How We Saved $2,800 on our Hawaiian Honeymoon
Everything in Hawaii is more expensive largely due to how remote the islands are. Keep in mind that a Hawaiian vacation isn’t going to be “budget friendly” in most instances, but the Chase Sapphire Reserve card allowed us to experience insane luxury for way less than we would have paid otherwise.
Hotel
Check In: June 21 - Check Out: June 25 - We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa in Kaanapali. When we booked our stay, a standard King room cost $480 per night, excluding taxes and nightly resort fees. Had we paid out of pocket instead of using points, our total would have been:
TOTAL COST PER NIGHT: $480 (x4) = $1,920
STATE TAX: 4.170% (x $1,920) = $80.06
OCCUPANCY TAX: 10.250% (x $1,920) = $196.80
RESORT FEES: $36.61 (x 4) = $146.44
PARKING FEE: $25 (x4) = $100
Out of Pocket Cost of Hyatt Stay = $2,443.30
Instead, we opted to transfer 100,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points to World of Hyatt points to pay for our stay. Why? If you’ve dabbled in travel hacking, you may know that transferring points to hotel groups isn’t widely thought to give you the best value for your points. Hyatt is the exception, because they have predictable and clear point values assigned to their different hotel categories — the Hyatt Regency Maui, for example, is considered a Category 6. This hotel category has a nightly rate of 25,000 points per standard room. (This point value also includes the resort fees and taxes!)
By electing to pay with points rather than paying out-of-pocket, the total cost of our stay at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa was:
TOTAL COST PER NIGHT: $0
STATE TAX: $0
OCCUPANCY TAX: $0
RESORT FEES: $0
PARKING FEE: $25 (x4) = $100
TOTAL HYATT SAVINGS = $2,343.30
Check In: June 25 - Check Out: June 27 - We stayed at the Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort. When we booked our stay, the Andaz wasn’t accepting points for any room type (not uncommon for luxury resorts, but annoying nonetheless.) The Andaz is also considered a Category 7 hotel, which means each night costs 30,000 points instead of the 25,000 we paid at our first resort.
At this transfer rate we would have been able to stay for 3 nights free, instead of the 4 we got at the Hyatt Regency. We made the only reasonable reward redemption available to us at the time, but had reward bookings been available at the Andaz, we would have saved more money getting 3 nights free than we did getting 4 nights free at the Hyatt since the per night cost was so much higher ($677 vs $480 per night.)
Since we couldn’t use points at the Andaz, we used a different Chase Sapphire Reserve benefit that allowed us to book our stay through the Luxury Hotel Collection. By booking through the LHC portal we were given:
Full Breakfast for two daily in Ka'ana Kitchen
$100 Spa Treatment credit, per room, per stay at Awili Spa & Salon
Room Upgrade
Early Check-In
Late Check-Out
Let’s break down the savings from these benefits:
Full Breakfast for two daily in Ka'ana Kitchen = $90 ($45 pp) + tax and tip per day
Breakfast Cost = $90 x 2 days = $180
Tax Cost = 4% x $180 = $7.20
Tip = $18 (x2) = $36
TOTAL BREAKFAST SAVINGS: $223.20
$100 Spa Treatment credit, per room, per stay at Awili Spa & Salon
We found out that you could actually use this $100 credit anywhere on site (restaurants, bars, coffee, etc.)
TOTAL CREDIT SAVINGS: $100
Upgrade - Room upgrades are subject to availability when you arrive on site. Luckily, we did end up getting a room upgrade from a Standard King Garden View room to a King Partial Ocean View room. The price difference was worth $50 per night.
TOTAL UPGRADE SAVINGS: $100
Early Check-In - This isn’t really quantifiable, but that’s okay! We booked 11:00 am massages to kill time before the the standard check-in time of 3:00 pm. We dropped our bags at the front desk, got massages, ate lunch, and were able to check into our room around 1:00 pm instead of the standard 3:00 pm.
Late Check-Out - We also got the benefits of a late check out. Again, not sure how to quantify it, but it was a great perk since our flight home wasn’t until 8:00 pm on our last day. We extended our checkout time from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm, so we were able to take advantage of on-site kayaking that morning and enjoy time in the pool before we had to shower and pack up.
TOTAL ANDAZ MAUI SAVINGS: $423.20
Note: I saved $423.20 just for being a card holder. I didn’t have to use any fancy travel hacking know-how, I didn’t have to earn any points before I did so, and I didn’t have any minimum spend targets. I just booked our stay through the credit card’s LHC site, and I saved almost the cost of a 1 night stay.
Flights
In case you were curious, we paid for our flights out-of-pocket, because it cost $853 for both of us to fly round trip. That was an insanely good deal for direct flights out of Dallas, and we were able to earn points for those long haul flights because we paid for them instead of using points. (Typically you don’t earn points on flights booked with points.)
Total Savings Breakdown
TOTAL HYATT SAVINGS = $2,343.30
TOTAL ANDAZ MAUI SAVINGS: $423.20
Our total Hawaiian Honeymoon savings for 6 nights in Hawaii was $2,766.50 thanks to the Chase Sapphire Reserve!
Are you as impressed as we were? Hopefully this incentivizes you to really dig into the details of your own travel rewards card. There could be benefits you’ve overlooked that could be providing a huge return! If you want to learn more about the power of the Chase Sapphire Reserve, make this your next read!