Last year I went with my mom and sister to Park City, Utah. We stayed for free and flew for free! And Guess what? We are doing it again in Tucson, Arizona!
The Ritz Carlton, Dove Mountain has been on my radar for years. I always knew it was a “reasonably priced” Ritz Carlton property but I just never had the opportunity to book it. I suggested it to my mom and sister, because actually my mom’s brother (my uncle) lives in Tucson. They loved the idea. We are heading there in November!
Here are the details about our free stay. Each room (of 2 rooms) was 228,000 Marriott Bonvoy Points. I always have a lot of Bonvoy points because each year I convert the options that I have in a few Colorado timeshares to Bonvoy points. Note, the fifth night was free and ideally I always try to book 5 nights versus 4 when staying at a Bonvoy property. Now for my value calculation…..Bonvoy points are valued at about .84 of a cent per point. So for the stay we used $3840 in value. Each night at this hotel costs about $760, so the stay had we paid for the 2 rooms at 5 nights each would have been $7600. However, each room has about $345 in taxes (in total) so about $690 in taxes. So for the stay we gained about $3,070 in value-yay! I love gaining value. (7600 cost of room-3840 (value of points)-690 (taxes)).
What about the flights?
I booked 3 flights in Delta Comfort for 65,000 Delta SkyMiles per flight. However, I did not have these handy in my SkyMiles account. Instead, I needed to transfer them from American Express Membership Rewards at the rate of 1:1.
I am not as confident with my value calacuation here, let’s see…
These flights would have cost $820 per flight so $2460 for all 3. I needed 195,000 Amex points to transfer to Delta which are worth $3900. (Maybe I had a few Delta Miles laying around, at this point 2 months later, I can’t rememeber 🙂 ). So, I was right, I did lose value, about $1440 worth. ($3900-$2460).
However, sometimes value is subjective too and that is how I am thinking about my flights! There is value in not having to lay out $2400! And I always earn tons of Amex points with all my Amex cards that earn Membership Rewards, like my Amex Gold where I earn 4x points on all my dining and groceries, my Amex Blue Business where I earn 2x points on all other spending and my Amex Platinum where I earn 5x points on airfare. And Rob has cards too. And I recently started getting my kids their OWN Amex Cards with big bonuses and big referral bonuses on my end. I can at times afford to lose value!
What about the car?
I always have a nice stash of Capital One Miles as I use my Capital One Venture X all the time and Rob uses his Capital One Spark Miles card all the time for his business. I booked a car thru Avis for 5 days (an SUV) which cost $688. I erased that purchase using my Capital One Miles at the rate of 1 cent per mile.