My fiancé and I have are looking to book a holiday to New Zealand and Thailand over the Christmas holiday. We currently have about 180,000 Altitude Reward points and are struggling to work out the best way of using.
The plan is to fly to Auckland on the 24th of December, flights at the moment look to be quite cheap from Sydney so we may pay for the flights using Credit Cards. We would then like to fly to Phuket (from Christchurch) on the 21st of January, it looks like Singapore airlines are the best. Is it best converting the exact amount of points to KrisFlyer and then making the booking? We would then look to fly back to Sydney a few weeks later but are unsure of the best airline to use, we would like to leverage points if possible.
Depending on the cabin, travel to thailand can be quite affordable in cash.
Your points balance will get you 60,000 points in all programs other than Velocity. That would just be a little less than what is needed for economy round trip for one person. I would recommend redeeming your flights from Auckland to Phuket or Bangkok for a greater range of flights and buying an affordable domestic flight to position yourself. Singapore Airlines is a good option for getting to Thailand, you could also consider going via Kuala Lumpur with Malaysian.
Thank you, I noticed you mentioned all except velocity. Velocity from what I can see allows you to direct debit points and get 2 to 1 instead of 3 to 1. Is it worth considering?