Smart ways to save on holiday travel

Getting home for the holidays could take a bigger bite of your gift budget this year. Sure could, and what you book now could make all the difference come November and December. Holiday flights are already bringing some sticker shock. Hopper puts average domestic round-trip fares at about $400 for Thanksgiving and $450 for Christmas. This is the highest prices we've seen in a decade. add to that the high fuel costs and the potential for El Nino weather delays. There's plenty to plan around and you really have to plan around all these things. And joining us now to help answer some of those questions. The Points Guy, director of contents and travel expert Eric Rosen. It's kind of like we're facing some landmines here and we travel. It's really tough for travelers right now. Higher prices, uncertainty around the weather, especially with El Nino. We've already seen it wreak havoc on certain destinations in the Pacific, including the west coast of Mexico this past week. So travelers have a lot to keep in mind, obviously. They said $400 there, and that to me sounds on the cheaper side. I mean, I had a friend that just took a flight, and she's not even going outside of the country, and it was $900. Isn't that the truth these days, right? $400 seems cheap. What does that tell you about how prices have been going? We've seen consumer price index after consumer price index list airfares as 20 to 30% higher year over year for the past couple years. So really, it's squeezing travelers right now. And honestly, if you can find something that suits your budget right now, I would say book it while you can. So buy right now. That's the time. So this month. Yes, especially for holiday travel. Do not wait. Prices aren't going to go down. Avoid basic economy, right? Those non-refundable fares where you can't make any changes. Buy a regular economy fare so that if by chance something does go down, you can pocket the difference as a flight credit for future use. But right now, prices are not going down. We are not seeing them flat at all. And to that point, and we were talking about this earlier, we see this every year, record number of air travel, record number of travel. There is no incentive then for the airlines to bring down the cost of travel if people just keep paying up. Well, that's interesting you say that because Delta's CEO just said that the other day on an earnings call, which is that the The market is bearing these prices, so why would they lower them? People are buying these tickets. So unfortunately, that's why we've seen these prices keep rising. So don't wait for them to go down. No, they're not going to this year, it looks like, unfortunately, even beyond the holidays. So start thinking into 2027 if you can as well. And like I said, as long as you're not buying basic fares, you can always look at if the price drops later and pocket a flight credit. We've seen that happen at the point sky. We have a few tools we like to use like Payback and Jenova that use AI to help you with your reservations. They can monitor them and get those flight credits for you automatically. How does that work? So if somebody were to sign up for something like that? Absolutely. So one of my colleagues at the Point Sky loves a service called Payback. It's P-A-I, so that's easy to remember because it's AI that's helping you do it. You basically load your reservation into the service or you can link it to your email basically. As long as you book directly with an airline, it can monitor that reservation for you. If the price drops, it snags that for you, and then you can pocket that flight credit. There's another one called Genova that does the same thing, and it takes a 20% commission off of the savings. But you're still saving the money, so you're not really seeing that price difference there. So when it comes to holiday travel, and you say book now, because a lot of people just say, I'm going to wait and see, maybe there's going to be a bargain that comes up. You're saying that's not going to happen. Give us some tips. When should you be flying? When people say you can fly on Thanksgiving and then you give up your Thanksgiving, but that still could be a lot cheaper than, let's say, flying two days before Thanksgiving. Absolutely. I mean, think about the days we always say are the busiest at the airport, Tuesday, Wednesday before Thanksgiving, that Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving. If you can avoid those days, avoid them. Take an extra day off work or an extra day off school if you can with the kids. you'll have much better chance the weekend before or coming into the following week, like December 1st, I would say, you'll have a better shot at getting a more decent airfare this year. And like you said, there are no savings this year, unfortunately, that we're seeing prices just keep going up. So that's why don't wait to book. So we were also talking about, obviously, this upcoming Super El Nino season. And I imagine these people who try to book a week-long vacation to some islands somewhere to get away from it all. And then they see a hurricane, this and this is coming. And so what areas should we avoid or what areas might be best to go to as we kind of look forward to this especially tumultuous weather season? Sure. I mean, regionally here in California, we're bracing for we don't even know what, probably torrential rains. We're not sure when they're going to come, how long they're going to last. We're getting a Santa Ana this week. everything's just more variable now. We've already seen some big storms in the Pacific, especially around Hawaii, and then also on the west coast of Mexico this past week. So I would say for the next couple months, don't look at Pacific vacations. Unfortunately, those are wonderful destinations, but you don't want to take a chance. Look east. The Caribbean has had a very mild season so far, so think about an island vacation. And then I was just in Europe last week for an airline event. Amsterdam was breezy, beautiful, 70 degrees, and they're having a tremendous fall this year, their summer was sweltering, but it's led to like an Indian summer there basically. What do you recommend when it comes to trip insurance? And you see this with airlines at the end, they're like, listen, if you buy this trip insurance, we have weather or something like that, especially with the weather situation that we could potentially be dealing with, we could be alert somewhere. Do you generally recommend that people buy this trip insurance or not? I would say skip the trip insurance that you're offered at the end of making that airline booking. Instead, look into an insurance policy that you can buy a la carte, maybe for one particularly big ticket trip, or something that lasts all year. If you're a frequent traveler, I have an annual travel insurance policy. But it's important that you look at what the exclusions are, because weather might be one of those excluded things. It tends not to be because that's exactly what you buy insurance for. Also, you might wanna look at your credit card again that you're using to book your flight because it could have trip insurance for you. Trip cancellation or interruption insurance for a covered cause like weather. There are cards like the Chase Sapphire Preferred that will cover you up to $10,000 per trip if you use it to purchase your ticket. So as long as it's covered and weather's one of those covered circumstances, then you should be set with that. And if you don't have traveler's insurance and you're about to get some rough weather, what's your recourse? Absolutely. I see what your options are. A lot of times airlines issue waivers, sometimes hotels do too. I mean, the last thing airlines want are pictures of stranded passengers in airports around the world. No, that's not good for them. No, so they're gonna help you change your ticket, but obviously don't wait to the last minute to do it when there will be long, long phone lines, essentially, and also use the app. We've been seeing a lot of scammers at The Points Guy populate those Google search results. So don't Google that flight number. Go through the airline's app or directly through its website. a number that you find there, not through Google, so that you don't accidentally call a fraudulent call center. We only have like 30 seconds, but you are the points guy. If people have points, what should they be doing with those? Should they be using their points? Now, a lot of people want to save them for that beautiful trip to Amsterdam or something like that. Should they be saving their points? Or now in this world where it's hard to get a cheaper ticket, should they be trying to use their points to get a better flight? This is the exact right time to use those points you've been saving to save some money, right? Unless you're going on your honeymoon next week and you have a specific use for those miles. Don't worry about the big ticket trips right now. Save the money for the travel you know you're taking soon. And there's always ways to earn more points and miles in the future. Do not hoard them. They're not gaining value. Don't wait. Yes. That's the whole point of this conversation is don't wait. Eric, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Appreciate you. You can find more on thepointsguy.com.