Trip reports, booked with real points
Here's exactly how I booked it — points, cash, and all.
Every report shows the real math: what I redeemed, what I paid in cash, and what the seat or room would've cost otherwise. No hypotheticals — trips I actually booked, for myself and for friends who asked me to help.
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A $12,000 Galápagos trip for 7, mostly on points
Cash covered the flight and hotel to mainland Guayaquil — then Avianca miles and a million-plus IHG points took over from there, including two nights that were flat-out free from a credit card perk. The IHG rate wasn't IHG's best-case value, but it still cleared a real margin over what those points would've cost to just buy outright (IHG regularly sells points around 0.5¢ each).
Read the full report →Over the last 25 years I've booked hundreds of award flights and nights, with total retail value likely exceeding $1,000,000. This site shares that know-how with the world.
Why this exists
It started with a desire to travel, and not much money to do it.
In 2001 I found FlyerTalk and fell into learning everything I could about miles and points. The game was different then — mileage runs, mattress runs, promotions, a scattering of credit cards, none of the transfer-partner ecosystem that exists today.
After planning and taking a few trips with friends, I knew it was sustainable. Credit cards became a bigger part of the earning mix as the years went on, and I was taking at least one big trip a year.
Since then I've helped friends plan honeymoons, family vacations, and plenty of regular trips — and I still take a few every year myself, usually with my parents along for the ride. None of it would have been possible without miles and points.
Easy Award is an attempt to pass that knowledge on, and eventually give readers a place to share their own great redemptions too.
And it matters more now than ever. Travel costs — especially hotels and flights — have climbed sharply over the last few years. A week-long solo trip can easily run $3,000+ on flights and hotels alone. For a family of four, that number reaches $4,500 or more — before a single meal out or ticket to anything.
That's why this site exists: to help you save on the trips you were going to take anyway, and to make the trips you've only read about actually affordable. Usually with miles and points, but not exclusively — whatever genuinely saves money. You won't find "I booked a $25,000 first-class seat" content here. You'll find family vacations, long weekends, and bucket-list trips that regular people take, with the real numbers behind each one.
Happy travels!
Recent reports
Every trip, with the receipts
Structured summary on the left, the full story on the right — so you can skim the numbers or read how it actually went.
No trips match those filters yet — try clearing one.
Affordable Bloomington hotels for IU football weekends — the play I've now booked three times
IU football tickets are cheaper than ever to get — IU football weekends aren't. As the program's success has pulled in more fans, hotel rates near campus have followed, with $800+ a night now common on home game weekends. 18,000 Hyatt points a night at the Hyatt Place Bloomington turned that into a non-issue, and it worked well enough that I booked the same play for two more weekends this season.
Read the full report →A $12,000 Galápagos trip for 7, mostly on points
Cash covered the flight and hotel to mainland Guayaquil — then Avianca miles and a million-plus IHG points took over from there, including two nights that were flat-out free from a credit card perk.
Read the full report →A $10,000 last-minute trip to Mexico City during the World Cup, on miles and points
Booked ten days out, right as a World Cup match sent every hotel in the city into surge pricing. Business class for three came from a transferred Amex bonus — then a planned mid-trip hotel change, made to see two different parts of the city, turned into the best redemption on the whole site: 42,000 Hyatt points for a room pricing at $1,560 a night in cash.
Read the full report →A Thanksgiving trip for 5, hitting one of Alaska's real award chart sweet spots
Alaska prices these short domestic one-ways at 7,500 miles in coach and 15,000 in first — half of what the old-school 12,500/25,000 standard domestic chart used to charge for the same cabins. Coach award space wasn't there for this route, but 15,000 miles for a first class seat at half the traditional rate still cleared roughly 2¢ a mile. Holding the Alaska Airlines Visa also waived the standard $20/person, per-direction partner booking fee — $100 saved across the group for the one-way flight, since the return was cheap enough to just pay cash for. Hyatt points, transferred from Chase, covered a suite-upgraded stay at the Hyatt House Chelsea.
Read the full report →What's in my wallet
Cards that actually earned these trips
Not a "best cards of 2026" roundup — just the ones behind the redemptions above, with the transfer partners that made them work.
Amex Platinum
Key benefit: Membership Rewards points transfer to 20+ airline and hotel partners, often with bonused ratios — the AeroMexico transfer behind the Mexico City trip landed at 1:1.6. Also carries strong lounge access and hotel elite status, on top of the points.
Chase Sapphire Reserve
Key benefit: 1:1 transfers to Hyatt — consistently the best transfer value of any hotel program, and the card behind every Hyatt redemption on this site, including the 11¢-per-point Andaz stay.
Chase Sapphire Preferred
Key benefit: the lowest fee-to-flexibility ratio of any transferable-points card — same Hyatt and airline transfer partners as the Reserve at a fraction of the annual fee. Usually the first card I recommend to a friend starting from zero.
Atmos Rewards Summit Visa
Key benefit: waives the $20-per-person, per-direction partner award booking fee — worth $100 to our group of five on the one-way Thanksgiving flight alone, and double that on a full round-trip — plus an annual Global Companion Award redeemable in any cabin, including first.
IHG One Rewards Premier
Key benefit: every 4th award night free, on an unlimited number of stays — this turned 8 nights in the Galápagos into 6 nights' worth of points, a flat 25% discount no points math can match.
Easy Award may earn a commission if you apply through a link on this page. That never decides which cards get covered — I won't recommend a card unless it has a genuinely compelling value proposition and is one frequently used by either me or a reader.
Submissions open
Got a trip worth writing up?
Reader-submitted trip reports are open. If you've booked something you're proud of — or fully researched a great trip idea — I want to hear about it. Not every submission gets published, but every one gets read.
Ground rules
- Real trips only — booked and taken, or a trip idea checked against real current availability, not chart math
- Honest numbers — the actual points or miles redeemed, the actual cash comparison, no rounding up
- I fact-check before anything goes up, the same way I do for my own reports
- I score every submission myself, the same way I score my own trips — that score is what decides whether it gets published
- Editorial discretion — a low score doesn't mean it wasn't a good trip, just not the right fit for the site right now
- No compensation — this is shared knowledge, not paid content
What to include
- Destination
- Programs used — flight and hotel
- Points or miles redeemed, plus any cash portion
- What it would have cost in cash
- Any tips for other travelers
- Photos, if you have them
Email your trip to
submissions@easyaward.comStay in the loop
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