Review: Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome

Introduction
Planning & Booking
British Airways 747-400 First Class Denver to London
British Airways Concorde Room LHR
Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam
Andaz Amsterdam
Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome
Singapore Airlines A380 Suites Class Frankfurt to JFK

The Thalys train from Amsterdam Central to Gare du Nord took a little over three hours.  There was wifi (although it was barely useable) and a couple of light meals and beverages (including wine) throughout the journey.  We passed the time eating, drinking, figuring out our Paris itinerary and watching movies on our computers.  We had paid a little extra (~20 Euros each) for Thalys "Comfort One."  One of the amenities is a taxi reservation upon arrival enabling you to skip the taxi line.  Reading the fine print, this was going to cost us another 12 Euros so we decided to take our changes with the queue.  We walked out of the station and found a taxi within about 7 seconds - so I wouldn't recommend paying the extra money for a taxi reservation - although nearly everyone in our train car chose to do so.

The taxi to the Park Hyatt took about 15 minutes.  It was a weekday afternoon and it had just finished raining and Paris was clogged with cars and people.

Paris is pretty

The Park Hyatt is located in the 1st Arrondissement (Louvre) which is basically right in the middle of the city on the Right Bank of the Seine.  Being centrally located is a double edged sword.  While the hotel is located right next to multiple metro stops, Place Vendome, Louvre, Tuileries, etc... you're also in the middle of tourist hell.  Which in Paris means lots and lots of people.  While we loved this hotel, next time we would definitely like to try something a bit more removed from the chaos.  On to the review...

Review: Andaz Amsterdam

Introduction
Planning & Booking
British Airways 747-400 First Class Denver to London
British Airways Concorde Room LHR
Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam
Andaz Amsterdam
Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome
Singapore Airlines A380 Suites Class Frankfurt to JFK

After a great two night stay at the Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam, we made our way over to the Andaz.  While the walk was gorgeous, I lost some points for making us walk with all of our bags.  Little did we know that I would make up those points (and then some) once we were shown to our room.  The building housing the hotel used to be the public library on the Prisengracht canal (Prince's canal) and is situated in the Jordaan neighborhood of Amsterdam.

Andaz Amsterdam Exterior

Andaz Amsterdam Check-In

Andaz has a great setup for check-in.  Instead of a "formal" check-in desk they have a handful of stations with laptops where they process check-in formalities.  I had booked the single night with Hyatt Gold Passport points (25,000) which I thought was a great deal given that we'd be rebated 20% of those due to Hyatt's current 20% promotion.  So a net cost of 20,000 points for a standard room selling for 635 Euros.  That works out to about $725 USD with tax - over 3.5 cents per point.

What's in My Wallet - March 2015 Edition

It's been awhile since I've posted about what's in my wallet.  I'm going to try and keep this up quarterly.  You can check out other posts here:

What's in My Wallet?  October 2014

What's in My Wallet?  April 2014

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.

1)  Amex Simply Cash Business Credit Card

I usually prefer to earn points and miles vs. cash back, but this offer is pretty hard to pass up given the strong bonus ($250 on $5,000 in spend so 5x cash back all with no annual fee) and bonus categories (5x on office supplies and cell/cable bills, 3x on a category of your choice - in my case restaurants).  This card is a keeper given the lack of an annual fee although I probably won't put a ton of spend on the card once receiving the signup bonus.

2)  Barclays US Airways Dividend Miles MasterCard

Given the merger with American and the fact that this card is going away (likely in April) as the merger progresses, I figured I'd pick up this card again (I've had it before a couple years back).  The sign-up bonus is really strong - 50,000 USAir miles after first purchase for an $89 annual fee.  These miles will become AA miles in April so you should definitely get this card before it goes away.  The card is still in my wallet due to a promotion Barclays is running offering 1.5x miles for the next few months.  After that, I'll stick it in a drawer.

3)  Chase Sapphire Preferred

All of my travel spend goes on the CSP.  Once I've hit the sign-up bonus on my Simply Cash Business card, I'll move back to the CSP for restaurant spend.

4)  Amex Starwood Preferred Guest

This card is perpetually in my wallet.  In fact, I just paid my taxes with the card.  Even though there is a ~2% fee to pay taxes with a credit card, it's a no brainer for me.  I would buy Starwood points all day long at 2%.  I am staying at The Phoenician Resort in May for 12,000 points a night.  The cash rate is >$500 per night.  If I was to "buy points" at $.02 that would be $240 per night...a huge discount versus the $500 cash rate.

Review: Grand Hyatt Hong Kong

Introduction
Planning & Booking
Singapore Airlines 777-300ER First Class San Francisco to Hong Kong
Grand Hyatt Hong Kong
The Bridge Cathay Pacific Business Class Lounge
Cathay Pacific A330 Business Class Hong Kong to Taipei
W Taipei
Cathay Pacific 777-300ER Business Class Taipei to Hong Kong
The Wing Cathay Pacific First Class Lounge
Cathay Pacific 777-300 ER First Class Hong Kong to Los Angeles

Since we didn't have to wait for bags at baggage claim, once were were done filling out paperwork for Emily's lost bag, we were on our way into the city.  First, we hit the ATM to pickup some cash and purchase our train tickets.  The train is the best way to get to Hong Kong (either Central or Kowloon) in my opinion.  It's cheap, super clean, has wifi, and runs often.  We entered the train station connected to the terminal and the train was waiting.  24 minutes later we were headed out of the station on our way to the Grand Hyatt.

My tree is bigger than your tree

It was only 8AM on Saturday and since we only had one bag, we decided to walk.  Using Google maps to guide us, we were at the hotel by 8:30.  It was the 27th of December so the hotel was still decked out with three giant Christmas trees in the lobby.  

2014 Year in Review: Hotels

I recently posted about my 2014 year in flight.  You can also read about my 2013 hotel stays here.

In 2014, We stayed in really great hotels although didn't receive as many "upgrades" as in prior years.  I'll end the year with ended the year with 57 total nights (I was at 55 last year) across Starwood, Hyatt, Hilton, IHG, and independent brands.  Interesting to note that 5 of our stays and 13 of our nights were at independent properties where we were unable to earn/burn points.

None of the nights were business travel although 10 of the "nights" were credit from the Starwood American Express cards and two additional nights were "mistakes" credits.  So I actually stayed in hotels 45 nights during 2014.  I will be dropping from Starwood Platinum to Gold (lifetime) which I'm okay with.

Chase Hyatt Credit Card Rocks

One of the best cards from Chase that I have yet to write about is the Hyatt Credit Card.  Over the last couple of years, I've become a big Hyatt fan after awesome stays at the Park Hyatt in Istanbul and Andaz Fifth Avenue in NYC.

Two free nights - for $1,000 in spend and no annual fee

The card offers two free nights at any Hyatt in the world (all brands) after spending $1,000 on the card.  The annual fee is $75 but that's waived for the first year.  If you are planning a honeymoon or a special trip of any sort, you should get this card.  You can redeem your nights for the Park Hyatt in the Maldives, Paris, Tokyo, NYC, etc...those properties can go for $500 - $1,000 per night so you're getting a ton of value for a very low spend threshold.

Beyond that, the card offers (for the $75 annual fee) a free night in a category 1 - 4 property.  There are some pretty great hotels on the list but we had been unable to use the certificate (which expires at the end of the calendar year) which I was kind of bummed about.

A few days ago we changed our outbound flight for our trip to Asia.  It's Christmas night so hotels are real cheap.  All Starwood properties (Westin, Le Meridien, W, Palace) with the exception of the St. Regis were under $160/night.  That is phenomenal for San Francisco.  But I remembered I had an expiring Hyatt certificate and checked to see if there were any category four hotels in the city.

Hyatt Regency San Francisco lobby

The Hyatt Regency San Francisco is a category four and I was able to use my certificate without an issue.  I'll have a future post on how easy it is to redeem the free anniversary night.  For some reason, paid rates were a lot more expensive than other (arguably nicer) hotels in the city.  We did some searching and found out that the property has a massive Christmas display in the lobby atrium.  In fact, the hotel has make the Travel and Leisure "best hotels for Christmas" list! 

The anniversary night really worked out.  Clearly a nice return on the $75 annual fee to end up with a $200+ hotel night.  Thanks Hyatt and Chase for making our Christmas.  We are pumped!

Ringing in 2015: Planning & Booking

Introduction
Planning & Booking
United 747 Global First San Francisco to Hong Kong
Grand Hyatt Hong Kong Grand Club
Cathay Pacific A330 Business Class Hong Kong to Taipei
W Taipei
Cathay Pacific 777 First Class A340 Business Class Taipei to Hong Kong
W Hong Kong
American Airlines 777-300 ER Flagship First Class Hong Kong to Dallas

We're only 40 days away from our trip and we're pumped.  Emily is always slightly bummed in the few days after Christmas (no more presents to open or family to hangout with) so it is great to have a trip to look forward to.

In the scheme of things, this trip was relatively easy to book.  There are three award tickets (two one-ways and a roundtrip) and three hotel stays.  Not like our last trip where we had five hotel stays including two overnights and four flight segments to get to our first destination!  If I had more time, we could make the itinerary MUCH more complicated but I still feel like we got great value from our hard earned miles and points.

Here's how we booked the trip:

Hyatt Selling Points at a 30% Discount

Hyatt is currently selling points at a 30% discount when you buy 5,000 or more points.  This brings the cost down to around 1.85 cents per point.  I wouldn't "speculatively" buy points at this price but if you are looking to book award travel for the holidays or 2015 this could be a good use of points.

I recently purchased 1,000 points recently to top off my account for an award at 2.4 cents a point.  Hyatt's sold points at a 40% discount so if you don't need the top off immediately, you might as well wait.

If you're new to the miles and points world, read this getting started post on the benefits of purchasing miles.

Ringing in 2015: Introduction

Introduction
Planning & Booking
United 747 Global First San Francisco to Hong Kong
Grand Hyatt Hong Kong Grand Club
Cathay Pacific A330 Business Class Hong Kong to Taipei
W Taipei
Cathay Pacific 777 First Class Taipei to Hong Kong
W Hong Kong
American Airlines 777-300 ER Flagship First Class Hong Kong to Dallas

I've already dripped a couple of posts around our flight to Hong Kong and the return flight so figured I might as well write the first couple of posts since the holidays are coming up and things tend to get busy.  Beyond that, we had a flood in our house a few days ago and while everyone is okay, our house is a mess.  We were looking forward to this trip before but now we are REALLY looking forward to a week on the other side of the world.  And writing about the trip gets me even more excited.  Anyway..now on to the intro.

We had originally planned a more robust trip to Asia where we could spend more time in each place and also see more places.  For a variety of reasons, we had to rethink our itinerary so that we could be here for Christmas and return prior to the first week of January.  That left us with 8-10 days to play with.

Nearly 18,000 miles in the air - courtesy of the Great Circle Mapper

We knew we wanted to go back to Hong Kong as it's easily one of our favorite places in the world.  The combination (and juxtaposition) of cultures, sheer size of the city, and the setting make it a great place to visit.  We'll be leaving for Hong Kong on the 26th of December which has special meaning for us - we took the same flight two years ago when we departed on our honeymoon and also got engaged on the 26th four years ago.  Last time around we stayed on the Kowloon side at the W...this time we decided to mix it up and stay on Hong Kong Island at the Grand Hyatt.

So we'll spend a few days in Hong Kong exploring before we head to Taipei for three nights.  We are really excited about Taipei.  It's just a quick hop (2 hours) from Hong Kong and from everything we've read, is a real gem of a city.

We're staying at the W which is supposed to be one of the best of the W's.  The location is perfect and we'll have a great view of the Taipei 101 (second tallest building in the world) New Year's celebration.

We then head back to Hong Kong for one night where we'll return to the W we stayed at in 2012 before heading home on American's 777-300ER direct to Dallas.

Hong Kong taxi and view of the skyline

Flying "legacy carrier" first class from the US to Asia was once the way to go.  Not so much anymore with all of the competition from Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines among others.  But it will be fun to ride in the nose of a 747 (I'm in seat 1K where the window faces slightly forward) and see what American has to offer on their brand new 777.  And it will be fun to compare to our previous first class experiences.

I'm most looking forward to the actual trip and getting there in style just makes it that much more fun.  The entire trip was paid for with miles and points with the exception of our last night in Hong Kong.  I'll have all the details on each redemption in the next post but I believe our total cash outlay (for flights and hotels) will end up being less than $600!

My Hyatt Targeted Promotion - 5,000 Bonus Points

There has been a ton of buzz about Hyatt's targeted promotions of late.  While I did not receive the big offer that provides 50,000 bonus Hyatt Gold Passport (HGP) points for 20 stays, I did receive a pretty solid offer of 5,000 bonus points for just one stay.

I value 5,000 HGP at around $100 so will be taking advantage of this promotion.  I don't have a stay booked at the moment (offer is good 9/1 through 11/30) but will likely "mattress run" to get the points if I don't end up needing a stay over the next few months.   The promotion also excludes MGM properties in Las Vegas which is a bummer since I do have a trip planned in October.  This is a pretty solid promotion since the list of exclusions/requirements is short and only one night/stay is required.

Hyatt Makes it Easier to Vacation in Costa Rica

Over the last 18 months, there have been a ton of loyalty program devaluations.  Hyatt is no exception but there seems to be some good news sprinkled into their latest devaluation.

As has been written about by others, (One Mile at a Time, Mommy Points) the Andaz Costa Rica (located in Peninsula Papagayo) has dropped from a Category 6 property to a Category 4.  Meaning each night requires only 15,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points vs. 25,000.  That is a massive reduction and seems to have been a surprise...it was not in the most recent update to the award chart.

Andaz Costa Rica

Considering that the hotel retails for $400+/night, (2.7 cents/point) this is now a pretty awesome
award redemption.  In fact, the current Chase Sapphire Preferred Sign-Up bonus will get you 3 nights (45,000 UR points) at the property.

Peninsula Papagayo Sunset

I have been to the area once before and it is stunning.  I've had this hotel on my list but will now be trying to figure out a time to go given the reduction in points required.  Liberia is the closest airport and easy to get to from Denver.  Frontier offers direct service and there is connecting service on United through Houston and Chicago.  Delta and American offer non-stop service from a variety of airports throughout the year.

100 Free Hyatt Gold Passport Points for 10 Seconds of Work

Hyatt is offering 100 free points as a gift for Chinese New Year.  Looks like it's supposed to be targeted but I tried it yesterday and my points (and Emily's) have already posted.  I value Hyatt points at a $.02 so this is like getting a couple of bucks for free.  The "activity" from the 100 points posting also resets the clock on points expiration.  Offer expires 2/15 but will probably get pulled sooner than that.

Some people scoff at spending the time to claim these offers but over time they really add up so I always try to take advantage if it's not too inconvenient/onerous to get the points.  In this case it's really 10 seconds as you just have to enter your Gold Passport # and hit submit.  If for some reason you don't already have a Hyatt account, you can sign up here and then grab the bonus.

Miles & Points vs. Cashback

A lot of people have asked me why they should switch from a cashback (or a debit card) to a miles/points earning credit card.  Everyone is in a different situation but generally speaking, all of us like to travel in some capacity.  You might like to travel to weddings, family gatherings, business travel, domestic vacations, international vacations, or all of the above.  Here are my thoughts on why you can derive so much more value from leveraging the variable valuation of points and miles cards for your everyday spend.

The top cashback card on the market right now is the Barclays Arrival(TM) World MasterCard.  The annual fee is waived for the first year ($89 thereafter) and offers a 40,000 point sign-up bonus and 2% cashback on everyday spend.  In addition, you can get an additional 10% back on your travel "redemptions" effectively making the rebate 2.2% back on spend.  So once you're received the signup bonus, you are capped at a 2.2% return on your spend because cashback is cashback.  You can't redeem the "points" for something that varies in cost like a plane ticket or a hotel night. And that is the best deal on the market (ignoring periodic 5x bonuses that Chase Freedom and Discover cards offer in specific categories).

2013 Year in Review - Hotels

I spent some time over the holidays compiling a few stats from 2013.  We stayed in some awesome hotels (and had some great flights) all over the world.  There was less business and more personal travel  I ended the year with 55 total nights across Starwood, Hyatt, Hilton, and IHG.  About 8 of the nights were business travel and I earned 10 total "night credits" with my Starwood American Express credit cards.  I closed out the year with four "mattress runs" to re-qualify for Starwood Platinum for 2014.

The four incremental stays brought me to 25 nights and cost about $250.  I'll have more on on the value of Starwood Platinum in a future post but for me...the combination of the renewal gift, free internet, upgrades, and free breakfast during each stay for the next 14 months far outweighs the $250 spent to re-qualify at the end of this year.

Here are a few of the highlights and pictures from 2013:

The Status of Status

As we enter the new year, it’s also the end of the status earning year.  Here’s where things stand going into 2014:

• United Premier Gold (50,000+ PQM)
• Starwood Preferred Guest Platinum (25 stays)
• Hilton Gold (Citi Hilton Reserve Credit Card)
• Marriott Gold (Chase Ritz Carlton Credit Card)
• Hyatt Platinum (Chase Hyatt Credit Card)

United and Starwood are my main programs so things are well setup next year.  While certainly a downgrade from 1K, United Gold still allows Economy Plus access at booking, CPUs, Star Gold, free checked bags, same day changes, etc...While I didn’t hit 50 nights to receive the ten suite awards, (will end the year with 44 stays) I’m satisfied with Platinum.  I usually take the breakfast if traveling with Emily or the points if traveling alone.  We were pretty lucky in terms of both treatment and upgrades in 2013.  Let’s hope that continues into 2014.