[Edited 9/10/2024:  Please note that card products and offerings have changed.]

 

Somehow the Citi Premier 80k offer is STILL around!  I want to say this increased offer came back around about nine weeks ago.  I would have thought it would have gone away by now – but that’s just additional time for more of you to jump on it to plan future travels!  My husband first got this card earlier this year when it was increased.  We used points from his card to fly our family to Seattle for our summer vacation.  After a few short days in Seattle, we drove to Vancouver where we spent the bulk of our time.  And to think we are heading into fall now!

Now what am I going to do with points from my Citi Premier card?  Great question!  Let’s walk through some possibilities together.  You better believe I’m saving them for international travel next year – because as a family of 5, planning for travel in 2023 is already well under way.  My personal strategy, for the most part, is to let the points dictate where we go.  At times I may have my eye on specific destinations, but considering that our toddler turns 2 in December – well, availability for five award tickets is hard to find!

I like to check for monthly transfer bonus offers first – especially if I’m eyeing international travel.  What does this mean?  There are promotional deals from time to time, where if you transfer points earned with a respective bank, to an airline or hotel partner – you can get more than the (standard) 1:1 transfer ratio!  Let me show you what that means.

So it just happens that through August 31st, there is a 25% bonus deal going on if you transfer points from Citi to LifeMiles, the reward program for Avianca Airlines.  For every 1,000 Citi ThankYou points you transfer, you will get 1,250 LifeMiles.  Avianca Airlines is one of Citi’s airline partners – you can find the complete list of Citi travel partners here.  Keep in mind this deal won’t pop up on Citi’s website as it’s being offered directly by LifeMiles.

Avianca Airlines is a member of the Star Alliance program, which means that you can use your LifeMiles for flights on the Colombia airline itself, or any of its Star Alliance partner airlines.

The best way to search on LifeMiles website would seem to be by using the “Smart Search” option – but I had to toggle back and forth between that and “Star Alliance” when looking for flights from Dallas-Fort Worth (my hometown) and Europe:

The “Smart Search” option isn’t all that smart.  While the “Star Alliance” option is supposed to show availability across all partners – it still may not show.  For example, I have my eye on Portugal for our next international trip, but when searching for award availability on the LifeMiles site, I couldn’t find both legs of the flight.  So I checked United Airlines’ website – which is  a Star Alliance partner – and this is what I found:

This is for right after Thanksgiving too, and check out the total fees!  Do note that when searching on United’s website you need to check for flights that code as “Saver Award:”

“Saver Award” flights will qualify under the Star Alliance program.  Note: before you transfer your miles from Citi to a transfer partner, always confirm award availability.  Transfers cannot be undone, and names on both accounts need to match.

Turkish Airlines also has flights to Europe for 30,000 miles/one way:

Business class award seats when available, run just 45,000/miles one way, per person!  Now that’s a sweet deal!  One bonus offer from the Citi Premier card can get you an economy or business class flight to Europe.  When searching on Turkish Airlines, under your name > miles transactions, make sure you are searching under the “Star Alliance award ticket” option to show the 30k/45k miles rates:

Now, while Citi doesn’t have a referral program, if you have a Player 2 (spouse, family member, loved one, partner, etc) in the points and miles game, both individuals can get their own set of bonus points from their individual cards.  So that’s 80,000 bonus points + points from usage (so for us it was an additional 3k points) for Player 1, and another 80,000 points + points from usage (again about 3k for us) for Player 2.  We collected at least 166,000 points from two Citi Premier cards!

While those are great options for 1-2 people, what about for larger families?  

Flying Blue is the reward program founded by Air France & KLM.  Flights can start as low as 19,500 miles/one way:

There’s a sweet spot with Flying Blue: Children between the ages of 2-11 get 25% discount on reward tickets.  So that’s less miles needed for two of my kiddos – and yes, this is the airline I have my eye on right now scouting out deals and offers!

These are just some options you can use to fly to Europe using points from the Citi Premier Card.  The more award tickets you are looking for, the further out you need to plan.  Getting the card(s), collecting the points, and finding award availability all takes time.  But with a strategy, game plan, and taking advantage of travel partners, you’ll be well on your way, having saved yourself a lot of money – money that you can use to well, for starters, eat your way through Europe 😉