Episode Description

Collecting a big pile of points is not the same as being able to book the flights your family wants.

That gap shows up nowhere more clearly than when you’re trying to get your whole family into business class to Asia. This week my guest is Maria Fung, founder of Maria Points the Way, who helps families use points and miles to reach Asia and Asia-Pacific. 

When Maria moved from Hong Kong to the US, she did everything the points world tells you to do, and soon found it wasn’t getting her family home in the cabins she wanted. That led her to build a completely different approach, one that reverses the usual order, starting with the exact trip you want and working back to the points that get you there.

Maria and I get into why this goal trips up so many families, and why the usual points playbook quietly works against you here. She walks through the destination-first approach she built, a framework she calls the ASIA Method, and the shifts that make several premium seats far more attainable than they look. Whether Asia is an occasional trip to see relatives or a business class dream that has felt out of reach, you’ll come away thinking about the whole thing differently.

Turn your expenses into points and save tens of thousands of dollars a year on your wishlist travel. Don’t miss out! Click here to know more about my comprehensive online program, Points Made Easy.

What You’ll Learn from this Episode

• Why booking multiple premium cabin seats to Asia is a fundamentally different challenge than most award goals
• Why the transferable points most people collect, like Chase and Amex, often can’t get a family to Asia on their own
• Which points currencies and airlines deserve a bigger role when your goal is family travel to Asia
• How to build a points portfolio around your destination instead of collecting what everyone else recommends
• Which airlines most reliably offer several premium cabin seats on the same flight for a family
• Why leaning too heavily on award search tools can work against you, and when searching manually winsow to avoid it

Featured On the Show

• Follow Maria on social media: Instagram, Facebook
• Get Maria’s checklist that outlines the 4 decisions that make your premium Asia-Pacific family award travel actually happen here 
• Check out Maria’s blog here
• Follow me on Instagram
• Get on the waitlist for the Points Made Easy Course here!
• If you have any questions or you want me to dive deeper into a specific topic, email me here: podcast@pointmetofirstclass.com 

Click here to download the full episode transcript

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