Knowing that I could cancel my flights, I have taken a leap and booked flights for Xmas Break to Hawaii. We have an 8 night stay booked in Maui which is also easy to cancel. As of now, Hawaii is opening back up to tourists on October 15th and if all is good here in NY and there in Hawaii, I think we will go!
We took advantage of some low prices (mileage redemption amounts) as I have often looked at Hawaii over the past few years for Xmas breaks for clients. For each of our 5 DELTA COMFORT flights, we used 90,000 Delta SkyMiles. I actually forgot to look at the cost of the flights the day I booked back in late August, but today the flights would have been about $1200 a piece. We saved about $6k using the Delta SkyMiles. Note, we were short some and Rob did have to transfer some from American Express Membership Rewards. I know that we likely lost value and I don’t want to figure it out. :-). I just want to get to Hawaii and I don’t want to outlay the cash for the flights. After all, we have been hoarding all of our points and miles throughout covid. We have a very nice stash and we can afford to lose value right now!
As for the hotel, I may have mentioned that we own a time share at the Westin Resort Beaver Creek that we never use because we our slaves to the school breaks and trying to get it during the school break takes too much advance planning even for me. (Starting in 2021, my kids are out of school!). Luckily, I am able to convert my timeshare each year into a nice sum of Marriott Bonvoy points. Right before Covid, I got a call from Vistana, the timeshare company, offering me a stay in Orlando-no thanks! For the first time they asked me what I did want. I said Hawaii at Xmas. Before I knew it, I had a 2 bedroom condo at The Westin Nanea Ocean Villas, Ka’anapali for a low price of $1250 or $250 per night! Literally about a week later, the world starting shutting down. I was still within the time period to get “cancel for any reason insurance”. I got it for a hefty sum of $500! Net Net, I will get $750 back if we need to cancel “for any reason”.
The condo we booked sells for about $1450 per night and believe me I know, I kept looking at prices to book 3 additional nights. Right now I have those 3 extra nights booked as a paid stay and a points stay.
The points stay is high! 208,000 Bonvoy points per night (624,000 total) which I do not have. But thanks to Marriott Bonvoy’s points advance perk, I don’t need the points to book the stay. I just need to have them in my account about 2 weeks before. However, I do have a nice amount and I am trying to earn more. I got my mom to transfer her balance of points to me (you can transfer 100k points per year to another member for a nominal fee) and have been using my American Express Bonvoy Brilliant card of late to get 10x points at restaurants and gas stations. I also have a paid stay coming up in a few weeks to visit my son at Cornell at the Ithaca Marriott Downtown on the Commons. I know in the end, if I am short, I can always transfer points from Chase Ultimate Rewards (at a 1:1 ratio) or American Express Membership Rewards also at a 1:1 ratio being mindful of a 40% transfer bonus through October 31.
UPDATE-the points value for the additional nights kept coming down because of the lack of demand due to covid. I ultimately booked 4 nights at the price of 402,000 Bonvoy points.
I guess I can roughly figure out how much we saved on this trip using rewards. Like I said about, $6k on the flights. As for the stay, I am not going to include the time share part. if I do use the Bonvoy points for the 3 extra nights, that is a savings of about $1450 per night or $4350 in total. So in total a savings of about $10350. Again, I definitely don’t want to do the value here either. It is a definite loss! I DONT CARE!
Back in 2015 we also went to Hawaii with a stay on Oahu, Kauai, and the Big Island and loved every minute of it. With all there is to do on Maui, I knew I wanted to save it for its own trip….and here we are. I hope we make it!