185. Which Points Get Your Family to Asia in Business Class?

Point Me To First Class

This episode of 'Point Me To First Class' features Maria Fung, founder of Maria Points the Way, who shares her unique approach to using points and miles for family travel to Asia in

Key takeaways

• Collecting large amounts of transferable points like Chase Ultimate Rewards doesn't guarantee access to business class flights to Asia.
• The key to success is starting with the desired trip and working backward to identify which airlines and loyalty programs offer available premium seats during peak travel periods.

Main topics

• Strategic use of points for family travel to Asia
• Why Chase points alone are insufficient for premium cabin bookings to Asia

Notable quotes

Any family can get business class to Asia if they just stop doing this one thing.

Conclusion

Maria Fung's approach underscores that successful family award travel to Asia requires a shift from generic point

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) Welcome to Point Me to First Class, the only show for employed professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are looking to optimize their higher-than-average expenses to travel the world. I'm your host, Devin Gimbel, and I believe that your expenses are your greatest untapped asset, if you know how to leverage them. Ready to dive into the world of credit card points and miles so you can travel more, travel better, and travel often? Let's get started. Speaker 1 (0:29) Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. On today's episode, we are diving into a topic that I know is a huge points travel goal for so many of you, and one that can also feel incredibly challenging. Using points to book family travel to Asia, especially if your dream is to get your entire family there in a premium cabin like... business class, and I have the perfect guest joining me for this conversation. Maria Fung is the founder of Maria Points the Way, where she specializes in helping families use points and miles to travel to Asia and the Asia Pacific region. Maria moved from Hong Kong to the U.S. in 2017, and her own experiences trying to use points to get her family back to Asia showed her pretty quickly that a lot of the conventional points wisdom she had been following wasn't actually helping her accomplish the travel goal that mattered most to her. And that experience eventually led Maria to develop an entirely different approach to earning and using points for family travel to Asia. In today's conversation, she challenges some of the advice that has almost become gospel in the points world, including the idea that simply collecting lots of some of the most popular transferable points currencies is enough to set you up for whatever award travel goal you want to book. Because when you're trying to find four or even six premium cabin award seats to Asia, particularly during school breaks and other peak travel periods, the strategy that works beautifully for another destination or for one or two travelers may not work nearly as well for you. So today, Maria and I talk about what makes family award travel to Asia different and why your strategy really needs to start with where you want to go rather than which points everyone else tells you to collect. We get into how to think about building a points portfolio specifically around your travel goals, which airlines can be particularly valuable for families looking for multiple premium cabin seats to Asia, and why some points currencies that don't always get as much attention as they may deserve really should play a much bigger role in your strategy. We also discuss award timing, why relying entirely on award search tools can actually put you at a disadvantage for identifying award flights on some Asian airlines, the value of learning how to search for award flights manually, and some routes and airports that might be hiding opportunities you wouldn't necessarily think to look for. Whether you have family in Asia that you want to visit regularly, you're planning your family's first big trip there, or you have four business class seats to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or elsewhere in Asia sitting squarely on your points travel wishlist, this conversation is going to give you a completely different way to think about how you prepare for and approach that award planning. So let's dive into it. Maria, thank you so much for joining me today. I have been anxiously, excitedly awaiting this conversation for so long because you are such a wealth of knowledge around family travel to Asia. And one of my favorite things about you as a points educator, because I've been hearing about you and then following you online and really loving the way that you teach about points and miles, is that you have a very strong point of view. And I think that that is fantastic. So a couple of things that I've seen you post recently that I just love. You posted at one point, any family can get business class to Asia if they just stop doing this one thing. You've also posted the points you've been collecting are probably not the right ones for the flights that you actually want. And I think that both of these statements really reflect your point of view that booking family award travel to Asia is unique. And I'm curious to hear from you. At what point do you realize? that booking, especially premium cabin award travel to Asia, was just a completely different challenge than what most people in the points space have historically talked about. Devon, I'm so glad Speaker 2 (4:17) that I'm here to speak with you on this topic. It is my passion. You know me, I moved from Hong Kong to US in 2017. So I just want to have one credit card and then move on. But I got... rejected by Citibank Costco card, you know, everyone's first card. I got the letter and I didn't know what I was doing wrong. So I checked online and then I found the mouse and points and credit card, how to get your first credit card. So I was hooked and they taught me, okay, you had to earn Chase. ultimate rewards. This would get you your first free travel. But I had to go back to Hong Kong almost every year because of my family in North there and because my sister still there. So Chase was gold. I worship them. 524 rule. But it end up in the first year, I couldn't really find anything for us, for the birds, to Asia, to Hong Kong. not just on business class, but even I couldn't touch economy class. The reason I realized was those airlines partnered up with Chase was not really getting me there. It was ANA, All-Nippon Airways. So All-Nippon Airways, ANA, they partnered up with Amex. So even though I have tons of Chase credit card, huge amounts of Chase bonds, They couldn't make my dream come true. So I shifted the whole strategy, not really listening to those mainstream advice. I built my Amex porn system and I started to focus on my destination, Hong Kong, and really back engineer which airlines really had the seats for us during the school breaks and which bank. And PONS program could really bring us to the destination. So that's why I realized I needed to look at my destination and really build the PONS system and the cuts that I contributed to the four business classes. And finally, I got four business classes on ANA for us to fly from San Francisco to Asia during winter breaks. So literally two first class and two business class. And Speaker 1 (6:50) we're going to get so much more into specific pieces of advice and tips and recommendations that you have around how do the rest of us learn how to do that? How do we also secure business class or first class premium award tickets on some of these fantastic airlines that service Asia? But one of the things that I think is so important that you just talked about is that so many of us in the points education landscape. We tell people you need to have transferable points currencies, right? We don't want to focus individually on just one single airline loyalty program or having an airline co-branded card as our main card. And I think a lot of us agree kind of on the surface that transferable points are the ones that give us options. They give us flexibility. But I think the thing that you mentioned that I see. becoming even more important for people who want to be really strategic about their points and miles as we move forward, is that it's no longer just about do you have, quote, transferable points, is that for specific trips, for specific goals, we now have so many different transferable points ecosystems, and some of them do have much bigger strengths. because of their transfer partners when it comes to accessing specific parts of the world. And so I started in this hobby, whatever, 100 years ago when really it was Amex and Chase. And so I learned the same thing. I started with my Chase cards. I had Amex cards. And for the most part, those did amazingly well for me for many, many years. That's not the same landscape that people really actively engaged in the hobby are encountering now. And so I think it's so... smart and wise, especially when it comes to strategizing premium award travel to Asia, to at least begin at that point that just because so many of us do love Chase Points, or we think that Chase Points is kind of a great entryway into award travel, that that actually... isn't going to be a huge strength in and of itself when it comes to booking travel to Asia. So that is definitely, I think, a very common misconception is as long as I have any transferable points currencies or as long as I have Chase, because people talk so much about them so often. But do you see any other big misconceptions that families have when they first start planning a points trip to Asia? The Speaker 2 (9:07) other mistake even I myself have made with the 524 rule. So everyone just watched it and I did in the past. But I realized the airlines that really brought us like business classes or first classes, they actually provide you more opportunities instead of really restricting you to follow the 524 route. For example, when we look at the airlines that really take you to Taipei or Thailand or even Australia. EVA is one of the airlines top everyone's mind, especially among the Asian American families. And they don't really partner up with Chase, but they partner up with Capital One. They partner up with HSBC. They partner up with Citibank. So if you limit or if I limited to 524, I couldn't really get the whole family on business class on EVA. to Taipei or to the other part of Asia. It is just one of the main examples that I realized. And I also got quite a lot of like friends reaching out to me. Oh, I follow everything online. I follow their advice, only keeping chase or another kind of porn system. But I really could not get any sits during school breaks, not even talking about the winter break. This is a really common Speaker 1 (10:34) mistake that I have seen. So people are starting from scratch. And let's say that they have family travel to Asia as a specific goal for them to accomplish with their points. We've already kind of touched on the fact that just having Chase Points may not be the pathway that's going to get you there. So how do you start advising people? What are the specific transferable points currencies that you see being exceptionally high yield for families to focus on earning in order to be able to access some of those great airlines that service Asia and also tend to have good award availability? Do you have certain recommendations that you tell people, here's a great place to start thinking about collecting? high yield transferable points? Of Speaker 2 (11:17) course, Chase is very valuable. But at the same time, I would put Amex is another one which is very valuable. First thing is my favorite program and airline, ANA, All-Nibon Airways. So they are the only partner with this airline. The other one I found that which is very interesting recently is Delta. Delta. is a kind of powerhouse in Seattle. So actually, they have direct flight from Seattle to Taipei, and they have very good rate. Even though people say, hey, it is very difficult to really get reasonable award ticket on Delta or from their award system. But actually, they release like 100,000 safer awards for Delta One suite from time to time. If you have their Amex card, you can have 15 % off. So it is just like $85,000. It is really a very good rate for Transpacific flying on business class for 14 hours. And the reason I also talk about Delta is they have just started to fly from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. Recently, they released a whole bunch of tickets, which is really one reason that you have Amex points. on this airline system. This is one thing. And the other thing I always talk about, and probably people would think I'm kind of being sponsored, is Citibank. Citibank has a lot of wonderful airline partners. So within the families in the States, of course, AA is the big one. AA also gets us like Japan Airlines, Guitar Airways. Yes, it is good. But the secret here is the EVA because EVA is the Taiwan-based carriers and they have, I would not say all of the routes, but at least the North American routes. You have higher chance to get the business class for a family of two to four. And they have also good chance for you to upgrade to business class from premium economy if you buy a proper. cash ticket. And sometimes it is a good deal. And Speaker 1 (13:29) of course, Capital One is another one that is kind of Speaker 2 (13:32) underrated. Yes, people say the transfer ratio to Japan Airlines and to EVA is not really good, like one-to-one. But one thing we have to realize is we can only focus on one source to support our EVA, to support our Cathay Pacific, to support our Japan Airlines. So we need the second. income stream. I call it income stream to redeem the business class, to redeem the tickets on a specific airline. After all, we are talking about one award ticket number times four or times six. So we need multiple sources to really fill the whole system. So Capital One has many good partners that can take you to Asia, Japan Airlines. Cafe Pacific and EVA. So these are good ones. Recently, MyLove is going to build, what that means to build credit card. They are wonderful. They have 23 travel partners, including airlines and hotel. Of course, hire is one. You let the airlines is one. So you don't have to rely on Chase. But I would like the families that listening to you is