VELA Podcasts

In this episode of the Polestar Podcast by VELA Wealth, Rob Wallis sits down with Ricky Zhang, Founder and CEO of Prince of Travel, to dive into the world of credit cards and travel rewards. Ricky, also known as the “Prince of Travel,” shares his journey from a passionate traveler to establishing a leading platform that empowers Canadians to maximize their credit card rewards to unlock premium travel experiences.

For those looking to optimize their travel spending and explore the world in comfort, Ricky’s insights provide practical guidance. To learn more, please visit Prince of Travel or follow their YouTube channel for comprehensive resources on making the most of your credit card rewards.

 

In this episode of the Polestar Podcast, we will talk about:

• Ricky Zhang’s Journey: From passionate traveler to founding Prince of Travel, a leading platform for Canadians to maximize credit card rewards for luxurious travel.
• Practical Tips: Advice on optimizing credit cards and rewards programs to get the most value from travel spending.
• Unlocking Premium Travel: Ricky shares how to convert points into airline miles and hotel stays, making premium flights and accommodations affordable.

 

About the Guest – Ricky Zhang

Ricky Zhang first had the idea to start a travel blog in 2016, inspired by his growing passion for traveling the world using points and miles. After graduating and starting a corporate job with one of the Big 5 banks, Ricky felt unfulfilled, despite the stable position.

Encouraged by his then-girlfriend, now wife, he decided to pursue his passion. After months of searching, he finally landed on the name “Prince of Travel” and launched the blog. Today, Ricky has shared hundreds of stories, inspiring others to travel the world in style for less.

Prince of Travel is a team of expert travellers dedicated to educating, informing, and inspiring readers on maximizing the power of Miles & Points to travel the world at a fraction of the price.

 

 

About the Host – Rob Wallis

Rob has provided senior financial planning and advice to VELA clients for over 15-years. He excels at working with entrepreneurial professionals and business owners to define their individual ecosystems and establish meaningful life and financial goals. He has specialized expertise in guiding healthcare professionals who are building multi-location, and specialist clinics. To read more, please visit the VELA team page.

 

The episode is also available on:

  

  

 

 

 

The Podcast Transcript:

Rob Wallis:

Welcome to the VELA Wealth Polestar Podcast. This month I’m delighted to have Ricky Zhang join us, also known as the Prince of Travel, to talk about credit cards, rewards, and the business that he’s built.

So, Ricky, as a fellow aviation enthusiast, I have followed you and your channels over the years, and just coincidentally had this epiphany that I had no idea what I was doing with my credit cards and points, despite collecting them for many years and not knowing what to do with them. I reached out to somebody at the Prince of Travel website and put two and two together, realizing that it was you who was behind that. So, it’s kind of a small world in some ways, and very cool to have you here and to talk to you about this.

Since we’ve set this podcast up, I’ve been talking to lots of my clients and contacts about credit cards and points, and what to do with them, and I realized that I was not alone in having no idea what to do. So, I want to find out about it today. You consider yourself a global citizen, and I’m interested to know about your aviation journey and how that transcended into Prince of Travel, and also what people can do with their points and how to build them in the right way. With that in mind, if you could give us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, your interest in aviation, and how that transcended into Prince of Travel, that would be an awesome place to start. Thank you for joining us.

 

Ricky Zhang:

Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here, and I’m happy that you were able to find out about what we do. I’m happy we got to connect; it’s always a very good time to share more with different audiences that we come into contact with and talk a little bit about what we do at Prince of Travel and how people can maximize their credit cards and travel rewards to enhance their travel possibilities.

I’ve always been a lifelong traveler. I had a fairly global upbringing. I was born in Vancouver, and I grew up in Hong Kong and Beijing at a time when technology was transforming the lives of all of Asia. I was growing up at an exciting time—kind of a buzz in the air in the region. With the unique background I had, growing up in Asia but with ties to Canada, I came back for university as well I always tried to think about how I could leverage this unique background to build something of impact in the work that I do. The first manifestation of that was through the pure act of traveling and finding new opportunities to see new places, expand my horizons, and unlock new travel experiences. Back in the day very much just backpacker style in Europe and going to take trips on a budget as a student.

That’s what led me to figure out credit card points and how to redeem points for flights and whatnot because I was purely coming from a place of, “I want to travel more and I have a limited disposable income to spend on it, so there has to be a better way to figure this out”. It’s pretty much a very niche community back in the day of how to take advantage of credit card offers and bonuses and benefits and get more for less, especially in Canada.

Back then, I was a student. I was just in my first job out of university. I was learning the ropes, applying for credit cards, earning points, and figuring out how to redeem for the best value for business class and first class instead of just economy class. So, I decided to share what I was learning online. I just created a website called princeoftravel.com. I spent a year, actually, between when I first had the idea for the website and when I actually launched it because I couldn’t think of a proper domain name that was available. Eventually, I landed on Prince of Travel as just the domain name that was ready for me to purchase. I just started creating content as a personal blog at first, and then it became a YouTube channel as well. That was seven and a half years ago. So, it’s been quite the journey of continuing to grow our content and grow our team, and now we have a wide range of services in the market to help people as they pursue travel of their own.

 

Rob Wallis:
So did you have any idea seven years ago, when you went down the beginnings of the entrepreneurial journey, that it would have led to the business that you have right now?

 

Ricky Zhang:
Not concretely, but I had an idea of the type of scale of impact that I would like to make, and I had an idea of the sense of abilities that I had, right? I went into it knowing that there would be a lot to figure out along the way. It’s a matter of taking those first steps and then being in a position to figure things out as we go along. So, there have been twists and turns, successes, and failures that we are going to take our learnings from as we move forward. It’s impossible to have that 100% clarity of exactly how it’s going to go right from the start, and even today looking ahead, but it’s just about that constant lifelong learning process.

 

Rob Wallis:
I myself had the realization I had no idea what I was doing with the points that I was collecting on my cards and started to Google and figure out that there were resources available. Seven years ago, when you started sharing, from what I could see, there wasn’t that much available at that time. What was the reception that you got from the general public?

 

Ricky Zhang:
So, 7 years ago, the space was… there was not a whole lot of understanding among Canadians of how to maximize their points, nor was there a whole lot of resources available. A lot of it was found deep in the niche communities. You had to actively gather information, and that’s what I was doing – I actively studied it and learned the game myself. I just saw an opportunity where this type of stuff needs to be presented in a digestible manner for people to be able to take action and apply it in their lives. So, I tried to set up as nice of a website as I could and write in an engaging, approachable style, and over time, just kind of invite people in when they come browse at the website and learn a few tidbits and apply it in their lives and get value from it, it’s a good experience, and they want to come back. So that’s just been the enduring underlying principle that has held to ourselves as we’ve grown the team, and we’re always looking to deliver that caliber of experience, that extra edge in terms of information, and the value that we deliver to the audience compared to other sites, and look at how people get the best possible travel outcomes as a result.

 

Rob Wallis:

You’ve mentioned a lot about Canada not having many resources. Why is that?

 

Ricky Zhang:
Well, I’d say the Canadian credit card market in general is overshadowed by the US side. There’s just population-wise, and then also credit appetite-wise, as Canadians tend to be more risk-averse and conservative. So, the credit card landscape here is, in general, there are fewer opportunities available compared to the States. Likewise, when it comes to the publishing space in the credit card domain in terms of publishers and websites and creators like ourselves, there’s just a whole lot more in the States. We were kind of the first one of the first movers on the Canadian side, and we’ve established that industry-leading position here. From that basis, we’re now looking to also play a bit of the US game and serve Americans as well. That’s the next phase of the company. On the Canadian side, it’s just been lacking, and we’ve been able to fill that gap.

 

Rob Wallis:
Very cool. You said you have a team now. How did you go about building the team, and what type of people do you have working with you?

 

Ricky Zhang:
It was really around 2019-2020, around the pandemic times when I was developing a greater awareness of what it would mean to scale this business and what would be required to deliver all the things and all the goals that we had in mind for Prince of Travel. That required making a big change from what I was doing before, which was me sitting down every single day writing three to five articles, and filming one YouTube video a week. So definitely that was around the period when we kind of underwent that transition. Since then, we’ve been through a second transition, which is the first time you go from me to a small, lean team of other people who are all doing similar things, right, like kind of grinding from morning to night and wearing many hats. Now we’re undergoing the transition of having built the company structure, and we have leaders and managers who know the importance of following processes and holding people accountable and all the “how the sausage is made” in terms of building a business. That’s the phase of the company now—it’s exciting, but it’s also very challenging going from the so-called lifestyle business to an enterprise and being able to fulfill the big vision that we have, which is to be the leading platform empowering every global citizen to go further and better.

 

Rob Wallis:
So that leads me very neatly to my next question, thank you, which is how does Prince of Travel help people now?

 

Ricky Zhang:
In the current phase of the company, we are an industry-leading content publication. First and foremost, we publish content on our website. We publish YouTube videos, and we have an active presence on all of the social channels as well. If you’re Canadian and are looking for information on this topic—how to use your credit card points, and how to travel better—you most likely will come across one of our content pieces sooner rather than later. If you’re American, then, you’ll be seeing more of us as well. From that content, people find out more about the services we offer on the back end.

We have like one-on-one paid consulting services to help people figure out exactly, based on their situation, how they should maximize their credit cards, and their spending, maybe which credit cards they should switch up to earn points currency that’s more powerful—points currency that will get them closer to their travel goals, maybe even fly first class or stay in a really nice resort and have a really nice special vacation that they can treat themselves and their loved ones to. We kind of take all that information based on the specific individual and give them a personalized plan. We also have a service that essentially does this on the client’s behalf for some of our entrepreneurs and founders who have a lot of spend and need to maximize their points but don’t have the time to do it themselves. We offer our concierge service that takes care of all the heavy lifting for them.

 

Rob Wallis:
Very interesting. So, if a family is looking to book a trip away, what is the best way for them to engage with Prince of Travel?

 

Ricky Zhang:
If it’s one trip, you can check out our points consulting service at https://consulting.princeoftravel.com/. Typically, in an hour’s worth of a call, we’d be able to figure out from your current position—how many points you have, how much you’re spending on your cards, which cards you have, and what your goals are—how you can get to take a trip as a family all on points, and perhaps even flying first class. So, if that sounds like something that’s going to be interesting in the next 6 to 18 months, and you’d like to go on a trip, essentially what points allow you to do is unlock like a $10,000 trip for $1,000 or $100, right? It allows you to really multiply the value of your travel budget. If that sounds appealing, then we can help throughout a call.

 

Rob Wallis:
Excellent. From what I understood when I engaged with the consultancy service, their outsized rewards live inside a program within credit cards that have the most flexibility. Do you have some tips for our listeners about what cards work best and where these outsized rewards actually live, and perhaps some easy fixes as well?

 

Ricky Zhang:
I think a lot of people are accustomed to earning a specific type of points because they just happen to bank with a given bank, right? For Canadians, it’s probably one of the big banks, and usually, when you set up your accounts, you’ll get set up with a credit card, and it’ll just be like that bank’s credit card or that bank’s points that you’re earning. That’s kind of a default mindset that most people don’t necessarily take the time to think about which points they should be earning. The key shift is there are a few specific types of points in Canada that give you flexibility in terms of how you redeem and give you a lot more flexibility than if you were to simply go with, say, TD Rewards, or BMO Rewards, or CIBC Adventure. With those, you’re just locked into the program. But the ones you should be looking at are number one, American Express Membership Rewards, and number two, RBC Avion points. The reason these are so powerful is because they each allow you to not just redeem points directly with their programs but also transfer them to a range of different programs run by airlines around the world. It’s through redeeming through these airline programs that let you get those high valuations for points that you get those first-class flights for less than $1,000 out of pocket, or business class or almost free. That enables you to get those big wins, right? It lets you put in very little and get a whole lot out of it in terms of maximizing that value.

So, for American Express, the key transfer partner to know is Aeroplan, which is Air Canada’s frequent flyer program. If you concentrate your points earnings on the American Express Membership Rewards points and the credit cards that earn that are the Platinum card, Gold card, or Cobalt card, then you can transfer those points at a one-to-one ratio to Aeroplan. When you have Aeroplan points, you can book business class to Europe for only 70,000 points or business class to Asia for about 75,000 points. Those are just a few examples, but that’s kind of the main strategy: on these transferable points rewards we say Amex and RBC, which will give you the optionality. When it comes time to redeem, you can go through Amex directly if that’s going to suit you best, or you can transfer to Aeroplan, or you can transfer to British Airways, because all these different programs have different rules and some of them have certain sweet spots that can be more favorable for you to consider. That’s where the rabbit hole starts to form, and people either delve deep with our content and do it themselves, or, we’ve got solutions that can help them shortcut the time it would take to figure it all out.

 

Rob Wallis:
Very interesting. Thank you for sharing. That’s very valuable information. Just before we wrap up, Ricky, I’m very interested, as you mentioned a little bit, about expanding into the US, and it’s really been an entrepreneurial journey with Prince of Travel that you may not necessarily have realized would end up where it is right now. So, if we were to sit down again in three years, where do you think Prince of Travel and Ricky will be?

 

Ricky Zhang:
It’s a good question. We’re aiming to establish an industry-leading position, not just in Canada but across North America as a whole. We are excited to embark on that journey and make inroads in the US market, which is very ripe with possibilities, especially in this space. Likewise, we’re keen to develop some of our other products and services as well. For example, the concierge services I’ve mentioned—we want to tap into a wider base of founders and entrepreneurs looking to maximize their travel perfect the product and become the market leader in terms of how well we can deliver value on saving both time and money for entrepreneurs who are traveling and giving that value back to the bottom line. There’s that, and then three years from now, I’d love to think we’ve moved on to a phase of the business where we’ve got our content processes dialed in, we’ve got our services in the market as well, and we’re looking to build some kind of mass-market software or tool or something that can transform the way people experience travel—not just learn about how to travel but also book and experience it. We want our brand to continue through people actually taking their trip and continuing to have that positive Prince of Travel experience and coming back the next time around.

 

Rob Wallis:
That’s awesome. So how do people find Ricky and Prince of Travel?

 

Ricky Zhang:
You can find us at princeoftravel.com. We’ve got our Prince of Travel YouTube channel and also our social media platforms. Our handle is @princeoftravel. You can follow me personally at @realricky on Instagram. That’s my account where I share some behind-the-scenes from my travels as well as my transformations as a founder.

 

Rob Wallis:
Super. Well, Ricky, thank you very much for your time today. This has been fascinating, and it’s an area that I have just learned a little bit about recently and realized there’s a lot more to unpack there. The resources that you and Prince of Travel have provided have been super helpful to me and my family, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to meet you and to be able to share your learnings and teachings with our audience as well. Thank you again.

 

Ricky Zhang:
Thanks so much, Rob. Thanks for having me.

 

Rob Wallis:
Welcome. Take care.