How this family turned reward points into a ‘Game of Thrones’ adventure

Early planning was essential for saving money, especially during Europe’s busy travel season in June and July. Gandhi, whometiculously collected credit card points, adopted a strategic approach: spend more to gather points that would fetch free business class tickets and stay in luxury hotels.

Collecting Avios

Gandhi and his family are into luxury travel, but they don’t splurge on just about anything. He has been collecting credit card points for the past two to three years to plan for these fancy tickets. He’s been paying everything using his Axis Magnus credit card, from his son’s school fees to groceries.

“Income tax is the only thing I don’t pay using a credit card,” said Gandhi, whose CA advised him against doing that.

He converted all the points he had earned over the years into Avios points. These are the loyalty points for British Airways and Qatar Airways customers. With enough points, one can use them to book flight tickets.

He converted all his Edge reward points (for Axis Magnus) and other points from his HSBC Platinum and IndusInd credit card to Avios. “I emptied all my credit card points and transferred them to Avios,” said Gandhi, whose family owns a business that provides credit information of companies to banks.

A few months back, Axis Bank devalued many of the lucrative rewards systems in the Magnus card. Luckily, Gandhi had accumulated most of the points when plastic was still fancy. Gandhi is currently using an Axis Atlas card.

Free business class tickets

Gandhi booked three economy-class tickets on Qatar Airways to the Croatian capital, Zagreb, from Mumbai in the first week of June for 1.10 lakh Avios points. There are not many flights from India to Zagreb, and business-class tickets on this route are very expensive.

He used his HSBC platinum card to obtain Pranamm services, which offer priority check-in services in addition to other VIP facilities.

He booked Qatar Airways’s business class tickets from Vienna to Mumbai for the return trip. Vienna had more regular flights to India than Zagreb and was slightly more economical.

Gandhi might have saved around ₹5.50 lakh on the flight tickets. The same 13-hour Qatar economy route to Zagreb on 1 November was priced at Rs.1.74 lakh, and the returning business class ticket from Vienna for 3 November was showing €4,032 ( ₹3.67 lakh) on the Qatar Airways website.

The family had to pay ₹35,818 and €622 ( ₹56,752) as taxes for the tickets.

Sumanta Mandal, whoruns a portal for credit card recommendations website called TechnoFino, estimated that Gandhi must have spent at least ₹15 lakh using Magnus to get the required Avios points. This is assuming he spent at least Rs1 lakh every month for 12 months when Axis was offering a crazy deal. It gave 25,000 edge points as a bonus to anyone who spent over a lakh in a month using that plastic.

“If he did not use this bonus, he’d have to spend around ₹50 to ₹60 lakh,” said the credit card expert.

Mandal, who has 51 credit cards to his name, said there are several credit card options for earning and accumulating air miles, such as Amex Platinum Travel, Axis Olympus, HDFC Infinia, Axis Atlas, etc.

“While there are other cards available, one should always choose a card based on their spending habits and requirements. A single card may not be the best option for everyone, as individual spending patterns vary, so it’s important to select a card that aligns with your specific needs,” said Mandal, who also said customers should keep an eye on the accelerated points system that companies offer.

No Airbnb

Most couples or backpackers prefer to stay in Airbnbs or hostels when in Europe, but the Gandhis preferred luxury stays.

For their first stop in Zagreb, they booked a room at Marriot for two nights. Since Marriot rewards users with points for booking rooms through their website, the room was booked using points. Gandhi and his family had been regulars at Marriot hotels for the past three to four years.

During covid, Marriot paid more rewards for every stay. Gandhi and his family often went to Marriot’s Mahabaleshwar property during this time. Also, Gandhi’s Amex card offered 30-40% higher value if the credit card points were converted into Marriot reward points.

For the commute, he booked a BMW X-3 on rent for 10 days since hiring a driver for the entire journey would require a lot more euros. Besides, there were no trains available to travel to Slovenia, a neighbouring country. He booked the car through SIXT, a car rental website, and paid around ₹1.5 lakh ( ₹70,000 for the car and ₹65,000 for insurance). In 10 days, they ended up travelling around 1,200 km.

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En route: Game of Thrones

From Zagreb, they drove 300 km to Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana. After two days, they headed to Lake Bled in the Julian Alps of the Upper Carniolan region of northwestern Slovenia.

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While visiting a church in the middle of the lake, Gandhi fell down the stairs and suffered a minor swelling. A nearby hospital handed him a bill of €110. He filed an insurance claim but got just €10 back as the insurance only paid claims above €100. Fortunately, it was nothing serious and the family headed to Plitvice Lakes, a national park in Croatia and part of Unesco’s World Heritage List.

They drove to Split, the second largest city in Croatia, best known for the ruins of the Palace of Diocletian (built 295–305 CE). They stayed there for four days in Radisson hotel. (Hotel prices mentioned in infographics.)

They then drove 430 km to Dubrovnik, where the iconic Game of Thrones series was shot, and spent four nights there. They returned the car to the rental car company’s Dubrovnik station. In Dubrovnik, they splurged about Rs.1.6 lakh (€1,800) for their stay in a luxury hotel called Rixos.

From there, they took an Austrian Airlines flight for Vienna. They paid €326 for the ticket. Besides the luxury shopping experience, the other attraction was the world’s oldest salt mine Hallstatt.

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Can you plan your own trip like this?

While Axis had devalued the Axis Magnus card, few options are available, although it might not be as attractive. If one has to plan a trip now, using Axis Atlas is an option. Gandhi used 2.93 lakh Avios points for those flight tickets, and to get those many Avios points, he would need to have 1.46 lakh Edge miles.

“And to earn those edge miles, one needs to spend ₹65.75 lakh (without accelerated reward),” said Mandal, the credit card expert.“We have Magnus burgundy, but one should spend more than ₹1.5 lakh in a month to earn good reward… this is not beneficial for general users,” he said.

“We have HDFC Infinia for 2.93 lakh Avios, we need 5.86 lakh Infinia points, and for that, we need to spend ₹1.75 crore without any accelerated reward. If a person spends everything on 5x categories using Infinia, like flight and hotel booking, he needs to spend ₹35.16 lakh.”

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