Most award travellers end up with points spread across several programmes: some Chase points, some Amex points, a few airline miles here, some hotel points there. None of the balances is quite enough for a trip on its own, and that is frustrating. The trick is combining them into a single trip, and there are more ways to do it than most people realise. Once you know the bridges between programmes, a handful of small balances can add up to a real holiday.

Transfer partners are the main bridge. Chase, Amex, Citi, and Capital One all transfer to Air Canada Aeroplan, British Airways, and Air France-KLM Flying Blue, which means points from different banks can meet in the same programme. If you have 30,000 Chase points and 30,000 Amex points, you can move both to Aeroplan and book a 60,000-point flight that neither balance could cover alone. Move each balance to the partner that prices your flight best, and book the whole trip from one account. Before transferring, compare the same flight across the shared partners, because the points price and the cash fees can differ, and the best programme for your route may not be the obvious one.

Avios is another bridge that many people miss. British Airways, Iberia, and Qatar Airways all use Avios, and Avios can be moved freely between these three programmes at a 1 to 1 ratio. That means points transferred to any one of them can be used in the others, which opens up different award prices for the same flight. Qatar often prices the same route cheaper than British Airways, so moving Avios from British Airways to Qatar can save a meaningful number of points. The transfer is free and usually instant, and it turns three separate programmes into one flexible pool.

You do not have to book a whole trip from one programme at all. Book the outbound flight with one currency and the return with another, or book the flight with points and the hotel with a different balance. One-way awards make this easy, because most programmes price them at half the round-trip cost, and mixing programmes often gets you a better deal than using one alone. For example, you might fly out using Aeroplan miles from your Chase balance and fly back using Flying Blue miles from your Amex balance, choosing whichever programme is cheapest for each direction. The booking takes a little more effort, but the savings are real.

Some programmes also let you pool points with a partner or family member, which turns two small balances into one useful one. British Airways lets households pool Avios, JetBlue lets families pool TrueBlue points, and some hotel programmes let you transfer points to another member for free or for a small fee. Check the rules of the programmes you use, because pooling can turn two unusable balances into a single booking, and it is often free. Even without formal pooling, some programmes let you book an award ticket for someone else, which means a partner's points can book your seat and yours can book theirs.

The practical approach is to start by listing every balance you hold, then work out which partner programmes they share. Choose the trip that your combined balances can actually book, rather than the trip you wish you could book, and build it from the points you already have. A trip built from existing balances is better than a dream trip that needs another year of earning, and booking it teaches you how the system works far better than reading about it. Once you have combined points across programmes for one trip, the second trip is much easier, because you know which bridges to use and which programmes to check first.