With a solid plan and direction, anyone can book their dream vacation. But, let’s skip the warm welcome and opener, and let’s get to the plan for Japan.
Make A Plan
Our first step was determining which award programs would best get us to Japan. There are a variety of sources out there. One is the page we’ve been creating. Where Will Your Miles Take You? Another option is www.pointsyeah.com. A quick search on their platform shows us that American Airlines (AAdvantage) requires 35,000 miles one way. Or, 70,000 miles round trip
This also specifically shows us that we can earn AAdvantage miles through Bilt credit cards. While this is an option, Bilt points are tough to accumulate in any short time. The best route is to earn them through AAdvantage co-branded credit cards. Which is what we are currently doing.
Get the Points/Miles
Two card issuers are co-branded with AAdvantage miles. Citi Bank and Barclays. Check out FrequentMiler to learn more about them. We both applied for the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select but were denied. It happens, unfortunately. We had better luck with the Barclays Aviator Red. There’s a killer promo going on right now and you can get 75,000 miles with the sign-up bonus. Quick math, 35,000+35,000 (flights) and you’ve got a sign-up bonus that can get you and your significant other to Japan. If you both open the card and get 150,000 miles, you’ll be flying round-trip to Japan in no time.
Update
The promo is gone, unfortunately, so your path forward will have to change a little bit If you both open an Aviator Red card, you’ll have 60k+60k=120,000. Not quite enough to get two of you there round trip. You’d need 140,000. This can be achieved in a couple of ways.
Without the promo it’s 60,000 which is still a great start, you may just also have to consider getting a Citi card as mentioned above. (or Barclays if you chose Citi first.) If it’s in your name the points will combine in your American Airlines account and you’ll have all you need. It’s worth noting that you can’t transfer points between accounts without a hefty fee so however you make up your strategy, you may need to book separate reservations and then pick your seats next to each other. You could probably do this over the phone pretty easily if you’re concerned.
A cheap and easy option would be to open the two cards and put all of your spending on them. Including making purchases through the AAdvantage shopping portal. In time you’d have enough for what you need. This works great if you’re not planning on going soon but want to start preparing. The Citi card gives you 2x the points on gas purchases which would make this a little quicker.
You could also purchase miles to top off your account. If you open a card and get the 60k. You’d need 10k more to get a complete round-trip ticket. You could then purchase the remaining 10k from American Airlines. Purchasing miles doesn’t often make sense, but in this case, you could top it off for about $340. $340 is still pretty good for a round-trip ticket to Japan. Doubled of course if there are two of you. The Citi card previously mentioned requires $3,000 spend to hit the sign-up bonus which would leave you at 63k with a leftover 7k miles needed, reducing that $340 to $237.
Sometimes people are unable to open new cards. It happens. Don’t stress it. If you’re still interested, look at Zippair out of San Francisco. They have relatively cheap flights to and from Japan that could make for a cheaper trip than booking out of your home airport.
This may be extremely confusing so really, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Back to the Plan
Our strategy is a little different as we’ve got a third person, our lovely baby, and we’ve got about 85,000 points with Air Canada (Aeroplan). Regardless, we both opened the Aviator Red card getting us 60,000+75,000 (with the promo) totalling 135,000 AAdvantage miles. Enough to get the three of us to Japan with plenty left over. 35,000×3=105,000.
Aeroplan costs 50,000 one way so we plan to transfer some of our Capital One miles over to get us up to the 150,000 that we will need to fly the three of us back. If we didn’t have the Aeroplan miles we would be solely focusing on accumulating AAdvantage miles.
We are just waiting for the sign-up bonuses to be posted to our accounts and we will be booking our tickets.
The alternative of course is to pay the $3,600 it would take to fly the three of us to Japan and back.
But the Hotels?! What About the Hotels??
Did you forget? This is the plan for Japan!
A few months back we opened the Chase IHG One Premier credit card. This sign-on bonus at the time was 170,000 points. Currently, the offer is 140,000. We used roughly 50,000 of our points to spend 5 days in Mexico City. This left us with 126,000.
A perk of this particular card is if you book 4 nights, you get that 4th night free. So, for 69,000 points and 4 nights, we can stay in this incredible Intercontinental hotel. This still leaves us with 57,000 points.
Let’s say we want to go to Kyoto or Osaka, which we do and probably will. Why not choose this Holiday Inn for 4 nights and 50,000 points?
But wait, there’s more. Our favorite credit card, and the card we use for everything, the Venture X, gives us $300 every year for booking flights and hotels.
This is easily another 2-3 nights.
Our Ultimate Plan for Japan.
Credit card rewards are the gateway into the world of free travel. With the help of these specific cards, we are planning to fly to Japan and to stay for up to 11 nights without paying for anything but sushi and high-speed trains.
So, what are you waiting for? Start the planning today and join us in Japan!
Additional Thought and Tips.
- This strategy can be applied to any dream vacation. Take a look at this hotel in Bali Indonesia. An opening bonus on the IHG card could get you a very long time in a beautiful resort.
- PointsYeah is incredible. Many people are interested in Europe. It works just the same. A quick search shows up that 5 different credit card programs can transfer to Virgin Atlantic for 30,000 points one way from Salt Lake City. Or, American AAdvantage, similar to Japan, can get you there for 29,500.
There are lots of options. Start your planning and go from there.
- I have to include the importance of being smart with credit cards. Don’t spend more than you have and never do anything to get yourself in debt. It’s not free travel if you’re stuck paying off credit card debt.