We are New Orleans bound for Columbus Day weekend. We will be looking at Tulane, and hopefully checking out some of the city’s other fun attractions and eating really good food!
This 3 day weekend trip is costing us……nothing! The flights were booked with JetBlue TrueBlue points and the hotels booked with Bonvoy points. Here are the details…..
We are flying in and out of JFK on JetBlue. The flights had we paid would have cost about $436 per flight. Instead we used, 143,500 JetBlue TrueBlue points as the flights required 28,700 points per flight. I had a nice stash of JetBlue points as Rob and I has gotten generous JetBlue bonuses over the years from JetBlue cards and I also took advantage of the family pooling feature to ensure I had enough points to book the flight. So, I consider we saved about $2180 on the flights ($436 * 5).
As for the hotel, I booked two rooms at the JW Marriott New Orleans. The rooms would have cost about $254 per night or $762 per room. Each room required 145,000 Bonvoy points (50,000 for 2 nights at the standard rate, and 1 night at 45,000 at the pointsaver rate). So here, I consider we saved about 1425 ($762 * 2).
In total, using rewards, we saved about $3,600.
Ok, let’s reluctantly look at value. Outside sources value a JetBlue TrueBlue point at about 1.3 cents per point. I used 143,500, so I used $1,860 in value for flights that would have cost $2,180. Not bad! I gained about $320 in value here. I don’t think the hotel will be as favorable…..
Bonvoy points are valued at .8 cents per point. I used 290,000 points for our 2 rooms. Here, I used $2,320 (290,000 *.008) worth of value for a stay that only would have cost $1,425. I lost about $900 in value here.
In summary, in using rewards for this trip, I am losing about $600 in value. Sometimes, there is some added value in traveling for free (not laying out any $) and I dismiss the actual numbers. This is one of those times for me.