The Points Guy (TPG) released its first-ever report analyzing just how far your rewards can go this holiday season. Partnering with Points Path, a browser extension for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge that displays frequent flyer prices next to cash prices in Google Flights, TPG analyzed more than 7.2 million searches to identify the best (and worst) airlines for using points and miles over Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.

Across all airlines, data shows a notable drop-off in value for frequent flyer miles this 2024-25 holiday season as four of the five airlines included in the report saw combined redemption values for these busy periods at (or below) non-holiday levels. The report found that searches around Thanksgiving (Nov. 22 - Dec. 1) resulted in 6.47% less value for your rewards compared to other 2024 travel dates, while using your points and miles will get you 3.6% less value over the winter holidays (Dec. 20 - Jan. 5). Only JetBlue's point redemption value over the holiday season exceeded its 2024 average.

Airline	2024	Holidays	% Difference
All	1.39 cents per point/mile	1.32 cents per point/mile	-5.04%
Alaska	1.68	1.55	-7.74%
American	1.55	1.39	-10.32%
Delta	1.12	1.1	-1.79%
JetBlue	1.36	1.38	+1.47%
United	1.39	1.32	-5.04%

Search data also revealed the need to spend more miles compared to non-holiday dates. Economy award tickets across all five airlines averages 38,473 miles outside of these busy travel periods. Over Thanksgiving, that average jumps to 49,680 miles — an increase of 29.13%. And over Christmas, the average economy ticket reaches 60,518 miles — 57.3% higher than non-holiday searches.

"This data confirms that traveling during the holiday season isn't just expensive if paying cash," said TPG's senior editorial director Nick Ewen. "It also shows that, in the majority of cases, your hard-earned points and miles won't go as far during these busy travel times as they do on other dates during the year."

Other takeaways from this unprecedented analysis include:

• Premium cabins offer more value: Overall, Thanksgiving awards in first or business class were 22.22% more valuable compared to economy redemptions, while flights over Christmas and New Years were 16.79% more valuable. This held true for four of the five airlines: Alaska, American, Delta and United. Only JetBlue saw a drop-off, as Mint business class award tickets were 16.43% less valuable than economy over Thanksgiving and 20.71% less during Christmas.
• You may be better off internationally: Leaving the country may not be on most travelers' radar over the holidays, but you may be able to stretch your points to do so. Average redemption values across all airlines were more than 10% higher on international awards compared to domestic flights for both holiday periods. United had the largest difference, with international flights offering 32.43% better value over Thanksgiving compared to domestic award tickets — and this climbed to a whopping 37.93% increase over Christmas.
• Look to non-peak travel days: Over Thanksgiving, the data showed that your points and miles are worth the most on the Friday after the holiday (1.34 cents each), whereas Sunday, Nov. 24 and Tuesday, Nov. 26 had the lowest value (1.27 cents). And over Christmas, leaving early or staying late is your best bet — Friday Dec. 20 saw the best value ahead of the holidays (1.38 cents), while Saturday, Jan. 4 and Sunday Jan. 5 both had redemption values of 1.4 cents each, the highest across all holidays.
• Leisure destinations and big metros are most popular: In addition to redemption values, data from Points Path shows where most travelers are looking to go, and not surprisingly, big cities led the way — New York, Los Angeles, London, Tokyo and Miami made up the Top 5 most commonly-searched destinations during both holiday periods. However, many leisure spots were also popular over both Thanksgiving and Christmas — Cancun (7th and 6th, respectively), Orlando (12th and 11th), Honolulu (15th and 9th) and Bangkok (18th and 15th) all cracked the Top 20 on both lists.

Report methodology:

When a Points Path user conducts a search and gets both the cash and points results for a set of flights, Points Path stores those results for valuation analysis, analytics purposes, and to assist in future user searches. Data is anonymized or de-identified, and aggregated for analysis so that no personal user information can be connected to the results.

In compiling this report, The Points Guy utilized 7,215,830 data sets — a cash price and an award price — from all searches conducted while utilizing the Points Path browser extension from Monday, Jan. 1, 2024 through Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024 at 2:00 p.m. ET. The search results sets were then classified into one of three categories based on the date(s) of the flight(s), regardless of when the search actually took place:

• Thanksgiving: A one-way or round-trip flight departing between Friday, Nov. 22, and Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024
• Christmas/New Years: A one-way or round-trip flight departing between Friday, Dec. 20, 2024, and Sunday Jan. 5, 2025
• 2024: A one-way or round-trip flight departing on any other date in 2024.

TPG then calculated the redemption value for each data pair on a cents-per-point or cents-per mile basis, as follows:

(Cash price — Taxes & fees) ÷ Award price = Redemption value

For Alaska, American, JetBlue and United, a small markup of roughly 0.2 cents was added to each value to account for award rates being shown for regular economy in Google Flights while paid rates are typically shown for basic economy. This markup was validated by Points Path across thousands of searches.

Finally, TPG averaged all individual data points and used specific criteria to filter the results for each of the above sections.

For the list of most-searched destinations, analysis was based on the number of unique users who searched for flights to a given city. One traveler could do multiple searches for a destination, but that's still just one travel party looking to go there.