Normally, Amanda and I end up using our airline and hotel points for brief free trips to see family in Minnesota. One or two nights in an inexpensive hotel, and maybe the flight there. It gets us an extra weekend with nieces and nephews every other year, but not a “real” vacation. This year, we decied to try something different, despite the years of travel Amanda did, and the last 16 months of very heavy travel I’ve been doing.
We just finished arranging the last pieces of our “nearly pure points” vacation to Hawaii in October. We got a $100/night deal from the Marriott Kaua’i Beach Club (that room is normally $350), the airfare on American in miles, and the car from Hertz on points. I plan to scuba dive (with my own gear), we’ll do some snorkeling, and a lot of hiking to keep things inexpensive.
We recieved the offer from the Marriott, and decied we’d only do it if we could get there on miles, but we had a very difficult time booking travel on aa.com. From Chicago to Lihue, Hawaii (LIH), the only direct flights are from LAX, and on the website, every available flight with a 4-7 night stay (any time between September and November) connected through Miami or Dallas before LAX. Two 2-plus-hour layovers, on top of the 10 or more hours in the air. Things were looking like the trip wouldn’t happen.
So we called the American Airlines reservations desk. They pulled up the history from our web sessions, and were able to set up a trip in October, off-peak, with only the one layover in LAX. We’ll spend our layover in the Aadmiral’s club in LA, which is a really nice place to spend 4 hours in an airport. They were able to put the travel together and put it on hold, so that we could verify the hotel had room (another phone call), and then we just had to click “buy now” on the AA website.
This was all accomplished with the help of two AA reps – Amir and Cheryl, who were both fantastic. They were kind, patient, and actually pretty funny, too. This made the phone calls a blessing after the frustration of trying to find the perfect flight online.
Unfortunately, the hotel reservation did not go quite as smoothly. We had to match up the available airline dates with available hotel dates, and couldn’t do any of it online, so it was a dance from calling American to calling the Marriott… ugh. Our hotel deal was only for 5 nights, and the Marriott required us to hang up after booking it, and call a *different* number to get the 6th, which had to be a separate booking entirely, and couldn’t be added onto the first one. The phone reps were extremely nice and professional, but the system was still extremely frustrating.
The Hertz rental was set up easy enough as it was all online, and American Express walks you through the point redemption step by step, and now we’re set to go – a nice warm-weather vacation, just as it’s getting cold here in Chicago.
Filed under: Awards Tagged: | "frequent traveller", money, Planning, vacation
Hooray for getting to Hawaii…and for pennies on the dollar, no less! Good for you for making all the travel you’ve been doing pay off in, well, more travel.
This post answers questions I’ve had recently about how best to cash in on hotel rewards and car rental points — I’m grateful for your story!
In case you’re interested in another take on how to make use of airline miles (albeit not with American), check out my recent post: US Airways Miles…and How Best to Use Them. http://www.travelswithtwo.com/?p=4959
And as someone who lives in Los Angeles and likes your blog, I’m only sad you won’t be at LAX longer — it would be great to meet you in person!
Thank you for the comment, Melanie! We got really lucky in some ways, but the persistence was what put it over the top. It was a happy surprise to me that the airlines will open up award seats if they think it’s worth it, as long as you call them and make a fair case. And we don’t even have quite the highest status! Additionally, those AmEx points we used for the car rental were never going to be enough for a free flight (and they don’t associate with AA), so we were glad to make use of them. We’ll check your post out, too!
We’ll remember you are in LA next time we pass through! Rob’s good about visiting folks when he has to travel to certain cities.