2024 Travel Plans

Do you have your entire year of travel planned out? No? Just me 😉
Just kidding! I know tons of you are just like me, major planners. Planning is half the fun!
And 2024 is definitely one for the books.

Knowing me, some of this may change… but here’s a look at what we’ve booked on points so far this year!

2024 TRAVEL BOOKED WITH POINTS

Skiing: My son & husband drove up to Keystone, Colorado a few different weekends in the early winter. They will do blue & black runs all day – something way out of my comfort zone, so I stay home. For us, this is a relatively short drive, so they usually ski all day Saturday, stay Saturday night & then drive home Sunday.
3 nights at Hyatt Place Keystone with points, approximately $1800 savings
Points used: Chase Ultimate Reward points transferred to Hyatt

Hawaii: We recently spent 8 nights in Maui for Spring Break. We flew Southwest using points for mine & my husband’s flights and the companion pass for my son.

8 nights in Maui + flights, saved $13,381
Prices were obviously super high for spring break – but holy cow that is crazy!
Points used: Chase Ultimate Reward points transferred to Hyatt & Southwest points earned via Southwest credit card sign up bonuses

Disney World: Flower & Garden is my absolute favorite event to visit Disney for. I love Disney in April/May. We are finally trying the Marriott Swan Reserve (we usually stay at the Marriott Dolphin). We ended up booking this stay with cash (putting it on my new Marriott card!) because the rates were so low. We are flying in late to Orlando (as we alwayssss do because of the Mountain – East coast time change, you lose 2 hours) and staying 1 night at the Hyatt Regency Orlando airport on points + we are flying Southwest on points/companion pass.

Really low points rates for
Swan Reserve for May & June!

1 night Hyatt Regency Orlando airport + 3 Southwest flights, saved approximately $1020
Points used: Chase Ultimate Reward points transferred to Hyatt & Southwest points
The rate at Swan was so low when we went, we used my new Marriott card to pay for this stay (to work on minimum spend) & earn points

Huntington Beach, CA – Everyone raves about the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach and California is such a quick trip for us we decided to make a long weekend out of it. We’ll fly into California late, use our IHG free night certificate that comes with having the IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card, staying at Staybridge Suites. Then head over to the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach for 2 nights, where we applied a suite night upgrade award.

1 night IHG, 2 nights Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach, 3 roundtrip flights Southwest, approximately $2500
Points used: Chase Ultimate Reward points transferred to Hyatt & Southwest points

Europe – Pinch me! We are headed back to Greece (with a night in Italy). We visited Greece 7 years ago and my son still talks about how amazing it is.

This trip has been a bit crazy to plan. Originally we’d booked a bunch of Hyatt’s SLH properties. But when Hyatt and SLH ended their partnership, I didn’t want to stay at all of these hotels and not get qualifying night credits. So now we are paying out of pocket for most of our hotels (doing a completely different trip), saving the Hyatt points we had planned to use for later trips. Luckily, our airfare was booked with points!

3 roundtrip tickets to Europe, business class + 1 night using Capital One Venture X $300 credit, 2 nights at Hyatt Regency Athens, approximate savings $15,600
Points used: Flight there on British Airways – American Express points transferred to British Airways during 30% transfer bonus
Flight home on KLM – Capital One Miles transferred to Flying Blue (KLM) during 20% transfer bonus

Costa Rica – While we hadn’t been planning a summertime trip to Costa Rica, we realized we had 1 small pocket of time before going back to school to make it work. And the points needed on the hotel were low and so were the points for Southwest flying there (yay low season). We did pay out of pocket for non stop flights home on United.

4 nights at Andaz Papagayo, 3 flights TO Costa Rica, approximate savings $4000
Points used: Chase Ultimate Reward points transferred to Hyatt & Southwest for the flight there

Bahamas – I have been wanting to stay at the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar. So when I found 4 nights at 21K points each during our fall break I thought, why not! Especially because I was able to add a suite night award upgrade to the stay. There are no Southwest flights from Denver to the Bahamas when we are going, so we are flying United there and American Airlines home paid out of pocket. There were award flights available but the flight prices were so low it didn’t make sense to use points.

4 nights at Grand Hyatt Baha Mar with suite night upgrade, approximate savings $2800
Points used: Chase Ultimate Reward points transferred to Hyatt

Asia – We visited Japan and fell in love with it… so, we are headed back to Asia! We are doing a combo of Hong Kong, Thailand & Taipei. We are using Hyatt points for all of our stays and we are flying KLM there & back in business class booked on Amex points we transferred to FlyingBlue (KLM).

11 nights in Hyatt hotels booked via Chase points transferred to Hyatt + 3 roundtrip business class flights booked with Amex points transferred to FlyingBlue (KLM), approximate savings $27,000
Both flights were booked by transferring American Express points & Capital One miles to FlyingBlue (KLM)

I will NEVER ever get over how points have completely changed the way we travel.
We would NEVER be staying 30 nights in hotels, entire weeks in $800+/night hotels and definitely NOT flying business class if it weren’t for points!

Total travel paid with points: $68,001 WOW!!!

EARNING THE POINTS FOR THIS TRAVEL

Most of these points were earned in 2023.
Here are all the cards we opened in 2023.
So far this year we’ve opened 2 cards.
Capital One Venture X Business – I knew we’d have much larger spend than normal in Q1 of this year with taxes and insurance payments. After meeting the minimum spend we received 150K Capital One miles, which I think is excellent for 1 sign up bonus!
Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card – We opened this card during the elevated offer, when that offer had 5 50K nights. We are still working on this minimum spend but thinking we’ll use these nights for spring break 2025 or early summer 2025 – See… I’m always planning a year out 😉

EARNING THE RIGHT POINTS FOR YOUR TRAVEL

When I look at our travel, I see 3 areas we save BIG on.

Hyatt stays. Man, we love our $0 Hyatt stays. I find points for Hyatt very easy to earn because our strategy is to earn Chase Ultimate Reward Points and transfer those to Hyatt. There are so many fantastic cards to earn Chase points on.
Southwest Companion Pass. We’ve had 1 Southwest Companion Pass since 2018. I can’t even imagine how much money it has saved us over these six years! If you aren’t sure if it’s right for you or how to earn it, I’ve got a post detailing all that info here.
Business class flights. This makes up the bulk of our savings because they are astronomically expensive. This is mainly where we use our Capital One miles and American Express Membership points. We continue to earn these points with card sign ups, every day spend on the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card and extra American Express points via Rakuten.

Want to see our savings from 2023? I’ve got a breakdown with all that info here.

Have you started planning your 2025 travel yet? What are you most looking forward to in 2024?

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