The 7 Things Our Travel Pros Insist On Packing

Smart Travel: Upgrade Your Getaways - NerdWallet Travel

Megan Coyle and Sally French from NerdWallet's Smart Travel podcast share their essential travel must-haves in a special in-studio episode, blending practical packing tips with financial savvy. They highlight tools like

Key takeaways

• Megan uses a 40L Peak Design backpack with a detachable day pack for versatility; it’s ideal for long trips and airport flexibility

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) You guys know I'm a backpack only traveler, but today you get to find out what backpack I'm actually using. And don't worry, I don't have anything against roller bags like Sally does, but I have plenty of recommendations that you could put into a roller bag if you wanted to. Welcome to a special in-studio edition of Smart Travel from NerdWallet, a deep dive into the tips, tools, and tactics to maximize your travel dollars. I'm Megan Coyle. And I'm Sally French and welcome to our real video set. You can watch us by going to Spotify to see the video version of us. As you know, we're the travel nerds ready to help you plan your next big trip. And that planning might mean packing. That's exactly what I was thinking. This episode dials into seven items we would not travel without. But first, our disclaimer. And that's that we'll talk about a few credit card companies that are nerd wallet partners in this episode. But that doesn't influence how we discuss them. The benefits terms and fees mentioned were accurate at the time of posting, but things can change. Some offers may have expired by the time you're listening. For the latest details, follow the links in the episode description. All righty. We are going to pop out of the studio real fast to record some up-to-date news. We'll be right back. Now, we love saving time and money on travel. And one of our favorite travel award search tools called Seat's Arrow just released a new Chrome browser extension. It lets you compare points pricing when you run a search on Google flights. Or you could also do it on some of the other travel search tools like Chase Travel if you have a Chase Travel card. This really does seem to be becoming the trend in Points Tools, the thing where there is now a browser extension tied to this. I am such a fan of Points Path, which also does something similar. With both of these tools, it makes it easier to figure out what the point cost is versus what the cash price is because you can just search for a flight on Google flights. And then without having to go check the individual airlines website to see how many points that flight would cost. Instead, it's just displayed right there on the browser extension. So how it works is you download this browser extension and then you open Google flights like the website and run your search. And like you said, the number of points will show up right under the cash price in the search results. Now, I'm very familiar with Points Path because I use it. But I want to know with Seat's Arrow, does it work for all types of cabins? Yes. Once you select the exact flight, like the time and the airline and everything, it'll show you the points prices broken out by cabin and also by the different types of points you could use to book that exact flight. Now, I guess the problem is, what if I don't actually have any miles with that airline? Let's say I'm booking an American Airlines flight, but I don't actually have any Airline Advantage miles. Well, the great thing is you can actually filter the results by airline, by credit card transfer partners, and even the max number of points you're willing to spend or maybe that you have in your accounts. So that way, you don't even see the options that you won't be able to book because you don't have enough points or miles. I have to start out of mind. I don't want to know. Now, one thing that people do, what I know is we talk a lot about these points tools and they cost money and people are like, please don't tell me something that costs money. I want to know if it's free. There is a free version, but you'll only be able to see results for 60 days out. So if you're trying to book a flight for next year, you wouldn't be able to see that yet. And also, the free version shows you cashed results, which means that this is not live availability. That means that maybe a day ago or six hours ago, they did see some availability for this flight on points. But maybe by the time you click through to the airline's website, it might be gone. Ooh, interesting. And we do know that airfares can change over the day, even over the hour, perhaps. So that interesting to think about but I guess I do appreciate that there's the freemium model so you can pay nothing and get a little taster of it and then pay a little more and then get something better. So if you do pay a little more, it is $9.99 per month or you can just pay all in one go, in which case it is $99.99 for the year. And we have a review all about seats. arrow on the nerd wallet website. And we can talk about when it might make sense for you to pay for that pro subscription. So we'll link to that in the episode description. High level, though, if you are booking a lot of award flights, if you've got some dream flight redemptions in mind, like first class on Japan Airlines or something like that, then I think the pro subscription could be worth it for you. And there's also some new features for cardholders that do get special discounts with certain airlines, for example, United and Delta. So again, if you're trying to see a complete picture of what your award flight options are and you do have a credit card with Delta or United, then again, you might want to consider a pro subscription because then you can see that cardholder pricing in those search results. And here at NerdWollet, we do the work for you. We review all of these points tools, whether it's SeedS.Arow, points path, there's a bunch of others. Check out NordWollet.com because we have reviews of all of them. All right. Now the next one is one of my favorite, Sally. You know I love an airport chai latte. It's just like so comforting. Oh, I do. Starting August 5th, eligible link. members of Delta Sky Miles Rewards Program and Starbucks Rewards Program will earn one mile per dollar spent at participating Starbucks coffee houses. This program has flip-flopped in the way that you earn your points or your stars a few times. So right now, I think it gets a little simpler. Delta and Starbucks launch this program in 2022. I did sign up right away. And then in 2024, they changed the rewards rate to be based on how much you reloaded your Starbucks gift card balance. So that sort of forced you to buy Starbucks gift cards. I don't love this because, you know, I hate gift cards. I actually didn’t mind this because you also get more Starbucks stars. That's kind of their rewards currency if you pay with a gift card. So I was already using Starbucks gift cards. But the weird thing was that you would get a certain number of Delta miles based on the amount that you reloaded. And it wasn't one to one like it will be now starting August 5th. So this is a lot simpler to remember. And just to note, none of this is life-changing numbers of stars or numbers of SkyMiles. Now it is pretty straightforward. You just earn one Skymile per dollar spent at Starbucks. So I appreciate that because I don't want to be scurrying around with all the gift cards. Keep in mind, we value a Delta Skymile at 1.2 cents each. That's NerdWallet’s valuation. So you're going to have to be buying a lot of coffee to get anywhere near a free flight. I do recommend that people do link their accounts if they have flown Delta within the last year because that is one of the requirements of being able to earn Delta Sky Miles with your Starbucks purchases. But if you do that and you go to Starbucks even occasionally, I think this is easy to do and it's free, so you might as well. Speaking of this partnership, they did one more new thing, and that is they shared a recipe for a Delta Cookie Drink that you can now order from the secret menu at Starbucks. Sally, you know my thought was, yeah. Yeah, I'm like, this is basically Biskoff in a Starbucks. Here's the recipe. Grande, ice brown sugar, oat milk, shake and espresso. I don't love oat milk. Ask me later for my hot takes on oat milk. But then they line the cup with caramel sauce. One pump of chai. Megan, you like chai. I do like chai. I know. Extra cinnamon powder. That's kind of cute. What do you think? Okay, actually, this sounds kind of good. I think I would order it. I would never order a Biscoff cookie, though. Next up, Bilt also released their Rent Day promo for August. They do this every month. It's always the first of the month. What they are not doing this month is a transfer bonus. Instead, they are doing a status match. So for August 1st, members can unlock a status match with all Accor when they transfer Bilt points to All Accor reward points on that day. So it'll take 5,000 built points if you're a silver or gold bill member to get silver status with all Accor. Then it would take 15,000 built points to transfer to some of the higher levels of status. All Accor is one of those lesser-known hotel rewards programs. it does have over 7,000 properties, including some luxury brands people might be familiar with, like Fairmont and Sofitel, but I'm not sure it's worth transferring bill points for this one. Yeah, because you don't just automatically get the status match. You also have to transfer the points, which means now your points as built, which were super valuable and flexible as built, are now tied up in, let's say, only booking a Fairmont. Now, if you are honestly going to book a Fairmont with points anyway, then I say go ahead and do it, because status does get you some nice benefits. So, for example, gold status gets you add-ons like a room upgrade, and I'll totally take a room upgrade at the Fairmont. Platinum status gets you other add-ons like a sweet upgrade. And then you also get into lounge access. I've never been in a Fairmont lounge, but I hope they're nice. I'm sure they are. You'd probably need to be pretty invested in this program and already have a couple of stays in mind for the rest of the year and even into next year to take advantage of this elite status. So I think I'm going to skip this month. Me too. there is one thing this month I am not skipping, and that is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. That is happening on Tuesday, August 4th. And anyone can take advantage of this because double tree by Hilton properties across the U.S. are offering free cookies. That's their chocolate chip cookie with the walnuts thrown in. Or there's also an allergy-friendly version if you're not a nut person. If you're not a nut, you can go in, just walk into the lobby and you get free cookies. Oh my gosh. Amazing. You don't even have to stay there. I love it. Yeah. So usually you get a cookie at check-in. someone was like, don't you always get free cookies? But I'm like, no, no, no. This is anyone can just go walk into the lobby. I'm always here for a free cookie, so I'll be doing that too. Wow, I have a lot of food to get in the next couple of weeks. All right. The next one is not so much news, but more of a PSA because I know it's still July, but Labor Day is coming sooner than you think. Yes, book early. Do not sleep on Labor Day, especially if you want to book something like an Airbnb where there's only one available or you're booking a flight route where there's only one flight that day. Do not delay jump on your booking. Speaking of that, we just got some interesting data from Turro, which is sort of like Airbnb for cars. And they told us that the number of dates reserved for Turro rentals across the U.S. are already up 9% year over year for the August 23rd to September 12th period around Labor Day. I know that's kind of a random timeframe. But keep in mind, this holiday is still five weeks out. So I think that number could climb higher. And I totally procrastinate on renting a car. So the fact that it's already up 9% is pretty interesting. It's also funny because I think something that we talk about a lot to each other and on the show is that we always hear people saying, oh, we're not traveling this year because it's too expensive. But then we see stats like this literally proving that travel is up. We are seeing that with rental cars. And I expect we'll see with flights as well that there are still quite a few people traveling. Like if you plan to fly for Labor Day, you need to strategize which days you're actually going to fly because that could help you save a lot of money. NordWallet uses