beckoa

Welcome to Flyertalk @Koalacash.

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~beckoa, co-moderator Information Desk

Duke787

Any experience with award booking services and PPT (Bora Bora) travel. I consider myself pretty well versed in all of the various mileage schemes and award redemptions and I am at my wits end planning a OW home from our honeymoon (need to get us from PPT to RDU but as a OW). I have a plethora of points all over the place (every alliance + AS + UR + AMEX with enough to cover something significant) yet the best I can come up with is a one way AKL - RDU flight for $2k/person using CSR at 1.5 CPP to offset that.

I would love a second set of eyes but I'm not sure what value they can really add since I'm certain I've covered 99.999% of the possibilities.

Thoughts? Do most of the people on this list have a "only pay if you are satisfied" view? Or do they just need to find *something* (which I can find) and they'll satisfy the requirements needed for payment?

Jasper2009

I obviously can't speak for all services, but afaik most GOOD booking services only charge a fee if they are successful in finding award availability that meets the client's criteria in terms of dates, class of service etc.

Some also offer a general award consultation for more experienced travellers (e.g. go through all the options you've considered and point out any options you may've forgotten, but leave the searching up to you)

But PPT definitely is among the most difficult award bookings - almost impossible to book unless you're open to creative routings and/or detours via Australia / New Zealand / Asia.

Dad to GO

I consider myself above average when booking award tickets but now that I need 4 of them... I need a little more help. I've been able to lock down a 1 way ticket for my family of 4 but am having trouble getting the best "bang for my buck" on our return tickets from Europe-Los Angeles. My real question is, does anyone know of an award booking service that only charges 1/2 price for just 1 way bookings?

TWA884

Folks,

It is time for the periodic reminder.

Award booking services reviews which, based upon content and posting history, appear to have been solicited by the service providers will be deleted.

Additional posts(s) have been deleted.

If you are a brand new or a member with a low post count and wish that your post not be deleted, please be sure to include the following details in your review: program(s), number of miles or points and the desired destinations and/or hotels. Please also include the itinerary booked by the service including the airlines, routing and hotels, the number of points needed to book that trip and the fee charged.

Thank you for understanding.

TWA884
Moderator

saaveraward

Is there a FT folder where one can solicit advice on best use of miles for a complex itinerary? I'm not sticking to one alliance.

I don't need a service to book flights, just some community help to figure out best award routing on a potential RTW.

kellison

Has anyone used Award Advocates or Cranky Concierge who can provide a review of either or both? Thanks in advance.

jj99

Book Your Award Review: I had a terrible experience recently with Book Your Award, and I will never use them again as a result.

I have used Book Your Award on multiple occasions previously with decent success, so I was happy to use them again on a booking to Europe. I had a voucher for Air Canada for 150,000 miles from a previous award flight that I had to cancel for personal reasons. Book Your Award booked the first leg of the trip for 110,000 miles with Air Canada via phone. Book Your Award thought that the remaining 40,000 miles could be used for the second leg of the trip, not knowing that once any of the miles were redeemed the remaining miles could not be used. Book Your Award ultimately booked another flight with Air Canada, which I could have used those 40,000 miles on, but due to Book Your Award's lack of knowledge I lost all 40,000.

Moreover, on this same booking request, Book Your Award suggested an award flight on Air France that required me to move 125,000 Citi Thank You points. After I moved the Citi Thank You Points, Book Your Award did not try to make the booking for an unreasonable amount of time. The award flight then was no longer available. As I mentioned, they ultimately booked a flight using Air Canada miles, so my previous Citi points are now trapped with Air France. Book Your Award also had no idea how to prevent Air France miles from expiring, and there advice on how to do so actually contradicted one of their own articles on this subject.

Also extremely frustrating is that Book Your Award attempted to push the blame on me for both of the above. When I pointed out irrefutably through our message history that Book Your Award did not understand how the Air Canada voucher worked and that my Citi points were now trapped with Air France, Book Your Award would not admit fault. At least Book Your Award did not charge me the award booking fee. In sum, I would not use Book Your Award again.

dingo

I'm skeptical of these services, overall, but readily admit that I don't have the time or expertise to book award flight at something less than the 'got you by the ahems'.

And I tend to wait to book but I've got points currencies up the wazoo...AMEX, Ultimate Rewards, AA, and multiple hotel programs..each in the 7 figures.

So I'm looking for three biz class w/ lie flat seats from CLT to BRU with one connection at most for late May. We've all got to be on the same flights. Before I waste the time of / engage a booking service...is there even any point? Is it too close in and too many seats?

GeezerCouple

It's pretty late, but OTOH, some of the airlines release extra premium awards seats (if available) within the last 2 weeks or so. (Twice, we've been prepared to fly J, and approx 2 weeks before travel date, the awards agent we used got us F seats. Once was on the same airline; once was on a different, and preferred, airline. In the latter case, we just re-banked the points for a small fee. WELL worth it, both times.)

At least some of the services don't charge unless they are able to get you satisfactory seats.

Thus far, we've *always* been able to get something satisfactory, although we usually book far in advance, and also usually have some flexibility on the actual dates, or even the exact routing.

Good luck.
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GC

JBG89

Hi all!

Any recent reviews on awardwallet's service?

Looking to go from SIN-SPU (Croatia) in June in business or first and have a variety of miles

141park

Which booking services have you used with success? Thanks!

GeezerCouple

We've been using "Jasper2009", who posts here on FT, and that's how we found his service.
His website is:

Award Bookings - Luxury Travel Consulting Luxury Travel Consulting

(I'm not sure why this isn't appearing as 'clickable' in the preview, but it should be if you hover on the above line.)

At the time we first started working with him, our only interest was in getting those precious (to us!) premium international tickets. We really wanted to try to get F, not just J, so that can be extra challenging. Fortunately, we are usually at least somewhat flexible on travel dates, which definitely helps.

We "started" our awards F experience by easily being able to get two F seats on JL for ourselves. Great start!

Then... we tried to get CX F seats for the return, and... well... that was going nowhere fast. He helped us get 1F and 1J, while we waited/hoped for another F, or for 2F's within a day or two. He was able to monitor for these while we were traveling in Japan, and it wouldn't have been easy for us to keep searching. Plus, we didn't really want to spend a lot of our precious travel time always fretting about trying to search again for those F seats, etc. At approximately that 2 week prior to flight date window, another F seat opened up

It turned out that he's also a travel agent, and can usually get us some perks that are similar to what we'd get from Amex Plat Travel. And we get terrific personalized service(which certainly is *not* the case these days with Amex).
Since then, he's helped us with several other trips, both the awards air travel, hotels, and now even some cruises with some extra perks that were worth a tidy sum.

GC

141park

Thank you!

PointsNmiles

Hello,

We would like to help you out with your award service needs, especially to help some folks who might not have the time to do the research, etc. themselves. Let us handle the hard part for you. Because airline award bookings is all we do, we are familiar with the various ins and outs of the various programs and really enjoy helping out our clients.

I've posted my info in the wiki and the direct link for more info is https://www.jjawardtravel.com

I've been on the forum since 2012 and I've also had a chance to fly all over the world and want to apply my experiences to helping you have great travels. A good majority of the awards booked we have traveled on those airlines ourselves.


Thanks