Pointhound
One of the main strategies for booking the best award flights is to be flexible with your destination and your schedule. This is a luxury not everyone can afford, but utilizing award search tools such as PointHound can be a step in the right direction.
Although Pointhound is an award search site, my favorite feature of their offerings is signing up for their email list where you will customize your travel preferences such as preferred points programs, outbound airports, fare class, and regions of the world you are most interested in. Each outbound airport, fare class and region is fully customizable, making it a simple process to get exactly the kind of award information you want and prevents having to comb through endless emails searching for that perfect combination of award features.
The emails batch every few days and are separated by outbound airport and flight tier. For example, my Seattle to Africa economy fares come separate from my Seattle to Africa Business & First, economy from SFO to Asia, etc. I will also receive roundup emails of best Domestic economy fares or International fares from specific airports as well.
The emails are easy to understand, colorblocked, separated by month and prices of points and taxes clearly listed. Although the emails require you to click into the listing to view exact dates and award programs, doing so will automatically open another tab showing the award programs and all the dates and prices for the desired route. Pointhound also rates each award far on a scale of 1-10 showing the value of the flight in comparison to its regular price.
You can book your flights directly through the Pointhound website, with detailed instructions walking you step by step through the points transfer process. I have yet to utilize their site for booking, but I appreciate the clean and easy to understand functionality of their website.
Award search tools have come a long way in a short number of years, greatly demystifying the process by offering up-to-the minute searches and more user-friendly sites. Gone are the days of needing to be a points veteran to book award flights and getting foiled by glitchy websites and abundant ghost flights. However, this uptick in ease of award booking may be precisely the reason we continue to see the devaluation of award points as airlines continue to tighten their belts and limit the availability of their premium seats to their own elite members.
