"Travel Hacking" What is it? Simply put it is traveling at low cost or virtually for free. I follow many hackers and you can learn some valuable tricks and tools to get the most out of your travel goals. Did you know that most frequent flyer miles are actually earned on the ground? In March 2016, Nicole & I went on a 7-week trip covering 40,000 flying miles and a few hundred-car miles for a fraction of the cost it would have been if we used hard earned cash rather than reward points. Hopefully will get to do another trip of this magnitude again soon!
March 2016 - Honeymoon Travels
I started the plans for this trip right after my wife and I got engaged in 2014. I am a points enthusiast, so knew that through leveraging the knowledge of blogs and my horde of points, anything was possible, as long as I was willing to put in the work.
My collection of points included: SPG, Marriott, Chase Ultimate Rewards, Arrival Miles and Skymiles (I know not the most favorite out there but I got some exceptional value from these). It helped that in September 2012 we moved from the US to London, so we were frequently taking long haul trips back to visit family in the US. We averaged at least 8-9 trips back per year and mainly to the West Coast. We would also occasionally do a Trans-Atlantic award at 60,000 Skymiles each, so I knew I could find value! We had issues with the MQD requirement but fortunately I can meet the Delta Amex exemption. Paying for a wedding and monthly living expenses, the monetary spend requirement on the Amex card was easy to meet. As for my wife, she decided to be exempt from the MQD requirement due to our UK address. She is also a frequent traveller being the EMEA lead in her role so she travels for work often and when possible would use the Sky Team Alliance, resulting in a Diamond status earned the hard way! Our timeline was wedding in the Fall of 2015 and honeymoon Spring 2016.
Seeing some of the aspirational posts on blogs, I looked into where our stash of Skymiles could take us. I stopped searching as soon as I saw the blue turquoise waters of Bora Bora and knew that was where we had to go. The route I was looking at was from LAX-PPT-BOB around spring. We had to be on the West Coast due to a family wedding so the timing worked perfectly.
These are difficult awards to find, however, thanks to Expert Flyer I signed up for alerts to check availability on Air France as a partner award. I also tacked on Air Tahiti Nui to cover my bases. As soon as I got the alert roughly a year out I rushed to the phone and was able to book one way awards, outbound economy on Air France and return business on Air Tahiti Nui. The beauty of us being both Diamond & Platinum is the ability to change these awards anytime at no cost. Seven months later, I got an alert for a business award on Air France. I snagged that one seat in business hoping that another business class seat would open up, and I could cancel the economy seats already reserved. Due to our loyalty to SPG it was a given that we would stay in the St Regis Bora Bora, plus it is an absolutely gorgeous property. We were able to get free nights on our layovers at the Le Meridien PPT. Unfortunately we did not have enough miles to cover the St Regis. This being one of the most luxurious hotels, we were fine with a splurge, and we used St Regis as our wedding registry so our wedding guests could help us with our honeymoon. I also had to get an inter island flight from Papeete to Bora Bora on Air Tahiti. Air Tahiti is not a member of any alliance so my only option was to use my Arrival Miles that reduced my cost from $735.11 to $235.11 before their recent devaluation. At this point, I was feeling very smug to have planned this trip. All that was left was to get our positioning flights to LAX from London.
All said minus the hotel costs, I spent 45,000 Skymiles & $5.60 each for our economy Air France flights from LAX to PPT, with a total value of $5,300. Our return flights on Air Tahiti Nui cost 80,000 Skymiles & $271.50 (Unfortunate carrier surcharge), with a total value of $5,960. I felt I was winning at this point. However I knew there was more.
I’m a big fan of rugby and always wanted to see the HKG 7s and whilst playing around on the award calendar I saw return business seats to HKG from LAX for a week at 140,000 Skymiles & $113.20 each. A steal considering the value was $12,367.80 USD! I picked those up and planned to split the stay at the HKG Harbour Grand Hotel and a friend's home. Next was finding a way to bridge the gap between Bora Bora, the family wedding and flights from London. Altogether, we had a trip beginning at the end of March and finishing the second week of May. Thanks to the wife’s profession, there was a business reason to be in the US so that helped with the flights and hotel stays. The overall route we took was London - USA - HKG - USA - Tahiti - USA - London. This trip included 17 flights, with all but one flight in business or first class, 40,000 miles travelled, and visits to various US cities: SFO, NYC & LAS. But the main portion of our award travels were for Hong Kong and Bora Bora, where the actual $$ cost of just the flights would have been $24,352.56 but our paid costs due to use of points was just: $1,015.71 total. The hotel points were used to cover the “non-work” nights and the mix of Ultimate Rewards, SPG & Marriott points were huge and able to reduce hotel cost. (Sorry just too much to note all the hotel awards) My main pride was in the flights!
Travel blogs and the many websites out in the “Travel Community” really helped in getting this planned. I can’t wait for the next trip, which will be tricky given all that is going on in the loyalty world. I’ve burned a ton of Skymiles but my transferable points are growing along with the Avios earned in Europe, and we’ll have to be creative with these when we move back to the US in a few months. I’m sure with the help of the “Travel Community” my next aspirational trip is around the corner.
Thank you.
Vincent Duncan-Callender