Credit card reward maximization requires attention to detail at every step along the way. Maybe you're already a pro at collecting points, you know when to get which SUBs, how to work referrals, and how to squeeze every point per dollar you can from your purchases. But how good are you at maximizing redemptions? In a previous article I went over the basics of how to know if you were getting good value by using the Air Canada reward chart as an example for Aeroplan, and highlighting some common pitfalls such as low percentage mixed cabin fares. For people who already know the basics its time to consider what tools they should use to help them find these deals.
This is the first in a series on search tools looking at Roame.travel. I'm excited to share that Tim Qin at Roame has provided me discount code "RMD" which can be used after singing up with my link here. Referrals and disclaimers at the bottom. If you already know why you'd want a tool, jump ahead to the review of Roame's features.
Why You Want a Tool
One of the first lessons in getting good value for your points and miles is to change your perpsective on travel to unlock maximum flexibility. Going from "I want to go to Amsterdam in May 2025" to "I want to fly business class to Europe next spring" can allow you to fly business class across the ocean, allowing you to start your vacation on a more rested and luxurious note. Unfortunately most airlines do not make this easy for you.
Air Canada for example has a bar of dates along the top of the search, but inconsistently shows what prices you'd expect on each of those days. To make matters worse, clicking on a different day takes 8-10s to load. Meaning that even if you could instantly appraise the options, manually checking dozens of options can become quite time consuming.
If you have transferrable points such as Amex or Avion it can be even more daunting to manually optimize as you'll want to check to see if you can have better value with multiple different partners.
Air France/KLM Flying Blue makes it easier than Air Canada by more consistently displaying the lowest prices across the date bar and loading new pages in 2-3s, allowing you to more quickly check the dates within your target budget.
British Airways Avios provides a helpful calendar to quickly scan months at a time, but doesn't display the point and cash prices until you click through, requiring you to develop an understanding of their typical pricing based on class, connections, airports, peak vs off peak and saver fares.
To further complicate things, while British Airways Avios can convert to other Avios partners such as Iberian, pricing differs depending on which of the partners you search and spend your Avios with.
If this wasn't already enough to make your head spin - consider that there may have been a far better flight (date, time, price, airline) that instead went to Brussels, and you could have taken a 1.5-2hr train or ultra cheap flight with a low cost provider. How many platforms are you willing to check with how many dates and location pairs? That's were search tools come in - bringing the potential to save you search time and/or points.
Free Search
Roame provides a free account option that allows unilimited searches of single location pairs across many different loyalty programs with a relatively narrow date window so lets try out our YYZ-AMS search for May 14th.
Since they're targeting a US market, you'll see a number of transfer options here that are not easily accessible to Canadians unless you have a US Card, check out my separate article of Roame Tips for advice on how to configure your searches/filters.
Paid Search
Contrasting to the free search, the most notable difference is that each search checks a wider date window of +/-3 for a total of 7 days, which for this search gave:
Before you get too excited about the lower point amounts, note that this redemption is via LHR notorious for massive surcharges, and sure enough $755 USD - contrast that to Aeroplan's low charges of $102 USD on the Swiss air flight, and Etihad's moderate $230 USD for the KLM flight.
Skyview
Instead of requiring specific airport pairings and dates, Skyview allows you to use broader pairings like YVR-Asia, or YYZ-Europe. Free users get just a taste of skyview, with only a 7 day window within the next 60 days, while paid users can use a 60 day window within the next year. In my opinion this is the feature you should be thinking about when considering paying for Roame.
Lets continue on the "Amsterdam in May" example, maybe you're willing to search Europe more broadly. Unfortunately as a free user you'll have to wait until mid March to start searching for May. For the sake of demonstrating, here is what that sort of YYZ-EUR search could look like on the free version, instead looking at mid October.
Oh look, a flight to Brussels, that could work to get us to Amsterdam! With the paid version looking at May 14 +/- 30d I found 24 different flights to AMS for 70k Aeroplan points including flights with Swiss via Zurich and flights with TAP via Lisbon - both great potential stopover locations.
Not keen on some of the results with such a wide search? More savvy users can take advantage of newer airport and airline filters to make a subregional search.
It's important to note that Roame does not perform a live search with this broad Skyview search. Instead they use cached results that are periodically updated across numerous combinations of locations. What does this mean? Well for popular routes it means that some of the availability you find may have already been claimed, and for niche routes they may not be tracked at all. On the brightside of things, you can either request the addition of a route, or take advantage of alerts to potentially solve both problems
Alerts
The ability to add 5 alerts is the second headline feature of the pro subscription. Just enter all the filters you want on Skyview and check the save as alert toggle. Roame will notify you when a flight matches your criteria, so make sure to tweak your filters to optimize flexibility without being bombarded with uninteresting or irrelevant options. In my case that means having 3 seats, a high premium percentage, and sub $500 in fees per ticket (looking at you BA flights via LHR). What you may not realize is that adding a specific pairing to an alert will cause Roame to start tracking it more generally for its Skyview service. This can be useful if you really want the origin to be your local airport instead of flying out of major hubs like YVR or YYZ.
Limitations
Unfortunately no search tool is perfect, and Roame is no different. Some of my issues I mentioned above but I'll summarize them here along with any other I experienced:
Point costs are displayed with the best available transfer bonus (whether or not you can take advantage), so it can look misleading, for example showing 54k FB for a redemption that is normally 65k because Capital 1 has a 20% transfer bonus right now
There is no easy way to filter to Canadian card transfer partners, and it doesn't display Canadian transfer bonuses (although these are very rare outside of the 1-2/yr Avion to Avios bonuses)
there is also no way to adjust point values based on Canadian program conversion rates a feature that the paid version of Pointsyeah supports
Finally I want to acknowledge that no airline search tool is going to be able to provide live searching across every program, location and date, but just make sure that the programs of your interest are included, or make a point to become savy to the workarounds.
For example British Airways is not included, but you can search partners like Aer Lingus (limited support), Iberia, and Qatar, as well their non Avios partners like American Airlines, Cathay, Qantas, and Alaska and find potential availability you can verify on their official platforms or by calling in to book. I've reviewed platforms that cover BA, but they have significant limitations that make them tough to recommend broadly to Canadians. Note that Roame is constantly being updated - since I first wrote this review, Roame added support for Aer Lingus, Cathay, Iberia, and Qatar and are adding initial support for BA.
Also expect that skyview will sometimes show you availability that has already been claimed, so use alerts to get there first.
Conclusion
Roame is a user friendly and powerful tool to rapidly search multiple rewards programs, dates, and airports to try to help you save time and points for your next big redemption. Unlike some other paid services, the free version can search a year out making it a useful tool to try out - but the true power is in Skyview and Alerts, which do require a subscription. If you're considering signing up, be sure to use discount code 'RMD' to save on your year's subscription through the signup here.
Referral Links
With its best in market 5x multiplier Amex Cobalt is a powerful point earner that can get you on flying for free 5 times faster than much of the competition, find the latest offer here.
You're going to need somewhere to stay after all of these free flights. The Amex Bonvoy or the Business Bonvoy card will earn you free hotel stays and can be combined with the Aeroplan eStore for some incredible double dipped rewards. Find the latest offers for Marriott cards here.
If you're on the fence, or wondering about other cards reach out to me for a free consult, and if you sign up for a card through my link, let me know and I will walk you through advanced tricks and personalized advice to help you get the maximum benefit both from earning and redeeming points - getting your travel journey going faster than you ever thought possible. These consultations are especially important for business owners to fully optimize their unique situations.
Check out my Keeper Cards series to see other cards worth exploring
Disclaimer
This should not be taken as financial advice and details are subject to change. I have made good intentioned efforts to be accurate but ultimately consult card terms and conditions
