Travel Hacking Has Changed. Here’s What Still Works.

Loyalty programs are a moving target, but it’s still possible to travel better while paying less.

Jul 31, 2026

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Travel hacking is usually presented as a set of tricks: get the right credit card, collect a huge number of points, and very soon you’ll be sipping champagne in business class while everyone else wonders why airport coffee costs nine dollars. It’s never been quite that easy, and these days maybe even less so.

Airlines devalue points by changing redemption rates. Hotels reduce their loyalty benefits. Credit cards introduce qualifying spend tiers to access certain perks, like airport lounge access.1 A strategy that worked well in the past, may produce less value, and more fees today. Or you may be stuck with an itinerary involving three connections and a night in an airport that seemed only a good idea because the total points required was less.2

The good news is that travel hacking still works. The principles I wrote about in my book and teach in my travel hacking course still hold true today. The best results still come from understanding the principles behind the travel industry rather than taking advantage of tricks.

Start With the Trip You Actually Want

I don’t really care about redemption opportunities, or what may be a good “deal”. Instead, I prefer to start with the trip itself and the experience value it provides. Do I want a direct flight? A better seat on an overnight route? A hotel in the right neighbourhood? Breakfast before a long travel day? Late checkout so I am not wandering around a city with luggage for six hours?

For the record, the answer is always yes to all those questions. I’m not willing to sacrifice my travel experience in exchange for a better redemption opportunity. Travel hacking serves me, not the other way around.

Once I intentionally design my trip around the experienced I’d like to have, I can decide whether cash, points, loyalty benefits, or a combination of all three offers me the best value. The goal is never to pay bottom price, but simply to pay less than average (for an above average experience).

A “free” flight with high fees and an inconvenient connection may be worse than a reasonably priced direct ticket. Using points for an inexpensive hotel can also be poor value when those same points could reduce the cost of a much more expensive trip later. Points can be useful, but they are only a tool: the trip itself should remain the focus.

Everything Popular Is Wrong

The most valuable reward seats and hotel rates rarely appear when everyone wants to travel. The opposite is true: look slightly in a different direction of when and/or where everyone is travelling. I often find better deals that way.

Everything popular is wrong. ~Oscar Wilde

A day or two of flexibility can make a substantial difference. So can checking nearby airports, considering a different routing, or travelling outside the busiest periods. It doesn’t necessarily matter if you’re using points or cash: the same flexibility can reveal better fares and more reasonable hotel prices.

Flexibility still does not mean I let the “deal” decide the entire trip. I have little interest in saving money on a trip I did not want to take in the first place, even if it’s free. I’ll still start with outlining the trip I actually want to take, but build in some creativity to allow the trip to “come together” naturally when looking at options.

Build a Strategy That Can Survive Change

Sometimes I’ll have several options when I’m planning my travel for the year. There’s usually a backup plan, and sometimes a backup-to-the-backup plan, just in case things don’t work out as planned.

Every hard condition reduces the number of options available. The exact date, exact flight, exact hotel, exact room type, and exact redemption price may not all cooperate at once. For me, I usually roughly know how I’d like a trip to come together.

If things just don’t want to line up, I deviate to a backup plan. This sometimes means an entirely different destination altogether. Other times, it just means moving my trip to a different time of year when availability is better. A little flexibility gives you more room to make the system work for you.

The Secret of Travel Hacking

Even though I have my favourites, the true value of travel hacking is not hidden inside one credit card, airline program, or secret booking website3. It’s about figuring out what fits your lifestyle, and understanding how the different pieces fit together.

If you’d like, there are quite a few best practices you can borrow from my approach to travel hacking. It all begins with knowing what kind of travel experience you want, and then applying a travel hacking system to achieve your goals.

Programs will continue to change. Benefits will disappear, but new opportunities will appear as well. The goal is not to build a perfect system and preserve it forever. The goal is to have some fun with this, and build in the ability to adapt without requiring you to start over every time an airline updates a rewards redemption chart.

Get Into Action

This is why I rebuilt my Travel Revolution course. The program originally brought airfare and hotel strategies together in one complete travel-hacking system. Over time, those topics became separate courses, which made sense for a while but also divided two parts of travel that work best when considered together. I have now brought them back into one updated, all-inclusive program.

The Travel Revolution covers both sides of the experience: finding better ways to fly and getting more value from the places you stay. The focus is not on following tricks that may be obsolete by the time you leave. It is about building a practical system you understand and can adjust as rewards programs, booking tools, and travel habits change.

If you are ready to rethink how you plan, book, and experience travel, I invite you to preview my newly updated Travel Revolution program.