How do we find flight deals? How do you start a travel business? What’s next for Thrifty Traveler? For episode 50 of the show, we bring on Founder and CEO Jared Kamrowski to show how the Thrifty Traveler sausage is made! Plus, Jared reacts to some new Delta routes to Hawaii, discusses the reality of points and miles availability, and helps a listener plan their first Europe trip.
How do we find flight deals? How do you start a travel business? What’s next for Thrifty Traveler? For episode 50 of the show, we bring on Founder and CEO Jared Kamrowski to show how the Thrifty Traveler sausage is made! Plus, Jared reacts to some new Delta routes to Hawaii, discusses the reality of points and miles availability, and helps a listener plan their first Europe trip.
Send us your “Welcome Back” video at ThriftyTraveler.com/Voicemail.
00:00 - Thrifty Traveler’s Founder & CEO gets Booksy, too!
03:30 - Timmy from Santa Monica welcomes us to the show!
04:15 - Delta’s new Hawaii routes – and their crappy biz class seats
08:05 - Traveler pain points: The reality of availability
12:55 - Sign up for The Extra Mile Newsletter today!
14:07 - A brief history of Thrifty Traveler
18:10 - The flight deal that started it all (& crashed the site)
22:00 - The evolution of Thrifty Traveler
26:45 - How do we find Thrifty Traveler Premium flight deals
31:00 - Tracking changes over the years at Thrifty Traveler
36:00 - What’s next for Thrifty Traveler – where’s the future of travel going?
39:45 - Helping a listener plan a (first-time!) Thanksgiving Europe trip for four
44:45 - Jared plays the airport code initials game
45:55 - What episode does our boss want us to do next?
Produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas
Video editing by Kyle Thomas
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
People would like gather around at weddings and we'd like talk about this and they'd be like, wow, that sounds so illegal. You open up multiple credit cards and everybody would like look at one another. Having that happen multiple times, I was like. Okay, I need to start something. So finally, in 2015, launched Thrifty Traveler.
I quit my job in 2017 after launching Thrifty Traveler Premium, our flight deal alert service. Um, I, I didn't know how that was gonna go. As soon as we launched the service, it was like the first week we got thousands of signups and I was like, oh, oh, this is not what I expected.
Yo, welcome to the show. I am Flight Deal Analyst Reporter, and your host Gunner Olson.
But with me today is a very special guest. He's our head honcho. The man with the plan, he won't reimburse all of my hair and makeup requests. It's Thrifty Traveler, founder and CEO, Jared Kowski. Jared, welcome to the show.
I'm glad to be back on her.
Uh, I'm really excited to have you on. Um, today we're celebrating 50 episodes of the Thrifty Traveler Podcast by bringing you on the guy who actually pushed us to do this show in the first place.
Um, we're gonna react to some recent news and take the listeners behind the scenes at Thrifty Traveler. We're gonna chat about the proverbial man behind the curtain. We're gonna see what's going on at Thrifty Traveler today. Uh, but first Jared, I wanna find something out. Um, in the pantheon of the worst decisions of your life, where does this show rank?
It is not high, but. It's steadily growing in stature, I guess, of where it should be. No, no, no. This is, uh, I think this is one of the best decisions that we've made here at Thrifty Traveler so far. And, uh, no. I'm excited to be here with you today.
Just give it time. There's still time for us to fail you.
There's, yeah.
Completely below this
one. Um, for real. I want to find something out. So you've, you've started this business and your whole goal in all of this has been to help other people travel more for less, but I think. Bosses are allowed to book things too. Bosses can get booksy too. What have you been doing lately?
How's your travel been? Do you have anything booked? Did you have any good trips lately? Tell us about what's going on.
Yeah, I feel that draw, that booksy feeling more than ever. Unfortunately, like the season of life that I'm in, I have a two and 4-year-old. It's just not as easy as, as it used to be. Uh, I mean, we've taken our boys a few times to Europe.
But we're kind of staying closer to home nowadays. So, you know, my wife and I, we are going to, uh, Cancun south of Cancun. Uh, staying at the secrets impressions. Moe actually booking with cash well through Chase. Uh, what are we using? Edit credit 'cause all those hotel credits. Yeah, just a burden on me right now as well as a points boost.
So, I mean, we've got a pretty good redemption with Chase, ur. Um. And then, you know, where else are we looking? Uh, trying to take the whole family and my parents out to the California Redwoods. Oh, cool. And so trying to, it's a little comp more complicated than it maybe sound sounds, but I was looking on United Site yesterday and I'm a now a United Card holder, which.
I wouldn't have said very long ago, and I know you guys have talked about this on the pod man, the savings you can get as a United Card holder, like F seats, domestically almost the same price as economy. Our main cabin. Yeah. Um, pretty crazy. But yeah. That's
awesome. That's where I'm at. That's lots of good stuff on the list.
Okay. Today on the show, we are taking you behind the scenes of Thrifty Traveler, all that and more.
What's up, thrifty Traveler Party people. This is Timmy reporting live from Santa Monica, California. And I'm here to say welcome back to the 50 Traveler Podcast.
All right. Welcoming you back to the show this week was Timmy from Santa Monica who checked in from what looked like a very lovely walk by the ocean and when a guy like Timmy calls you party people, you take that seriously. Oh, nice. Timmy looks like a party guy.
Yeah.
Yeah. I
appreciate that
Timmy. Looks like he knows his way around a good time.
Thank you for the submission, Timmy. Let's jump into something hot and something cold this week, and we're gonna start with something hot. Uh. Jared Delta gave us the route that we've been yearning for for a long time, and we almost had a few years ago this, this nonstop from our home here at MSP to Maui.
They also added a few more other routes to Hawaii as well. They are returning the Boston Honolulu route that they actually got rid of last year. Um, and they're beefing up frequencies from Atlanta, JFK, and Detroit. And I also saw in uh, my. Weekly serum check, uh, some expanded service on Salt Lake City to Kona as well.
What do you make of uh, Delta's push to Hawaii?
I mean, I love to see more competition to Hawaii, especially, you know, if you're on the West Coast, you're already getting pretty amazing pricing 'cause it's just so competitive. But as you move further and further to the east, it gets the pricing. Airfare is just so expensive, so awesome to see.
I will be honest, I'm still not really enthused with the aircraft that they're flying, especially, uh, you know, from the Midwest to the East, not the best. Delta's not using their best aircraft, especially for, you know, Delta one. I mean, if you're in main cabin, eh, you know, it's the same thing, but Delta one.
So not real impressive.
Why do you think that, I mean, Hawaii is clearly such an important market to all these airlines, but it also seems like they're kind of giving these routes short shift on what aircraft they get and these, you know, fancy upfront seats. What's going on with. Lie flat competition to Hawaii.
Why do they not care?
I mean, there is more competition now than there ever has been, but it's still like this leisure versus business mentality. Like who is flying these routes? Uh, and you know, they're gonna put their best birds, their best aircraft to Europe and some of those longer haul routes where more business travelers are, 'cause it's just.
That's kind of the way it is. Uh, business travelers know what the competition has, and I don't think a lot of leisure, especially Delta leisure travelers know what. You know, you could have, if you're flying United American, or of course foreign carriers, which have just amazing products in comparison to some of Delta's worst,
right?
If you're, if you're looking at live flat to Hawaii, which is something that, you know, you said you, you mentioned leisure travelers maybe just don't care as much about it. They're just gonna book that lowest price. But I mean, especially on the weight. Back to the middle of the country. Like all those flights are red eyes.
You can, there aren't that many daytime flights from Hawaii back to the mainland at all. Trust me. I've been looking for them like crazy. But we're, you know, we're flying, uh, Hawaiian first class when we go in a few weeks to, to Hawaii and I'm really excited to test it out. But you know, it's a flight that leaves at like eight in the morning.
Mm-hmm. So it's, you're not getting the full, like overnight. I don't need the live flat space, but I do need some space for my, uh, my. Little girl who is getting so active and is never quiet and never, never, still anymore. So that'll be nice to have just a little extra space there. But it's pretty much just that, that Hawaiian first class seat, and then United Polaris probably on some of their wide bodies, but there aren't that many United Polaris seats heading over there.
And then you've got the, the ancient Delta one. Relics and then a few American Airlines live flats. But it's just interesting that this like live flat market to Hawaii isn't more robust.
No, I think it's going to get, and it's getting more competitive, but Yeah. You know, with Delta always, and I'm the one, I think I'm the loudest voice in the office about this.
You know, Delta always putting themselves out there as the premium airline, and yet there's still flying. Yes. These relics, ancient relics. Even I push our premium team when these flight deals come across, I'm like. I think we should use the word ancient or I, we should have, or whatever. And they're like, roll their eyes at me sometimes, but it's really not acceptable.
Um, you know, in, in, in this day and age, um, to be flying some of those old, old aircraft in comparison to some of the the great new products that they do fly.
Right, exactly. Okay, let's pivot to something cold. So, I wanted to mine your brain for a little bit of your expertise here, because a lot of what you do, uh, for the company is you're, you're doing a ton of market research and figuring out what is hurting travelers out there.
Like, what are the biggest pain points. So I guess my, my question is like, what are you finding that travelers are bumping into over and over and over again?
Yeah. I think the biggest pain point right now is, especially with how many influencers there are on Instagram, TikTok, I mean, you guys see how they're out there and talking about how you can book, you know, this product or that product with opening one credit card and then, you know.
The reality sets in, you know, this is how you can book, but how do you actually find this space? And it kind of boils my blood. 'cause there aren't really a lot of options out there other than spending, you know, probably what, hundreds of hours trying to figure out how to do this. Um. Which most people just don't have time for, and obviously that's why we created our, our flight deal alert service.
Um, but that's still just a huge pain point. That was business and first class redemptions.
Yeah, I, you know, we, I think about this all the time and I, I'm not a big fan of sense per point and like making those calculations and ranking, uh, points programs based on, on value. Like I know that there are, you know, you can book.
A NA the room or a NA, the suite first class over to Japan with one credit card signup bonus. In theory.
In theory,
but the availability has to be there and the availability is, especially now, almost never there. So we, we find that a lot of people see, you know, one, uh, one TikTok or one Instagram reel that says, here's your first class seat for, you know, one annual fee on one travel rewards credit card.
And that's really not the calculus, because if the availability is never there, like how are you gonna build that into it? Sense per point calculation. So I, I find myself bumping up against that all the time. 'cause I know some travelers like sense per point because it just helps them wrap their mind around all this because it is hard when you're getting into it.
It's like, what? What is this actually worth? You really can't know. No. Unless you're just gonna earn and burn. You know, American Advantage miles or United Mileage plus miles. But even then there's like a lot of fluctuation, but I think that's the availability question is one of the biggest pain points for sure.
I see it over and over again.
You know, I, and just the amount of competition there is now for, you know, I, I was doing some research, uh, recently of, I was like, you know how many points and miles are out there? And it was like 30 trillion points and miles in the United States, and I was like. Oh my God. You know, that's worth billions of dollars.
And then I was like, that's almost like. Like the, one of the largest shadow currencies to the US dollar, you know what? Crypto stable coins and it's like points and miles. I was like, this thing has gotten so big and you know, and you think about this, you know, trillions of miles out there and like how many people are actually booking these business and first class products.
It's a very, very, very small amount of, of humans are actually putting those butts in seats.
Yeah. I think, uh, I think there are a lot of people for whom having. The points is als almost the point. You know, they just love to see that balance go up and up and up, and whether they're having trouble. Getting the value they want out of redeeming them, or they're just, you know, a lot of those people are just so rich that they don't have to use points and miles.
So they're just, it's just fun for them to watch it go up and up and up. But 30 trillion points and miles. That's wild. That's, that's, most of those are just in Kyle Thomas, our video editors accounts. Yeah, yeah,
yeah.
He's flush, he's flush with points right
now. I know. He's very frustrating.
Um, any other kind of big.
Pain points. Any other sticking points you, you find from people out there?
You know, we're, you know, based on, you know, we ask our customers, you know, survey them, you know, where do you want to go? And I mean, it's still like Hawaii, Europe, especially Italy. Italy is just the, the mainstay for, for Europe. Uh, people still want to go to these places.
It hasn't really changed too much. People have the miles, people are. Expanding and diversifying. I think the cards that they have, it's not all like in Amex as much as it used to be. You know, people get into Capital One built, et cetera. So we're seeing a nice diversification. But yeah, the redeeming is, uh, it's still the struggle.
Yeah, it's, it's always really interesting to me. 'cause you, we keep finding these. Like destinations where I think okay, you know, the Pharaoh Islands is about to have its moment and it's like, no, everyone just wants to go to Italy and Hawaii.
I know.
Which ironically are my two next vacations. I have lined up Italy and Hawaii Classic.
But why not? Those places are amazing. They're
wonderful for good reason.
Yeah. Well that's really interesting. Thank you for sharing some of the market research without giving away, uh, all of your secrets. I guess we gotta keep some close to the vest. Alright, when we come back, we're gonna go behind the scenes at Thrifty Traveler and talk about everything you need to know about this little outfit here.
We'll be right back. Today's episode is brought to you by the coolest new thing that we're doing here at Thrifty Traveler. It's the revamped extra mile newsletter. So our team is bringing you travel news analysis in a whole new way with the extra mile it's in your inbox. Every weekday morning, our team's breaking down a few big stories you should know about, but we've added a lot more than that, which makes this newsletter really fun.
We're showcasing our deal of the day. It's gonna be a flight or a hotel deals, maybe an awesome credit card offer. Something we think that you can't miss out on. As well as diving into a lot of, a lot of helpful tips that are gonna keep you on top of this ever-changing world of travel rewards. Plus, we've got reviews of hotels.
Flights and trip recaps. We got fun segments like travel tidbits, which gives you a little roundup of the little changes in the travel world that could help you level up your travels. Uh, I'm most excited about our new on our radar segment, where the Thrifty Traveler Premium Flight Deals Team is kind of outlining all the.
Fun new changes in award space, as well as making a few, uh, bold predictions about what's coming next. This is a seriously fun newsletter. I really think you'll enjoy it. Come join us over there at the extra mile to get the extra mile. Go to thrifty traveler.com/extra mile to get signed up so you don't miss out on the news.
Every weekday morning. Alright, back to the show. Okay, Jared, the, the reason, one of the reasons why we had you on, besides the fact that, you know, you pay for this whole thing, uh, is that this is episode 50 of the Thrifty Traveler Podcast. So we thought it would be fun to have you in here and just kind of open the kimono on all things thrifty traveler, like show people what's going on inside this company.
Um, you know, obviously we're both incredibly biased and we think that we're doing great things and are, are having tons of fun doing it. But, um. For people who just joined us and missed episode three of the podcast where you came on and, and kind of gave a full backstory of Thrifty Traveler. Can you give us the kind of CliffNotes version?
What's, uh, gimme the brief history of Thrifty Traveler?
Yeah. The, the brief history. Well, it's actually not so brief and Yeah. I'm not the original thrifty traveler either. Uh, there was a woman named Mary Van Muir, uh, who started, started.
Mary's book is
right
behind us. If you're watching on YouTube,
she started Thrifty Traveler in 1993, so I would've been eight.
And Gunner, I, that
was the year I was born. That was the year you were born.
So I, I, she, uh, she started all this. Uh, she's kind of, I, I know honestly the foundation. For, for a lot of, you know what we do, she used to have a, uh, a snail mail newsletter, um, which had 25,000 subscribers that would get every single month.
And I know we have one of them, I'm not behind here, but we do have one in the office. Uh, people would receive stuff in the mail about how to travel on the cheap. And then, uh, in 2014, when I first first reached out to her to, to try to secure thrifty traveler.com, she was root. She was deep into retirement.
Uh, she didn't really wanna sell. She ultimately did. And then she gave me tons of advice once I launched the site in, in 2015. Um, 'cause yeah, back then I still, I was a bank examiner, worked for the federal government, so going from federal government to entrepreneur. Not the most normal path, but yeah, I was traveling.
Over a hundred nights a year for work. So I was, you know, flying, I, I was get, I had status, uh, you know, airline hotel status, which is great, right? If your employer pays for it at that level. Uh, it was a crazy amount of, uh, exposure to the points and miles seen, and I was, I was like, man. This is crazy. The amount of value, you know, back in 20 20 13, 14, 15, when I was really getting into this and, uh, we'd go to, you know, my wife and I would go to like weddings.
That was a big wedding season for, for, you know, our friends getting married and everybody like Jared. Let's talk about that thing that you do the points in miles and somebody. People would like gather around at weddings and we'd like talk about this and they'd be like, wow, that sounds so illegal. You open up multiple credit cards and everybody would like look at one another.
And I, it was like at that like, have, having that happen multiple times, I was like, okay. I need to start something. So finally in 2015, launched Thrifty Traveler. Um, and you know, for the first, what, three years? It was kind of on my own. I quit my job in 2017 after launching Thrifty Traveler Premium, our flight deal alert service.
Um, I, I didn't know how that was gonna go. Um, but then, you know, I'd be like working. After work, you know, sending out flight deals. And, uh, as soon as we launched the service, it was like the first week we got thousands of signups and I was like, oh, oh, this is not what I expected. Uh, so I. Kind of quickly had to make a decision that, okay, I need to quit my full-time day job, do this, you know, full-time.
Uh, and then see where it goes. And I, I'm an accountant. I was a CPA by trade. I'm not a, not a business owner. Not trained, uh, other than on the finance side of things. So those first three years, first few years were just a lot of learning, some hard lessons, um, and. Yeah, now we have what, 25 employees? Um, it's been a long road, uh, but super exciting.
Yeah, that's really amazing. Uh, there's a legendary story about the first flight deal that you sent that crashed the website before you had the premium service. What was that deal? Do you remember it?
Yeah, yeah. Vividly, vividly. I, it was Christmas of 2015 and I was in my aunt's basement up by the Canadian border in North Dakota, like in a dark.
Just I, and I'm on my laptop and I'm sending out this deal. It was an Emirates deal from all like eight Emirates gateways from the US to Dubai for I think it was like $400, which back then, I mean, that was a, it still was a great deal. Yeah. I mean, you don't even see that anymore. Anyhow, it crashed a website for three days went viral and I was like.
Okay, like points and miles is one thing, like clearly like cash flight deals at that moment in, you know, 2015 resonated really strongly with folks. So that's kind of the, the whole deal with kind of starting a business. It's never a straight line of what you think it's gonna be. It's kind of this winding river.
So while Thrifty Travelers started talking about points in miles. We kind of focused on cash deals for a good five years, um, and did points and miles too. But now we've really come full circle that, you know, now our premium product is not only focused on, on cash deals, also points and miles deals, um, as well.
And I think, you know, today we're, we're probably focused more on. Points and miles deals and even cash deals. So it's kind of like this ebb and flow of focusing where, where are the pain points for folks solving them? Uh, and, and then just seeing what happens and evolving.
Yeah. So you mentioned we're, we're now up to something like 25 team members.
How did that evolution go? How long was it just you?
It was just me, fourth. A little over two years, almost three years. Um, and then my co-founder, Nick Sti, who's been on the pod, um, who I've known Nick for over 20 years, um, I was able to bamboozle him into joining Thrifty Traveler, which is, you know, he had a great.
Full-time job. And I'm like, Hey Nick, you should come, you know, work with me. Which in hindsight now is like, oh, of course you should have done that. And Nick was like, I have children. I have a family. Uh, but no, uh, it was obviously a great decision for, for Nick to join us, uh, and. Yeah. From there we made some, some, some big hires in those first few years.
And, you know, gunner, you came on board while we were still doing meetings at my house. In the front yard. That's right. And in the garage in the winter with the heater that was so loud. When we'd be doing our, our weekly meetings as a team, when the heater would turn on, we'd have to stop talking for a few seconds so it could wind up, you know, we're in Minnesota here, it's cold in the winter, and then we'd.
It's kind of calmed down a little bit. Then we continue our meeting. So to be in our office here, uh, with a podcast studio and, and plenty of breathing room has been a, a, a huge change.
Yeah. That's the memories of being in that when I was just getting to know you all too, and, and we would come in to our, our weekly Tuesday meeting as a whole team and, and, uh.
Our chief flight deal analyst, John, she better, who was on a recent episode, would throw a stick of Starburst in the middle of the circle and we'd all share Starburst. And there's like,
I know he'd bring snacks all the time and just toss them into the middle. Like that was a normal thing. And I'm like, of course, John picked up some snacks, mostly sugar
feeding me like.
Fish just throwing it at my feet.
That's pretty much the foundation of our culture here at Thrifty Traveler.
Yeah, exactly. No, that that was so much fun. It is. It is pretty wild to be here in this one studio, which I, I can't believe that we have a studio to begin with because a podcast a year ago was still just a, a pie in the sky idea.
But to have our, our big office here in Edina and, uh, it's been really cool to see, especially since we did literally start in your garage or on your front lawn, depending on the season.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'll say, I think this podcast studio is about the same size as our first coworking office.
Yeah.
So, yeah, no, it's good to have some perspective to really appreciate kind of where we're at.
So you, you had a pretty, and I say you because I wasn't on board yet, but you had a pretty lean team, like in the late 2010s. And then of course the pandemic hit, which, um. You know, I wasn't in the travel industry at the time, but it sounds like it was pretty hard on the travel industry. Is that safe to say?
Uh, the pandemic,
yeah.
Yes. Not traveling for a few, few years. Uh, it was, you know, I, I feel like, you know, Kyle obviously a a and John and, and Nick and Erica, um, you know. We kind of used it as an opportunity. We always tried to spin things, you know, as positively as we can as a company. You know, how can we, you know, take this time, uh, to, to retool, um, keep our team together.
Um, and thankfully, you know, we had launched Thrifty Traveler Premium many years before and it's a subscription service. And what we saw really surprised us is people didn't really cancel like you would think, um, when they can't travel. 'cause people still wanted to be synced in to see what was happening to flight pricing, which, you know, 20 20, 20 21, there was some crazy stuff happening with flight pricing.
So we were able to maintain, you know, a vast majority of our subscribers, which allowed us to keep the lights on and keep our entire employee base. We'd have to cut anything or anyone. Um, and then we, we learned a lot about just. Marketing, SEO uh, we watched a lot of videos. We didn't go anywhere. Um, but I think that was like a springboard moment.
Like we didn't just kind of just sit around like we learned. And that was like really where 20, 21, 22, 23, where we just like exploded and grew, you know, exponentially for those through those years. Um, which. Was, I, I don't think you could say is true about a lot of travel companies during that time period.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, you hired me in 2022. Obviously the best decision you've ever made. It's a game
changer.
Um, it's just this thing's been a rocket ship ever since, uh, perhaps in spite of me, but I think the, the. Kind of pivot you, you mentioned, or not, not the pivot, but like, uh, a refocus on award travel that kind of came outta that because, you know, during the pandemic, uh, people all of a sudden became more and more flush with points and miles.
Yes. I think a lot of those, what you said, 30 trillion points and miles that are out there probably were accumulated and hoarded during that time. 'cause people weren't using them. Uh, you know, for the usual travel things. All of a sudden we come out of this and it's just, you know, all things award travel.
Was that purposeful or did it just kind of happen that way for us?
You know what, sometimes you get a little lucky. I mean, it's a little bit of both, right? We are constantly, again, like surveying, talking to people, reading the news with our ear to the ground, trying to figure out what's, you know, where people are at, what they want to see.
Um, and in that instance, yeah, we were at the right place at the right time to help. People, you know, solve the problem. I mean, you know, uh, beyond that we're also solving the problems that, you know, you and I have Gunner, uh, as you well know, like we always say, and I know you guys talk about on the, on the pod, we like to get high on our own supply.
Like we, with Thrifty Traveler Premium, the things we write about, these are solving the pain points we have as well. Like that amazing unicorn flight deal, you know, comes through or that hotel deal right away in the office, people are like, oh. Should we book this? Should we book this before we send it out, before the space dries up?
I mean, that's kind of the excitement that happens here. So, um, yeah, I,
yeah, it's the, there's so much, especially with the Thrifty Traveler premium flight deals. There's so many, there's so much energy behind every deal because, you know, and it is, I've talked about this on the show too, but it is sometimes just like crushing to be in this role because every deal is good enough.
That we want to book it so I can pretty much talk myself into anything that we send. And so, you know, I do from time to time, if I'm in a vulnerable enough place, I, oh, yeah, I'm sending my wife frantic, desperate texts at six 30 in the morning, uh, asking her how many sky miles she has.
Is it, is it like my wife?
I send her these texts. There's just no reply, nothing. I'll be like, did you see this? She'd be like, yes, I saw it. I'm like, why didn't you reply? She's like, I was. Doing things.
Yeah. Well that's when we used the 24 hour rule. You book it and then you go home and start asking questions. Um, but alright, so we, we've talked a little bit about these, this, you know, pivot to award travel.
We still send lots of cash flight deals too. I was just working on one, uh, this morning as well. But, so let's just go from. You know, uh, how a bill becomes a law. How does a flight deal become a flight deal here at Thrifty Traveler? How does a, a good fare become a flight deal? So, start at the beginning. How, how is our team in Thrifty Traveler Premium finding these deals?
Yeah. And you know, from, from what I have gathered, we're really unlike any other service. Um, so kind of the backbone of our premium team is we have. Many employees in the Philippines, some just amazing people to get started very early in the morning or even, you know, uh, late at night here in the United States that are, you know, manually looking for flight deals.
You know, we have some automated tools as well and you know, when the automated tools, you know, something flags. They vet that. And then, you know, when, uh, you know, Katie gets started here in the US a little bit earlier than the, the rest of our team, she's right away already looking. And then when the rest of the premium team, you know, Peter and John and, and you Gunner, you know, when you guys start in the morning, there's maybe even something drafted already.
'cause our Philippine team has already been vetting and, and looking through this stuff. Um, and I think that's, uh, you know, we have just the ability to be constantly on watch with manual. And again, those automated tools and a lot of people over the years have been like, oh. You do this manually, like this is like super negative.
And I think that's actually our edge. It's a combination of automated plus manual tools. 'cause that human element is just so much, you know, knowing whether something's phantom or ghost space, you know, actually booking it to make sure it's bookable. Like these are the things that other services just don't really.
Care about, or it just doesn't seem like, you know, one of our core values is care. Um, we don't want to send out a deal that we wouldn't want to book ourselves. Like you said, gunner, like, this stuff comes across. The only thing we send out are the deals that are, you know, the best of the best. Um, so yeah, there's just a lot of vetting and time put into, uh, each and every one of these deals.
And I think if you're a, a premium subscriber, you see that we don't just send out deals that. You know, people don't understand or don't know how to book. Um, you know, we spend a lot of hours on every single deal.
Yeah. I, you know, I have an example that I used for a cash deal I was working on one time. It was, I, I forget the destination, but it was this incredible fare.
I was so excited to send it out. And then we go through, you know, just to make sure everything works. We always go through the booking flow just to make sure that you're gonna. Actually get the fair you want in the end. You're not gonna get gouged for a seed assignment or something at the, at the very end of everything without us at least disclosing it.
But I remember going through this cash deal and finding that the lowest fair or the fair that was bookable was through a site called YOLO Flights. Oh. And I was like, I think this is enough of a red flag that I'm not gonna send this to our members. We're not gonna send you to YOLO flight. To book your, uh, to book your trip.
But, you know, we, especially with the award deals, which are so complicated, and, and there are in many cases, several ways to book all these things. And, um, I was looking at one of our deals, it was a a latam business class deal from last week that our. Our team, uh, Katie Rollins and Peter Thornton go through and are so meticulous about this stuff, and they, they give you the eight step breakdown to booking with Finnair, booking latam with Finnair and it in call, it includes, you know, chatting with an agent or calling Finnair, and Peter and Katie had everything lined up from, here's the exact flight number you need to approach them with, and here's what you need to ask them verbatim, like they give you a, a script.
To like how you're supposed to talk to this agent. And, um, just that level of detail, I'm, I'm really proud of and I don't work on the Points and miles award side of, of the flight deals as much. So just watching what John, Katie and Peter do, I'm, I'm always in awe of it. And, and you know, when, when it seems sketchy, we book it because we wanna make sure that it's actually bookable.
We, we don't want you to, you know, transfer your points and then end up in purgatory without a flight to, to look forward to on your calendar. So. I know this has been a little naval gazy, but I just wanted, it's, it's fun to like go inside and, and show people exactly how a, how a flight deal idea becomes a flight deal.
Anything else to include about our process? Alright, let's, I wanna talk a little bit about, um, our kind of what we call editorial here on the team is, is, you know, thrifty traveler.com, uh, our new extra mile newsletter, and then of course, this little show that you're listening to here. But, um. Basically, was it a year or maybe two years ago now?
Uh, Google search was basically upended by ai and Google Search used to be a pretty big part of our business where people were searching for, you know, um, I need to, I wanna know how to use Google Flights the best, uh, and. When they would search for something like that, our name would pop up and, you know, search traffic generates revenue for a company and then this kind of AI boom means that people aren't clicking links anymore.
And that kind of cratered, not, not only you know, that part of our business, but a lot of. Uh, businesses like ours, um, a lot of websites like ours. But tell me about like, that transition and what that was like. I mean, 'cause it was, it was clearly like a big seismic change in this industry.
Yeah. I mean, our, our, our traffic, our organic traffic to thrifty traveler.com has been declining since the fall of 2023, which is, it's a while now.
And that was due to just some very significant Google algorithm changes, which I won't go into and put people to sleep, but essentially just took traffic, traffic from us and gave it to sites like Reddit or, or other really well-known like companies with high domain ratings. Um, and then yes, AI overviews, um, which continues to just take more and more traffic, um, you know, every month.
So. Like any good business, we had to pivot and we're continuing to pivot. And like you said, this, this podcast is just a great example of that pivot, which I, it just feels so much better than, you know, finding people, finding us through Google, you know, finding through the pod. 'cause you know, one of our huge differentiators is we always say real awesome humans trying to get our team, which we have.
Fun. Just we have, we have a lot of fun here. Um, and getting them in front of as many people as is possible. So that's been the, the huge shift and we've been growing and changing the composition of our team to do that.
Yeah, it's been, it's been really fun to bring on, you know, so many really smart and, and interesting people, especially as we were kind of doing this push.
But, so, you know, we're, we're trying to meet people where they're at. I think there's this big focus on social media in. The travel rewards space especially, um, we talked about some of those creators who, uh, maybe don't acknowledge the fact that availability is scarce and things like that. But there's also just been a lot of really helpful stuff on social media.
I think it's, um, lowered the barrier to entry to all this. A lot of people are, are finding their way into this because of, you know, someone on social media who talked about one big cool redemption or booked a really cheap flight and everything like that. And I think we've also found that there were a lot of.
Social media influencers out there who are using our product too. Can you just tell me about like our, our marketing strategy and, and kind of meeting those people where they're at too?
Yeah. You know, in, if you think back to like 2020, it's like how many points and Miles influencer were influencers were there, there were not very many, like less than 25 maybe, and now there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and there's more joining every day.
Um, and yeah, a lot of them are using our service. So, uh, about a year ago, uh, we launched kind of, we call it our affiliate hub or whatever. We started, you know, partnering with influencers and we've really leaned hard into that. Um, and I think now we're working with over 400 or 500 different. Influencers, which sounds crazy.
Um, wonderful, wonderful people that are, you know, already talking about, you know, thrifty Traveler Premium or, or you know, the, the, you know, the deals that they're booking. Um, 'cause it's, it's a solution for them too. 'cause you know, they're talking about, Hey, you know, apply for this credit card through my links.
Uh, and then people are like, well, how do I actually book? It's like, well, here's the solution and then they can promote us and they can make a commission on that. So it's kind of a win-win. Um, we don't see, you know, the. I think the points and miles space on, on, uh, Instagram and TikTok is, is great 'cause it's brought things mainstream and partnering with all these, these great influencers and affiliates has, has really, uh, helped us reach audiences that we, we normally wouldn't be able to.
Yeah, for sure. I, I, it's really fun to see, you know, other people around the travel internet get as excited about the deals that we're finding as we do too. I mean, we call them sickos here on the podcast, but there are so many more sickos out there than we know people who just really love this stuff and, and get obsessed with it like we do.
So it's been really, really fun to see. And our team, uh. McKenna and Casey, who's been on the pod Casey meets world on, on Instagram and TikTok and Chloe are, are, have been done such a good job at kind of finding those people who are as, uh, as crazy about this stuff as we are and, um, bringing them into the fold.
So it
makes us feel like we're not alone.
I know it's
now that
discomforting
they are doing a fantastic job and we're, we're gonna be making a bunch more marketing hires to Yeah. Reach more people where they're at.
That's awesome. Okay, one last question here. Uh, in our kind of behind the scenes talk, but I guess what's next for Thrifty Traveler?
What's changing in travel? Like what do you, what do you want the company to do to kind of meet the moment? Uh, um. Very curious, what, what, what do you think is on the horizon here?
Yeah. Right now we're tinkering a lot with, uh, different, you know, AI automations. The, the space is changing so much, and it's like, how can we use different AI tools to help us find more flights and hotel deals?
How can we reduce our reliance on, you know. That manual search, how can we make our team more efficient to find more deals quicker? How can we automate testing? How can we help our, you know, uh, followers, subscribers use AI to travel better, easier, you know, however you wanna look at it. And, and like I said, like every, every day this space is, is changing so much, but that is.
That is where, you know, I, I run our tech team as well. Um, which that, that's also a growing segment of our business. I mean, we really are a technology company now, um, which, which makes a lot of sense, right? And we're gonna continue to be bigger and bigger as you know, we, we use ai, um, and, you know, we created, you know, our card pilot, um, tool at Thrifty Traveler.
And if you've never used it, go to go to thrifty traveler.com, uh, search card pilot, uh, which, which uses a anthropic AI model. And we've had this out for well over a year. And I don't think anyone else, uh, is using it like we are. I don't think anyone is. Um, and which helps you, you know, identify, I've got all these different cards, these are what my travel goals are, what do you recommend?
And of course we don't collect any kind of personally identifiable information. Um, but it makes excellent recommendations for what your next travel card, you know, could be. Um, and even if you just wanna test it to see, you know. Is this strategy that I've outlined, does it make the most sense based on where I want to go?
It's good for that too.
Yeah. And it, I, I, I really love it because Nick and Jackson, our credit card gurus were the guys who set the sliders right on the ai, like the AI is so good at taking the information from you and pairing you with a card. But Nick and Jackson, with their, you know, so many years of experience.
Millions of points redeemed and earned are the ones who set the sliders to say like, okay, someone who has this card needs to know about this rule and this rule, and here's how they can be eligible for this card. And these points are gonna be best for them if they like flying this airline. It's, it's a special tool.
It's really cool and it's also saved me a lot of time at. At, at the weddings like you were talking about, where someone's like, what credit card should I get next? I'm like, here, go to card pilot. Once you, once you uh, go through this flow, it's free, go through this flow and then, uh, then you can come back and talk to me about what it spits out and I'll give you my recommendations, but saved me a lot of time socially.
For people asking me about what card to get,
you know, you bring that up. So one of the things that we've learned, and I'd love to share with the audience is that, yeah, we're like, Hey, automating, this is the key ai, right? Let's do, this is what everybody wants. But what we actually found is people like. That personal recommendation, they like to share a text or an email with someone.
So we're actually bringing a little bit of that back, especially for premium customers. 'cause we thought let's automate all this stuff, right? Like these, these models are getting better and better and making better recommendations, and people want to have some of that. But they also want that real person to make a recommendation that they reviewed it.
So, you know, that's kinda like that real awesome humans. Two concept that we, we saw and we're trying to rein, we're trying to reintroduce as much as possible is people like to talk to someone like you or Jackson or Nick. Um, 'cause yeah, I think in this, in this world, that's becoming all automated. People want that human element.
Yeah, for sure. There's always gonna be a human behind it here at Thrifty Traveler, and that's what we love to do. Speaking of humans, should we help out a listener who may have a question for us? Let's
do it.
Okay. Uh, before we get started with that, a reminder to send us your welcome back video to thrifty traveler.com/voicemail, or you can find the link in the show notes to leave us a message, a really quick message.
That's thrifty traveler.com/voicemail to leave us a message. I can't wait to hear from you. Those are getting better and better We've. Been really, really impressed. Uh, it's actually making me a little angry. Uh, some of you're traveling too well. Oh yeah. And I'm sitting here at my office watching your videos, but it's been special.
Thank you all for contributing. Okay. I have a question from Megan, from Omaha, Nebraska. She says. I'm hoping for some free advice. Well, Megan, you got a free podcast that you wrote into, so congrats. Uh, Europe over the American Thanksgiving holiday is something that we would love to try. We're a family of four with two kids that will be six and eight by Thanksgiving and are just wondering your thoughts about somewhere that wouldn't be super overwhelming to plan for our young family.
I'm not aspiring to travel business class with my family, but premium economy for that long flight certainly has its appeal. I'm not opposed to slumming it in economy though. I'd love to go somewhere. That may have some winter or Christmas time. Magic European Christmas markets sound wonderful. Uh, Megan goes on to say that they have never been to Europe, which is really cool.
Um, they have Chase Amex Capital One Points and some Southwest companion passes that they said they're happy to use for positioning. Jared, I think this is a perfect question for you because you've been. All over Europe. Uh, you've got more dots on Europe than just about anybody I know. Uh, have any ideas of where you'd like to take your young family of four in the next few years to maybe help Megan with her inspiration or any preferences on how you guys would like to get there?
No, I like this one 'cause there's so many transferable currencies, uh, Christmas markets in Europe. Okay, let's do that. So Omaha. You're gonna position with Southwest. Okay. Then you can go, what? Chicago, Denver. Mm-hmm. Dallas. Um, leave those options open. Okay. My favorite Christmas markets in Europe, you're gonna want to stay in the northern tier of Europe.
Um, there are Christmas markets in places like Italy that just not as good to be honest. Um, you're gonna want to draw the line, also kind of the French border, and you're gonna wanna focus east. Um, uh, so I would say, you know, some of the best, the biggest Christmas markets in Europe would be like Strassburg France, which is right on the German border.
It's very, it's very French, but it's also very German. Uh, also one of the, just a beautiful city, great alsation wine there. Uh, I, I love Strassburg. Um, and it's, uh, less than two hours from Paris. So I need champagne's right next door as well, if you're into that. Um, otherwise, yeah, Germany's gonna be great.
Nuremberg Munich, Munich's really easy to fly into. Munich also has just so many points in Miles hotels. And then if you were to fly into Munich, obviously you can go anywhere within Germany via train Deutsche V, but you can also go East Vienna. Budapest and then things as you go further east, get cheaper too, especially when you go into Hungary or even think about Christmas markets in, in places like um, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, great Christmas markets there as well.
Poland's, one of my. You know, my heritage is, is Polish. So I've spent a lot of time in, not, not a lot of time, but uh, I'd like to spend more time in Poland, like one of the budget places in Europe, which is great. And I know growing on the Christmas market scene as well, so some great city centers there. Um, you got a lot of options.
Yeah.
But for a good, yeah, I, going over Thanksgiving, um, fly economy. Don't make it too hard on yourself.
Yeah, I think Thanksgiving is, is just such a good time to go to Europe. We, we harp on it every year and, and you know, if you stay, if you wanna travel domestically or you wanna go to the Caribbean, you're paying like 10 x regular rates to to fly.
But if you want to go to Europe, you're usually saving money. It's, it's kind of this shocking thing. It always creeps up on us every year, but Thanksgiving flight deals are so easy to book with cash or with points, and uh, that's obviously because there is no Thanksgiving over there. They don't, the airlines don't price that that way because that's not a holiday in Europe.
It's just, uh, a weekend in, in, uh, November for them. So it's, it's such a good time to go and, uh, I'm just already thinking about. European Christmas markets.
I know it's
Ma.
Once again,
it's making me feel books. See? Yeah, I know. I was like, it wasn't on my radar. And I was like, you know, we've done this in the past.
I was like, oh, I haven't been to Estonia. I haven't been to Latvia.
Yeah, a little Riga tallen kinda double trip would be pretty amazing. Okay, I think that's enough to get Megan moving on, seeing what you're gonna book. Good luck, Megan. Let us know. Let us know, uh, Megan from Omaha, what you end up booking. If you'd like us to answer your questions on the podcast or if you have any feedback for us, hit us up at podcast@thriftytraveler.com.
We might feature your question on next week's show. All right, Jared, it is on the spot and I've got one for you. Um, first, the last few weeks we've been playing, uh, the airport code. Initials game. So your initials, uh, are JAK and first Googling JAK airport brings you to 1970s punk guitarist Jack Airport from the band X-ray specs.
So that was very confusing.
It is,
uh, it took me a while to get to it throws
you off, doesn't it?
Yeah. It took me a while to get to the actual JAK airport, which is. Near the city of Jackel, Haiti on the south coast of the country. Oh wow. I
have a Haitian airport
code. You do the sixth busiest airport in Haiti.
Uh, of course, regular service started in 2005. Sunrise Airways operates flights between Jackel and. Port to Prince twice daily on a Cessna. A flight blocked at 20 minutes. Are you gonna go get that line?
I can't wait.
I'm, I feel real booksy. I've been loving the initials game. Mine is, uh, GSO Greensboro. Not that exciting.
No,
that's, um, but yeah, yours is, uh, Jack Mel Airport in Haiti. I hope you get there someday. I can't wait. Okay. I have an on the spot question for you. Um. Play producer for us. What is something we haven't covered on the show that you'd like to see us take on? Or what, what's something you'd wanna see Kyle and I do with this format?
Just, uh, play Producer. What's, what's next for the Thrifty Traveler podcast? If you had the creative control and not just the financial control.
I have no control. No, I'm excited for you guys to have some, some bigger guests than me on this pod. Uh, you know, I, I know there's some that I won't give away, uh, that are coming up, but I know as, as, and I don't know how much you guys have shared with the guests, like, this pod is growing like quickly.
So attracting more and more guests in the travel space or even, you know, government, um, you know, that's. That's where I'm, I'm, I'm hoping to see you guys grow and, uh, uh, not bore everybody out there with, uh, me droning on.
Good. I hope, I hope for that same thing. We've got some really exciting things in store for 2026 and beyond.
And, uh, yeah, as, as Jared, uh, just spilled the beans, we are growing like crazy. We've got a ton of new listeners, which is also partly why we brought you back on to, to reintroduce you, even though you were on in episode three when we had, uh, what I would call. Air quotes studio. Back then, it
was a very sweaty studio.
All of us were sweating.
We were so close together and it was. Not, it was a coworking space. There were like other randos walking around behind us.
We had a sheet behind
us. Gunner. Yeah, we, yeah, we cursing.
It was like a white sheet.
Yeah, it was. Uh, we've come a long way. We've come a long way. And I know, um, our, our producer Sylvia is hap much happier with the audio quality today than she would've been back then.
Alright, that's all we have. Thank you so much for listening to the Thrifty Traveler Podcast. Rate us five stars on your platform of choice and like, and subscribe to the show. On YouTube, send this episode to someone you know who needs a vacation. If you have feedback for us, send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com.
We would love to hear from you there. This episode was produced and edited by Sylvia Thomas and edited for video by Kyle Thomas. Our theme music is by Benjamin Teso. Jared, thanks for coming on. We'll see you later. Thanks for having me.