Family Travel Unpacked: Make the Most of Travel With Kids

How We Planned London & Azores on Points

• Melissa Conn • Season 1 • Episode 42

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This summer our family is heading to London and the Azores — and before we go, I'm walking you through exactly how we're paying for it with points and miles. From 32,500 AA miles per person to a $1 flight (yes, really), this episode breaks down every flight and every hotel booking and shows you what this trip would have cost in cash versus what we're actually paying out of pocket. If you've ever wondered whether the points and miles game is worth it for a family, this one's for you.

IN THIS EPISODE

  • Why we paired London and the Azores together — and why we couldn't squeeze in a second island
  • How booking nine months out locked us into an ideal one-stop itinerary at 32,500 AA miles per person
  • The one-dollar flight from London to São Miguel — and why departure taxes matter more than you think
  • How we'll get home from the Azores with United miles and a cardholder deal
  • Finding a four-person hotel room in London (harder than it sounds)
  • How we used Amex points — a currency we were flush with but not using enough — to cover our Azores hotel stay
  • The full cash value of this trip vs. what we're actually paying

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Welcome and Points Preview 
01:32 Trip Setup and Constraints 
03:22 Flights to London with AA Miles 
06:36 Avios Deal and UK Departure Taxes 
08:04 Flying Home from the Azores 
10:36 London Hotel: The Standard with Hyatt Points 
13:23 Azores Hotel: DoubleTree with Amex and Hilton Points 
15:16 Total Costs and Takeaways 
16:46 Wrapping Up

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Melissa

Hey there, and welcome back To Family Travel Unpacked. I'm your host, Melissa, and in case you're new here, you can always find tons of detailed destination guides, travel tips, hacks, and more on my website, thefamilyvoyage.com. And if you've been enjoying the show, be sure to hit follow wherever you're listening so you never miss an episode, and drop a five-star review below- it really helps other families find the show. A few months ago, right before our spring break trip to mainland Portugal, I peeled back the curtain and shared exactly how we booked our flights and hotels on points. A lot of people told me that was super helpful because it made all of the award travel stuff feel more concrete instead of this abstract idea that, oh, you just earn points on a credit card and magically transfer them to the right partners. That trip was actually kind of complicated. There was definitely some 201 type of strategy in there, so you might wanna listen to that episode after you finish this one. That's number 30 in case you wanna go back to it later. But I'm doing it again, and thankfully, it was a lot simpler to piece things together even though this trip involves two different countries. This summer, our family is headed to London and then the Azores, which in case you don't know, is a Portuguese island group in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. After the trip, we'll talk in depth about what we did while we were there. But for now, while the planning decisions are still fresh in my head, I wanna walk you through the booking logistics and how we're using points to do this trip at least sort of on a budget. If you're new to the idea of using credit card points and miles to offset your travel costs, or you feel like you could use a refresher, you'll definitely wanna hop back to episode seven where I break down the basics, or you can head to thefamilyvoyage.com/freetravel to grab my free e-book. All right, let's get into it. First, the setup. This is a summer trip for our family of four. We're spending five nights in London and then four nights in the Azores, specifically on the island of São Miguel, which is the biggest in the group. Ten nights total when you include our overnight flight to London. Here's the honest version of why we're capping it there. We really wanted more time in the Azores, but this was literally the only ten-day window this summer when all four of us were free at the same time. We're leaving two hours after my daughter's last production for her theater camp, and we get back 36 hours before my son gets on a plane for his sleepaway camp. We have a summer full of awesome experiences ahead, and I'm not complaining, but, like, this is definitely a real-life scheduling challenge. So because of those constraints, we honestly didn't get the best possible deals on our flights. If we had more flexibility, I could have either used fewer points for our flights or gotten us there in premium economy or business class. But as it stands, we would have had to cut our trip short to make either of those possible. And ultimately, our priority is the destinations, not how we get there. The other thing I'll say about how this came together, London and the Azores might seem like a random pairing, but there's logic, I promise. We were already planning to visit Portugal this past spring break, and the Azores kept coming up as a place we'd love to visit, but just couldn't fit in. A lot of the flights from the U.S. are seasonal, and we also would have had even less time during spring break, so we tabled it and figured we'd go a different time. Then when I started thinking about the summer, the routing just clicked. There's a nonstop from London to the Azores that I could book with points. It also gets us a little closer to home and peels back an hour of the time difference, which will be nice for our son since he has such a tight turnaround. And the combination of both destinations gives us a balance that offers something for everyone to get excited about. London has all the cultural history and that kind of movie backdrop excitement, and the Azores has beautiful landscapes, hiking, whale watching, and hot springs. Honestly, our family is really excited for both of them. Okay, let's start with the flights. I was really hoping to score business class or at least premium economy for that overnight transatlantic flight, but it hasn't happened, at least not We're a few weeks out and still booked in economy, although I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a last-minute deal. Here's the thing, though. I'm completely at peace with economy because I think what I did get is a great deal. I booked nine months in advance last fall, and because of that early booking window, I was able to find our ideal itinerary. One stop, perfect timing for our ridiculously tight window, and it gets us there without spending an entire day sitting around in airports. Also, we used just thirty-two thousand five hundred American Airlines miles per person and five dollars and sixty cents each for taxes and fees. That's twenty-two dollars and forty cents total out of pocket for four people to fly to London, which I think is pretty awesome. If I'd been able to find availability through Alaska Airlines, it would have been twenty-two thousand five hundred for that same itinerary, which is crazy, but I was probably a month or two late to get that. One thing you'll wanna keep your eyes on is that dollar amount for taxes and fees. Flying from the US to London on American, United, Delta, or other US carriers, you're generally just gonna pay that $5.60 for the mandatory security fee. But if you're trying to fly on Virgin Atlantic or British Airways, the taxes and fees can be more than $150 each in economy or up to $1,000 per person in the front of the plane, and that's on top of the points you'll have to use. There's just no way we'd feel comfortable spending that much. And ordinarily, we'd look at positioning to a bigger airport like JFK or Dulles to grab a great deal, but we just couldn't do it this time with such a tight timeline. Now back to what we did book. Those AA miles came from two American Airlines credit cards we had opened, the Platinum Select and the Business card. When we opened them, each had a welcome offer of around 80,000 points, and each card has a $99 annual fee. Between the two cards, we had more than enough miles for this flight. Now, I'll be honest and say that I don't know if I'd chase those exact cards today. Don't get me wrong, AA miles are still really useful. We use them all the time. But there was a change last summer that I wanna call out for you. Citibank became, once again, a transfer partner for American Airlines as long as you have one of their paid cards that earns thank you points like the Citi Strata Premier or the Citi Strata Elite. The Strata Premier didn't make my recent episode on the best $95 credit cards because it's just a little bit more niche than the other options I covered, but it earns at really solid rates for families, three points per dollar on groceries, restaurants, gas, airfare, and hotels. The Strata Elite doesn't have the same earning structure, but it has some really nice perks and a few times since its launch last year, it's had a 100,000-point welcome offer. That's when my husband Ronnie got it. Both of those cards transfer to a bunch of partners, including American, Air France KLM, Virgin Atlantic, JetBlue, plus some hotel programs. So if you see that American has great service from your home airport, the Strata Premier or Strata Elite could be a good pickup for you because it gives you access to American while keeping the flexibility in case there's a different airline that offers something better. But anyway, we already had the miles in our accounts and the deal was really solid, so I took it. If I get an alert the day before that there's a better or cheaper option, I can always cancel for an immediate refund of my points. So I felt really confident locking in a flight that worked for our schedule and our stash of points. Flight two is London to the Azores. This is something I'm pretty proud of, and it's because of $1. We booked four seats from London to São Miguel on British Airways for 13,000 British Airways Avios and $1 each in taxes and fees. Just $1. Here's why that matters. The UK has a departure tax that can be substantial no matter what airline you fly, but it depends on how far you're flying and in what class of service. On the long-haul flight back to the U.S., it can start around $270 per person on top of your points. So if we'd done this trip in reverse, flown to the Azores first and then London before going home, we'd have been looking at about $1,000 just in taxes By flying out of London to a fairly close destination within Europe, we paid just a dollar each. I'm not gonna go deep on the departure taxes and carrier-imposed surcharges right now, but if you're ever booking into or out of the UK, it's worth thinking through the direction of your trip before you commit. As for where those Avios came from, we've collected them over the years from flying different Oneworld partner airlines and also through the British Airways Airbnb portal. You earn two points per dollar on those stays on top of whatever you earn by paying with your credit card. And one nice thing about the BA program is that it allows household account pooling, so all of our family's miles live in the same bucket, and even the kids had some from random flights we paid cash for when they were a lot younger. And if you ever need to top off your Avios balance, they transfer in from Chase, Amex, Capital One, and a few other bank programs, so they're really easy to access Now the flight home from the Azores to Columbus. I'm gonna be honest, this one is less exciting from a points standpoint, but it was the most constrained decision of our whole trip. When I booked last fall, there was basically one option that would get us back from São Miguel without spending an extra night somewhere along the way, and it was on United. We're paying fifty-three thousand United miles per person plus around sixty dollars in taxes and fees. I know that sounds like a lot, but the cash rate on this itinerary was around twelve hundred dollars per person. So we're using points instead of paying four thousand eight hundred dollars out of pocket, and I'm good with that math. One reason I was able to make it work is that United offers a cardholder discount on award redemptions, and I've been able to reprice this flight a few times since I originally booked it and bring the miles cost down even further. So keep checking your flights because if the price drops, you can often rebook at a lower rate, and it might be worth getting one of the low-end United credit cards like the Explorer just to access those better cardholder rates. The United miles came from credit card welcome offers, same as the AA miles. United has offered cards with one hundred thousand-mile bonuses at various points, including right now on the business card, and we also get a lot of targeted spending bonuses on our United cards. Things like earn an extra eight thousand miles for hitting a spending threshold in a quarter or a ten thousand-point bonus for adding an authorized user. We've added the kids as authorized users, which was a quick win. Similar to British Airways, United offers points pooling, so Ronnie and I are able to combine the points that we each earn from our United credit cards along with anything that the kids pick up from flights they take. I'll mention two alternatives to get back home from the Azores that would have worked if we had a little more flexibility. Azores Airlines run some inexpensive cash fares from the Azores to the East Coast, Boston, New York, Montreal, and Toronto. And if we weren't up against Jacob's camp departure, I could have booked one of those for around three hundred dollars per person and then erased it with our Capital One Venture X points. From there, it's a short flight home, but it would have meant a night in a hotel, and we just don't have room for that in our family schedule The other option is WestJet, but they announced their service from San Miguel to Toronto after I had already locked in our tickets. Those flights are so cheap for the day before we wanna come back. Like right now, you could fly from San Miguel to Toronto for $113 per person. If you don't have a summer trip booked yet, take a look at that. And those flights actually get to Toronto around midday, so there is time to catch one of the non-stops back to Columbus. But the hour-long flight from Toronto to Columbus, that's over five hundred dollars each, so it wouldn't have ended up saving us anything, and we would have had to cut a day off of our trip to take advantage of that deal All right, that's enough on flights. Now let's go on to hotels. Finding a hotel in London that fits four people in one room is really, really hard. A lot of hotels cap occupancy at two or three people per room, and the ones that allow four are often either very expensive or not in a great location. In theory, I don't mind having two separate rooms, but not at London prices. Thankfully, there's one sort of good option, The Standard London. Hyatt acquired The Standard brand in 2024, so it's now part of the World of Hyatt portfolio, and I was able to book it on points. It's a category six property, and our nightly rates range from 25,000 to 29,000 points per night. I transferred those from Chase. We're staying for five nights, so we're talking around 140,000 points for the whole stay. For London, where hotel rates are really steep, I think that's solid value. Now I'll be up front, it's gonna be tight. Four of us in one room at The Standard is not gonna feel spacious. My friend Lana stayed there last year with her two kids, and she said her younger one slept on the banquette and it worked out fine. I'm telling myself the same will be true for us. We've slept on mattresses on the floor in hostels in Thailand, so I'm sure we can make this work, and if it weren't for booking on points, we probably wouldn't have been able to include London in our summer travel plans. I also want to flag something for anyone planning ahead. Hyatt updated their reward chart earlier this month, and under the new rates, the standard can be anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000 points per night. Obviously, check the calendar for your dates. If you're seeing really high points prices, it's definitely worth comparing to other options, like booking a more basic hotel or vacation rental and erasing the purchase with Capital One points, or using statement credits from a card like the Citi Strata Elite. I talked about how we use that strategy in episode 30 if you want the details. Another option I looked at was Hilton. Last month, Amex was running a 20% transfer bonus to Hilton, so every Amex point could become 2.4 Hilton points. If that was the case when I was booking earlier in the year, there are a few Hiltons I would have considered because the math works for some very specific reasons. We each have an Amex Platinum card, which gives us Hilton Gold status. So when we book on points, we get the fifth night free at Hilton properties, and we happen to be staying in London for five nights. When you do all the math for that transfer bonus and the fifth night free, some of the DoubleTrees around London come out to forty-five or fifty thousand Amex points for two rooms. Not terrible. But by the time that transfer bonus started, there weren't many options that actually had those base rooms for all five nights. I know that was a lot of math, but you can always go back to episode fourteen to learn more about these next-level hotel booking strategies for families. So I think we'll stick with the standard unless one of the Hyatts magically has a suite available for our dates in the next few weeks. I did reach out to one of the nicer Hyatts to inquire about upgrading from a standard room booked on points to a room that would accommodate a family of our size, and they quoted me a nightly rate of four hundred pounds on top of the thirty-five to forty thousand points per night. To me, that's just too steep. For São Miguel in the Azores, we're staying at the DoubleTree in Lagoa. It's a Hilton property, which means I could use Hilton Honors points, and this is where the big stash of Amex points we've been sitting on finally gets to do some work. Now, here's a little background. Our family is pretty flush with Amex Membership Rewards points. We earn a lot of them from really generous sign-up bonuses and also from transfers from Rakuten. But honestly, we don't spend them nearly as often as we spend our Chase points because Chase transfers to Hyatt, and Hyatt's been our go-to hotel program since they offer really solid value. So we have a big pile of Amex points that needed a job. Hilton's a good use for them because Amex typically transfers to Hilton at a one-to-two ratio. One Amex point becomes two Hilton points unless you're lucky enough to get a transfer bonus like the one that happened last month. The DoubleTree in Lagoa is thirty-five thousand Hilton points per room per night, and we're booking two rooms for four nights to accommodate our family. So that's two hundred and eighty thousand Hilton points total. I already had about sixty-eight thousand Hilton points sitting in my account from stays over the years, so I transferred another one hundred and six thousand Amex points, Which became two hundred and twelve thousand Hilton points, and that covered the rest. Done. Obviously, it would have been better if I'd transferred during a bonus like the one that was available last month and if our schedule was more flexible, we could have stayed a fifth night for free. But alas, it just wasn't in the cards. Our complimentary Hilton Gold status comes into play here and gives us free breakfast, which is a nice perk. Four people, four mornings, free breakfast at a hotel, that adds up fast and takes the pressure off finding a restaurant before a hike or a whale watching tour. We debated getting an Airbnb, but just didn't feel like spending a ton of cash and it's peak season. Plus Ronnie gets access to the gym, the kids will get a pool and I'm not gonna be cooking on vacation anyway, so we don't really need a kitchen. Everyone wins. Again, if you wanna hear more about how to use those hotel loyalty programs and specifically how Hilton Gold status can help you, I covered all of that in episode 14, which is the Hacking Hotels episode. Let me summarize the numbers so you can see the full picture. Four transatlantic flights in economy, 32,500 AA miles each and $22.40 out of pocket. Four flights from London to the Azores, 13,000 British Airways Avios each, $4 total out of pocket. Four flights home, 53,000 United miles each and $60 in fees per person. Five nights at the Standard London, about 140,000 World of Hyatt points transferred from Chase. Four nights at the DoubleTree Lagoa in two rooms with breakfast, 106,000 Amex points transferred plus around 68,000 Hilton points I already had in my account. Now let's talk about what this would have cost us in cash. Flights were running about $2,000 per person for the three legs, so $8,000 for the four of us. The Standard in London would have been about $2,000 for five nights, maybe more. The DoubleTree in São Miguel for four nights, around $1,200. So we're looking at roughly $11,200 in cash for this trip. instead, we're paying a few hundred dollars in taxes and fees. The rest is points and miles that we earned through credit card welcome offers, everyday spending, and a few years of collecting. In total, a ballpark of six hundred and forty thousand points from a combination of Chase, Amex, and Citi This is exactly the kind of trip I had in mind when we started building out our points strategy. It's not magic and it's not super complicated. The keys are starting early, holding points in flexible currencies, and being willing to get a little creative with your routing when you need to. All right, that's our London and Azores trip from a cost perspective. Once we're back, I'll do at least one full episode on each destination. What we did, what we loved, and maybe what we'd change. I can't wait. If you have questions about any of the strategies I talked about today, how I found our flights, the Amex to Hilton transfer, the United cardholder discounts, any of it, send me an email at melissa@thefamilyvoyage.com. I do read every message and I love using listener questions in future episodes. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Family Travel Unpacked. If it was helpful to you, be sure to hit follow and leave a five-star review wherever you're listening. And share it with a friend or maybe a spouse who needs help seeing just what points can do for them. Until next time, safe travels