Travel Hacking Success Story: Sedona, AZ 2017

Hi fellow hackers! We finally made it to Sedona! I’ve been wanting to come here for a while but couldn’t find a good time to take a 3 day weekend to fully experience Sedona. Side note: This is a continuation of my Travel Hacking Blog Series where I talk about how I use reward points to pay for my vacations. I’ll be posting a travel guide to Sedona that’ll detail what we did and more pictures but I wanted to do a separate post about how I used my airline and hotel points to pay for us to come here. We ended up only paying out of pocket for our food and activities!

Where we stayed:

One thing I love about being a World of Hyatt credit card member  is the (random) deals they offer throughout the year to attract guests to different properties. Last year I got a deal to go to Hyatt Piñon Pointe for 4 days for just $132, a night, which is a huge discount in comparison to their current rate of $379 a night. Sadly, at the time I couldn’t utilize this deal but I was able able to fall in love with Sedona and decided to book a trip anyway, outside of the deal offered by Hyatt. With the Hyatt credit card I was able to utilize the 2 free nights after spending $2,000 on the card within the first 3 months.

Update: Hyatt has now changed the bonus to 40,000 points instead of 2 free nights. It’s still a good decent deal though. It entices you to go to their moderate properties versus the luxurious ones.

For the third night, since this is a Hyatt Residence Club property I was able to utilize their ‘tour’ promotion to get an extra 10,000 World of Hyatt points. A tour is essentially a 2 hour long time share sales pitch. For me spending 2 hours to get 10,000 point is a no brainer. The caveat is that you can only ‘tour’ a Residence Club property once a year.  Which for me is easy, we love to travel but the Hyatt Residence Club are scarce, click here for full listing. I was able to booked the third night with my Hyatt points, 15,000 points a night since this is a category 4 property. So, technically, I only used 5,000 of my World of Hyatt Points on this vacation (15,000 points a night minus the 10,000 points that I got for doing a tour of the Hyatt Residence Club).

Overall, I was able to save $1,137 on hotel costs by using my points!

How we got there: 

Sedona, Arizona is pretty remote and far away from a major airport (2 hours away from Phoenix Sky Harbor), which would normally scare me away, but I’m finally 25 and can rent a car without that pesky underage fee. Since Phoenix Sky Harbor airport is an American Airlines hub, it’s easy to fly into without having to make stops/hops. With American Airlines the cheapest points fare you can get is 12.5k points per leg (25k total there an back). Luckily we were able to get this lower fee, maybe people don’t go to Arizona during Labor Day ? I was able to accumulate these points through everyday purchases, it was my primary credit card for 2 years.

Once we got to Phoenix, we had to drive 2 hours to get to Sedona. I rented a car with National using 7,300 of my Chase Ultimate Rewards points. I recently got the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card and received the 50,000 point bonus after spending $4,000 in 3 months. One good thing about the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport is they have all major rental car companies right on airport property so getting to them is no problem. Definitely something to check before you book your rental car.

I would definitely recommend getting a rental car if you’re going to Arizona. I’ve found that cities in Arizona are more spread out and there are a lot There are so many hikes and most of the places are spread out, vs in one centralized location, that you’ll want the freedom to come and go as you please.

Thanks for reading and good luck on your next vacation!

P.S. None of the photos above are edited!! Seriously though, that’s just how gorgeous Sedona is.