Travel Hacking Success Story: Montego Bay, Jamaica

After months of planning, we’re finally in Jamaica and we couldn’t be more excited!!!! Our last couple vacations have been filled with hiking, waking up early, and little rest, so we’re taking this opportunity to recharge and relax on the beach with frozen drinks.  I’m so glad we had the opportunity to go to Jamaica and, even better, use points to do so. Overall, I only spent $260 (on flight taxes and fees), and saved roughly $5,398 on this vacation! Keep reading below to see how.

How we got There:

I’m still loyal to American Airlines because it’s a hub in Dallas and I have the Citi AA Advantage credit card which gives me my free checked  bag and AA points on all my purchases. I accumulated most of my points through work travel but they consistently have a sign up bonus of 60,000 miles after you spend $3,000 in the first 3 months. This goes a long way if you’re redeeming miles at a rate of 12,500 miles per flight, currently their lowest rate. I was able to fly to Jamaica for 15,000 miles per flight, so 60,000 miles total. This flight would have cost me $555 per person, so I ended up saving over $1,000. One thing I did learn is that the flight taxes can vary depending on what country you’re flying to. Typically, when flying domestically I expect to pay around $30 a flight in tax but to Jamaica I paid $130 a flight in taxes. I would have had to pay these taxes whether I used points or dollars, but it was still $260 that I didn’t want to spend.  

The next American Airlines card that I’ll be getting is the Barclay AAdvantage Aviator Red World Elite Mastercard, I know it’s a mouthful. This card gives you 60,000 bonus miles after your first purchase, first checked bag free, and 10% of your redeemed miles back. The 10% is something you wont find with the Citi card and, for me, this is why I’ll be canceling my Citi card and getting the Barclay card. It means that the 60,000 points that I redeemed for Jamaica, I could have gotten 6,000 points back.

Hyatt Zilara Rose Hall

I love being a World of Hyatt member because I get so many deals and discounts throughout the year. This year’s deal came at the perfect time with 40% off their new Jamaican hotels. The standard rate is $1,072 a night, for two people, but in order to entice travelers, there is a 45% discount, so it comes out to $590 a night. Since it’s an all-inclusive hotel, Hyatt charges 25,000 World of Hyatt points per night, which is on the high side. The most expensive Hyatt category cost 30,000 points, but that doesn’t include food. Overall, this is a really good point value, especially since food and (alcoholic) drinks are included at their all inclusive properties. Without the discounts, this redemption rate is 23 points per dollar (25,000/$1,072) which is good for Hyatt hotels, it’s even better actually since it is all-inclusive. We stayed 4 nights and used 100,000 World of Hyatt points instead of $4,288.

We saved so much money on this trip and probably wouldn’t have gone had it not been for the points so I’m so glad I finally go to use them on a relaxing resort!

This was a continuation to the previous blog posts that I’ve done on Travel Hacking. You can find the previous posts here.