Christmas in Thailand and Singapore on EuroBonus Business Class: Three Travelers, 281,250 Points

In December 2025, my wife, our son and I flew Business Class from Stockholm to Bangkok on five different airlines across two separate bookings. We spent the Christmas period in Thailand, made our way down to Singapore, and flew home from there together in mid-January on a KLM 777-300. Three travelers, peak season, every leg in Business. Total cost: 281,250 EuroBonus points.

The unusual part wasn't the trip itself — it was how we got there. My wife and son flew out one day on Air France via Manchester and Paris. I flew out the day after on a completely different routing: SAS to London, then Virgin Atlantic to Riyadh, then Saudia to Bangkok. We landed in Thailand a day apart and reunited at the hotel. Then we spent the Christmas period together as a family and eventually made our way down to Singapore, where we stayed at the Four Seasons Singapore before flying home together on KLM.

The split outbound wasn't an aesthetic choice. It was the only way the trip could be booked at all, and the structure that made it work is what this article is about.

The bookings

Two separate bookings, three travelers, five airlines in total.

Booking 1 (me, solo, open-jaw):

Outbound December 20: ARN → LHR (SAS) → RUH (Virgin Atlantic) → BKK (Saudia), Business
Return, mid-January: SIN → AMS (KLM) → ARN, Business

A note on the routing: Virgin Atlantic flew LHR–RUH from March 2025 until early 2026, when the route was discontinued. This exact routing cannot be recreated today, but the principle can — there is almost always a SkyTeam routing via London, Paris, Amsterdam or another hub that gets you to the destination if you're willing to dig for it.

Booking 2 (wife + son, open-jaw):

Outbound December 19: ARN → MAN (SAS) → CDG (Air France) → BKK (Air France), Business — with the MAN–CDG–BKK portion booked as a married segment
Return, mid-January: SIN → AMS (KLM) → ARN, Business

List price for partner Business (before the December 2025 devaluation): 187,500 EuroBonus points round trip per person to Southeast Asia on SkyTeam partners.

With one Amex Elite 2-for-1 voucher per booking: the voucher halves the points price for every traveler on that booking. (I've written up the voucher mechanics in more detail in the Dubai on KLM Business with the Amex Elite voucher piece.)

My booking with a voucher: 93,750 points (one traveler at 50 percent of list price)
My wife and son's booking with a voucher: 187,500 points (two travelers at 50 percent each = 93,750 × 2)
Total: 281,250 points for three round-trip Business Class tickets to Southeast Asia over Christmas

For reference: the standard list price for the same trip without vouchers would have been 562,500 points — double what we paid.

Taxes and fees, paid in cash at booking: 2,355 SEK for my solo booking; 1,923 SEK per person for my wife and son. The total cash component for all three came to roughly 6,200 SEK across three long-haul Business Class tickets in peak season.

When it was booked: roughly seven months before departure, in late spring 2025. That's earlier than most travelers plan their Christmas trip, and it had to be — the partner inventory we needed wasn't going to wait.

Why we needed two bookings and not one

The Amex Elite 2-for-1 voucher allows up to two travelers per booking. There is no way to fit three people on one voucher booking. Three travelers on one voucher is a hard rule, not a guideline.

The choice was between three options:

One voucher booking for two of us, one full-price booking for the third. Total: 187,500 (voucher booking, two people) + 187,500 (third person at list price) = 375,000 points. Uses one voucher.
Three separate full-price bookings, no vouchers. Total: 562,500. Saves the vouchers but pays 281,250 more in points.
Two voucher bookings split as 1+2. Total: 281,250. Uses both vouchers but minimizes points spend.

Option 3 is what we chose. Economically it's simple: each voucher saves 93,750 points on this redemption. At any reasonable points valuation that's serious value per voucher — the kind of redemption vouchers exist for. Vouchers expire annually whether they're used or not. Saving them for "later" without a concrete plan is the same thing as letting them lapse.

The non-economic reason is also worth being clear about: this was a trip the family was always going to take, on dates that were always going to be priced at a premium.

There was also a hard operational constraint that forced the split. Saudia releases only one Business award seat per flight to EuroBonus on the Riyadh–Bangkok leg, which meant the three of us couldn't have flown that routing together even if we'd wanted to. The decision to split into two bookings wasn't a creative optimization — it was the only way the trip could exist at all. Once we were forced into two bookings, putting both vouchers to work was the obvious move.

How the open-jaw made the trip itself work

The Christmas trip was never a round trip to Bangkok. It was a multi-city itinerary that started in Bangkok in late December and ended in Singapore in mid-January. Booking it as a standard round trip to BKK would have meant flying back to Bangkok at the end of the trip just to fly home — an extra domestic flight and a wasted travel day for no reason.

EuroBonus allows an open-jaw on the destination side as long as both endpoints sit in the same zone. Bangkok and Singapore are both in the Southeast Asia zone, so flying into BKK and out of SIN priced identically to a closed BKK–BKK round trip. No penalty, no surcharge, no extra fees beyond the standard partner administration fee.

Both of our bookings used this open-jaw structure: BKK in, SIN out. The shape of the trip became:

All three of us arrived in Bangkok in late December
Time in Thailand over the Christmas period
Onward travel down to Singapore in mid-January (separate, not on EuroBonus)
All three flew home together SIN → AMS → ARN on KLM

For long multi-destination trips, this is the structure that matters. The points cost is identical to a plain round trip; the trip you actually take is markedly better.

Married segments: the Air France complication

One detail worth understanding if you're planning a similar partner Business booking, especially with Air France or KLM.

Married segments are a routing-control mechanism partner airlines use to release Business Class award seats only when they're booked as part of a specific connection profile. The seat from CDG to BKK can be unavailable as a standalone booking but open as the second leg of a MAN → CDG → BKK routing. Air France is particularly known for this — the airline releases inventory through specific route combinations rather than making each leg available on its own.

The practical consequence is that finding partner Business seats on Air France often requires testing different connection profiles to surface seats that don't show up in straight searches. A direct ARN–CDG–BKK search can return zero Business availability while a routing via Manchester first shows seats — same dates, same destination, different routing, entirely different inventory.

For my wife and son's booking, the MAN–CDG–BKK portion was a married segment. Booking it required searching beyond the obvious routing options. It's also why partner award bookings on EuroBonus often require booking by phone — the online tool shows the obvious routes but rarely tests the alternatives that married segments unlock. If you're hunting for award space yourself, a tool like the RoamSnap award browser helps you see what SAS is actually releasing before you start probing partner routings.

Why the partner strategy matters most in peak season

SAS's own nonstop flights to Southeast Asia in Business over Christmas and New Year are practically impossible to find on points. The seats that exist get snapped up the moment the booking window opens, 330 days out, and the dates around Christmas are the first to go. By the time most travelers start thinking about December planning in October or November, SAS award inventory for the holiday period is gone.

Partner airlines carry their own inventory. Every SkyTeam carrier — Air France, KLM, Virgin Atlantic, Saudia, Korean Air, Vietnam Airlines — releases Business award seats on its own schedule. The seats SAS doesn't have, partners often do. Partner inventory follows different release patterns than SAS, which means options for peak-season trips can appear even after SAS nonstop availability has long been gone.

The strategy for peak-season award trips is therefore the inverse of what most members do by default: instead of searching SAS first and treating partners as the backup plan, search partners first and treat SAS as one option among several. For Christmas, summer holidays and Easter — the three peak seasons that drive the highest cash prices and the worst SAS award availability — partner Business via Amsterdam, Paris, London or Riyadh is where the realistic redemptions live.

The Amex Elite voucher is what makes those redemptions affordable. Without it, partner Business at 187,500 points round trip per person is a steep redemption few members pull the trigger on. With the voucher, the same redemption becomes 93,750 points per person — competitive with any other premium-cabin tool in the SkyTeam ecosystem.

What the trip taught me

One: Business Class in peak season is realistic on points if you book it as a partner award. Most travelers write off Christmas and New Year for award travel because SAS nonstop availability is effectively zero. Partner inventory exists for these dates if you search the right combinations and accept connecting routings. KLM, Air France and Virgin Atlantic all flew our family of three to Southeast Asia over the holiday window when SAS couldn't.

Two: vouchers are worth the most when deployed against expensive redemptions, not flexible ones. It's tempting to save Amex Elite vouchers for the "perfect" booking that may never come. The reality is they expire annually, and a saving of 93,750 points on a peak-season partner Business redemption is among the most valuable uses there is. Vouchers that go unused expire at 0 SEK in value.

Three: open-jaw should be the default for any trip longer than a long weekend. If the trip involves more than one destination, it's almost always cheaper to book and better to travel if you fly home from a different city than the one you arrived in. The EuroBonus same-zone rule for open-jaws covers more itineraries than people assume.

Summing up

Three Business Class tickets to Southeast Asia over Christmas for 281,250 points total is not a unicorn redemption that hinged on a mistake fare or a hidden loophole. It is, however, a meaningful redemption — the kind most EuroBonus members assume isn't possible in peak season and therefore never attempt. The trip exists because two Amex Elite vouchers were deployed against partner Business redemptions, structured as two open-jaw bookings instead of one round trip, and routed via SkyTeam hubs that release award seats in peak season.

The trade-offs were real. Connecting routings instead of nonstops. Splitting the family across two outbound days because Saudia released only one Business seat per flight. Married-segment routing that required searching beyond the obvious options. None of it is glamorous on paper — but compared to the cash alternative for a Christmas trip in Business to Southeast Asia, the trade-offs paid for themselves many times over. I would book it the same way again without hesitation.

The structural piece most travelers miss is that the booking has to be planned around partner availability, not SAS availability. SAS's own flights disappear first on peak-season dates; partner inventory follows different release patterns and often shows options after SAS nonstop seats are gone. The question, if you're considering a similar Christmas, summer or Easter trip, is whether you have vouchers worth deploying and whether you're willing to accept connecting routings in exchange for the cost.

If you're sitting on EuroBonus points and Amex Elite vouchers and thinking about a peak-season family trip — the planning starts now, at least 6–9 months out for Christmas redemptions.

Frequently asked questions

Can you book SkyTeam partner airlines with EuroBonus points?

Yes. EuroBonus award tickets can be booked on SkyTeam partners including Air France, KLM, Virgin Atlantic, Saudia, Korean Air and Vietnam Airlines, each of which releases Business award seats from its own inventory on its own schedule. Before the December 2025 devaluation, partner Business to Southeast Asia listed at 187,500 points round trip per person.

What is a married segment?

A married segment is a routing-control mechanism where a partner airline releases an award seat only as part of a specific connection profile, not as a standalone leg. On our trip, the CDG–BKK Air France seat was only available booked as part of a MAN → CDG → BKK routing — a direct ARN–CDG–BKK search showed nothing. It's also a key reason partner awards on EuroBonus often have to be booked by phone.

Does EuroBonus allow open-jaw award bookings?

Yes, on the destination side, as long as both endpoints are in the same award zone. Bangkok and Singapore both sit in the Southeast Asia zone, so flying into BKK and home from SIN priced identically to a closed BKK–BKK round trip, with no penalty or extra fees beyond the standard partner administration fee.

How many travelers fit on one Amex Elite 2-for-1 voucher booking?

Two, maximum — it's a hard rule, not a guideline. That's why our family of three needed two separate bookings, each with its own voucher: one for me solo, one for my wife and son.

Originally published in Swedish at Riviario. Adapted for RoamSnap by the author.