ONLY FOUR MORE DAYS (!!!) until my round-the-world summer vacation with my friend Rosio! We’re heading to 8 countries in two weeks (gotta maximize that annual leave), and booked our flights and accommodations using a mix of loyalty points and money. We ended up with a nearly $37,000 trip for 2 that was booked with about 600,000 points and roughly $2,000. I’m so excited, and I want to share bit about the plan and how we booked it.
Oakland – Minneapolis – Reykjavik – London – Frankfurt – Singapore
Kuala Lumpur – Malé – Colombo – Hong Kong – San Francisco
Sarah, What Were You Thinking?
In early 2017, Rosio and I both applied for the Chase Sapphire Reserve* credit card while it was offering a 100,000-point bonus. When the points deposited into our accounts, we promised each other we’d do something epic with them. Later that year, we decided to use them for a trip in Singapore Airlines’ First Class suites**, and we also agreed on wanting to add the Maldives as a destination.
* If you sign up through my link, I’d deeply appreciate it since I’ll receive 10,000 bonus points. If you want more information on credit cards, check out my post from last year.
**Everything I’ve seen about the first class suites tells me this is basically a mini bedroom in the air. The bougie corners of my heart really can’t contain the excitement.
How We Did It
If we were going to spend nearly all of our Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points on one flight, then we needed to be on that flight for as long as possible. That, and limited award availability, is how we ended up booking our 12-hour Frankfurt to Singapore flight using 115,000 Ultimate Rewards transferred to Singapore Airlines and $100 in taxes. From there, everything else was about getting to Frankfurt and getting home from Singapore by way of Maldives. Once we started booking flights using points as much as possible to keep costs down, we realized with a little tweaking, we could make the travel go in a single direction around the globe.
All in all, we used nearly 600,000 points across 6 different point currencies to spend two weeks hopping around 8 countries.
In addition to the Sapphire Reserve cards, we each opened the AAdvantage Aviator Red World Elite Mastercard to cover most of the flights home.
We were also able to save money using the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal to book different activities and airport transportation. For instance, we used them to arrange transportation from the Blue Lagoon in Iceland to our hotel in Reykjavik, and also for the London Eye Champagne Experience, which would have otherwise cost us $160.
We used my Southwest Companion Pass (essentially BOGO flights) in conjunction with Southwest points to position to Minneapolis where we’ll catch a cheap flight to Iceland on Delta Airlines. Hotels seem to be pretty pricey in Reykjavik, so we used my last 70,000 Hilton points instead of $423 to try out Canopy by Hilton for a night, a brand I’ve never been to. From Iceland, the cheapest/easiest flight was to London, which we booked in the Chase UR Portal for about 10,000 points. Then, it was simple to transfer URs to British Airways, where we could get 2 tickets to Frankfurt for 9,000 URs and $55. We’ll spend one night in the nearby town of Mainz – the perfect place to use a free night certificate from a Marriott promotion last year – before heading back to the airport in Frankfurt for the fanciest flight of my entire life.
Once in Singapore, the main objective is to eat all the food, and lounge about in the JW Marriott’s rooftop infinity pool, which was the main motivation behind our hotel choice since the Marina Bay Sands had some absurd ideas of what one night with infinity pool access should cost. From there we’ll spend two much-needed budget-friendly days in Kuala Lumpur, flying Scoot Airlines for a tiny amount (about 3,000) of UR points.
We decided to dabble in Low-Cost Carriers and booked AirAsia X to get to Malé in the Maldives for about $90 each. After two nights at the Sheraton Full Moon Resort & Spa over Rosio’s birthday, we’ll spend some time in Colombo, Sri Lanka before our flight home via Hong Kong in business class on Cathay Pacific. Lie-flat seats for the win!
We’ll be posting mainly on Instagram if you want to follow our trip! I’m @wanderingsideeye and Rosio is @chio_132 .
#RandSWorldTour18