How I Booked a Vacation in Bora Bora (Almost) for Free by Using Points and Miles

The room alone was completely value each level we spent. Because of that Diamond standing, we had been upgraded from the Lagoon View Suite to a King Deluxe Overwater Villa with direct lagoon entry, an overwater hammock, and totally retractable home windows. The room was spacious, snug, and trendy, with options together with a Bluetooth sound system that we took benefit of every day. And whereas service sometimes appeared to run on “island time,” workers had been pleasant and the meals was good high quality.

Reserving enterprise class flights to Tahiti

Earlier than I locked within the Conrad with my factors, I checked flights to verify I might put collectively an affordable itinerary when it comes to the time and miles it could require. I’m primarily based in Portland, Oregon, so I typically join in San Francisco, which occurs to have nonstop flights to Tahiti on United Airways—and in order that’s the place I started my search.

Positive sufficient, United, which additionally makes use of dynamic pricing like Hilton, had well-priced award availability in economic system for 55,000 miles in late December. However higher but, the airline additionally had enterprise class award house (i.e. seats bookable with miles) that had been deeply discounted for sure United MileagePlus program members: On the time, I held Premier Platinum elite standing, which knocked the speed from 170,000 miles per one-way ticket right down to 85,000 miles.

However my husband doesn’t have elite standing, so he didn’t have the potential to e book his ticket at that charge from his personal account. As an alternative, we had to verify I had sufficient factors in my MileagePlus account to e book tickets for each of us. Whereas I used to be in a position to fund a big chunk of my ticket with a sign-up bonus I’d beforehand gotten on the United Quest Card (80,000 miles for spending $4,000 inside three months of account opening), I didn’t have sufficient for each of us. So my husband transferred factors from his Chase Sapphire Most popular to my United account and I transferred factors from my Bilt Mastercard to my United account to achieve the brink.

General, for the outbound leg of our journey—Portland to Tahiti, with a cease in San Francisco—we used 170,000 United miles to attain two enterprise class tickets (85,000 miles every) that had been operating at $4,949.70 apiece in money.

Reserving flights dwelling

The quickest and best route dwelling was to take United via San Francisco as soon as once more, however after gutting our Chase Final Rewards balances, we knew we had to make use of a special kind of factors to fly dwelling. We turned to American Categorical Membership Rewards, which we each had loads of due to my American Express Platinum Card and my husband’s American Express Gold Card. We booked our United economic system flights via a associate program to which Amex transfers its factors: Air Canada Aeroplan.