How to save business travel rewards points for personal use

When you travel for business, you might be dealing with early wake ups for flights, lost sleep due to jet lag, and even anxiety over having to conduct meetings in new destinations.

If you’re clocking up thousands of miles every year with regular domestic flights or international hops to cities 5 time zones away, then you probably want more business travel perks than what your paycheck provides.

We can’t guarantee that your company will allow you to collect points, but we’re of the mindset that they should. Your company gets the credit card points or miles for the money spent buying the ticket, and you get the miles from your loyalty program. That seems fair right? We think so. If you’re of a like mind, then read on to learn how to collect those travel loyalty programs’ points for yourself.

Note: if you’re a travel manager wanting to make your frequent flyers happy by saving their points for them, this system works perfectly for you too. Just skip ahead to step 5.

1. Check your employment contracts

There may be a clause in your employment contract that states that your employer owns the rights to your frequent flyer miles, and not you. Particularly in small consulting firms where employees travel often, this might be the case.

Using business points for personal use is a complicated issue. You need to understand how your company handles this. If such a clause or agreement exists, your journey probably stops right here. If there’s no information available, go on to step 2.

2. Talk to your travel manager or office manager

If whether or not you can collect travel rewards points is still unclear to you, ask your travel manager (or whoever is in charge of managing travel at your company) if there’s an existing company policy on this matter. If one doesn’t exist, be prepared to share with your higher ups how you intend to use the points and why they’re important to you, and get your travel manager and other frequent flyers on board.

3. If you’ve got the green light, proceed…

Hopefully, your company has no issue with you taking advantage of travel rewards. If so, get ready for the really easy part!

Collecting points is as simple as signing up for rewards programs and then saving the account numbers in the platform you use to book travel.

4. Sign up for your own loyalty programs

Now it’s time to sign up for loyalty programs in your own personal name, and not your company’s name.

Check out these guides to help you choose which programs to sign up for:

• Read: The Best Airline Loyalty Programs in Europe
• Read: The Best Airline Rewards Programs in the US

5. Use a modern travel management tool that lets you save those loyalty program numbers to your traveler account

TravelPerk is the top-rated tool for business travel management for a few reasons: great travel support, unrivaled inventory (book from anything available on the web), easy booking for travelers and managers, fast invoicing, and insightful reporting.

One little thing you may not know about TravelPerk is that we make it super easy to save loyalty program numbers for every employee account.

6. Add the program numbers to your account

Did I say it was going to be easy to add the rewards programs numbers? Excellent. Because, it is.

Just log in, head to your traveler profile and click “Add a loyalty program.” Then select the program (here we’ve selected Flying Blue, our top choice for EU business travelers). Next, you just add the number. That’s it!

7. When you book flights, collect points every time

Now whenever you fly, your program numbers are always saved. Regardless of who is booking for you, whether an administrator for your TravelPerk account handles the booking process or you’re booking your own trip, you can collect points every time.

When you’re searching for a new flight, TravelPerk will automatically check which of your saved travel rewards programs apply. This way, you’ll never forget to collect points during the booking process.

If your company doesn’t have a travel management tool that saves time, money and hassle—or one that your travelers love—then sign up for TravelPerk Premium and start searching for your next trip.