The Book Fighting Its Own Subject: How To Win At Travel by Brian Kelly
If you’ve ever flown on a domestic flight in the United States, you’ve probably experienced something weird: the flight attendant getting on the PA to announce the airline’s co-branded credit card has a unique welcome offer exclusive to passengers on your flight.
That’s right. If you spend 3,000 dollars in 3 months on this new credit card, you’ll get 70,000 bonus frequent flier miles, which could be redeemed for an epic first class ticket to Bora Bora!
If you’re not American, this practice of shilling financial instruments at 30,000 feet is weird or even vulgar. However, the world of frequent flier miles and credit cards is but one component in a system for improving your travel experience. Travel is a skill and if you get it wrong, you will get your ass kicked. Traveling well is a subject needing a guidebook fit for the modern age.
Fortunately, someone extremely qualified has stepped up to the plate. This is a review of How to Win At Travel by Brian Kelly.
Background
As the book cover indicates, Brian Kelly is the founder of the popular travel blog The Points Guy. For thirty years, he’s turned his skill at redeeming frequent flier miles and credit card rewards programs into a powerhouse business which gives travelers a badly-needed masterclass to travel better. Used to their fullest effect, frequent flier miles and frequent guest points from hotels can save people thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars, drastically improve their vacation experience, and make travel downright fun.
With this book, Kelly synthesizes his experiences into a step-by-step guide for all variety of travelers. Everything from maximizing card points to the best trips for traveling with young kids are all covered.
So how well did Kelly do in committing his advice to print?
What Works
If you’re standing in line at the airport, panic whenever your flight is delayed, or are shocked when an overbooked hotel denies your reservation, you should have read this book yesterday. In an era where information technology dictates much of our lives, not having that information is a costly mistake. So if you want to improve your travel experiences, get reading. Now.
Particular highlights in the book are the chapters on jet lag, travel etiquette, passport information, and managing disruptions to your trip. The reason these chapters work so well is because Kelly’s experience can prevent you from making common mistakes from the outset. ‘What you’re supposed to do’ in a situation like that is not immediately obvious nor can it be picked up without the aid of someone who’s already done it. In the worst cases, you’re accidentally breaking a few laws. Horror stories of travelers being arrested for having an expired passport or bringing prescription medications that violate local customs crop up in the book and should scare you straight.
Other highlights are introductions to the value of credit card rewards and Kelly’s personal experiences learning how to travel as a new father.
What Doesn’t Work
The flaw with this book is not Kelly’s writing skills, but the subject itself. The subject screws Kelly on at least three fronts.
First, information about maximizing frequent flier programs, credit card rewards, and best practices goes out of date way fast. In fact, I flagged recommendations that were already out of date a mere six weeks after the book was published. Frequent flier programs are constantly changing their rules, updating (read: subtracting) their benefits, and altering the partnerships you can leverage in your everyday spend. So if you’re reading this review or indeed the book long after the original publication date, then you might need to verify if ~50% of the book’s advice is still valid. Kelly needs to start work a second edition now.
Second, Kelly’s advice is sound, but the order of information he presents it in is not. This is a problem his editor should have spotted. Because traveling correctly involves a steady list of dos and don’ts, the reader is barraged with countless tips which would require a personal assistant to manage. I only happen to know about this subject matter because writing blogs sometimes involves traveling for research, but a person trying to get a grip on the travel world for the first time might struggle. This book badly needed a chronological narrative so Kelly could show not only how to win at travel but when one should take his well-founded suggestions. Certain things belong in a certain order and this book only gives you the loosest idea of when you should do those things.
Third, Kelly’s book—like the subject matter itself—doesn’t acknowledge elephant in the room: winning at travel is expensive. Kelly frequently highlights how ‘being cheap is expensive’, but the book doesn’t take into consideration how someone might actually implement that advice. For instance, some of Kelly’s suggestions for infant travel seats are listed as costing more than 600 dollars. His recommended premium travel credit cards have annual fees of 400 dollars or more. Increasingly, the way to earn the most frequent flier miles—or at least enough for a good redemption—is to buy a cash fare in the highest class of cabin, also exorbitantly priced. You’ll only get elite hotel status if you spend anywhere between 10 and 100 nights in a hotel. Yet the only financial advice Kelly offers is managing one’s credit score. That’s a good start, but that doesn’t tell me how to earn more money to actually afford a credit card that costs 550 dollars a year. You can’t win at travel if you’re losing at money. Plain and simple.
Conclusion
If your airport experiences suck and your hotels are lousy, get this book and start implementing the advice. But beware: you can’t do it on the cheap. Once you’re done with reading How To Win At Travel, get a personal finance book because you’ll need to get your house in order (or list on the market at a rate higher than what you paid for it) if you want to put Kelly’s advice into effect.