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🤙🏿 Welcome back to the Better Than Points Newsletter - the premier place for all things Credit Card Points News and Travel

My name’s Luis and I’m the one writing this (hit me up here!)

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Each week, I’ll share something cool I’ve discovered or tackle a question from the community. It’s my little corner to explore ideas, offer fresh perspectives, and hopefully spark your own curiosity.

I wanted to walk you through my thought process when I'm booking a trip with points.

Hopefully, seeing how I actually do it makes the whole process feel a little less daunting.

If I'm trying to use points for both the hotel and flights, I usually start by figuring out my hotel dates.

The reason is that sometimes finding the hotel availability I want can actually be harder than finding a flight, especially since I usually have more airline options to work with.

Let's say I wanted to go to Spain and had a bunch of Chase points.

I know Hyatt is a Chase transfer partner, so the first thing I would do is go to Hyatt's website and search my potential dates.

If you didn’t know that, here's a good credit card points transfer matrix that I made a while back.

Transfer Matrix Link

I wouldn't transfer any Chase points yet.

I'd first see which hotels are available with points, how many points they cost, and which dates work with the amount of points I have.

Once I found the hotel and dates I wanted, I could lock that in.

From there, I'd start working on the flights.

One of the first tools I'd pull up is FlightConnections.

It gives you a visual look at which airlines and routes can actually get you to your destination.

From there, I can start figuring out which airlines I could book using my Chase points.

For example, I could look at Air Canada Aeroplan.

Aeroplan gives you access to over 50+ partner airlines, so I'd search its website to see if any of those partners had award availability to Europe for the dates around my hotel stay.

United would be another easy option because Chase points transfer directly to United.

I could also look at something like Virgin Atlantic, depending on the route and which airline I wanted to fly.

There are also tools that can make this process significantly faster.

Virgin Atlantic's Reward Seat Checker and Avios' Find reward flights tool are two really useful resources for quickly seeing award availability without searching one individual date at a time.

And there's one more thing that's really important when you're doing this:

Don't limit yourself to your home airport.

Sometimes you're going to need to take a positioning flight to a larger airport to catch the international flight.

Airports like JFK and IAD have significantly more international service, which also means you have more opportunities to find award availability.

Added some actual flight results to the flight of the week section

If I can't find a good award from my home airport, I'll search from one of those larger airports and figure out how to get there separately.

That's really how I approach the whole thing.

Find the hotel and dates that work.

Then figure out which airlines fly where you're going.

See which of those airlines you can book with the points you have.

Search for the award availability.

And only once you've actually found the flight you want should you transfer your points.

It might sound complicated when you're first getting into points and miles, but once you break the trip into individual pieces, it becomes a lot easier to figure out.

In what I'd call some pretty crazy whiplash, Hyatt announced that its current partnership with American Airlines is coming to an end.

There is still some time to take advantage of the existing benefits, though.

If you have a Hyatt account, make sure you link it to your American Airlines account by November 15.

Link them here.

If your accounts are linked by then, Hyatt members can continue earning eligible American Airlines rewards through December 31, while American Airlines members can continue earning eligible Hyatt rewards through February 28.

But that's not really the interesting part of this story.

Hyatt is essentially dropping American for Delta.

If you remember, back in 2025, American and Hyatt changed their partnership pretty significantly.

Previously, you could earn Hyatt points when flying American and American miles when staying at Hyatt, essentially allowing you to double dip on your travel.

Then they got rid of that reciprocal point earning, which, understandably, didn't make a lot of people happy.

Now it looks like some version of that idea is coming back, except this time with Delta.

We don't have all the details yet, but the new partnership could potentially include reciprocal earning opportunities and benefits based on your Hyatt or Delta status.

So you could potentially see opportunities to earn Delta SkyMiles from Hyatt stays or Hyatt points when flying Delta, along with additional benefits for elite members.

The exact earning rates and status benefits are what I'm going to be watching closely because that's where this partnership could get really interesting.

There's also another Hyatt partnership worth knowing about that could potentially make this even more useful.

Hyatt launched a partnership with Air Canada Aeroplan in July, and there's currently an Aeroplan status challenge that can help eligible members earn Hyatt status.

The offer is available to eligible Aeroplan Elite members, including certain 25K members and cardholders.

If you're eligible and register by December 31, you get a 90-day challenge.

Depending on how many qualifying nights you complete at Hyatt properties during that period, you could earn World of Hyatt Discoverist or Globalist status.

That's where I'm really curious to see what happens next.

If Hyatt's new Delta partnership eventually includes some type of status matching or reciprocal elite benefits, there could potentially be an interesting path where you leverage Aeroplan status into Hyatt status and then use that Hyatt status to unlock additional Delta benefits.

That's not something I'd go out and get a credit card for yet because we still need to see exactly how the Delta partnership works.

But it's absolutely something I'm keeping an eye on.

Once Hyatt releases the full details of the Delta partnership, I'll dig into the numbers and see whether there's a worthwhile status strategy hiding in all of this.

I came across a study that asked 192 tour operators to rank different nationalities based on a few categories:

Who is the most polite?

Who are the best tippers?

Who are the biggest spenders?

Who are the most adventurous?

And who are the biggest foodies?

Honestly, I just wanted to know the answers.

Unsurprisingly, Japanese tourists were ranked the most polite, with Norway coming in second.

When it came to tipping, Americans took the top spot.

I don't know if that's necessarily surprising, though.

We have such a strong tipping culture in the U.S., while tipping either isn't expected or works completely differently in a lot of other countries.

Americans also came out on top as the biggest spenders.

The one that surprised me was the most adventurous travelers.

Germans took the top spot, with the French coming in second. Americans were fourth, with Japanese travelers close behind.

Then there was the foodie category, which I found particularly interesting went to the Indians.

It made me think about something I've noticed while traveling.

I'll be somewhere with all these amazing local restaurants around, and somehow the big American chain restaurant is packed.

I guess sometimes Americans travel halfway around the world just to decide, "You know what sounds good right now? Something I can also get back home."

I.e., the Cheesecake Factory anywhere I travel to

Overall, I thought this was a really interesting snapshot of how people working in tourism see travelers from different countries.

Obviously, you can't boil down an entire nationality into a handful of characteristics, but it was still fun seeing which stereotypes held up and which rankings were completely different from what I expected.

For some reason, the UK's air traffic control system had a glitch earlier this week that essentially shut down the skies for a couple of hours.

Even after they fixed the issue, the cascading effects continued.

One of the crazier stories I saw involved passengers sitting on the taxiway at Heathrow for more than five hours.

Five hours sitting on an airplane without even going anywhere is crazy.

It reminded me of another situation we saw in the U.S. involving an international flight coming back from Mexico.

The flight had to divert to another airport, but because that airport didn’t have immigration and customs, passengers couldn't simply get off the plane.

They ended up stuck there for hours.

Situations like these are why I always board a flight somewhat preparing for the worst case scenario.

If there's medication I absolutely need, it's going in my carry on, not my checked bag.

And now that we travel with kids, I probably overpack more than I need to when it comes to snacks, diapers, wipes, formula, and anything else they might need.

I'd rather carry around a few extra things through the airport and never use them than be stuck on an airplane for five hours with a hungry kid and realize I'm out of snacks or diapers.

It's also why I don't necessarily pack based on how long the flight is supposed to be.

A two hour flight can very quickly turn into a six, eight, or even longer ordeal when weather, mechanical problems, air traffic control issues, or diversions get involved.

Most of the time, everything will go exactly as planned and you'll carry those extra supplies around for absolutely no reason.

But every once in a while, something crazy happens.

And when it does, you'll be very happy you packed for the flight you might have, rather than just the flight you were supposed to have.

Check out these crazy award deals!

This section includes some of the best award flights of the week bookable with points and miles.

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This section includes some of the best links videos and articles of the week around the points and travel community