Tips for Winning the Travel Game
Reviewed by Lisa Timpf
If you’re on the hunt for ways to stretch your travel dollars, How to Win at Travel by Brian Kelly might be the book for you. Kelly, who founded The Points Guy travel blog, shares detailed information about travel booking, points collection and redemption, and other topics, based on experience garnered through extensive personal experience.
Kelly goes into details about cash back versus points cards, the merits of using several types of cards for booking travel, and considerations like travel insurance.
How many weeks ahead of your trip should you book to get the best hotel prices? What are the perks that come with first class and business travel, and how can you use your points to access higher-prestige seats? What is your recourse if your trip is delayed more than three hours? Sometimes, the answers vary depending on where you are traveling to, from, or which airlines you use. That’s okay, Kelly has you covered.
“Kelly provides tricks and tips for getting discount fares and provides suggestions for which portals to use for initial research versus final booking.”
Kelly provides tricks and tips for getting discount fares and provides suggestions for which portals to use for initial research versus final booking. He provides advice about how to obtain elite hotel status, and how to minimize time spent waiting in lines. Early in the book, he offers his ten Points Commandments, which briefly summarizes some of the key points he has learned along the way.
Some of the information relates to travel within the United States, but Kelly also discusses travel to other destinations around the world. Canadian readers might be particularly interested in the occasional references to Air Canada, Aeroplan, and Canadian rules around compensation for travelers in the event of long delays. Though the book does not focus on Canada, much of the content should be transferable, and there is still value for a Canadian audience—particularly those who travel, or plan to travel, beyond our borders.
Besides offering extensive information about air travel and hotel bookings, Kelly also devotes chapters to topics like traveling with families, strategies for fending off jet lag, and managing the fear of flying. There are also sections on what to do when things go wrong, and on travel etiquette.
Kelly can speak with authority, having traveled widely around the world. He also incorporates information from other sources; for example, he relays discussions he’s had with Whoopi Goldberg about how she overcame her own fear of flying, and quotes etiquette expert Myka Meier in the chapter about travel etiquette.
In the concluding chapter, Kelly muses about the future of travel and loyalty programs. The latter, he believes, are here to stay, though they may continue to evolve. In fact, that’s a piece of advice he provides early in the book: How to Win at Travel outlines the current situation, but things can and will change. That being said, Kelly’s book is packed with information that should be relevant for some time to come.
About the Author
Brian Kelly is the Founder of The Points Guy (TPG), the leading voice in loyalty programs, points, miles, credit cards, and travel. He has grown TPG to be a powerhouse travel and lifestyle media platform that reaches over 10 million unique monthly visitors around the world.
Book Details
Publisher : Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster (Feb. 4 2025)
Language : English
Hardcover : 336 pages
ISBN-10 : 1668068656
ISBN-13 : 978-1668068656