10xTravel Award Booking Service: How It Works

At 10xTravel, we inform our readers about a multitude of strategies for maximizing frequent-flyer programs. Oftentimes, these strategies involve earning points with a credit card and identifying the best rewards program among that credit card issuer’s transfer partners for the specific redemption you’re trying to make.

For example, if you wanted to book a flight to Paris with Chase Ultimate Rewards points, you’d have to look through Chase’s 11 airline transfer partners to identify which of these programs is offering the best rate for award flights between your home airport and Paris on your selected dates.

If the process described above sounds complicated and time consuming, that’s because it often can be. Although we advocate for finding the best possible value for your credit card points or airline miles, there are times when the time spent searching for the perfect flight redemption just isn’t worth it.

Luckily, we here at 10xTravel offer an award booking service, which means that we take the hassle out of finding the ideal award booking. Basically, you simply tell us what your ideal award booking looks like, and we do all of the heavy lifting of finding the best available flights that match your criteria.

Want to fly round trip in business class from San Francisco to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, with Citi ThankYou Points? Our team of award booking experts will find the most affordable way to do so. Want to fly one way in economy class from Houston to Seattle with Capital One Miles? We’ll find you the flight that requires the fewest miles possible.

So, let’s discuss everything you need to know about how to use this award booking service so that you can get the best possible value for your credit card points or airline miles without having to spend hours searching for flights.

How to Use the 10xTravel Award Booking Service

To use the 10xTravel Award Booking Service, visit the Award Booking page on our website and click the “Start Your Booking” button. Then, fill out a form with all of the details we need to find your desired award flight.

Name and Email Address

Enter your name and email address so that we can contact you. Please ensure that your email address is correct or we won’t be able to contact you.

Type of Award, Departure Airport and Arrival Airport

Select your type of award: one-way, round-trip, multi-city (maximum of three stops), multi-city (more than three stops) or round-the-world. Then, input how many people will be traveling. Provide your departure airport, your arrival airport and let us know whether or not you’re willing to reposition to a different airport to get a better deal.

Repositioning

Repositioning generally involves taking a short flight to a larger airport that has significantly more flights available. For example, if your local airport is Casper-Natrona County Airport (CPR) in Wyoming (an international airport with relatively few flights), you could reposition to Denver or Salt Lake City to increase the number of available flights.

Likewise, you might reposition in the middle of your journey. For instance, if you’re trying to fly from Los Angeles to Dublin, you may be able to save a lot of miles if you’re willing to fly from Los Angeles to New York City, then take a repositioning flight or even a train to Boston and, finally, fly from Boston to Dublin.

Repositioning can drastically increase the chance of a successful award search, particularly if you don’t live near a major international airport.

Departure and Return Dates and Date Flexibility

Next, you’ll be asked to provide your desired departure date and return date and whether or not these dates are flexible. If your dates are flexible, provide a range of how many days before or after your ideal date you’re willing to fly. For instance, if your desired departure date is March 10, you could say that you’re flexible to fly any day between March 7 and March 13.

Flexibility is extremely important to increasing the chances of a successful award search. The more flexible you are with your dates, your routing, your cabin class and your departure times, the more likely we are to find an award flight that works for you.

On the flip side, if you’re rigid with your search parameters, it’s going to be difficult to find the right award flight. This is particularly true with large travel groups (of three or more) and award flights on popular routes during peak season (for example, flying from the U.S. to Japan in spring).

Same Flight for All Passengers

Let us know whether all travelers need to be on the same flights. If you answer “no,” this will increase your chances of a successful award search, particularly if you’re traveling with a large group. This is because, occasionally, the cheapest available award flight will have only one or two available award seats. You’ll also be asked whether there are any countries you can’t travel through for any reason and, if so, which ones.

Preferred Cabin Class

After that, provide your preferred cabin class (economy, business or first). You can check multiple boxes if you’re willing to travel in multiple cabin classes. For example, if you prefer to travel in business class but you’re willing to travel in economy if need be, check both boxes.

Minimum and Maximum Length of Trip

You’ll also be asked to provide your minimum and maximum length of trip. For instance, if you want to travel to Portugal for at least five days, enter five days as your minimum trip length. On the flip side, if you can get no more than seven days from work to travel, put seven days as your maximum trip length.

Miles and Points Balances

Next, provide any points or miles balances you have. For instance, if you have 80,000 Capital One Miles, 20,000 British Airways Avios and 100,000 American Express Membership Rewards points, make sure to disclose all of them. If you have multiple people traveling on your itinerary, disclose all points balances that you think are relevant for each person.

Please double-check whether your points are transferable. For example, if you have the Chase Freedom Unlimited®, you’ll earn Chase Ultimate Rewards points, but these points can’t be transferred to airline partners.

You’ll also be asked whether you’re willing to purchase miles to top off your account. For instance, if you have 19,000 miles and you need 20,000 for the cheapest available redemption, then it sometimes makes sense to purchase that extra 1,000 miles.

Other Relevant Information

Finally, there’s a section where you can include anything else that you need our award booking team to know. For instance, if you’re willing to fly out of several different airports, this would be the place to mention that.

This is also a great place to disclose whether there’s anything that you don’t want in your travel itinerary. For instance, if you don’t want to fly on certain airlines, certain types of aircraft, don’t want layovers or don’t want to fly at night, then this is the place to add that kind of information.

Submit

Once you’ve checked all of your information and verified it, click the “Submit” button at the bottom of the page. It’s important to make sure that you’ve included everything that you want the award booking expert to know. The more detailed your submission is, the better they’ll be able to tailor the award booking to your needs.

You’ll then be redirected to a payment page where you’ll be required to pay the nonrefundable $50 deposit to complete your submission.

Finally, once you’ve submitted your request, add awardbooking@10xtravel.com to your email contacts list to ensure that our emails don’t end up in your spam folder.

Making Your Booking

Once you’ve submitted your award booking service request, you should receive an email from a member of our award booking team within 24 to 48 hours. This email will ask you to confirm the details of your submission and will ask you to agree to the pricing for our services.

Please remember to reply to the confirmation email directly rather than starting a new email chain or sending an email to the “Contact Us” email regarding your award booking. Replying directly to this confirmation email will streamline the process and allow us to complete your award booking as quickly and effectively as possible.

Choosing Your Flight

Once you’ve confirmed the details of your submission, our award booking experts will begin working on your case. Shortly after, you’ll receive an email with several options (usually three or four) that match your criteria as closely as possible. The award booking expert will also typically offer their opinion as to which option is best for you.

This is typically how these options will be presented:

So, once you’ve received a list of options such as the one above, you can compare the mileage rates, travel times, departure times and more. It’s important to pay attention to all of these details when making your selection.

For example, the flight that requires the fewest miles might depart in the middle of the night. If you don’t want to interrupt your sleep, then you may not want to choose this option. Or perhaps you may want to choose a slightly more expensive flight if it means you don’t have a layover.

Whichever option you choose, be sure to make that booking as soon as possible after making your decision. Award seats can fill up quickly (especially if they offer good value), and it would be a shame to decide on an award flight only to find that it’s no longer available when you go to book it.

It’s important to note that our award booking experts can’t create award availability. Every award flight that we suggest is available to the public. Our role is to help you in searching for these award flights. However, if there simply aren’t any award flights that match your criteria, there’s nothing more we can do.

If we fail to find an award flight that meets your terms, you won’t be charged any more money beyond the $50 deposit.

Points Transfers

In many cases, making your award booking will involve making a points transfer from a credit card program to a frequent-flyer program. In most cases, you can do this by logging in to your credit card account and going to the “redeem points” section (or something like that) and then choosing the “points transfer” option.

Luckily, if that seems at all confusing, our 10xTravel experts will send you step-by-step instructions (with video) on how to transfer points from your credit card to your desired loyalty program to make your booking.

If you need additional help with making a points transfer, you can always reach out to our award booking experts for assistance.

Redeeming Miles

Once you’ve initiated the transfer of credit card points to your selected frequent-flyer program, check to see if the transfer has been processed and whether those points have arrived. Depending on which programs you’re transferring to or from, these transfers may be instant or they may take up to a few days.

Of course, if you were planning on using a balance of airline miles to make your award booking, then no transfer will be necessary.

Once you have the required miles in the airline account, you’ll need to locate the award flight that you wish to book. In almost all cases, this will involve conducting a search on that airline’s website. However, in rare cases, you’ll need to call that airline’s customer service line to make your award booking (as some award bookings can’t be made online).

Of course, our award booking experts will be available to walk you through this process and provide detailed instructions and a video on how to complete your award booking.

We can’t complete the booking for you through your frequent-flyer account as we can’t accept the liability of handling your passwords, usernames or other sensitive information. Please do not share this kind of information with our award booking experts.

In the unfortunate event that your desired award flight is unavailable when you go to book it, your award booking expert will provide alternative award flight itineraries. Once again, if we can’t find an award flight that matches your criteria, there will be no charge besides the $50 nonrefundable deposit.

Payment

Only after we find an award flight that satisfies your needs and have helped you successfully book that award flight will we charge the card we have on file for the remaining balance for your award booking service. The $50 deposit will be applied to your total fee. So, if the fee was $400, you’ll have to pay $350 (because you’ve already paid the $50 deposit).

If the payment doesn’t process or you prefer to use another form of payment, you’ll receive an invoice via email that is payable with a credit card or by ACH.

If we fail to find an award flight that satisfies your needs, you won’t be charged anything beyond the $50 nonrefundable deposit.

In the event that we find an award flight that meets all of your requirements and you change your mind and decide not to book, you’ll be charged the full fee. This is because our award booking experts have upheld their end of the deal and have done extensive research to find you a satisfactory award flight.

Additionally, if we find an award flight that fits your needs and that award flight fills up before you book it because you took too long to complete the process, we may charge you a $75 re-search fee if you want us to conduct an additional search.

Pricing

As the process of finding award flights is time-consuming and requires expert knowledge, we charge a fee for using our award booking service. The cost of using this award booking service starts at $100 for one passenger on one-way flights and goes up if you add more passengers or more cities to your itinerary.

To send a request to our award booking team, you’ll be required to pay a $50 nonrefundable fee. If we successfully find a flight that meets your requirements, then that $50 will be credited toward the total cost of the award booking service. If we don’t find an award flight that matches your criteria, you won’t owe us anything more.

Here’s how much our service costs depending on the number of passengers in your itinerary and the type of flight you’re looking for:

So, for instance, if you wanted to book a three-person round-trip flight itinerary, it would cost $400. However, since you already paid a $50 deposit to begin the search, your remaining balance would be $350.

If you wanted to book a five-person one-way flight itinerary, it would cost $500 ($100 for the first person, $75 each for the second and third people and $125 each for the fourth and the fifth passenger). Since you already paid the $50 deposit, you’d owe an additional $450.

Unpaid invoices are considered late after 30 days of nonpayment. Late invoices will invoke an automatic $75 late fee and may be sent to a collection agency if unpaid after 90 days.

10xTravel+

If you love using points and miles to travel for cheap, then you probably love saving money. And if you’re interested in using the 10xTravel Award Booking Service more than once, then the best way to get the most bang for your buck is to sign up for a 10xTravel+ subscription.

This subscription has a $199 annual fee. However, your subscription comes with one free award booking per year, which can be applied to one round-trip booking for two people (a value of $275) or any one booking of lesser value. So, if you use that credit every year for a round-trip booking for two people, you’ve instantly offset the subscription’s annual fee.

Plus, as a 10xTravel+ member, you’ll get 15% off all Award Booking fees with no annual limit. That can translate to a lot of savings if you use our Award Booking service often.

A 10xTravel+ subscription also includes a sign-up gift, advanced access to 10xT Award Alerts, priority access to award bookings (which means faster turnarounds), two one-on-one consultations with our staff (during office hours) per year and the ability to have your questions answered on our podcast.

FAQs

In this section, we’ll address some questions that customers often ask our award booking experts.

How Far in Advance Should I Book My Award Flight?

In general, the earliest that you can book an award flight is 11 to 12 months before the departure date, and there are no disadvantages to booking your flight as early as possible. In fact, using our award booking service as far in advance as possible means that there will be the greatest availability of award flight options, increasing the probability that you’ll find an award flight at a great rate.

The latest that you should try to book an award flight is probably three to four days before the departure date, particularly if you need to make a points transfer from a credit card rewards program to a frequent-flyer program. These points transfers can take up to 48 hours in some cases, and it would be a shame to complete a points transfer only to find out that it’s too late to purchase the award flight you want.

Additionally, the further in advance you book, the more award availability there will be and, in all likelihood, the better deal you’ll get. So, you should always try to submit your award booking request as early as possible.

How Many Points Do I Need for an Award Ticket?

The number of points required for an award ticket depends on a wide variety of factors, including the type of points you have (i.e. Chase Ultimate Rewards, AAdvantage miles, Capital One Miles, etc.), your destination, the cabin class you want to travel in and more.

In general, though, if you want to book a transcontinental flight (to South America, across the Atlantic Ocean or across the Pacific Ocean), you’ll need at least 40,000 points to fly economy class, 60,000 to 80,000 points to fly business class and 100,000 points or more to fly first class per person per direction.

If you want to book a domestic flight within the U.S., you’ll typically need at least 5,000 points in economy class (and usually more than that) and at least 30,000 points in business or first class.

Can You Help Me Plan My Trip?

The 10xTravel Award Booking Service is not a travel agency. Our services are limited to searching for award flights. We can’t help you plan your trip, decide which destinations to go to, what to do at your destination or help you find accommodation.

If you need help planning your trip or finding accommodation, you can find it through Elsewhere, our partner travel agency.

However, you can be broad with the region of arrival when submitting your request to the 10xTravel Award Booking Service.

For instance, in the “Arrival Airport” section, you can put something like “northern South America.” In this case, we’d look for award availability on flights to several airports in northern South America. Once we’ve provided you with reasonable options, you can’t then request that we also search for flights to “Central America” and “southern South America.” You should have a pretty solid idea of where you’re going before you submit your request.

Can I Call and Talk to an Expert Directly?

At the moment, we don’t offer the option to speak with award booking experts over the phone. All correspondence with our team must be made via email. This ensures that there’s a written record of our conversations and no misinformation over the phone. It also ensures that everyone can look back at the details of the award booking parameters.

Can I Have a Consultation Before I Pay the $50 Deposit?

We don’t offer private consultations before you pay the $50 deposit. However, if there’s any information that you need (that can’t be answered by our FAQs section on our website), feel free to send an email to contact@10xtravel.com.

Also, if you submit an award booking request and it’s determined that you don’t have enough points or miles for your requested award, your $50 deposit will be refunded.

How Long Will We Search for Awards?

The 10xTravel Award Booking Service will not monitor the travel industry for the long term and alert you when good deals arise. If you have submitted an award booking request, we will conduct one award flight search per week for one month at the maximum.

If you’re looking for a way to get alerted on high-value deals as they arise, consider signing up for the 10xTravel Award Space Alerts email notifications. This subscription is free and is a great way to stay up-to-date on the best redemptions in the airline and hotel industries.

Why Haven’t I Received a Response?

In most cases, if you haven’t seen a response from one of our award booking experts, it’s because the response email has been flagged as spam. Check your spam folder and also add awardbooking@10xtravel.com to your email contacts to ensure that our future replies don’t go to your spam folder.

In some rare cases, your submission may have slipped through the cracks and been missed by our experts. So, if you haven’t heard from us in two business days, please reply to the confirmation email you received.

Can I Request a Specific Award Booking Expert?

Since all award booking requests are submitted through an automated ticket system that all of our award bookers have access to, we can’t guarantee that you‘ll be paired with a specific award booker. However, we can guarantee that all of our award booking agents offer top-of-the-line service, responsiveness and expertise.

The Bottom Line

Through our podcasts, blog posts, Facebook group and other media, we here at 10xTravel try to empower our community with the knowledge to get great value out of credit card offers and frequent-flyer programs and to achieve their travel dreams on a budget. However, in truth, utilizing these rewards programs can be time-consuming and confusing in some cases.

So, if you don’t have the time or the know-how to find high-value award flight deals, you can utilize our 10xTravel Award Booking Service. For a reasonable fee, our award booking experts will search the entire airline industry for the most affordable and the best award flights that match your requirements. They’ll also walk you through the process of converting credit card points to airline miles and redeeming those airline miles for your perfect award flight.