✈️ Building the Ultimate Award Travel Tracker
Welcome to Smart With Points, the podcast where we dive into the world of travelling with miles and points. I'm your host, Jack, and I'm excited to share with you a project I've been working on recently. As someone who's deeply immersed in the points and miles game, I've spent countless hours maintaining spreadsheets to track my award flight redemptions. I'm sure many of you can relate to this - creating increasingly complex formulas to calculate value per point, track taxes paid, and monitor redemption patterns. But recently, I reached a breaking point with this manual approach and decided to do something about it. I've started developing a simple iOS app that does what my spreadsheets did, but with a much better user experience. The app allows you to track all your award flight redemptions, calculate value per point automatically, view your redemptions on a map, keep a record of taxes and fees paid, store booking references, and analyse your redemption patterns. For example, I recently redeemed Japan Airlines points for a flight that would have cost eleven thousand pounds, but I only spent one hundred and twenty-three thousand nine hundred points plus four hundred and four pounds ten pence in taxes, giving me a value of about ten point two pence per point - not bad at all! While tools like Smart Redemptions can help you find these sweet spots, having a personal record of your actual redemptions adds another layer of insight to your award travel strategy. The question is, would this be useful to you? I've invested less than a day in development so far, but before diving deeper, I'd love to hear from fellow points enthusiasts. I'm envisioning features like multiple loyalty programme support, redemption history analysis, best value redemption highlights, integration with existing flight tools, and expenditure tracking across different currencies. Think of it as your personal award travel diary, but with powerful analytics built in. No more juggling spreadsheets or trying to remember what that amazing redemption from last year cost you in points and fees. Would you use something like this? What features would make it essential for your award travel toolkit? Let me know by reaching out on our website or on social media. Thanks for listening to this episode of Smart With Points. If you want to stay up to date with the latest news and tips on travelling with miles and points, be sure to subscribe to our podcast on all major platforms or visit our website at smartwithpoints.co.uk.
