Live booking a multi-family trip to Europe
TODO:
Call Hyatt for booking check-in
Book inner-euro travel (LIS -> FCO, MXP -> CDG)
Total Cost
Points + Cash:
150k + $358 (JFK -> FRA -> LIS) - Amex MR -> Air Canada
140k + $99.80 (SEA -> YVR -> FRA) - Alaska Miles
220k + $75 (SEA -> IST -> LIS) - Amex MR -> Air Canada
180k + $157 (SEA -> IAH -> FRA) - Amex MR -> Air Canada
240k + $1687 (CDG -> SEA) - Amex MR (transfer bonus) -> Air France/KLM Flying blue
100k + $277 (SFO -> MUC -> LIS) - Amex MR -> Air France/KLM Flying blue
Total (Flights): 1.3M + $2654
Total (Hotels):
Estimated Cash only prices (same date / flight):
$5k JFK -> FRA -> LIS
$3.2k SEA -> YVR -> FRA
$9k SEA -> IST, $2.6k IST -> LIS = $11.6k Total
$12k IAH -> FRA alone
$29.6k CDG -> SEA
$3.5k SFO -> MUC -> LIS
Total Cash Price (Flights): $64,900
Goal of this trip
I have been blessed in my life to be surrounded by such a loving and caring family. Ever since I was born I feel like I’ve been giving the support & tools I’ve needed to succeed. I give my thanks to none other than my parents for that — from traveling all over the state(s) to staying up late or getting up early to help me prepare for tests at school. My parents are nearing retirement and have never traveled much together aside from our family trips to Hawaii and such. Ever since I got into the points world I always imagined being able to book an amazing trip for my parents to scratch that itch for them to see the world. I felt hesitant sending them off on their own, so I decided to bring myself, my wife and my kid, too!
I also figured, why not extend the thanks to my in-laws that so gratefully paid for my wife and I’s beautiful wedding and who I consider family. My in-laws have also never been overseas and I thought I can give thanks to them by creating memories in different countries that we can all cherish with us forever.
Initial research
We are all based on the west coast and all fly out of SEA. That limits how we can really get to Europe direct, so I knew that connections would most likely be required. I was sitting on about a million points collectively, mainly through Amex MR, some Chase UR, and Alaska miles. I had the tools to track down flights and hotels to build an initial itinerary. I knew:
I wanted to get to Europe and back
I was okay with splitting itineraries — meaning we can travel in pairs
There were 8 adults and one lap infant
Wanted to fly business class for long routes (inner-Euro travel I don’t care as much, but need to consider bags)
Wanted to visit at least 3 countries
February 2025
I just got a text from my brother asking if we can add his girlfriend to the trip. That’s quite funny because I tripled checked with him before booking everything below, and he was still hesitant. Anyways, this makes for a great challenge. I now need to keep my eye out for any deals for 3 people in biz US to EU, or try very very very hard to get a hold of air canada aeroplan’s customer service (my call log for this is hilarious back and forth of missed calls).
Update - got off the phone with Aeroplan and they mentioned for the same itinerary they do not have any award space. Sad, but expected. I will continue my search. I navigated back to seats.aero and looked around and saw decent availability from east coast to Europe, but ideally we all take the same flight to the same place from the west coast. I set an alert on roame and ended up snagging Air France KLM SFO -> MUC -> LIS for 100k Flying Blue miles (transfer from Amex). This will be a good backup in case another alert provides SEA to LIS with up to one layover.
I also started to look at hotels in Paris - our final leg of the trip. I found some interesting comparisons for the same hotel on different partners all through Citi points. Citi supports both IPrefer and Choice Priviledges. And you can interestingly book a Preferred hotel through both chains! Citi to Preferred is 1000:4000 and Citi to Choice is 1000:2000. The hotel that caught my eye was Castille Paris - Starhotels Collezione.
Late October 2025
Now that I had some breathing room to plan around, I started looking for hotels. I was also sitting on a stash of Chase UR aka Hyatt points so decided to start there. I also have a few Amex Plats for the FHR on the shorter stays I am looking to use. Now that I knew there were a few core places in our itinerary (Frankfurt, Lisbon, Rome, and Paris), I started to map out the Hyatts. I saw decent availability for the Hyatt Regency Lisbon ranging from 21k-24k points a night. I knew we were traveling in groups of three: My wife / son and I, brother mom and dad, MIL FIL and BIL, so I booked three rooms under the same name and still need to call to make sure the others can check in themselves. I don’t believe this will be an issue and I’m not super worried. The total for all stays collectively was 273K Chase MR
For flights, I saw there was a 20% transfer bonus from Amex to Air France KLM Flying Blue. I also saw that around the time I wanted to come home, there was great award availability. We wanted to visit Paris anyways, and figured this would mark a great end to our trip. So I found availability for 5 people in business class for 60k Air France Flying Blue miles or 48k Amex MR with the transfer bonus. The fees were quite hefty, but I think the value is well worth it. I just want to point out the insane value here. Not that I would ever pay cash for something like this, but for 5 people to fly direct from CDG to SEA in business class on the day / flight we booked with points, it would cost $29,677… Read that again please. Nearly 30 grand. And I got it for 240k points (or around $2400 if I cashed out 1:1). Now this doesn’t get everyone home, but it is a magnificent start.
Late September 2025
I started searching for flights in pairs and common routes to Europe from Seattle (or west coast even). I came across a couple of options from flightconnections. The ones that seemed to where most common were:
SEA -> FRA
SEA -> LHR (yeah, not gonna pay $$$$ in surcharges)
SEA -> FCO (less common)
SEA -> CDG (less common)
Okay cool. Now I know that most likely I’m going to need to have family meet up in Frankfurt, Germany.
flightconnections SEA → Anywhere search
Now I thought, okay well lets make this trip very special for my parents. For one, they haven’t been to New York City. I want to make this trip memorable, and remember hearing about a fifth freedom flight offered by Singapore Airlines: JFK -> FRA. How amazing! I looked for availability and found JFK -> FRA on Singapore Airlines Business class through Air Canada Aeroplan (both are Star Alliance Members). I came across this because I had an itch to visit Lisbon. While trying to chase down options, I saw on Air Canada there was JFK -> FRA -> LIS! One of my favorite things about Air Canada is the 5k stopovers in business class. So I booked this for my parents, and this marked the beginning of the rest of the search journey. I paid a total of 150k Air Canada points (150K Amex MR) + $358 CAD.
Next on the agenda was to look for flights for my wife and her mom. I volunteered to take our to-be 1 year old on me and my brothers to-be-booked flight. I expanded scope a little bit because direct to Europe from Seattle seemed to be harder and harder to find for saver awards. I figured Seattle is 3 hour drive or 45 min flight to Vancouver, BC (YVR), and started looking for more AC availability from there. I actually expected to find AC availability but no luck. Expanding my search I found that there was SEA -> YVR -> FRA for the same-ish dates for 70k atmos miles per person. This is flying on Condor metal for the long haul in an Airbus A330-900neo. I had a good amount of Alaska miles to I felt comfortable with this redemption, and figured it was nice to depart from SEA, although will be a small and annoyingly long 5 hour layover in YVR. This is my mother-in-law’s first business class experience and I am happy she gets to do this! This was a total of 140k Alaska miles + $99.80USD.
Now I wanted to book my son, my brother and myself. My son is technically a lap infant. Originally I planned on also trying to find Condor through Alaska for a similar route, and I found a flight that worked however I saw that there was a bit of headache going that way so I looked elsewhere. I don’t know why, but I saw a clip of a golf simulator in the Turkish Business class lounge in Istanbul and was like — I gotta try this. That is basically why I decided to lock in the weirdly routed SEA -> IST -> LIS. Can you guess which partner flies this? Air Canada! I found SEA -> LIS with a 15 hour stopover in Istanbul. I called over the phone to book this because I felt more comfortable receiving confirmation on the other end that I correctly added a lap infant to a partner airline. This metal is Turkish on the A350-900. I think it should make for a great time. My brother has not been on a business class flight either, so I was happy to snag this one for a great memory to come. The total cost of this was 220k Air Canada Miles (Amex MR) and like $75 CAD in fees? I can’t find the receipt of this, only the booking confirmation. I was sitting on a bank of Amex MR so I didn’t hate this price, but I know I could’ve done better (good thing there is still time to look for other awards).
Finally, the last set of tickets to book to get to Europe was for my father-in-law and brother-in-law. I don’t believe they have flown business either, and I don’t believe my BIL has been to Europe. I figured how awesome of a gift it would be to take not just my mother-in-law to Europe, but her family, too? So back I went to my bookmarked SEA -> EUR (mainly FRA). I found it on Air Canada through United / Lufthansa for SEA -> IAH (Houston) -> FRA for the date I needed. The cool thing about this itinerary is my FIL and BIL will be flying on the upper deck business class for IAH -> FRA on Boeing’s 747-400! I am still relatively new to award travel and airplanes in general (lots of economy flights, but never paid attention). This is real cool to me and I hope they are excited to fly it. The total cost of this was 180k Air Canada Miles (Amex MR) and $157.60 CAD.
Woahhh.. update for January! My brother wants his gf to come on the trip. I think its pretty awesome to have a big group, but that throws a tiny wrench in things. Normally its easy to find 2 seats per booking, so I knew it was unlikely she would be able to come along on our SEA → IST → LIS booking. I called AC and after finally getting ahold of them (2 days back and forth missed callbacks), they mentioned there was no room left. So I set my alerts and started looking for close-ish airports to fly out of to Europe. I found A pretty good deal, AF flying SFO → AMS → LIS for the date we needed. After convincing my brother things will be okay for her traveling alone in biz, he gave the thumbs up. I transferred 100k Amex MR to AF KLM flying blue and booked for her. He paid cash for the SEA → SFO flight and we should all be there on time! The total for this trip was about 100k Air France KLM Flying Blue Miles and ~$200 USD in taxes and fees.
Great! We have 90% of the total flights for the trips set. The ones still on the radar are LIS → FCO (limited direct, only through TAP or Ryan air so will likely pay cash here). We then also need one for MXP → CDG.
February 2026
Now that we have the majority of the hard flights in place, I needed to lock in the rest of the hotels. I had been working on an Amex Aspire card (Hilton) for the free night + 175k welcome offer. I opened this (and pushed my parents to open it) so that I could stay on Lake Como at the Grand Hotel Victoria Menaggio. This is a 2 Michelin Key hotel and I paid 170k Hilton points + FNC. I found this to be a great redemption given I didn’t pay a dime cash, and this hotel runs for about $1300 USD / night. Unfortunately, by the time my parents reached the SUB and got the FNC, the lowest rewards available were about 1 million points / night lol. So instead, they are on the other side of the lake at Hilton Lake Como for 100k points / night + FNC, still a great deal.
One thing I’ve found hard with booking hotels in Europe, is a lot of them care how many people total, not what age they are. What I mean is we have an infant who will be 1 years old by the time we are in Europe, and many hotels require you to book for 3 people. I understand but it does make it harder to book things. I bring this up because I recently booked an IPrefer hotel: Hotel Keppler for our final leg of the trip in Paris. I booked this for a total of 93.75k Citi Thank you points (375k IPrefer points) just in time before the devaluation (1:4 → 1:2 on April 19th, 2026). This was an okay redemption, its like getting the price of 3 hotels nights for 5. I didn’t have enough Citi points, so I had to pay the final night cash. I am currently waiting for a response from the hotel to merge those. One dialogue snippet from this booking with the IPrefer specialist:
Me: “Can I book this on behalf of my parents?”
IPrefer: “That is not allowed.”
Me: “Is that a hotel policy or an IPrefer policy?”
IPrefer: “I Prefer policy…”
Me: “Can we pretend I didn’t say that?”
IPrefer: laughs, “Sounds good”
So that was pretty awesome. Note to self when booking for others, try and avoid the program and go to the direct source (i.e. the hotel could update the check in names themselves). I still need to do that for all the other hotels I’ve booked for everyone else (Lisbon Hyatt, Rome Hyatt). Back to the baby situation, I had IPrefer add a note that a baby would be coming with us. This was the hotel response:
Good to know! I asked if they could upgrade and they were able to, for only about 40 EUR / night — I accepted so I wouldn’t have to look around and book a diff hotel for me and my parents (limited options with IPrefer in Paris for reasonable price).
April / May 2026
My goal for this month is to:
Complete booking / logistics of all hotels
Need to call Hyatt lisbon and add other members as check in people (my wife needs to call and I need to build a script for her). I also need to ask them if my baby is allowed or if I need to upgrade my room to fit and extra 1 foot wide human!
I need to call Hyatt Rome to add other members (just parents) to check in. Similarly, I need to do a baby check!
Book some activities across the locations
Book flight LIS → FCO
Book train Rome → Milan
Book flight MXP → CDG
Book ferries on Lake Como (one for getting to hotel, one for date night to celebrate my wife’s birthday)
