How I Saved $5,000 on My Honeymoon

WE WENT TO GREECE ON OUR HONEYMOON! I’ve wanted to come here for so long and I’m so glad/lucky/blessed to finally get to go! But, let’s get real, it’s expensive AF to go to Greece and getting there can be a pain in the butt. One of my favorite things to brag about on this blog is how I’m able to pay for my vacations using points that I accumulated through airline, hotel, and credit card points. So, this trip is no exception!

The Flight:

I did a blog post (and small rant), here, on how I purchased the flights for our honeymoon. Essentially, I used all 90,000 of my American Airlines points and saved around $2,740! I accumulated these points two ways. First, by getting the Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select credit card ( I know it’s a mouth full!) where you can earn 50,000 miles after spending $2,500. The second was by purchasing the Barclay AAdvantage Aviator Red World Elite Mastercard (I know another mouth full!) where you can earn 60,000 miles after making your first purchase and payment on the card. In my experience there is NO minimum for what this purchase can be, I spent $10 at Walmart and still got the 60,000 points!

I still had to pay over $2,000 in taxes and fees (because… UK) but I would have had to pay these regardless, so I still saved over $2,700. Lesson learned, try not to connect through London Heathrow, you’ll have to pay more in taxes and fees.

Athens Hotel:

One of the main ways that I accumulated so many Hyatt points was through work travel (I traveled throughout the US, every week, for almost two years, always stayed at a Hyatt hotel). Another way that I accumulated so many points was through the World of Hyatt credit card, through Chase. On top of earning 25,000 points after spending $2,500, you also earn earn one free night at a category 1-3 hotel every year. Luckily, the Grand Hyatt in Athens is a category 3 hotel so one of my 4 nights was covered, literally for free. I guess you can count the annual fee that I pay towards the credit card, so I paid $79 for a $185 a night room (still a win). I was then able to use 36,000 additional points for the remaining 3 nights, 12,000 point per night. Overall, this saved me $185/night or $740 (plus taxes and fees). Don’t forget, if you use your hotel points to pay for hotels then you aren’t charged the taxes and fees (including resort fees).

Santorini Hotel:

In Santorini we stayed at Anteliz Suites (hotel review to come) in a room with a private pool. The total cost for all 3 nights would be $1,250 (including taxes and fees). However, with my Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card it would cost 83,200 points (you can use your points to pay for taxes and fees but I decided not too because the tourist tax was only $5 USD).

Keep in mind that with the Chase Sapphire Reserve, you can redeem Chase points for 50% more when you book travel, with the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the Chase Ink cards it’s only 25%. If you want to learn more about why these two conversions are so important, I wrote a blog post here that shows you all the math and why this card is totally worth it!

Mykonos Hotel:

Sadly, the hotel in Mykonos are way more expensive than Santorini (in my experience, 3x as expensive!). We stayed at Kouros Hotel and Suites which is within walking distance of Mykonos Town. For a suite with a private pool, it cost me $3,011 for all three nights (tax included) — spoiler alert it’s 100% worth the cost! Luckily, one of the perks of my Chase Sapphire Reserve card is $300 worth of travel credit and 5,000 points left over from my Santorini hotel. So with this, and the remaining points i had with Chase, this brought my total down to $2,536 so I saved around $480.

London Hotel:

One of the only perks about taking multiple airline connections is potentially getting to explore another city, if the connection is long enough. For our flight home, our connection in London was 14 hours!! Which is wayyy too much time to be spending in an airport overnight. So we opted to get a hotel and explore London. I’ve been staying with Hilton a lot, for work, so I opted for the Hilton Honors credit card, through AMEX, which gets you 60,000 bonus points after you spend $3,000 in the first three months. With the card you also get elevated status, which got us free breakfast in the lounge, saving us another $50!

We stayed at the Conrad London St. James which averages around 512 euros or $560 + $50 breakfast = $610.

Overall Savings: $5,820!!