You know that friend that can magically stretch a small handful of points and miles into two business-class tickets to Paris? What if you also had their superpower?
Enter Pointrs, the new (to the U.S.) platform that shows you how to save up to 75% on flights through the clever use of points and miles. To illustrate, Pointrs showed me that I could save up to 60% on flights from California to Hawaii by using Air Canada miles. Who knew?
Pointrs costs $7.99 per month after a 30-day trial. But how exactly does it work? And who is Pointrs best for?
Read our story to find out how and why you should be using it.
What is Pointrs?
Pointrs is a subscription-based online platform that helps you save up to 75% on flights by using loyalty rewards points. For example, let’s say you want to find a great deal on a flight from Atlanta to Chicago. If you’re a travel veteran like me, you’ll probably check several places online, including:
- KAYAK.com
- Chase Ultimate Rewards
- Delta.com
But no matter where you look, flights are around $350 or 35,000 miles. There’s gotta be a cheaper way. And there is.
If you head to Pointrs > Spend Less > set filters for Atlanta to Chicago, you’ll see that the Pointrs team has found a way to book economy seats for as little as 4,500 miles each way.
So you click on the first option, and see that you can save nearly 80% by using Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles – an option you may have never considered.
But what if you don’t have any Alaska Airlines miles?
Well, Pointrs has thought of that, too, and they’ll kindly point out other ways to earn the miles you need – from spending $1,500 on an Alaska Airlines credit card or simply buying them outright for $83 to $133. Either way, you’re saving way more than the $350 you’d originally budgeted.
These individual travel hacks and deals are called “Pointrs” (hence the name), and there are well over 20,000 Pointrs total on the site – with more being added each week.
Who founded Pointrs – and why?
Pointrs was founded by Australian entrepreneur Michael Dixon, who over the past 25 years has racked up over 100,000,000 credit card points and miles while running a thriving pharmaceutical business.
As he benevolently spent his fortune taking loved ones around the world (including taking his mother on a first-class tour of Europe for her 85th), Michael became a bonafide black belt in how to redeem loyalty rewards efficiently.
So he built a team and a website to do exactly that – help the rest of us book travel as cost-effectively as possible, so our dream trips become well within reach.
What does Pointrs cost?
Pointrs costs $7.99 per month for the Standard plan following a 30-day free trial.
How does Pointrs work?
To start using Pointrs, the first thing you’ll do is create an account. Simply head to Pointrs.com/en-us (assuming you’re in the U.S.), click Get Started and complete your registration. There’s a 30-day free trial, so no need for payment yet.
Next, Pointrs will ask you to enter all of the loyalty rewards programs you’re currently part of, including credit card rewards, airline miles, hotel rewards etc.
In my case, that was Chase Ultimate Rewards, Wells Fargo Rewards, IHG One Rewards and a few others.
(The main reason you enter these in is so Pointrs can consolidate your current benefits and rewards in one place for easy reference).
Next, you’ll be brought to your Main Dashboard:
Here’s a breakdown of all six sections:
Promotions
The promotions screen shows you all current and past travel-related promos for each of the credit cards you entered.
In my case, I can quickly see that my Chase Sapphire Preferred currently offers an 80% bonus on all points transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards to IHG One Rewards. Definitely worth considering if you need to book a hotel soon.
Benefits
The Benefits screen works just like Promotions, but for evergreen benefits that (mostly) never expire.
So at a quick glance, I can see the benefits for each of my credit cards and loyalty rewards programs. Here, for example, are the benefits for my IHG One Rewards Premier card, which are otherwise scattered or buried on various Chase web pages.
Personal Pointrs
Personal Pointrs are a paid, optional service where you can ask the Pointrs team to create “Pointrs” just for you.
There are three types of Personal Pointrs:
- Pointrs Seat Search – For $7.99, the Pointrs team will find you the best possible deal on a specific seat on a specific flight.
- Pointrs Consult – For $199, a Pointrs team member will hop on a 50-minute Zoom call with you to provide booking assistance and general one-on-one guidance on how to most effectively spend your points in general.
- Premium Pointrs Consult – For $249, you can schedule a Pointrs Consult with Michael Dixon himself.
Once you’ve generated some Personal Pointrs, they’ll begin appearing on your dashboard.
Earn More
The Earn More tab is a collection of 161 (and counting) Pointrs tied to a specific topic. So if you want to learn about the Best Credit Card To Use To Earn Points And Miles On Restaurants, you can click that article and be taken to a Pointr comprising 9 tips that will teach you exactly that (and more).
Spend Less
Spend Less is really the meat and potatoes of the Pointrs platform. This is where you can find amazing deals on flights and precisely how to book them at those rates.
Let’s look at another example, this time a round trip from San Francisco to Tokyo. As Pointrs proudly boasts, you’d pay 150,000 miles in most places – but they found a route for just 50,000.
Clicking on the top left option, we find that there are select routes on Air Canada for as little as 50k miles – which you can pay as little as $595 cash for.
From the dropdown menu you can see alternative ways to book on the cheap from ANA, Etihad, Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Kris Flyer and more. But your best bet is still the first option.
For convenience, you can also click the Book Now button to be redirected to the Air Canada site (although the specific flight and deal don’t auto populate).
Travel Better
Finally, the Travel Better page offers helpful Pointrs that are based on specific loyalty rewards programs.
For example, there’s one article titled Use Delta SkyMiles To Fly Other Airlines where you can read six relevant tips. My favorite – and one that I had to learn the hard way – is this one:
“Note 3: Taxes, fees and surcharges may differ between airline loyalty programs.”
Beyond those six main pages, Pointrs also features a blog, a newsletter for receiving fresh Pointrs in your inbox, a Help page and a live chat feature.
So now that you know how Pointrs works, should you be using it?
Who is Pointrs for?
Pointrs’ chief value proposition is that it helps you save up to 75% on flights by booking using points.
Even if you don’t have the specific type of points you need to snag the deal (e.g. Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles), Pointrs will show you what they cost to purchase separately – which still ends up being significantly cheaper than booking the flight directly or via KAYAK.com in most cases.
That means, on paper at least, Pointrs could be useful to virtually anyone who:
- Frequently travels on flexible dates
- Isn’t afraid to track and purchase points with multiple airlines, and
- Doesn’t mind the manual steps involved in finding a deal on Pointrs then booking separately with the airline.
Are there any drawbacks to Pointrs?
I wouldn’t say Pointrs has any glaring flaws, but it definitely has some opportunities for growth in a few areas.
For one thing, Pointrs hasn’t quite advanced to the point where you can click “Book This Deal” and be redirected right to the checkout page on Delta.com with the deal fully loaded. That would be nice to have in the future, especially considering how time is money when booking popular deals.
The platform also can’t search by specific dates (unless you pay $8 for a Pointrs Seat Search). So you may track down an amazing deal, only to find that it doesn’t apply to the specific flight you need.
Lastly, Pointrs can’t look at your existing points balances and say “here’s where you should go.” In other words, I can’t tell Pointrs “Hey; I have 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points, where can I go in the Caribbean?” Instead, it mostly does things in reverse – it shows you the deal first, then the points you need and how to get them.
Wrapping up
Even in its current 1.0 state, Pointrs offers an interesting and effective way to find cheap flights that would otherwise be hidden from all but the shrewdest travel gurus.
Case in point, I myself have been booking cheap flights for 15+ years – but I would’ve never known that I could save $500+ on flights from California to Hawaii… by using Air Canada miles.
So if you’re interested in booking flights as cheaply as possible – even if there are some cumbersome steps involved, from generating accounts to purchasing miles – you’ll want to give Pointrs a try.
– Chris Butsch is an award-winning trainer, speaker and freelance writer helping to train and educate the next generation of high-powered leaders.