I’m a frequent flier and here are 10 hacks for making your 2025 holidays more luxurious – from SPEAKING to a travel agent to a loyalty scheme that cuts 50% off fancy hotel stays

I’m Gilbert Ott, frequent flier and Founder of travel site godsavethepoints.com, and I have 10 top tips for making your next trip more luxurious.

Follow my advice and you could snare a return lie-flat bed on a plane for around £1,300 ($1,999), get money back if the weather turns bad and avoid wasting time by trying TikTok hacks that just don’t work.

My list also includes ways to avoid the crowds in popular tourist destinations and why going back in time and picking up the phone to talk to a travel agent can pay dividends.

Read on for more and let me know what you think in the comments.

Book early and forget being flexible

Long-haul flatbeds in business class for around £1,300 ($1,999) round trip? You bet. Usually, you’ll just need to be sure about the trip. Yes – most airlines now offer their best discounts and prices for the earliest bookings and the least flexibility.

If you’re locked into a wedding or fixed dates and want the best experience for the least money, get in the habit of looking and booking earlier. For example, book for January 2026 in January 2025 if a big sale pops up.

Another hot tip? Book flight and hotel packages directly with airlines, since they’ll often slash prices if you secure accommodation through them.

There are real occasions where ‘flight + hotel’ can be cheaper than flight alone.

Go back in time and pick up the phone

For some of the savviest hotel deals – the ones that include a free daily breakfast and upgrade – pick up the phone and talk to a travel agent.

Travel agents are back at the centre of travel planning and have special hotel perks that you typically can’t find anywhere else, and often for the same price you’d pay online without the perks.

Just don’t waste their time if you’re casually looking.

Good weather or your money back

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but there are some startups in travel that will guarantee good weather, or your money back – for a price of course.

Sensible and Weather Promise are two companies leading the way in travel satisfaction. They offer insurance-style products that allow you to purchase guarantees for your trip, such as sun for a beach holiday, and you can get compensated in full for every day the weather doesn’t deliver.

Investigate subscription discounts

Pay £93 ($118) and you can instantly save thousands. It sounds too good to be true, but it’s not. This is the membership fee for ‘Dis-loyalty’, the rather genius new ‘loyalty’ program of Ennismore, a brand behind Hoxton, SLS, Mondrian and SO/ hotels globally, among others.

For some of the savviest hotel deals – the ones that include a free daily breakfast and upgrade – pick up the phone and talk to a travel agent, says Gilbert

The membership gets you a free coffee at any of its hotels every day of the year (and that could pay your fee alone), but the gem is that all newly opened hotels are 50 per cent off and you get a real 20 per cent off your first time at any hotel, new or not.

Crazy – and true.

I booked SLS Playa Mujeres in Mexico and saved $2,800 (£2,284), taking $750 room nights down to $375. 

Consider “nearby” airports for big savings with ease

Google Flights allows you to enter up to five – yes five – departure and destination cities at once, meaning you can instantly compare how much it might cost to go to various places in one search. You can use this in two ways. Say you want to go to Buenos Aires, but pricing is expensive from London.

You can enter cities you’d consider flying, driving or training to, like Amsterdam, Paris and others, and see if there are significant enough savings if you leave from one of those.

This can also be a gem for picking a destination, where you want to go to South America, for example, but are open to Rio, Buenos Aires, Santiago or Bogota. Enter all into the search box for destination and the cheapest option will appear.

Dive into points

Points used to be called frequent flyer miles and that was a horrible misnomer. In today’s world, they’re less about frequent flying and more about frequent buying.

You can earn points from daily activities with or without a credit card.

At the very least, points can be a rebate off a flight and at best, they can be first-class somewhere far-flung and exotic for next to nothing.

Figuring out your preferred airline and looking at their ‘earning partners’ is a great way to start. When it comes to burning points, use point.me, which simplifies how you find flights.

Find the next hot travel spot

The more difficult a destination is to reach, the more other people likely won’t bother trying to get there, notes Gilbert

If you want to level up your travel in 2025, be open to new and perhaps more exotic destinations, or ones that require an extra boat, train or flight.

The more difficult a destination is to reach, the more other people likely won’t bother trying to get there – and that’s often where you’ll find better savings and better trips.

For example, while Mykonos can feel like a special form of crazy, other islands just a ferry ride away are still relatively idyllic.

Stop faffing around with silly ‘hacks’

TikTok can show you many wonderful things, from recipes to new dance moves, but most of the travel hacks are not going to help.

Save yourself money by not wasting your precious time trying things that don’t add up to much.

The days when you can switch the website country or currency to save on hotels or flights are really limited and only rare exceptions exist where there are meaningful savings to be had.

If you spend five hours trying, only to save $10, something tells me you actually lost out on that deal.

Take advantage of members-only prices online

Because of hotel pricing rules, you often need to be a ‘member’ of a site – which can be as simple as sharing your email address – to see their ‘special’ pricing.

By grabbing your email, booking sites and hotels themselves are able to undercut the publicly available pricing, since it’s totally legal and ok for them to show ‘closed environment’ discounts.

Try the new travel apps

From Turo, which is basically the Airbnb of car rental (and even has fancy cars) to ResortPass, where you can simply purchase a day pass to a hotel pool, and Wander, a vacation house company that guarantees fast Wi-Fi and dedicated workspaces, there are so many ‘new’ ways to experience travel.

Do your research, not all of these platforms will be a fit for everyone, but they’re a great tool to add to the arsenal while searching for savings.

I was able to rent a Tesla Model Y in California through Turo for less than a basic car from a leading rental company – and the host picked up and dropped off the car.