TPG's Zach Griff's 2025 elite status plans, trip stats and travel highlights

06.01.2025 - 19:49 / thepointsguy.com / Delta I (I) / Zach Griff

2024 was perhaps my biggest year yet, especially from a personal perspective.

On the travel front, I logged upward of 100,000 miles on 59 flight segments, making it yet another busy year for me on the road. Some of the highlights include a ski trip to Europe in the winter, a sublime escape to Greece during the summer and an early-fall visit to Italy's Puglia region.

Given my job as a travel blogger and creator, some of my followers were surprised to see that I stopped traveling for nearly three months at the end of the year. That certainly wasn't because I was "over" travel.

In fact, when I shared the news that my daughter was born in late October, everyone quickly understood. I'd been waiting to share the good news with my community, and so 2024 definitely closed with a bang — even if I didn't travel as much as I have in the past five years.

Now that we're a family of three, I'm starting to develop some new perspectives about travel. Below, I'll share some of those views — including my plans for elite status this year — and my travel stats from 2024.

Total miles flown: 100,093 (2023: 191,271; 2022: 185,780; 2021: 152,033; 2020: 133,796; 2019: 205,985)

Longest flight: Dubai to New York City (6,832 miles)

Shortest flight: Philadelphia to New York City (80 miles)

Unique airlines: 14

Unique airports: 34

Elite statuses earned: Six (Amtrak Guest Rewards Select Plus, American Airlines AAdvantage Executive Platinum, United Airlines Premier 1K, Hilton Honors Diamond, Marriott Bonvoy Platinum Elite, World of Hyatt Globalist)

Ever since my daughter was born, I've been thinking about travel differently; I have been breaking down my trips into two categories — family trips and work trips.

Going into 2025, I'm really trying to lean into the former. Although my daughter is still young, I want to instill in her a love of travel and exploration so that she can appreciate the great world we inhabit.

I'll give it a few more months until she can begin to understand what's happening around her, but I'm already planning to take her on trips to see family in Israel and to major cities with lots of kid-friendly attractions, like London.

And because I want to be around the house with her, I'm also thinking about work travel differently. In the past, when an event popped up in some far-flung place, I'd often make a big trip out of it.

But now that I'm prioritizing being home, I'm planning on still saying yes to events, grand openings, inaugural flights and such but minimizing the amount of time I need to be on the road.

For instance, late last year, I went to San Diego and Boston for the opening of the Chase Sapphire Lounge and Delta One Lounge, respectively. What might've been a one- or two-night trip will now be a same-day