Have any of you planned a 2 week Hawaii trip - mostly on miles/points? Our plan is May/June 2019. I want to use miles/points for air and all hotel stays. Cloud we start a new thread on the Reddit DisChurners page for Hawaii/Aulani planning?
We did 10 nights for Aulani last March. I will post most of what I did and why here, then copy and paste over on the Dischurner group so it is easier to find in the future.
We chose American Airlines for a number of reasons. First, Miami is a hub for AA and we are in South Florida. Second, I knew I might need to switch flight dates depending on Aulani availability. AA allows you to change award bookings for no fee as long as your departure and arrival city remain the same and the same class and award type are available for the new date. Third, DH wanted lie flat seats and I saw AA had a connection we could do that would get us lie flat seats for the second and longer leg of the flight.
We made sure to have the miles we would need in place well before 331 days of departure. This way, we could grab award space as soon as it was released. Our miles were earned through a few Citi AA cards, Barclay Aviator cards, AA shopping portal points and AA dining rewards network points and a couple of Citi Gold banking offer for AA miles.
We made sure to have a back up plan in case there was no award availability. The back up plan included paying for the flights with Citi Thank You Points earned from Prestige and Premier cards which we both picked up. At the time TYP on the Prestige were worth 1.6 for AA flights. They are worth 1.25 now. We also had a number of AA gift cards that we stock piled from airline credits earned from various Amex Platinum cards, the Citi Prestige cards and a couple of others that escape me at the moment. In the end we wound up utilizing both plan A and plan B. We were able to get saver award flights to Hawaii but not on the way back.
Personally, I think it is critical to get award bookings the moment they are released which means having your miles in place about 330~ days out depending on the airline.
We are now planning to take a family Hawaii trip in 2020 and I need to get 6 of us there. We each picked up the Alaska airline card since it comes with a companion pass for card holders. I would rather pay for 2 family members to fly, have the other two fly on the CP for taxes and fees than stress over accumulating all the miles it will take. DH and I will likely use the next stock pile of gift cards for ourselves on that trip. We are also planning Bora Bora that year which is mind boggling enough for me to try and figure out so I don’t need additional planning headaches and I’m taking the lazy way out.
As DVC members, we have 1300 DVC points to play with so I have enough to book a 2 bedroom ocean view room which was amazing! We don’t own at Aulani so we chose to go during a time that would not be as busy. This gave us a greater chance of finding availability for our dates at the 7 month window. If that had not worked out, I was prepared to rent out our Grand Floridian DVC points which I knew would go fast and then book a cash reservation and use the money to pay for the accommodations. Fortunately, I did not need to do that.
This year, we taking advantage of a Westin timeshare presentation offer to visit Maui. The offer was for 5 nights, 5000 AA miles and a rental for about $600. We are flying on AA miles again.
If we had the vacation time, I’d extend this year’s Hawaii trip to another week with the Marriott 7 night certificate which we got by transferring 90,000 SPG points. This gave us 270,000 Marriott points which we traded for 120,000 Alaska Air miles, and a 7 night cat 1-5 certificate. I’d kick in the additional 90k required to bump it up to a cat 8 certificate and go to the Big Island.
DH and I each did the Marriott hotel and flights transfer, so we have two of those 7 night certificates. We’ve been going back and forth on where to go and what to do. Venice is a romantic idea we’re mulling over and Edinburgh during the fringe festival is also high on the list. We are also considering the Big Island with their cat 8 resort or maybe Fiji, who knows.
So there is what we did and what we plan to do next. I hope this helps.