Case Study: Business Class to Asia on Points for Christmas

Christmas has always been a big deal in my family. It’s a time we love spending together, swapping presents and sipping champagne. However, this year I wanted to bring a little bit of extra cheer to the festive season.

To wrap up an intense 2025, I wanted to give my family (and myself) a special gift we’d never forget. After some careful planning, persistence, and a few tricks I’ve learned along the way, it all came together.

In this article, I’ll explain how I booked Business Class flights to Asia during one of the busiest travel times of the year, which programs I used, and the different ways I acquired the points to make it happen!

Booking 1: Melbourne to Ho Chi Minh City with Velocity Points

There are many great ways to redeem Velocity Points, but my absolute favourite is for Business Class flights on Singapore Airlines to and from Asia. So I knew that’s exactly how I wanted to use the Velocity Points I earned as a sign-up bonus from my Citi Prestige credit card.

It’s pretty easy in Australia to earn a reasonable amount of Velocity points. But with Velocity’s announcement late last year of changes to reward flight prices I was very keen to use my points and get a trip in my diary ASAP. So the idea of a festive season family holiday was born!

Research and tenacity

I knew that at this time of year, the competition for reward seats would be fierce.

I began my research a few weeks before Velocity started releasing reward seats for my desired December 2025 travel dates, making sure to stalk what time and day the flights were becoming available on the Virgin Australia website.

Every day, I logged in to watch. And wait. Then watch and wait some more.

Finally, the day arrived. I was prepared. I had my points primed and my credit card ready to go.

Cost to get to Vietnam

It cost 71,000 points and $420 in taxes & charges (which always hurts just a bit) per ticket from Melbourne to Ho Chi Minh City via Singapore. My husband and I were officially off to Vietnam!

I also managed to snag a couple of seats the following day for my parents from Brisbane to Kuala Lumpur via Singapore. So they definitely can’t say I never do anything nice for them.

Booking 2: Ho Chi Minh City to Seoul with Qantas Points

Now that we were officially going on this trip, I knew that we would absolutely have to make some time to visit South Korea.

While the five hour flight between Ho Chi Minh and Seoul is definitely doable in economy, the cash fares are significantly higher in peak travel season. So I looked for other options…

Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong

When my husband and I visited Hong Kong in early 2025, we had a great flight home on Cathay Pacific. We also had an amazing last day visiting all the different Cathay Pacific lounges in Hong Kong International Airport.

So, when I saw that Qantas had an available Ho Chi Minh-Hong Kong-Seoul itinerary in Cathay Pacific Business Class for 43,800 points per ticket on the exact day we wanted, I made sure to snap them up.

Qantas Wine

With my Qantas Points depleted from the previously mentioned trip to Hong Kong, I needed to get some more ASAP. This is where Qantas Wine came in.

I had already signed up for my free Qantas Wine premium membership. And I knew that there are ways to maximise Qantas Wine bonus points offers.

With the 5,000 bonus points on my first order with Qantas Wine, I ended up spending about $1,250 for roughly 78,000 Qantas Points. That’s great value at ~1.6c per point!

These points were delivered to my Qantas account before the wine had even been delivered to my door. So within 36 hours of finding these flights, I was able to add them to our travel plan.

Internal Business Class Asia flights officially acquired!

Booking 3: Seoul to Fukuoka

As this is only a very short – and cheap – flight I opted to purchase this with cash. Remember, we don’t always have to book everything on points!

Booking 4: Nagoya to Melbourne with Aeroplan points

My last challenge was to get us home to Melbourne from Japan. I knew this wouldn’t be easy, as we wanted to come home within a couple of days after New Year.

How I found our flight home

Because of this limitation on dates, I was prepared to be extremely flexible on what airport we could fly out of. I was able to easily and quickly search departures on our dates from most major Japan airports for free using AwardTool, one of many handy award flight search tools out there.

I made sure that I was again searching almost a year in advance for reward seats. It took about a week of monitoring before I saw a Singapore Airlines Business Class itinerary from Nagoya to Melbourne via Singapore pop up for early January 2026, bookable through Air Canada’s Aeroplan program.

Acquiring Aeroplan points

While there are ways to earn Aeroplan points with Australian Credit Cards, I was fortunate that, at the time, Aeroplan was running a 85% bonus offer on purchasing points directly from Air Canada.

Points + Cash with Aeroplan

It normally costs 60,000 Aeroplan points per ticket (plus taxes) for this route – so, 120,000 points for two people. But Aeroplan offers a flexible Points + Cash option, which is ideal if you don’t have enough points for a full redemption.

At checkout, you’ll be shown different combinations of points and cash to suit your balance:

For my booking, at that time, the best value was using 36,000 Aeroplan points + CAD$576 (~AUD$640) per person. (The screenshot above, taken later, shows a slightly higher co-payment.)

Cost to get home

So, to cover two tickets, I needed to buy 72,000 Aeroplan points. Those points cost CAD1,400 (~AU$1,700), which was the cost of buying 40,000 points (before the bonus). With the 85% bonus, I got an extra 34,000 points bringing the total to 74,000 points.

Therefore, the points to cover one ticket was half this amount (CAD700 or ~AU$850). All up, the total cost per ticket came to about CAD1,276 (or ~AU$1,490) – much less than buying a Business Class airfare!

Flexibility and preparedness are key

This trip is a great example of how being flexible, and prepared, can land you some great Business Class flights to Asia in the busiest travel period of the year.

I am happy to explore and fly out of different cities, as well as book well in advance to make sure I lock in our plans. And while we’re not flying the most direct routes to many of the places we’re visiting, the experience we’ll enjoy on board some of the world’s best Business Classes definitely makes up for it!

Sometimes travel is really about the journey, as well as the destination.