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NYC to Portugal to Thailand and Back for $120!

August 17, 2014 by Brad 11 Comments  Richmond Savers has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Richmond Savers and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities. Disclosures.

Lisbon, Portugal

Lisbon, Portugal

I just put together an amazing itinerary for my brother for his proposed summer 2015 trip and this is a perfect example of how travel rewards points can save you money and take you places you could only dream of!

He’s a teacher and he wanted to go to either Europe or Asia next summer using his points, so my response was, “why not both??”

Using the United Free Stopover

United Airlines has an incredible bonus built into their round-trip international award bookings called a “free stopover.” It is basically an entirely free flight built into your award booking! We tested this out and here are the amazing results:

It costs only 80,000 United miles and just $120.70 to go from the US to Portugal, Portugal to Thailand and then Thailand back to the US!

Normally it would cost 80,000 miles to just fly round-trip just from the US to Thailand. On this trip, thanks to the free stopover in Portugal, he is able to get this trip to Europe for zero additional points!

This plan calls for him to fly from the greater New York City area out of Newark Airport to Lisbon, Portugal where he’ll visit for a week and then will fly from Portugal to Bangkok and then two weeks later fly back from Bangkok to Newark.

It took us about 10 minutes to mock this up on the United website and here are some screenshots so you can see for yourself:

United Europe to Thailand for $121

Only $120.70 of taxes and fees to go to Portugal and Thailand!

Here’s the actual itinerary:

United Europe to Thailand details

If you head over to our travel rewards video training page you’ll find a few short 5-minute videos showing you exactly how to search the United website in general and how to find these ‘free stopovers’ to put together amazing trips like this one.

If you want to get started with your own personalized travel rewards plan, click here to sign up for our completely free (no gimmicks) travel rewards coaching program!

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Richmond Savers has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Richmond Savers and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers.

Filed Under: Travel Rewards

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Comments

  1. Jacob Karkula says

    August 17, 2014 at 12:25 pm

    In addition to what was posted, you can take advantage of the two free open jaws that United offers, then use budget airlines (or trains) in either Europe or SE Asia to get around. We just returned from a similar itinerary using points. After our 16-night stopover in Rome, we flew into Bali and out of Thailand and used budget airlines Tiger and Air Asia to get around SE Asia at very reasonable prices.

    With the itinerary that was posted, you potentially could fly into Bangkok, then out of one of the southern Thai airports such as Phuket (HKT) or Surat Thani (URT) which has access to the famous gulf islands of Koh Samui, Koh Tao and Koh Phangan. Or into Bali (DPS), then out out of a Thai airport of your choice.

    Reply
    • Brad says

      August 17, 2014 at 1:19 pm

      Great comment Jacob — thank you for the insight! It sounds like you had a phenomenal trip 🙂

      I know this entire concept can be quite confusing to people, so I purposely left out the open-jaw functionality as it makes heads explode to hear all this unfamiliar terminology. Your comment described it perfectly and is an ideal addition to this article — I really appreciate you taking the time to comment!

      Reply
      • Jacob says

        August 17, 2014 at 1:49 pm

        I am glad I can help!

        Reply
        • Connie Lee says

          February 1, 2016 at 1:45 pm

          Hey Jacob! Do you have your itinerary for your 16 night (Rome+ Thailand) That sounds amazing!!!

          Reply
          • Jacob says

            February 5, 2016 at 4:11 pm

            It was 16 nights in Italy, then off to Southeast Asia for 5-6 weeks.

            What specifically are you interested in? Italy itinerary? Italy and Southeast Asia? Just flight paths?

  2. Holly@ClubThrifty says

    August 18, 2014 at 12:26 pm

    Awesome, Brad!

    Reply
    • Brad says

      August 18, 2014 at 7:04 pm

      This is a sweet one, right?? I thought you might like it 🙂

      Reply
  3. Done by Forty says

    August 20, 2014 at 10:20 am

    I love the flexibility this offers. I was trying to make one of these sweet stopover itineraries for our Europe trip next year, but the easiest thing was just to fly in and out of the same city. Go figure. Oh well, it works…just not as impressive. ;0)

    Reply
    • Jacob says

      August 20, 2014 at 11:11 am

      Did you try calling up United to help you out? They can sometimes get you better routes than you can easily find online.

      Reply
  4. suriyan says

    August 25, 2014 at 4:59 am

    Thank you for published because I have been learn a lot of knowledge.

    Reply
  5. Paola Fuentes says

    February 10, 2015 at 11:50 pm

    Whoa! For just $120, really? Awesome!

    Reply

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