Our Free Trip to Japan (Part 2)
Previously, I talked about how easy it was to fly to and stay in Japan essentially for free using points. And if it stopped there, we would have been thrilled. But wait, there’s more! In addition to taking us across the ocean and giving us someplace to stay, our credit cards offered a ton of other perks that made the experience even better, protections against travel misfortunes, and opportunities to rake in extra points for our next trip while we traveld.
CREDIT CARD PERKS
Lounge Access
They say you’re supposed to get to the airport 3 hours before international flights. Overkill? Almost certainly–it never took us more than 30 minutes to complete both check-in and security. But we played it safe, and ended up with a few hours to kill in the airport. Depending on the airport in question, this can be some combination of boring, uncomfortable, and expensive. Clean, comfortable seats and power outlets are actually fairly plentiful at the San Francisco airport. But I tend to be a little snacky, and the cheapest snacks you can get in most airports seem like they were meant to be split 6 ways and cost the better part of $10.
Thankfully, our Capital One Venture X comes with Priority Pass lounge access, so we were able to spend that extra preflight time in the comfort of the lounge, scrounging down free food and drinks. We had pancakes and eggs in the morning in San Francisco, and enjoyed plum wine and chicken karaage in Tokyo. And because the Venture X allows you to add up to 5 authorized users with the same benefits for free, I was able to set my mom and brother up with lounge access for their trips as well.
Concierge Services
We have two cards that offer concierge services: the Venture X Visa Infinite card and the Bilt World Elite Mastercard. We played around with the Bilt concierge a bit during our trip to Chile. It was helpful there, but we discovered that it can be indispensable in Japan. When we were in Kyoto, we discovered that most restaurants require reservations, but don’t take them online. Although I had a Japanese e-sim card, my phone only had data service, so I wasn’t able to call to book a meal. Of course, even if I had had phone service, I could still only make a reservation if someone at the restaurant spoke English. But I was able to simply log into the Mastercard Concierge website, use their contact form to tell them when and where I wanted a reservation, and a Japanese-speaking member of their team could reach out, make the reservation, and email the details to us in English. Once we figured out how to book restaurants this way, it made planning our day trips much, much easier.
Global Entry
Once we got back home, we were able to breeze through customs in a matter of minutes thanks to our Global Entry memberships. Although the service costs $100 to enroll (and also provides you with TSA PreCheck status as well), a number of credit cards—including the IHG Premier and Capital One Venture X—offer statement credits that will completely offset that cost.
TRAVEL PROTECTIONS
Thankfully we didn’t experience any travel disruptions on our trip, but my mother, who joined us in Japan but traveled separately, wasn’t so lucky. Her flight to Japan was delayed by 6 hours, forcing to all but miss out on her first night’s (prepaid) hotel. To add insult to injury, her return flight was delayed overnight, and she paid out of pocket for a hotel room..
A lesson we all learned the hard way was the value of credit card protections. Despite the massive delays and the expenses they imposed, American Airlines offered no compensation; US law doesn’t require them to. Despite those significant costs, to say nothing of the inconvenience, AA just washed their hands of the situation. At times like that, good credit card protections are invaluable. My Capital One Venture X, for example, covers “reasonable additional expenses, such as meals and lodging” for delays over 6 hours or overnight, meaning that, at minimum, the trip delay insurance would have covered my mom’s hotel.
Unfortunately, I booked her ticket for her, so my policy didn’t cover her travel. Even more unfortunately, I realized once I began writing this blog post that if we had just used the authorized user card in her name (the one I mentioned above that got her free lounge access) then she would have been covered. Because purchases on an authorized user card are billed to the primary cardholder, the expense would have shown up on my statement in the same way in either case–the only difference would have been the added travel protections. So if you ever find yourself booking a flight for someone else in the future, consider whether you have a booking option that will ensure they have the maximum protections possible.
MAXIMIZING POINTS
Your free, airport-lounge enjoying, concierge-assisted, credit card-protected vacation is a great time to earn more points for your next one, at least as long as you have a card with no foreign transaction fees. I originally got my Amex Gold card for that reason. And now we have several that helped us make the most of our travel spendings, including the following:
Capital One Venture X: Not only were we able to erase our hotel costs using Capital One miles, we were able to take advantage of the card’s 10-miles-per-dollar earning rates when booking those hotels through Capital One Travel. The Visa card is widely accepted, and earned a solid 2x points on our miscellaneous spending on our travels, such as gift shops.
Amex Gold: We mostly travel to eat, and the 4x points Amex earns on dining, even internationally, allows us to maximize those meals. Although Amex isn’t universally accepted, I was pleasantly surprised at how often we were able to pay for meals with the card.
IHG Premier: One of my favorite features of this card is the 5x points it earns on travel, broadly defined. For me, this is at least slightly more valuable than the 2x Capital One miles earned by the Venture X, and makes the card useful for miscellaneous travel expenses like local transit. This habit helped us discover a convenient travel hack. In Japan, you can use a SUICA card to get around on buses, subways, and most trains. As a transit card, you earn 5x points on the IHG Premier when you load funds onto the card. But, the SUICA is actually accepted by tons of other merchants, including convenience stores, allowing us to get a few extra points for our 7-11 Kit-Kat purchases. (This hack also works with other cards with similar earning structures, like the Chase Sapphire cards or Amex Green card.)
CONCLUSION
We were lucky to have such a fantastic trip to Japan, and our collection of credit cards made it happen. In addition to paying for flights and hotels with points, with a good credit card setup you can:
Visit lounges in the airport for quiet, free food, and phone charging
Use free concierge service to book restaurants even where you don’t speak the language
Get Global Entry for free to speed through customs
Minimize travel risk with trip delay/cancellation insurance
Earn maximum points with bonus categories on hotels, restaurants, and transit