
Travel Hacking: Is it possible in France ?
As a “permanent traveler”, I am fascinated by the “travel hackers” in North America who enjoy flights and hotel nights almost for free thanks to the points they have accumulated
For the most part, these points are accumulated via their credit cards.
Broadly speaking, banks in North America offer very generous benefits when using their credit cards. The more a person consumes, the more points he or she accumulates that can be turned into benefits
The use of these credit cards is dangerous because one can very quickly find oneself in an infernal circle and have large sums of money to repay with very high interest rates
On the other hand, those who are rigorous in the management of their budget can, in fact, benefit from significant advantages. This is what travel hackers do
After some research, as far as I know, the only card in France that allows you to accumulate points is the American Express card. I’ve talked about it here. If you do well, you can get back about 1.7% of your payout, or 17 € for every 1000 € spent. Not huge but that’s still it.
There are still some tips that can be interesting to do travel hacking as a French person and make some savings. Unfortunately, I don’t have any miracle recipe to propose you but by cumulating all these “travel hacks”, you will get some nice advantages from time to time. If you have other ideas, don’t hesitate to share them, I’m interested and will add them to this article
Use an American Express Air France card
As I have discussed in detail in this article, the American Express Air France card allows you to earn one Air France mile for every euro you spend with your card
On top of that, this card will allow you to save money when you rent vehicles. If this happens to you regularly, this card becomes very interesting
You can then convert your miles into airline tickets.
In this example, I can buy a ticket Miami – Guadeloupe for 13 000 miles + 9 €. Without miles, the ticket costs 235 €.
Every euro I spent on my American Express card therefore “earned” 1.7 cents, a return rate of 1.7%.

If you would like to get an American Express for free the first year, I can sponsor you by clicking here
It is also possible to convert miles into Accor Hotel Rewards points at the rate of 4 miles for 1 Rewards point. Knowing that 2,000 Rewards points allow you to obtain a €40 discount. This makes a redistribution rate of 0.5%.
Create a loyalty program for each airline alliance
There are three alliances that bring together a large number of airlines: OneWorld / Star Alliance / SkyTeam
Being very unfaithful and rarely taking the same airline (we always take the cheapest flight ^^), I opened a loyalty program in each of the alliances. This way I can accumulate points each time
For example, with our round-the-world ticket, we flew all our long-haul flights with One World, and we chose the Qatar Airways frequent flyer program because their qmiles can be exchanged for miles and rewards from other programs.
The round-the-world ticket cost us €3,000 per person with OneWorld, which generated 13,283 miles per person.

9000miles = 40€ Accorhotels voucher
Theoretically 3000€ of flight should give me 59€ of voucher, that is to say a return of about 1,9%. This is quite high compared to other programs. Of course, this calculation is a bit simplistic because the conversion is done in steps: you can convert only 4500 miles at a time (for Accorhotels anyway)
Thus, after two years of travel, I was able to enjoya freeflight from Lisbon to Paris with SkyTeam anda night in a Sofitel in Paris with OneWorld. Again, nothing magical, but it’s nice when you get it
Fiscal year limit: most low-cost companies aren’t part of an alliance.
The booking.com Genius program
Do you all know about booking.com? As soon as you have made 7 reservations via this site, you automatically become a “genius member” for life
Genius members receive discounts (at least 10% and sometimes much more) on many hotels around the world. A status that you must obtain
In this example, the Genius status allows you to get a night at 57 € while it is found at 63 € on all other sites.


The booking.com partner program
Booking.com also offers an affiliate program as an incentive to promote the site
The principle: once you are a booking.com partner, you receive a personalized link that you can put on your blog, your facebook page, ..
If someone makes a reservation after clicking on your link, you will receive a commission between 4 and 5% of the total price of the stay.
The trick is to use this link for your own reservations. By cumulating it with the Genius program, it starts to make an interesting discount
However, you have to wait until you have earned at least 100 euros in commissions before you get the money
Earn Air France miles when you book on Booking.com
By going through the website https://sp.booking.com/index.html?aid=1530246&lang=fr&label=pageloyalty-link-1530246-click_brand-airfrance, you will recover up to 1 Air France mile per euro spent on Booking.
Note that this hack cannot be combined with the booking partner program but you can still benefit from the genius advantages.

The hotels.com loyalty program
Hotels.com offers a very interesting loyalty program: one night free for every 10 nights booked
More precisely, after 10 nights, you will receive a voucher corresponding to the average price of the 10 nights in question
It’s finally as if you get a 10% discount on each stay you book through hotels.com
In the example below, after 10 nights I get a voucher worth 53,86€.

With Genius status, Booking.com often offers better rates than hotels.com but not always. I always compare the two and sometimes I have very good surprises
Getting miles with Agoda
The Agoda website regularly proposes more interesting rates than Booking in Asia.
On top of that, a reservation allows you to obtain miles that you can then convert into airline tickets or other benefits.
You just have to inform your loyalty program about Agoda.

Kiwi.com affiliation
Kiwi.com is a flight booking site that offers an affiliate program in the same spirit as Booking.com
You receive a commission of 3% of the trip price for each booking
Kiwi.com is rarely the cheapest site for direct flights but on long trips with stopovers, they are sometimes very competitive
And 3% on the price of a long haul flight is to be taken 🙂
The Delta Airlines / Airbnb program
By joining the Delta Airlines frequent flyer program, you earn miles when you make a reservation on Airbnb
So, by paying with American Express, for an Airbnb reservation you generate miles at both Air France and Delta Airlines, not bad 🙂
The American Express Platinum Card
The American Express Platinum card is quite expensive (€590 for a business, €660 for a personal card). But it can pay for itself.
Above all, this card offers a Priority Pass subscription that gives free access to airport lounges around the world, a very appreciable little luxury.
If you would like to obtain an American Express Platinum Business Card, follow this referral link and receive 30,000 free Membership points. Based on the 0.5% payout rate, this represents a premium of €150
Book a round trip instead of a one-way trip
If you are used to booking one-way flights, always check the price of a round trip.
This is completely counter-intuitive but a one-way ticket can cost 5 times more than a round-trip ticket.
You can therefore book a round trip, use only the outbound flight and get a refund of airport taxes for the return flight.
I discuss this subject in detail in this article.
Pay for your plane tickets in the currency of the country of departure
Airline tickets are usually charged in the currency of the country of departure. For example, an Istanbul – Paris will be charged in Turkish lira. You don’t really notice this because airline websites will usually display the price in your own currency by applying an exchange rate.
This exchange rate can be interesting… or not!
So systematically compare the price of the ticket in euro and in the currency of the country of departure, there is sometimes a 10% saving to be made.
You can read a complete article on the subject.
Join shareholder clubs
If you invest part of your savings in publicly traded companies, some of them offer free membership in a shareholders’ club that offers certain advantages.
For example, as a shareholder of LVMH, we were able to benefit from the equivalent of €150 in free visits to Champagne and Cognac cellars.

