Points and Miles Tips For A Trip to Banff

This is the post where I share all the points and miles strategies I used to book my family’s Summer Bucket List trip to the Banff area.  You can try out part of these options or stack them like I did for the maximum amount of points earned and spent.  The credit card links are personal referral links, which means I will earn points if you use the link but there is no extra cost to you.

We stayed at the in Terminal Marriott Hotel in Tampa the night before our early morning flight. We also stayed at the in terminal Marriott in Calgary on the day we arrived in Canada and again on the day we left.  We covered those three stays with free night certificates we earned from opening this Marriott Credit Card. Staying steps from the terminal on arrival and departure can be such a lifesaver.

I booked us a Southwest flight using Southwest miles for our “positioning flight” to Atlanta. From there we used Air Canada miles transferred from my Chase credit card. Flying out of Atlanta made our flight to Calgary less miles than traveling from Tampa.  

I used Miles earned for our Southwest flights with this card and transferred points to Air Canada for our other flights from the Chase Saphire Preferred.  Our round-trip flight on Air Canada was approximately 200,000 for the four of us in premium economy class. 

We stayed at the Tekerra Lodge in Jaspar for three days. They have a variety of cabins and lodge rooms. Since they are an independent hotel we used Capital One points to erase the charge after we booked.  

Our rafting excursion and gondola/chair lift tickets were booked via Viator. You can shop Viator via your favorite airline shopping portal. Or check out Cash Back Monitor for the highest cash-back offers. 

Our stay at the Fairmont Lake Louise was booked via the Capital One Travel portal. The Venture X card comes with a $300 travel credit. We used that and then used Capital One points to wipe out a portion of the stay.  Capital One points can be used to erase any travel-related purchase up to 90 days after the purchase. The stay here was a splurge but was a bucket list hotel for me and within our reach thanks to credit card points and miles.

Our last stop was an Airbnb in Canmore. Canmore is 20 minutes outside of Banff Town. We booked the Airbnb using gift cards purchased with the Chase Business card. I picked up the Airbnb gift cards at an office supply store where it earns 5x Chase points.  I then used the cards to book via the Delta Airlines Airbnb portal to earn additional Delta miles on the booking. 

This is the very abbreviated version of how I used points to save thousands on this bucket list vacation. If you have any specific questions please feel free to reach out!