We are using a Travel Agency to plan a European vacation. We have early estimates of the cost and I have enough capital one rewards to cover the entire trip.

I don't want to cash out the points for cash because it's not dollar for dollar.

Does anyone have experience in using points to pay and agency or trip with similar situation?

Do you have a Capital One Venture card? If so, use travel eraser and apply the points to your statement after you pay for the trip. That's how I use all my points.

Great point. I have capital one spark business but yes same
concept could apply. Capital One would need to recognize the one-time original payment as a travel purchase.

Is there any way to guarantee it would be recognized as such?

As a travel agent, we can't really use points. The only way is how TxTransplant described. We have to charge credit cards.

*Now I'm not saying a travel agent wouldn't use airline miles to book something and charge you a fee, but in general we do not work with points because we don't get paid.

EvenPar said:

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Great point. I have capital one spark business but yes same
concept could apply. Capital One would need to recognize the one-time original payment as a travel purchase.

Is there any way to guarantee it would be recognized as such?

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If it's a travel agency, I don't think you'll have any trouble. I've used my points on charges from a travel agency. But you could ask them how their charges show up, just to be sure.

TXTransplant said:

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EvenPar said:

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Great point. I have capital one spark business but yes same
concept could apply. Capital One would need to recognize the one-time original payment as a travel purchase.

Is there any way to guarantee it would be recognized as such?

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If it's a travel agency, I don't think you'll have any trouble. I've used my points on charges from a travel agency. But you could ask them how their charges show up, just to be sure.

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Most of us use your cards to pay the vendor so it would show up United, Marriott, etc.

Now not everyone does, especially some of the ones who have been in business a long time. They may charge your card as their company and use their card to pay the supplier. That is more rare nowadays but still happens. I would love to do this honestly because of the points I could rack up but it requires a lot more hoops to jump through and isn't as safe for the consumer.

That makes sense. I was thinking of a travel agency like Adventures by Disney, where you are actually booking/paying for an entire trip with a single charge. I've had no trouble reimbursing myself for that (Cap One recognizes them as a travel agency).

TXTransplant said:

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That makes sense. I was thinking of a travel agency like Adventures by Disney, where you are actually booking/paying for an entire trip with a single charge. I've had no trouble reimbursing myself for that (Cap One recognizes them as a travel agency).

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Yep most of those would be fine.

Thanks for the insight.

We are using Destinations Inc:

https://destinationsinc.com/

I will see if they can confirm how the charges are paid and posted.

If you put in the homework and find good reward flights on the search engines like seats.aero or point.me, I'd say work out an arrangement with the travel agent to pay them some amount and you book the flights.

In the past few weeks, I've booked 18 transcontinental business class flights for our family's Spring travel, so study the points game a lot and am always amazed at the deals.

As an example with Capital One, yesterday I transferred 110k points from Capital One to Air France for two business class lay flat flights from Paris to New York JFK for my parents anniversary this Spring. Those 110k points are worth $1,100 in cash back at Capital One, not even enough to buy those two tickets in economy.

If you have a Capital One Spark Miles, then you can transfer those points to a participating airline for your bookings. If you have the Capital One Spark Business Cash, you can convert it to a Spark Miles card or open a Venture card and convert the points to cash at 1 cent to 1 point.