Round the World in 11 Days: Planning & Booking

Introduction
Planning & Booking
American Express Centurion Lounge DFW
Emirates A380 First Class Dallas to Dubai
Al Maha Desert Resort & Spa Dubai
Emirates First Class Lounge Dubai
Emirates 777-300 First Class Dubai to Male
Transfer to Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa
Park Hyatt Maldives
Transfer to Male
Singapore Airlines 777-200 Business Class Male to Singapore
Grand Hyatt Singapore
Singapore Airlines The Private Room Singapore
Singapore Airlines 777-300ER First Class Singapore to Hong Kong
Singapore Airlines 777-300ER First Class Hong Kong to San Francisco

They say the best part about a vacation is the anticipation.  This trip is no exception.  Emily and I have had The Maldives on our bucket list for years.  For us flying halfway around the world to get to a beach is part of the fun.  When the opportunity to spend time in The Maldives and Al Maha, (outside Dubai) I started to work on flights.  Here's an overview of the booking process and what everything cost.

Hotels:

We've already covered our first couple of nights in Dubai at Al Maha.  This cost me 78,000 SPG points (normally 120,000) thanks to Starwood's recent promotion.  Given the fact that the resort is all inclusive (3 meals per day and 2 activities) and room rates go for more than $1,500 USD/night, I consider this a great deal.

Cash rates at Al Maha Dubai

All in, I'm getting about 5 cents worth of value from my SPG points.  Not that I would ever pay $2K for a night in a hotel but this regardless, this is one of the best redemptions of my life.

We'll then head to the Park Hyatt Maldives for 4 nights using Hyatt Gold Passport points.  The hotel used to be a category 6 then went to 7 and now is back to 6.  So 25,000 points per night for a total of 100,000 for our stay.  I used a combination of Hyatt points earned from stays and transferred in the rest from my Chase Ultimate Rewards account.  I did pay cash to upgrade us to an overwater bungalow for the last night of our but I'll leave that out of the booking process since that was totally optional.

Park Hyatt Maldives beach

Tracking Point Balances with AwardWallet

AwardWallet is one of my favorite miles and points tools.  Staying organized in this hobby is critical to success and keeping track of point balances, expiration dates, free night certificates, etc... would be much more challenging without a place to aggregate all that information.

If you're getting started with miles and points, I highly recommend signing up for an AwardWallet account and adding all of your loyalty program accounts.  It will make life much easier for you as your start to accumulate points.  They even have a new interface (in beta) which I like a lot.

To that end, feel free to signup using my link and signup with coupon code free-fyvqsm (10 total) for a free upgrade to a plus account.

All the Right Points at Work

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk a bit about miles and points to a group (40+) of co-workers as part of our monthly "lunch and learn" sessions.  The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and I think I picked up a blog reader or two in the process.

Given many of the attendees were new to the miles and points world, I've posted a few introductory links below.  Looking forward to hearing about your own travel hacking success stories as you get started!

Getting Started Page

How I Started

Credit Cards & Travel Hacking Overview

Miles & Points vs. Cashback

Managing Credit Card Annual Fees

I'm going to work on a few additional introductory posts including finishing my 5 Steps to a (Nearly) Free Trip series.  Feel free to email me with any additional questions about getting started!

Double Starpoints with Uber

I was in NYC last week for a few days and used my fair share of Uber's to get around the city.  Earlier in the year, Uber and Starwood rolled out a partnership where SPG members would earn 1 point/dollar spent on Uber's and 2 points/dollar spent on Uber's during a Starwood stay.  That bumps up 3 pints/dollar spent for elite members.

While I would use Uber to get around the city anyway, an extra ~300 Starpoints is a nice bonus.

The points (standard and bonus) post in a couple of days and I've never had a problem with the points posting accurately.  My Uber account is linked to my Chase Sapphire Preferred card where I also earn 2x points on my Uber spend.  Earning 5x points on Uber rides is pretty awesome.

Round the World in 11 Days: Introduction

Introduction
Planning & Booking
American Express Centurion Lounge DFW
Emirates A380 First Class Dallas to Dubai
Al Maha Desert Resort & Spa Dubai
Emirates First Class Lounge Dubai
Emirates 777-300 First Class Dubai to Male
Transfer to Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa
Park Hyatt Maldives
Transfer to Male
Singapore Airlines 777-200 Business Class Male to Singapore
Grand Hyatt Singapore
Singapore Airlines The Private Room Singapore
Singapore Airlines 777-300ER First Class Singapore to Hong Kong
Singapore Airlines 777-300ER First Class Hong Kong to San Francisco

After a summer break due to our new family member, Emily and I are 30 days away from our most anticipated trip yet.  Both of us have had the Maldives at the top of our bucket list and we actually had a trip booked in late 2014.  Life got in the way and we ended up canceling the trip...and I'm glad we did because a year later, our itinerary is even better.

The Maldives is far.  Really far.  Almost 11,000 miles far.  For those keeping score, that is nearly halfway around the world.  So we decided to break up the trip on both ends with stops in Dubai and Singapore.  Flying through Singapore on the way home enabled us to make this a true round the world trip (RTW) which has been another bucket list item of ours.  In total, we'll fly nearly 23,000 miles as we make our way around the world.

Round the World in 11 Days:  ~23,000 miles of flying

After an early morning flight from Denver to Dallas, we'll spend a few hours in the American Express Centurion lounge relaxing before the 14+ hour Emirates A380 flight to Dubai.  This will be our first time flying Emirates and we're both pretty excited for the onboard bar, shower, and overall experience.  We were in Dubai a couple of years ago and enjoyed our time in the city.  For this trip, we're headed to the Al Maha Desert Resort & Spa thanks to Starwood's generous 35% off promotion.  Al Maha is supposed to be an incredible resort and at nearly $2,000 a night would be completely unattainable without a large stash of SPG points.

After a four hour flight on Emirates first class to Male, we'll transfer via domestic prop plane and speed boat to the Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa.  While there are dozens of reviews of the property online, we're both super excited to experience it for ourselves.  With just 50 villas (14 overwater and 36 on land) and a staff to guest ratio of nearly 2:1, it is supposed to be a very special place.  We'll spend three nights in the standard park villa and our last night in an overwater bungalow/villa.  Another bucket list item checked off.

We'll spend four nights at the Park Hyatt before transferring back to Male for a five hour redeye on Singapore Airlines.  Not looking forward to that but we'll be tired and use the flight to rest up for Thanksgiving in Singapore.

We've been to Singapore a couple of times and stayed at the same property (Conrad) during both trips.  We decided to check something new out and stay at the Grand Hyatt near Orchard Road.  It will be cool to stay in a different neighborhood and spend more time in a different part of the city.

Singapore Airlines 777-300ER First Class

While I would have loved to fly Singapore Suites again, availability was challenging post Thanksgiving.  So I "settled" for Singapore's 777-300ER first class which isn't fully enclosed but still an excellent way to fly.  We'll be flying Singapore to Hong Kong to San Francisco and then overnighting at SFO before catching an early flight back to Denver.

This is the best itinerary I've put together thus far.  We were able to cover all of the flights (with the exception of the connecting flights to Dallas and from SFO) and hotels with miles and points.  The Maldives is expensive and the fact that we were able to do so leaves us with a bit more cash to splurge on activities.  I'll cover the booking specifics in costs more in the next installment. Stay tuned!

Review: Asiana First Class A380 Seoul to Los Angeles

Introduction
Planning & Booking
Qantas First Class Lounge LAX
Cathay Pacific 777-300 ER First Class Los Angeles to Hong Kong
The Pier Cathay Pacific First Class Lounge
Le Meridien Bangkok
Thai Airways First Class Lounge & Spa
Thai Airways 747-400 First Class Bangkok to Hong Kong
Conrad Hong Kong
Singapore Airlines SilverKris Lounge Hong Kong
Air India 787-8 Business Class Hong Kong to Seoul
Asiana A380 First Class Seoul to Los Angeles

I seemed to have lost my camera pics from the Asiana First Class Lounge and the flight home.  Good news is I have some pics of the flight home from my phone so will continue with the review.  I was in the Asiana FCL lounge last year so you can check out that review if you're interested.

After our Air India arrival and less than stellar transfer experience, we were welcomed into the lounge.  I showered and grabbed a quick bite to eat and then caught up on email.  Soon it was T-40 and we decided to go roam the terminal a bit.  We were maybe 100 feet out of the lounge when an Asiana lounge employee came running up to us.  "Mr. Berlin?"  "Yes, we both responded."  

A preview of things to come

He was our escort to the gate to ensure we were able to board first.  I knew that Asiana provided First Class passengers escort services but I'm a semi functional adult and figured I could manage the 500 foot walk to the gate by myself.  He really wouldn't take no for an answer so we "let" him escort us down to the gate and to the front of the line.  He politely informed the giant queue of passengers that we would be jumping ahead of them and there was no push back.  Now first in line to board, we had 10 minutes or so to talk about the airline, his girlfriend in LA, and how proud Asiana is to fly the A380.

Boarding was called and we said our goodbyes to our new friend.  Asiana's first class cabin contains 12 enclosed suites on the lower level of the aircraft.  We were both seated in window seats - 2A and 3A.  I've flown first class on Asiana's 777 which was a great experience.  

Time to fly - seat 3A

SPG Dashboard - How Do You Rank?

Starwood recently launched a new website feature that provides a ton of stats on your previous stays (in some cases only from 1/1/2012 forward).  The SPG dashboard displays YTD stats, lifetime stats, progress towards elite qualification, and metrics about stays by brand and location.

Lifetime SPG stats

I qualified for SPG Lifetime Gold last year after 5 years edit and 250 nights.  I still have a long way to go to Lifetime Platinum (10 years elite and 500 nights) but I imagine I'll get there at some point.

I wish the data went back further (I've been an SPG member since 2003) on the stays by brand but looking at the past 3+ years is still pretty interesting.

Over the last three and half years, I've had at least 2 stays at all of the SPG brands in the portfolio with the exception of the newest addition, Tribute hotels.  I've had stays in 4 regions, 8 countries, and 15 states.

What does your SPG dashboard look like?