How I Planned a Trip to England and Scotland on Points and Miles
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This summer we will be visiting London for the 4th time, but it will be our very first trip to Scotland! We, of course, booked all of our flights and hotels using credit card points and miles. This trip would 100% not be possible if we hadn’t. 💯🙅🏻♀️ We’re flying on a mixture of five different airlines, staying in three hotels from multiple different hotel chains, and I’m detailing exactly how we made it happen!
Flights
The biggest booking of this trip was our very first piece of the puzzle: the ✨surprise business class flights✨ we were booking for our daughter’s first trip to Europe! I knew I wanted to book these first since A) they would be harder to find and B) then I could plan the rest of my dates around the availability I found.
✈️For our outbound flights, I booked British Airways business class through Cathay Pacific for 63,000 miles and $230 in taxes per person:
This same flight booked directly through British Airways would have cost significantly more! Which is why it's so important to know your airline alliances and partners.👇🏼
I transferred 189,000 Capital One Venture Miles to Cathay Pacific to book this flight.
*Best offers for earning Venture Miles:
💳Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card
💳Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card
✈️For our flights home, we booked KLM premium economy from Edinburgh to JFK, stopping in Amsterdam along the way. I have never flown in premium economy, so I'm excited to fly it on KLM! I booked these flights directly through KLM (part of the Flying Blue loyalty program).
We paid 40,500 miles per person for the premium economy seat. I transferred 121,500 American Express Membership Rewards® points to Flying Blue to book this flight.
*Best offers for earning Membership Rewards®:
💳American Express Platinum Card®
💳The Business Platinum Card® from American Express
💳American Express® Business Gold Card
The taxes were high, about $500 per person, but here's my thought process on that:
This trip is unique because my daughter is flying from Nashville, and we are all meeting up in JFK to fly in and out together, which made this a very difficult puzzle to piece together. 🤪 I priced out the cost of a positioning flight or train ticket to another city in Europe to save on UK fuel surcharges, but that wouldn't end up saving us much, and it would have created a LOT more headache on an already complicated trip. So I did what worked best for us and caused the least amount of stress for our way home!
Hotels
🏨For our hotel in London, I booked the Residence Inn by Marriott London Tower Bridge. Since we have a family of three, it can be TOUGH to find points availability in Europe, so luckily they had a family room that sleeps three!
For these three nights, we used our 50k Marriott free night awards. And paid $0 out of pocket. 👏🏻
For our two nights in Edinburgh, we booked a similar layout at another Residence Inn since this was a perfect option for our family of three! We're staying at the Residence Inn by Marriott Edinburgh and paid about 53,000 points per night ($0 out of pocket again).
For both Marriott hotels, the free night rewards and points were earned by opening the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card when it had an elevated offer to earn five 50,000 point free night rewards!
🍻We also have one night in Scotland where we will be staying outside the city along the coast, and I am SO EXCITED for this one. 🤩 We booked the Bonnie Badger (a Small Luxury Hotel) through Hyatt and paid 32,500 points for one night at this unique little pub hotel!
We booked a Deluxe Room and we paid £50 for an extra bed for our daughter.
I transferred Chase Ultimate Rewards® to Hyatt to book this room.
Trains
🚊To travel between London and Edinburgh, we booked a train ticket ahead of time on trainline.com. We have used this site for all of our train tickets through Europe over the years and always had a good experience. We paid cash for these, but if you wanted to cover train tickets with points, you could charge them to a Capital One Venture card and use your Venture miles to cover that cost.
Related: current best offer to earn Venture miles! 💳
Positioning Flights
Since we all wanted to fly together for our long-haul flight, that meant we all needed to take a positioning flight to the same airport. This is where things for really wild. 🤪 Since we were flying to a HUGE airport like JFK, I wanted to make sure that our daughter wasn’t left there along for too long. Luckily we found flights that landed just 10 minutes apart for our outbound journey! And I also manage to snag flights for our way home that both took off at exactly 8 PM.
How we made this work:
Keegan and Aimee: Postion from PHX - JFK on American Airlines (booked through AA by transferring Citi ThankYou Points to AA)
Kenz: Position from BNA - JFK on JetBlue (booked through Capital One Travel Portal)
Keegan and Aimee: Position home from JFK - PHX on JetBlue (booked through JetBlue by transferring Citi ThankYou Points to JetBlue)
Kenz: Position home from JFK - BNA on Delta (booked through Delta and paid cash)
Overall, we're saving over $13,000 on this trip thanks to points and miles!
Bottom line
The UK is the perfect family friendly destination or wonderful for couples looking for their next adventure! ♥️ It’s also an ideal first international trip for so many since it is easy to navigate and everything is in the same language. Not to mention how much there is to see, do, and eat along the way!
➡️ If you’re looking to plan your next trip to London, make sure you download my FREE London on Points & Miles Guide!
EDITORIAL DISCLOSURE: Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.
