Happy Friday Reader!
Listen to this segment on: Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Pardon the length, but I've got 4 updates before this week's tip:
- I created a web version of my Transfer Partner Guide available on my website: nursemichaeltravels.com
- I also created a page to show Transfer Bonuses updated throughout the week so you don't have to wait for Friday.
- For those who have purchased the Award Redemption Analyzer (ARA) that now has an online version on my website.
- These are tools I made exclusively for subscribers and customers of the ARA. Just put in your email, and you’ll get a one-time code. Then you’re good to go!
- The Smart Money Bundle that I'm participating in is live! I'm one of 20+ creators sharing FREE exclusive resources, most other creators are in the personal finance space. Check it out here!
Last week, I shared how I booked my flights to Greece. Here's the (lengthy) rundown of how I went about booking my hotels.
Don't forget there's an audio version available linked above.
For the entire trip, we have 2 nights in New York, 2 in Athens, and one in Paris, plus two stays I wanted to splurge a little more on: 3 nights in Santorini and 3 nights on a second Greek island. We'll start with the latter stays.
The main strategy I had in terms of the points to use for the Greece hotels was
1) Chase points combined with a $250 statement credit for a property within their "The Edit" collection. These also tend to have a Points Boost rate attached to them to increase the value I get. You can use points for the majority of your purchase and make it so you pay only ~$250 out of pocket to trigger your statement credit.
2) Amex points which I anticipated to use for a hotel with Leading Hotels of the World, or possibly Hilton.
Whenever you’re looking at points hotels, you have to factor in the location of the ones that are available, whether that’s at the beginning or the end of your planning (I personally check at the beginning).
Luckily, there were a couple of different locations available in Santorini: Fira and Oia. Those are two of the more common places to stay and there are a couple of in-between spots that possibly give you a nice middle ground.
From what I’ve read, Oia is more of the classic whitewashed tourist site that people like to see, while Fira is a more populated town with stuff around. Which one you should pick really depends on how you like to travel.
What I’ve learned about my wife and me is that we like to be close to things, in a walkable area when at all possible, so we decided on Fira. I could be wrong, since I’ve never been, but that’s where we chose to stay.
We’re staying at the Katikies Garden Santorini, booked through Leading Hotels of the World (LHW) using 71,000 Amex points. The cash price for this was $1270, so a 1.79 cent per point value.
But I actually had two options for booking this.
I could have also used Chase points for a similar price because it’s also part of The Edit program, so I wanted to check my other hotel options for our next stay before committing to either option in Santorini.
It actually took a while to figure out our second Greek island. Being able to book hotels with points actually influenced where we ended up staying in Greece.
I was initially looking at nearby islands, like Paros or Milos, but neither had points hotels. I initially planned to book one of these either through the Chase Travel Portal, Citi Travel Portal, or Rove and possibly reimburse some of the cost as a statement credit with points.
But, after looking further, Crete turned out to be an option I didn’t know existed (I thought it was much further for some reason), and it has quite a few points hotels, so we decided to go there.
There were several options with both LHW and Chase. Ultimately it took research to narrow down the hotel we wanted. I was looking for a place that had beach access to a beach with not-so-rocky sand and something that wasn't extremely secluded. Ultimately, for the option we found, Chase offered the better deal.
We booked 3 nights at the Domes Noruz Chania resort for 50,000 Chase points plus the $250 statement credit from the Sapphire Reserve card. The cash price was $1273, so I got a 2.5 cent per point value if you include the total amount of cash saved.
The nice thing about both of these bookings is that both programs (Chase The Edit & Leading Hotels of the World) offer free breakfast, possible early check-in and check-out, and possible room upgrades.
Chase's The Edit bookings also include a $100 property credit.
The big downside and risk I took with both of these bookings, however, was that they’re both non-refundable. That was all that was offered, and I couldn’t find a refundable points option at all for these hotels.
So it’s a calculated risk we decided to take, which many people understandably wouldn’t.
Now for our other shorter stays:
Our stay in Athens was booked with an IHG free night certificate for one night, plus some stranded IHG points I had left over for the other. We’re staying at the Crowne Plaza Athens City Centre.
For New York City, we’re there for two nights, and I booked our stay with Hyatt points at the Bowery for about 20,000 points per night. That’s about the lowest you can get for a Hyatt in New York these days.
I do plan to look at Edit prices come January, when I get a new $250 statement credit, and maybe book the InterContinental Times Square for free breakfast. I want to see if I can get it for that same 20,000 to 22,000 point price, but time will tell.
For our one night in Paris, I used a Marriott free night certificate from my Ritz-Carlton card that just renewed. I may cancel that card, but that’s a story for another time. The hotel is relatively easy to reach from the airport, although not too far from the city either.
How to search:
There are award search tools that help find points bookings, but I personally just look at the points I have available and manually search each program I have access to. I find that many of these tools leave out at least one option.
Here's how to navigate Leading Hotels of the World if you're curious.
