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Every time I’ve used a platform OTA, the prices were way higher and less choices (even with the point discount) than I could purchase on another OTA. I never c
by itake 4y ago
Every time I’ve used a platform OTA, the prices were way higher and less choices (even with the point discount) than I could purchase on another OTA.
I never considered platform OTAs a reasonable option.
- CPLX 4y agoThere are good ones. Chase Sapphire is an example, and I think people like Amex too though I don’t use it.
- mvid 4y agoCorrect. Chase and Amex use the prices from the airline. They aren't as good as the scammy aggregators, which try to upsell you further in the purchase process or tell you the price is no longer available
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoDon’t they have more blackout dates than the airlines?
- atdrummond 4y agoFor fare sales or awards? If anything, I find it is the opposite. The US Big 3 have very little inventory open - and what is open is super expensive. (Let’s say $10k worth of airline miles for sake of argument.) You’re better off using CC points for tickets through the card’s OTA where you can get the above $10k itinerary for $2k worth of points - and since the value per point is known and fixed, this price is never a surprise.
- scarface74 4y agoThere are no good travel portals. If you need to change anything or if there are any issues, going through a portal is alway a pain compared to booking directly. Amex in particular for domestic flights have Delta and JetBlue as a partner. You get much better value by transferring to one of those two than booking through a portal. You will only get 1 cent per point by using the portal. You can routinely get 1.2 - 1.5 cents per point for Skymiles
- CobaltFire 4y agoI used AMEX via ANA transfer to get over $0.20/point value on a pair of business class tickets from West Coast US to Japan this last year. I’d say that was good value.
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoI hope Amex never devalues their program
- scarface74 4y agoAs someone who has an idea about transfer partners. There is a huge difference between being able to book a flight on a random day from a random place to a random destination and just choose to pay with miles like I can do on any random Delta domestic flight for 1.3 - 1.5 cpp and having to deal with partners and waiting for award flights to open up and then only on certain days and from certain cities.
- CobaltFire 4y agoThis was an arbitrary date and the transfer took less than 30 minutes. It was my first time using it and it was about as painless as I could have hoped for. I will say that we mostly only fly to a couple places and we mostly fly ANA, so we are an edge case.
- scarface74 4y agoOkay, so you’re actually using Ana to book flights directly instead of trying to use ANA to book flights on other airlines in the same alliance - in ANAs case Star Alliance. In that case, I take back everything I stand corrected.
- CobaltFire 4y agoYeah, I can't imagine the headache to do THAT. The ANA flights in these cases were Star Alliance operated long haul legs paired with shorter ANA operated legs, and we got to see both the older and newer business class for Delta (typical for most routes; we aren't where ANA runs their specific long haul). Newer is MUCH nicer.
- sanj 4y agoThey’re all just white-labeled Expedia.
- slater 4y agoOr BDC