How to Travel for FREE With Points and Miles

If you told me that I would travel over 8,000 miles from Denver to Australia and New Zealand FOR FREE, I would’ve questioned whether or not you were delusional! A flight that normally costs over $2,000, for mere pennies? 

There is no way!

Well, that’s what I thought when I was planning a trip to Australia and New Zealand in early March of 2024. As I was looking through the list of flights from Colorado to Australia, I realized that my dream of traveling to P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney was looking more like a fantasy, rather than a reality.

But as if instagram was spying on my search history (hint: IT IS), I received an email from my preferred travel airline, United, stating that flights to Australia and New Zealand were forty percent off, when booked with travel points. 

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Traveling for “free” with points doesn’t have to be a myth. Save this pin to help you plan your next trip using travel points!

As a hoarder of my hard-earned Mileage Plus points, I knew I had to jump, like a kangaroo, on this amazing opportunity. I thought it mythical that people were actually traveling for “free” exclusively using travel points. Yet here it was…MY opportunity to use my airline points on a flight that was indeed “too good to be true”. 

In an industry that continuously gets more expensive, I found a flight valued at over $2,000, and I only paid the taxes for it (~$100)…for BOTH myself and my boyfriend. Free flights to destinations halfway across the world? COUNT ME IN.

There’s a lot of nuance to booking with points, but since my first award travel flight to/from Australia, I’ve mastered the practice of “traveling for free” using travel points. In this blog post, I compiled a detailed list of ways to make your travel more affordable. This detailed guide covers how to travel for free with points and miles, including my fool-proof way to optimize point accrual with everyday spending!

Wanting to travel more in 2026? Read on to learn more about how you too can travel for pennies. Worry less about the money and more about the miles you travel (and the miles you accrue for use in the future).

What are Travel Points and Miles?

Travel points and accrued miles are intangible currencies that can be redeemed for discounted travel, hotels or even cash back. There are two types of credit cards where you can earn travel points or accrue miles: co-branded credit cards and general travel cards.

Co-branded travel cards involve a partnership between travel company X with banking company Y. When you use your co-branded travel credit card you’ll accrue travel points (or miles, they might be called, depending on the card) that will automatically convert to company X’s loyalty program. 

As a frequent flier of United Airlines and a local to the state of Colorado, one of United’s hubs, I am a devout user of the United Explorer Visa credit card. Whenever I use my United Visa, I earn United miles, which can be redeemed on United flights at any time. 

General travel cards aren’t linked to a specific airline or hotel brand, but offer travelers a chance to transfer points to many different partners. To which airline or hotel the travel points transfer to depends entirely on the credit card: X credit card may transfer points for redemption on A, B, C airlines, while Y credit card may transfer points for redemption on D, E, F airlines. The choice depends on the partners you rely most on. 

In addition to my co-branded United Explorer Visa, I also have a general travel card for all other travel – the Capital One Venture One. With this Mastercard, I earn miles on everyday spending and 5X miles on hotels when booked with the Capital One travel portal. Miles earned with this general travel card can be transferred to many different airline and hotel partners including Aeromexico, Turkish Airlines and more!

If you are an active traveler or are hoping to make any future travel more affordable, I highly recommend signing up for a travel credit card. Whether you choose an airline-specific travel card (United, Delta or Southwest are GREAT options depending on your home airport) or decide to go with a general travel card (I like the $0 annual Venture One, and the $95 annual Chase Sapphire Preferred), the choice is entirely dependent on your spending habits and travel style!

Though I am not an accountant by trade, nor a financial advisor, I do know a thing or two about travel points and optimizing their redemption!

Want to chat more about how to travel for free with points? 

Contact me HERE!

How to Earn Travel Points Effectively: My Fool-Proof Strategy

Take Advantage of Sign-On Bonus Opportunities

This tip comes with a VERY important caveat, so read on to learn more. 

Many travel credit cards such as the Capital One Venture One (which I love) and the United Explorer Visa (also one of my favs!) have opportunities for new members to receive a large sum of bonus miles after opening the card. In many cases, airline and hotel miles don’t expire, and can be redeemed on a plethora of travel experiences. This is considered a “sign-on bonus” – an incentive for new cardmembers to open the card and start spending money. 

Credit card lenders bank on members using the credit card (pun intended) and only paying the minimum payment. Therefore the member accrues interest, and the lender gets paid. 

The caveat is that you need to spend money to earn miles! This is true for most (if not all) earning programs. The “bonus” is only awarded to members who spend a certain amount within a few months. If you don’t spend the amount needed to get the sign-on bonus, you won’t get the bonus miles. In that case, determine if you’ll meet the spending requirement before opening up a new travel card.

Optimizing Everyday Spending Using Cards that Reward Most

In order to accrue points, you have to spend money. 

Regardless of whether or not you are accruing points through regular spending or not, spending is spending. Why not use your credit cards to your favor and optimize point accrual? Strategize a method for faster point earnings by using specific cards for optimal point accrual. 

For example, one of my travel cards earns 2x points on restaurants, hotels, and United flights (my United Explorer Visa card, not sponsored nor affiliated), while my other credit card earns 5x points on hotels, when booked though the travel portal, and 1.25x points on all other purchases (my Capital One VentureOne, not sponsored nor affiliated). 

I use my United Explorer when I fly United and go out to eat, and my VentureOne on all other purchases. Develop a spending strategy to optimize point accruals based on the credit cards you have! Credit cards with point earning systems are pocket “assets”. I find it incredibly rewarding to save my hard-earned points to book a trip at a later date!

Create a detailed list of the benefits your credit cards offer and determine which card to use for which purchase. Having a detailed table to visualize credit card benefits can help you optimize spending for greater point accrual. 

Here’s an example to help you optimize credit card usage to accrue more travel points:

Join Airline and Hotel Loyalty Programs

Joining an airline loyalty program is the easiest way to accrue travel points, even if you don’t open a co-branded travel credit card. When you fly or reserve a room in a hotel, you’ll accrue points that can be redeemed for free flights or a free night in a hotel later. 

Most loyalty programs are free to join and offer members special discounts or travel deals. Do yourself a favor and sign up to collect your miles!

Use Credit Card Shopping Portals for Extra Mile Conversions

Even though I’m not much of a shopaholic, I still flock to my credit card shopping portals to see if I can accrue additional miles when I shop online. Most credit cards like United, Capital One and Chase Travel (my top three credit cards for travel) have their own shopping portals with different accrual rates for thousands of different shops and brands. 

Just recently I got an email from Capital One Shopping mentioning an incredible 10X miles deal on GetYourGuide purchases – the largest bonus miles shopping deal I’ve seen to date, and a regular brand I use to book guided tours around the world. 

If you’re a user of the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserve credit card, the holidays come with incredible shopping discounts, especially on Apple products. Chase Sapphire users can get 25-50% discounts on Apple products when booked with miles. This means that the brand new iPhone, which might normally cost the equivalent of 100,000 miles, could only cost you 75,000 miles (Preferred) or even 50,000 miles (Reserve).

Planning to purchase a birthday gift for a friend or buy the grandkids some toys? Search through your credit card’s shopping portal to see if you can earn extra miles on your next purchase!

Travel Promotions and “Mile Play”

It’s always “too good to be true” until it’s ACTUALLY true. 

The first time I received and booked my first travel promotion – 40% off my roundtrip flight to Australia, when booked with miles, a deal I scored on United Airlines – was the day I realized that you ACTUALLY CAN travel for the cost of a single checked bag. 

Keep an eye on your favorite airline’s promotional deals by signing up for cardmember newsletters or following on social media. I know we all hate to receive promotional text messages, but one day you might just find your “free” flight in one of those pesky messages; I’ve forwarded many promotional texts to family members, many of whom booked the deals with airline points.

If you’re signed up for your favorite airline’s loyalty program, you’ll also get “Mile Play” deals (a term coined by United Airlines) that allows you to level up your member status or get bonus miles. One month it might be, “book and take one flight to get 2,000 bonus miles”, and the next it could be “sign up for our newsletter to get 500 bonus miles”. Opt in to every chance you can get to level up your status, and the miles will stack on quickly.

How to Redeem Travel Points for Maximum Value

Transfer Points to Maximize their Value

There are limited ways to get a business class ticket for the price of basic economy. The biggest way to score unforgettable travel deals is to transfer your points from your travel portal to a partner airline.

Airlines will frequently have transfer deals that multiply the value of your points simply by transferring them from the portal to the airline. These deals are usually seasonal, finite, and require a keen eye to parse the fine print. Once transferred, points don’t expire. However, these multiplication deals are gone in an instant!

Book Directly Using Miles

Though many travelers discourage spending miles like money, this is one of the easiest and most accessible ways to use your accrued travel points. Point enthusiasts frequently mention to “never use your travel points directly” but sometimes the financial need outweighs the patience required for points multiplication strategies and transfer bonuses. 

Points optimization is a marathon and requires a lot of patience – don’t beat yourself up if you decide to spend the points in place of cash.

Take Advantage of Cardmember Award Travel

Signing up for a co-branded credit card, such as getting the X Airline Visa or Y Hotel Mastercard, has more perks that just points accrual.

Oftentimes cardmembers will receive exclusive travel discounts and award flight options not available to the general public. A cardmember exclusive sent to me in an email promotion was the reason I was able to travel to Australia for 40% off, when booked with travel points. If you frequently travel with a specific airline or book specific hotels, I highly recommend looking into a co-branded credit card.

Cash-back Options or Discounted Offers when You Redeem Travel Points

Brands will oftentimes offer special discounts to travelers who redeem points for purchases. 

The most noteworthy example of this is the yearly Chase promotional offer that allows Chase Sapphire users, Preferred and Reserve, the chance to purchase Apple products at discounted rates using travel points. The current deal allows users to get 25% (Preferred) or 50% off (Reserve) specific Apple products when using points. For example, if the iPhone normally would have cost $1000 USD or the approximate value of 100,000 points, Sapphire users can purchase using only 75,000 (Preferred) or 50,000 points (Reserve). That’s a significant discount!

To find deals like this, sign up for your credit card’s promotional emails or, if you’re like me, frequent the subreddit for your specific credit card.

How I’ve Used Points to Travel For FREE

There have been countless times I’ve traveled for free with points and miles. 

I first learned about point redemption offers when I was studying abroad in Florence. My first point redemption with Capital One Miles scored me a “free” flight from Florence to Paris.

The best deal I’ve ever found, and the first deal I impulsively booked, was a promotional fare from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia.

A flight that would normally cost me $2000 USD was discounted to the dollar equivalent of $750 USD – a round trip ticket I “paid” for with 75,000 points. I’d never thought I’d be able to afford a two week trip to Australia and New Zealand, but this promotion sent me directly to the steps of the Sydney Opera House, for the meager price of taxes and fees. It’s not often that deals like this turn up, but when they do, I have the miles ready!

The most recent way I’ve used my travel points was by converting them directly into cash for a return flight from Guatemala. I’m all for points transfer bonuses and miles multiplication, but working in corporate, my travel lifestyle often has to fall within scheduled office closures  – which usually fall over major holidays, the most expensive time to travel. Flights during peak airline travel are always expensive and this was true for my scheduled trip to Guatemala over New Years, which coincided with my office shutdown. 

Rather than try to find the best travel points deal, I simply booked what worked for my PTO limitations. I was able to cover half the cost of my flight to Guatemala with points by substituting them for cash. If you need to use your travel points directly, use them. I won’t guilt you for it!

Best Travel Rewards Programs for Beginners

There are a lot of great travel rewards programs for beginners. Here are a few of my recommendations if you’ve just begun to learn about traveling for “free” with points. Welcome to the world of “free” travel!

Travel Specific Credit Cards

The best thing a frequent traveler can do for themselves is to open a travel specific credit card.

Credit cards like the Chase Sapphire (I like the Preferred Visa for beginner travelers) and the Capital One Venture One (a great Mastercard for beginner travelers) rack up travel points with everyday use. These points can be transferred and multiplied or used directly for discounted or “free” travel. Start putting everyday purchases on a travel credit card and you’ll be a financially-conscious globetrotter in no time!

Airline Loyalty Program, Specific to your Home Airport

Major airports are hubs for specific airlines.

My home airport is a hub for many airlines including United, Southwest, and Frontier. As a frequent traveler on United Airlines, I’ve found the co-branded credit card (United Explorer Visa) to be a great way to earn free travel on United Airlines, which offers several national and international routes from my home airport.

Determine which airline uses your home airport as a hub, or offers a variety of regional and international flights everyday. Then open a credit card and purchase flights using the specific credit card to multiply your travel points. 

Hotel Loyalty Program, Specific to your Preferred Budget

Like co-branded airline credit cards, there are a variety of benefits to opening up a co-branded hotel credit card.

If you travel a lot for work, you might want to join a specific hotel loyalty program and devote yourself to the brand. Book a specific hotel brand whenever you travel and accrue points for one specific brand, rather than staying in multiple hotel brands and having a scattered collection of points throughout them all. Though hotel point redemption isn’t as lucrative as airline point redemption, a free night in a hotel is always exciting! 

Conclusion

As a veteran of booking with travel points (and savvy traveling), I have a lot of knowledge to share about reward travel! I hope this detailed guide to booking award travel with points and miles will help you earn a *free* travel adventure!