How to Use Your Credit Card Points for Holiday Travel, According to an Expert at The Points Guy

For over a decade, Eric Rosen has been completely immersed in the world of travel. The Los Angeles-based globetrotter learned early on how to flex the power of credit cards, points, and miles, eventually leading him to his role as the director of travel content at The Points Guy. Here, he shares his insights on how to maximize your spending and stay savvy during the busy holiday season.

Photo courtesy of Eric Rosen

Certain days around the holidays, like the Sunday after Thanksgiving, are notoriously expensive to fly. Any ways to reduce costs when flying around the holidays?

In the past, certainly before the pandemic, there were travel days that were always busy: the day before Thanksgiving, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the weekend before Christmas, and New Year’s Day. Because we are in more of a hybrid, remote work situation, those travel periods have expanded to almost a week before and after the major holidays. So we’re seeing higher airfares more protracted over several days, and that just means you’re less likely to get any huge spike in crowds on any given day. The earlier you can book any of your travel arrangements—airline tickets, hotel stays, rental cars, anything associated with your trip—the better. If you’re within three weeks of those holidays, book as soon as possible; typically prices will not go down from there.

Is it better to save your points and miles for something other than holiday travel when fares might be more expensive?

Spending your points does not depend so much on the time of year as what you want to accomplish. If your goal is flying Emirates first class with Champagne and caviar free-flowing throughout a 13-hour flight, you’re going to want to save up. But keep in mind, airline miles and hotel points never accrue value. They’re always losing their value, so it doesn’t typically pay to hold onto those points and miles for that pie-in-the-sky dream redemption later on. Airline programs are constantly changing how many miles you need to redeem for certain kinds of tickets and increasing the number of miles you need for tickets on their partners. If you find a good use for them in the near term, use them. There’s always a way to rack up more, whether that’s traveling in the future, getting a new credit card, or getting a better handle on your finances and building up miles on everyday spending.

Photo courtesy of Eric Rosen

And does the same apply to credit-card points?

Credit-card points tend to hold their value a little bit better. If you think about something like Amex Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards, not only can you transfer them to a variety of different airline and hotel programs, but you can also accrue them into a central account and transfer them as needed to the program that you need. But if you want to redeem them directly through the issuer’s own travel portal like Amex Travel or Chase Travel, they tend to have a fixed value per point. That said, airfares are getting higher, hotel rates are getting higher. It’s not worth holding onto a boatload of points for something you’ll book two years in the future when there’s no way of knowing how much those points are going to be worth at that time. The time is now.

What credit cards are the best for when Murphy’s Law of Travel takes place, and you need to utilize travel protections for canceled flights, which often happens around the holiday season?

For my money, I’d say the Chase Sapphire Preferred, or at a higher level, the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Chase Sapphire Preferred, which only has a $95 annual fee, includes things like trip interruption and cancellation insurance for when you can’t take your trip, or it gets interrupted and you have some nonrefundable expenses. You don’t actually need to have paid for your whole trip using the card. If you book it as an award and just use the card to pay for the taxes and fees, you can still be eligible.

Any good travel gifts that you’re looking to give this year?

If you have a credit card [whose rewards] reimburse the cost of TSA PreCheck or Global Entry and you already have it, that’s a really awesome gift to give. And then for the on-plane experience, having a noise-canceling set of headphones is a godsend. We love the Bose QCs.

What do you think are the trends that we’re going to be seeing in 2025?

I think we’re going to see airfare stabilize domestically. We are also seeing some truly phenomenal upgrade deals for a couple hundred dollars, even on longer routes. Delta and United are making aggressive upgrade offers, so if you want to treat yourself this holiday season, that’s a great way to do it.

We only recommend things we love. If you buy something through our site, we might earn a commission.