Kcberg1

I have a stockpile of points on various credit cards and airline loyalty programs. I came on here expecting to find a link to a website where I could: a) enter all of my point balances and b) enter my desired trip route/dates/cabin and then quickly get an answer for all of my different award redemption options. Basically something like a Kayak or Google Flights where I can upload my point balances and get a full list of award redemption options alongside everything else those sites already have. I've noticed there are some services where I can pay a person to do the work for me, but I thought there would be a free/automated way to do this. Does such a website/app exist? If not, is there a reason why not? Thanks!

sdsearch

The fallacy of your analogy is that Kayak or Google Flights look up flights in one currency only at a time. They also don't have a way to enter how much money you have, you have to figure out yourself whether you can afford the flight.

So IMHO you're asking too much from one site.

Award Nexus (www.awardnexus.com) lets you search for award availability on all 3 alliances, and it's free to join as a FlyerTalk member (click "more signup options" under the green Purchase button to get to the page where you enter you FlyerTalk account info), and you can do a certain number of searches free, but it has no idea how many miles you have in what program, nor does it tell you how many miles it takes in each of the zillions of programs that you can redeem for, it just tells where the availability is.

Then there are other sites that let you keep track of your miles amounts (I think they might be called "mileage managers">).

And there are still other sites that claim to tell you how much it will cost using this airlines' miles or that airlines' miles for such-and-such a flight, but (a) they are not always up-to-the-minute accurate, (b) they don't work well for "dynamic pricing" programs such as Delta, and (c) they don't factor in which airlines do and don't have availability for your route and your date (that you need to go to someplace like Award Nexus for). One of those is Travel Is Free, including a page for comparing YQ fees on redemptions:
Or, for a fee, there are "award booking" services you can pay for that do the searching for you.

So the more "streamlined" you want, the more it costs. For example, what Award Nexus eventually charges you for if you use it a lot, you can do for free at half a dozen different airline sites that all have vastly different user interfaces for absolutely free. So you're paying (if you use it that much) for the convenience of "streamlining".

And you pay even more for "award booking" services, and that's the most "streamlined".

As to why the fully-integrated website you ask for doesn't exist: Kayak and Google Flights and such work because airlines publish all the information needed to purchase paid tickets through reservations systems made for travel agents (this information predates the internet, it's how travel agents worked long before these websites existed). However, the airlines don't publish equivalent information for award flights (because travel agents can't book them). So it takes a lot more work to correlate award availability (provided by airlines via "secret codes" through that same reservation system), with award cost (provided only through award charts, if they even exist for a given airline), with "YQ" cost (not "published" anywhere, you have to "reverse engineer" roughly how it works for a given airline). And then, like I said at the start, Kayak and Google Flights don't ask how much money you have, and thus further integrating a "miles manager" service would be even more work. And this work wouldn't be one time, I would need constant updating since any given day one airline or another may change something. And it would wrong some of the time, because since airlines don't need to publish this stuff to travel agents, they don't always make such changes very public when they make them (for example, "YQ" charges are not published, and so changes to them don't tend to published either).

And think about it: There are many dozens of airline programs in the world, but everyone tends to have a slightly different collection of them. A site such as this would either need to support every airline program there is, or else it would likely not support every airline program you use, because it couldn't guess all of them correctly for every user! (I have AA miles, DL miles, UA miles, BA Avios points, but I also have LAN kms. And I have Amex MR points, Citi TYP points, and Diners Club USA points. How many other people have that exact combination?) So at best, even if it existed, such a site would only cover some, not all, of the miles/points programs you have, and would have a subscription fee, and you'd still have to use other sources for what it didn't cover.

arollins

You posted that same question back in November 2016 and where given some suggestions, quite similar to the one you have just received. Some members even asked you to provide additional details such how many points/miles you have and your goals and they will help, yet you did not provide the answer. Not much has changed.

sdsearch

Please read both posts again. Last time the OP was asking only about 3rd party services:

while now it seems the OP is asking if there's any one website where you can do all of it yourself, instead of using a 3rd party service. Of course, there isn't (that's why 3rd party services exist and that's why all of FlyerTalk exists, because the do-it-yourself part is so far from trivial), and if not why not, but IMHO it's definitely a different question.

dusanb

Answering the OP here - I kind of expected to find the same kind of service/website by now.

I gave up looking and am building one myself. If you or anyone else is interested in testing out an alpha/beta, PM me.

As other folks have mentioned it's not very straightforward due to a variety of factors, but I don't believe it's insurmountable.

MSPeconomist

IMO the OP wants more of a consulting service than just a award booking service, which tends to require that the person has some specific trip in mind.

Either variety will charge a fee.

dusanb

Agreed it doesn't really work without some destination or date in mind. Because the GDS imposes a fee, hard to make this work without charging a subscription, or doing some advertising.

Maybe I'm wrong, but aren't concierge services around $200 per itinerary? Not bad compared to the saving of time and $$$.

dukerau

Is this even really necessary? There are plenty of free websites that will tell you what each mileage currency charges for a specific itinerary. Figuring out which you can afford with your mileage balances is the easy part.

dusanb

Agreed, but this doesn't address the issue of whether reward seats are actually available. Most people know if they have enough or nearly enough miles, but that combined with actual availability is the key, IMHO.

sdsearch

Not necessarily. Those who have actual miles with individual airline programs probably do (Delta's "chartless" redemption possibly excepted ).

But those who instead have lots of transferable points (Amex Membership Rewards, Citi ThankYou Points, etc) that have oodles of not-very-familiar-to-most foreign airline partners, with perhaps several airlines in the same alliance they can transfer to (but at many of which miles will typically expire after 3 years no matter what), they might not have a good idea of where to transfer miles for a particular trip, the timing of the transfer vs the determination of availability, etc, etc.

And the OP did mention credit card points first and airline miles only second...

dusanb

That's a good point and you're right. Useful feedback as I try and develop said search tool (to include the use case of having balances of credit card points, rather than "native" airline miles).