Do you have a  “group-text” trip in your family or group of friends? A trip that you talk  about taking one day, that  maybe has been kicked down the lane towards some “someday” date? In my family we have France, and what I can’t believe is that right now I am sitting in JFK airport waiting for this group-text trip to take off out of our imaginations and over to Paris. My grandmother was French, and my mom lived in France as a teen. My sisters, brother and I have always wanted to go with  my mom, and now here we are on the eve of our arrival.

I truly was ready to spend actual money on this trip, but as the planning got underway, the points and miles called. Because I was able to book my flight and some of our  accommodations with  points, this  seven  day trip has set me back only $734 for flights, hotels, a rental car, and our tours and  museums. Honestly, I could have gotten that cash number even lower, but I was walking a thin line between having family members grateful to me and possibly annoyed with me. I think I quit while ahead before crossing over that line.

Here’s how I did it, along with some tips and suggestions I learned along the  way.

Both hotel and AirBnB type lodging in Paris are not  cheap. Additionally, many hotels in Europe have to comply with strict occupancy laws so max out at 2-3 people per room. After looking at a million different chain hotels, I kept coming back to the Hyatt  Regency Paris Etoile. While this might not be a quaint little boutique hotel steps from the Louvre, it does have rooms for 4, a great Club for complimentary breakfast and snacks, is a block from the Metro, has amazing views of Paris, and is bookable for relatively few points. It turned out my mom had  a stash of Chase points she wasn’t sure what to do with, so we pooled them together in the Hyatt program and booked a Regency Suite for four with Club access along with a standard room for two. Plenty  of beds for the five of us, all for 121,000 Chase points.

While you can’t combine points with people not in your household in the Chase system, Hyatt allows you to do it. I helped my mom make a World of Hyatt loyalty account, then she transferred her Chase points to it. We then filled out a paper form and emailed it to combinepoints@hyatt.com. I urge you to be super duper careful when filling this form  out and not in a big rush like I was. On my first attempt, I wrote my mom’s phone number incorrectly. Then on my second attempt, I transcribed  one of our  Hyatt numbers wrong. Finally, on the  third attempt, it was approved. It took a little bit less than a week to get the points all pooled into my account, and from there we were able to book the hotel for our planned nights in Paris. I earned two Hyatt Club Access awards for earning 20 elite nights in the loyalty program (some from actual stays, some from holding the Hyatt credit card, and some from putting spend on that card), so we added the Club to the other room as well. I also emailed the hotel last week to ask for an upgrade to an Eiffel Tower view room – it is my mom’s birthday after all! I’m not expecting anything, but they wrote back assuring me that our stay would be extra special. 

My number one piece of advice, especially when booking popular Hyatt properties with points, is to book as  early as possible. The Hyatt calendar opens up 13 months ahead of time, and reward availability goes quickly for many hotels. We booked our stay a full year in advance. If for some reason we would have needed to cancel, the points would have been refunded to my Hyatt account. We love Hyatt points, so this would have been ok – my plan was to use them to take my mom somewhere fun if that happened! I recently ran into the here today, gone tomorrow nature of Hyatt reward nights when trying to book a hotel in Hawaii for next year. I was able to get what we needed, but will be on the lookout for a different room-type that wasn’t available  anymore for our dates. Such is the fun in the game of points – no struggle, no reward.

With our huge savings on our Paris hotel nights (cash cost for these  rooms was $3100, plus saving on breakfast and our nightly wine and aperitif in the Club), we went on to book a night in a beautiful Chateau, an Air BnB near Mont St. Michel, and another little hotel in the quaint town of Senlis for our last night. We found a Hertz  rental car to pick up a block from the Paris Regency and drop off on our day of departure at Charles de Gaulle. I feel like I missed my calling as a travel agent.  

Now to the flights! I really leveled up my game to book my flight to Paris. We mostly travel domestically and have used Southwest the most with some American Airlines sprinkled in. As this trip began coming together, Tom got it in my head that I should go for a business class flight in order to get some sleep on the overnight flight. This idea took a little time for me to accept as a good one – mostly because I didn’t like the idea of spending so many of our family points on myself. As I researched how to find award availability on international business class flights, I would swing between “I go this” and “this is complicated, I’ll never it.”

As I tracked different programs, it became clear that positioning from Pittsburgh to New York was going to make way more options come open. And then, imagine my surprise when in May of 2023, Amex offered a 25% transfer bonus to Air France. So every 1 point I transferred became 1.25 points. In early May, about 350 days in advance of our trip, I found a one way flight from JFK to  CDG for 55,000 points. I transferred 44,000 points to AirFrance and booked my ticket for $201 in taxes and fees! My family lives in Philly and are flying direct on American Airlines. I was able to book my return  on their same flight for 30,000 AA points plus  $87. I’ll have a layover in Philly then fly home to the ‘Burgh on that itinerary. 

What I learned from booking these flights is primarily to  start as early as you can. Most airlines open availability 330-360 days in advance. The best deals are often going to be a year out, or in the weeks leading up. I really don’t have the flexibility to plan a trip with only a few weeks’ notice, so booking far in advance is the mindset shift I’ve had to make. I also have learned to not be afraid of booking one-way itineraries when booking with points. While this is often financially unappealing when paying with  cash, it’s often the best way to do  award bookings. I also learned about being flexible with both the city I’m flying out of, and for Europe in particular, the city flying into. It’s so much easier and more affordable to get around Europe with both rail travel and flights, that this is  often the more economical way to go. Finally, I now have more of a system for searching for flights. It starts with looking at the destination’s airport entry on Wikipedia to figure out which airlines are flying there. I then look up the airline alliances to see if there are any tricks for booking. For instance, you can pretty reliably find Delta Flights on Air France or Virgin Atlantic for a fraction of the points that Delta would charge. I also sometimes use award search tools, but haven’t landed on a favorite yet. What this whole planning cycle taught me was that this is all really doable – and also that AirFrance is a great option for getting from the US to Europe. 

Well, stay tuned… I’ll have  a full trip report  next week once the group text trip comes to an end. For now, I bid you farewell from the Primeclass Lounge in JFK. Remember that if you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve, a Capital One Venture X, or an Amex Platinum, you can enjoy free food and drinks in a less airport-y setting for free, too!