50% off ($50 per ticket fee instead of $100+) or 2) 30 minute phone consultation and evaluation of your current points and miles strategy
Annual fee of $125

Good luck!

Lot of folks

Gary, view from the wing
Lucky, one mile at a time
Brian, thepointsguy
Not sure exactly whom but folks at upgrd.com
many more.....

Rates are almost more or less the same for everyone.

Ben also know as Lucky9876coins has been a contributor here and has a blog at http://boardingarea.com/blogs/onemileatatime also has a service to find award seating.

"Having trouble using your miles for that dream trip? Consider using my award travel booking service, Points Pros. You can find more details, including what we do, how to contact us, our pricing, testimonials, and more, at PointsPros.com."


Never used it myself, but I've read Lucky for years and the man is extremely knowledgeable and helpful. He also serves on the board here at flyertalk.

I realize I may be a bit late for the OP here, but for future reference - I too run an award-booking service. You can check it out here, or in my signature :)

Cheers!

Award booking services - a list and some reviews
 

I have done plenty of award bookings- but at times its quicker to pay for the help as Im on travel etc. Or the multiple friends & family "bugging" me for help.

I would like to divert them to competent and reasonably priced consultants.

Could you please post links to relevant services here, and possibly add your experiences. Feel free to add basic pricing etc.

I will update this post with all links provided.

The search function revealed very scattered info over the years. This might become a master list.

THERE IS NO NEED FOR DISCUSSION ABOUT THE NEED FOR SUCH SERVICES OR BASHING OP OR OTHERS FOR NOT DOING IT FOR FREE

Edit:
Some of the veterans dont take new clients. Will add info posted on thread.

http://www.awardtravelconsulting.com/ My personal favourite based on requests to all services. YMMV.

www.awardexpert.com

http://bookyouraward.com/

http://pointspros.com/ (unable to take new clients at time of October 2012 update)

http://travelfreecoach.com/ (no e-mail adress on web site - only link for form)

http://premierawardbookings.com/ (no e-mail adress on web site - only link for form)

http://www.travelconcierge.com.au/ (no e-mail adress on web site - only link for form)

www.milevalue.com

http://www.maximizingmiles.com/services/ (unable to take new clients at time of July 2012 update)

http://www.firstclassandbeyond.com

http://crankyconcierge.com/ (Word of warning: contrary to other services this require full pre payment)

http://boardingarea.com/blogs/thewan...aramean/about/

http://www.worldclassperks.com/

http://upgrd.com/award/ (no e-mail adress on web site - only link for form)

www.awardplanners.com (very nice website!)

www.awardbookingservice.com (no e-mail adress on web site - only link for form)

http://www.extrapackofpeanuts.com/aw...oking-service/

http://shrewdtravel.com/award-booking/

http://awardassist.com/ (no e-mail adress on web site - only form)

www.awardmagic.com (no e-mail adress on web site - only form)

http://www.upgradeguru.com/ (contactdata under ToS!))

http://www.juicymiles.com/

Out of service as of time of writing (OP date);
thepointsguy http://thepointsguy.com/about-me/ "If you are writing to ask about booking travel using points, I do not currently offer that service, but hope to add it again soon."

Concur that a master list with reviews would be a great addition.

gleffp - http://bookyouraward.com/

lucky9865 - http://boardingarea.com/blogs/onemil...ed-award-help/

thepointsguy did or does, couldn't find link on his blog - http://thepointsguy.com/about-me/

You really think your friends & family will pay for this service when they know that you will help them if they bug you enough? :)

What is even more interesting is instead of helping "friends & family" he will rather have them pay. (wow)

And I don't see the point of paying someone for that.

Agree with why wouldn't you help family/friends???

I would, but OP clearly says "at times its quicker to pay for the help as Im on travel etc"

Award booking is time sensitive

I believe lucky and thepointsguy are not currently accepting new customers (for award bookings that is). But I may be way off.

http://pointspros.com/
 

http://pointspros.com/

I recently used this service. I wanted to book a round trip to Asia, but one way with OW, and the other with *A. He presented me with a schedule that I hadn't thought of, but that I liked.

I believe the price was worth it, considering I didn't have to deal with any airline, and everything was done through e-mail.

How much?@

$150.

Obviously you have not ever booked a complicated routing involving very hard to find award seats segments, at the peak seasons or last minutes.

There are times the money paying for the experts to hunt these down for you is money well-spent when you either dont have the knowledge or the tools to look for such, or you simply dont have the time to hunt for such.

And it is time consuming.

Above all things, it is the KNOWLEDGE that one is paying for.

Those pros know the alliances route maps like the back of their hands. They can come up with routing that none of the newbies here can think of, or know about.

Of course if your award idea is a r/t to Hawaii, or a r/t to Europe / Asia with the basic routing, you would think paying for such service is crazy... UNTIL, you have a very difficult time finding award seats on the basic routing you know about... such as just to get to Rome in July by business class to meet your cruise ... Then those services may come up with very unusual routing that have seats to get you there... just an example.

I've used travelconcierge before (twice now) and Roland has been very good at finding what I want and from different alliances. I think he is Australian based, but is very knowledgable in finding routings for me that work. ^

I used up *A miles for my first trip and this time I am using up my *A miles one way and BA/Avios miles on the way back. Being able to fly the A380 on Air France was nice.

I agree on the knowledge thing....and they have a wealth of experience working with awards, thinking outside the box and making things work. They know not just alliance partners but non-alliance partners, etc.

Granted with a bit of work anyone can figure this stuff out...with the right tools. I would certainly consider using a consultant like this though if I had special needs beyond a simple, straight-forward ticket.

Fair point:D

Ridiculous:td:

:td:

Ive spent more than 300 hours on phone with US, burning millions of miles. There is no way I can help all friends and family with the time consuming ANA searches and phone calls with various US agents. However most I have done have been for family and friends. I have never charged any fees for helping anyone spend their miles. I even pay for it my self when urgent due to timing, travel etc. Will update with my experiences.

Which award service would you recommend and how much would it cost?

Need to book with U.S. Airways dividend miles for Biz or 1st class from LAX to SGN, PHN to YVR and YVR to LAX for late December 2012 to January 2013, approximately 3 weeks total for trip.

My service is in my signature line. :D

I would also like to recommend Award Travel Consulting and they only charge $100 per booking: http://www.awardtravelconsulting.com/ I am new to the game and ATC helped book two F class award tickets using US Airways DM. They take consulting to a new level because we experienced a bump on one of our segment back home and could not get in touch with US Airways but luckily I was able to get access to a computer before boarding and emailed ATC with the predicament. They gave US Airways a call and had the problem resolved when we arrived for our next connection flight.

I'm glad you enjoyed your trip...hopefully we'll get to see some pictures of you in the BKK Thai Airways First Class lounge soon! To clarify, we charge $100/person to put together an itinerary and $50/itinerary to call in and book. We have a full explanation (along with a picture taken in TK first class suites with wine and canapes :p) available--see link below.

Since people asked, I'll throw in a shameless plug for my service:
see link below

Back in November I was looking for help in getting some award travel booked. I got in touch with both Ben (aka lucky) and Gleffp (aka bookyouraward.com). Gleffp never bothered responding to me. Ben responded to me within a couple of days (the delay being due to his being on the road). Thus of the two ben gets my vote. However, in the end I decided to plump down for KVSTool, do some research and booked my travel by myself.

First Class and Beyond
 

Don't forget about the First Class and Beyond award booking service (see link below)!! It's been around for about 16 months and has serviced clients around the world. With the exception of being out of town - and even then, only sometimes does the following not happen - you will always get a response within 30 hours!

Thanks for your consideratoin!

My website now has a new URL- see link below

I have contacted all consultants mentioned to date in OP with a challenge. Will report progress.

Worth noting is that several dont publish their contact mail, and you have to use a form. This to me is inconvenient.

Please do report back.

I have always wonder what goes on when an consultant engages with a client to help with an award trip. Do they talk on the phone? Do they email back-and-forth? Do they finish within a day or two (successful or not), or do they work with the client longer-term to secure and optimize the redemption?

i like your site, but the blog hasn't been active in months

+1 (or ExpertFlyer)

I used a service (none of the ones listed here) about 10 years ago that I thought was responsive, treated me well, and would be perfect for someone who is "new to the game"...but...they ended up finding only the same routing I had already found on my own, which made me think they were using the same tools I was. It was a semi-complicated oneworld itin nested inside a more straightforward Star Alliance itin, but nothing overly crazy. Couple hotel awards in there too...

It was cheaper then - something like $49 per trip. I paid it thinking they'd magically find some partner or routing I didn't know existed, but I was wrong. Not really their fault...it's just that if you know how to use a lot of the tools listed here on FT (whether for mileage runs or for award searches), you're likely fairly high up on the proficiency scale already and therefore less likely to overlook a nugget that a true "pro" will find. At the end of the day, the $49 bought me assurance that I had indeed found the optimal route and not missed something.

Where I can see using a professional would be on an RTW, simply because of how long it would take to put that one together. Anything that gets into long phone calls to airlines starts to sound worth it to me. Plus some good local knowledge of hotels in places where I'm not using points would be worthwhile.

Out of curiosity, was it a prepaid type of consultation, or was it contingent on acceptable itinerary found? Did you talk to the consultant about what you already found, or did you wait to hear from them?

Also, before you engaged them, how much time do you estimate yourself having spent to find the same routing that they did?

I imagine that's part of the pricing situation with these kinds of consultations. The consultant has to average his work complexity - if everyone booked the easy trips themselves and only come to the consultant for the extremely complex trips, the cost (and price) will have to be well north of $200 - $400, instead of just $49.

one more i found recently when searching but haven't used any of them yet..

http://crankyflier.com/

10 years ago!? Did you account for inflation? ;)

My service is that you don't pay if I can't find you anything.

I prefer not to have my e-mail published on the website simply to prevent automated bots from filling my inbox with spam. If it is really an issue for people, maybe I will reconsider. Either way though, simply drop me a PM or fill out the form, and I will be happy to reply with my e-mail.

Thanks! Yes, I am working on getting it back up and running. Look for a new post coming this weekend.

You could use this format; award at travel.com

In any case many prefer using their mail client, which also keeps a copy in the sent box.