Frequent Miler on the Air - Doing New Zealand with points | Ep185 | 1-14-23

Episode Date: January 14, 2023

Fresh off the plane from New Zealand, Greg shares highlights from his trip and we discuss the best ways to fly to and stay in New Zealand using points and miles. Subscribe to our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ 1:06 Giant Mailbag 3:06 What crazy thing . . . did Chase and Aeroplan do this week? https://frequentmiler.com/unlimited-pay-yourself-back-for-travel-at-1-25c-for-aeroplan-cardholders/ 9:47 Mattress running the numbers https://frequentmiler.com/40k-choice-points-100-amex-gift-card-w-bluegreen-vacations-timeshare-offer/ 15:56 Awards we booked this week 21:35 Main Event: Doing New Zealand with points 23:36 United Polaris mini-review 30:48 Qantas business class mini-review 37:23 Ways to book to NZ on points https://frequentmiler.com/best-ways-to-get-to-australia-new-zealand-south-pacific-using-miles/ 42:53 Cheapest way to NZ on points in business class 47:24 How to book impossible awards https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-piece-together-an-impossible-award/ 49:48 The best program for impossible awards 54:27 What are your options for staying in New Zealand? 54:48 Park Hyatt Auckland 1:03:27 The George (SLH via Hyatt) 1:17:14 Eichardt's Private Hotel (SLH via Hyatt) https://frequentmiler.com/eichardts-private-hotel-a-gem-in-queenstown-new-zealand-bookable-with-hyatt-points/ 1:21:24 The Carlin (SLH via Hyatt) 1:24:36 Other options on points in Queenstown 1:24:57 Holiday Inn Express 1:33:55 Question of the Week: Can you do a free stopover in Honolulu on an Alaska award? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, doing New Zealand with points. I'm fresh off the plane back from New Zealand,

which I did, you know, mostly with points, had a fantastic time. And so we'll be getting into not just what I did, but what are the options for getting to New Zealand with points and staying in New Zealand with points and where you might want to go off grid a little bit and use some cash because there's some fantastic things to do that way as well. You might want to, I mean, if you've seen Greg's pictures, then you'll be like, yes, no, I definitely want to do whatever it is that he did to make that trip happen. Cause that looked pretty great. There were some pretty great elements to, I mean, overall great trip. And, you know, so I will touch on some of the, some of the really great parts of it when we, when we get into that in detail.

First, of course, we have our giant mailbag and today's giant mail comes from t.s ogle via um apple podcast reviews and i i pulled this one out not just because it was complimentary to our podcast but because he had some humor in that and this is the first time I can kind of remember a deliberately funny thing in a review like this. Anyway, TS says, consistently the best in the space. Bottom line, Frequent Miler produces consistently the best Points and Miles podcast in the space. If they had a paid tier for the podcast, I'd subscribe.

And that's the highest praise I can offer. If you don't already tier for the podcast, I'd subscribe, and that's the highest praise I can offer. If you don't already subscribe to this podcast, you'll be more informed, well-entertained, and better looking for it. So there was a little asterisk after the better looking where he says terms and conditions apply. Better looking offer not available in all 50 states, U.S. territories, or international jurisdictions. Thank you very much for your excellent advertising there. You've got a future. Future as an ad person. That's right.

That's right. So I enjoyed that, TS. And TS went on. He had more details about our podcast, which i'll let people jump on to podcast apple podcast reviews if you want to read the rest of ts's uh high praise for our show thank you to us that was very very nice thank you very much thank you and you never know maybe you will become better looking i can't say that you won't i don't know that for sure so it's it's a possible side effect of listening to the show you You know, I think it's probable.

In all this time we've been doing the show, we certainly haven't seen any of our listeners while they were listening get uglier. No. So most likely they got prettier in some way. There's a good chance. There's a good chance. Anyway, yeah, all that yard work, it adds up.

You're looking good out there. Whoever's listening, looking good. Looking good. Looking good. Okay, so let's talk about a crazy thing. What crazy thing did Chase and Aeroplan do this week with the Chase Aeroplan Visa card? Yeah. So, I mean, I was off vacationing in New Zealand when this crazy ex hit the fan. So there's really two parts to the crazy, isn't there?

There are. And that's why I kind of gave Chase and Aeroplan both credit for the craziness. So the first thing, I guess, that we should mention to get this part out is that the Chase Aeroplan visa is allowing customers now already started on January 13th to pay themselves back for travel purchases at a rate of 1.25 cents per point. So you can use

your Aeroplan points to cover travel purchases on your Chase Aeroplan Visa at 1.25 cents per point. That could be flights on any airline. You could fly on Spirit and pay for it with your Chase Aeroplan Visa and pay yourself it with your Chase Airplane Visa and pay yourself back at 1.25 cents per point with the Airplane Visa card or any other kinds of travel through the end of this year, through the end of 2023. So all the way to December 31st of 2023 and without a limit. When they originally introduced this, it was up to 50,000 points, but now they're saying you can do it an unlimited amount, which I'm going to put an asterisk there because I don't think it's really

going to be quite as unlimited as unlimited sounds, but at the same time, very, very generous anyway. You can use Pay Yourself Back. And so that's crazy, A, because it's very useful, but B, it's crazy because Chase just devalued Pay Yourself Back like 10 minutes ago, right? I mean, like earlier this year. Right, right. So for the longest time, since Chase introduced Pay Yourself Back just for their ultimate rewards cards, I'd been hoping that they would add a general travel category like they did with the Aeroplan card just now. Because how great would that be if you had the Sapphire Reserve, for example, you're going to be using it to pay for

travel anyway, because it has great travel protections. And then to be able to pay yourself back for those charges and get 1.5 cents per point value would be awesome. But they didn't add that travel category. And to make things worse, they devalued the pay yourself back overall. So now when you pay yourself back for travel categories with the Sapphire Reserve, you can only pay yourself back for grocery and for gas, and then also charity. Charity is still at 1.0, but you said when you pay yourself back for travel, it's 1.25. Oh, did I say for travel?

Yeah, but no, only for the qualifying categories is what he meant. Yeah, so grocery and gas with the Sapphire Reserve, you get 1.25 cents, yeah. And with the Sapphire Preferred, which is the sort of closest equivalent on the ultimate reward side to the aeroplane card, you went down from 1.25 to only one cent per point payback when you pay yourself back

for categories other than charity. So, wow. So what they did was they made the aeroplane card look a lot, lot nicer. If you're interested in paying yourself back, it's like better on all accounts than their signature Sapphire cards. That's insane. I think that's probably the craziest piece of this. And what stood out to me right away, I said, how did they manage that? Because that's what we've been wanting all along. And I feel like, honestly, if the Sapphire Reserve had also only offered 1.25 cents per point, pay yourself back. We would have been mildly disappointed that it wasn't 1.5. But we also probably would have said, well, but then you could book travel anywhere you want and you can use whatever discount codes and things.

So maybe that's not really worse than 1.5 through the portal. And we could have had that debate, but they didn't do that. They didn't do that at all. They dropped it to 1.25 and limited it to certain categories, which it's been limited all along. General travel was never one of the pay yourself back categories on the Sapphire cards. And then, like you said, I think it's ultimately crazy that the Sapphire preferred only gets one cent per point because I mean, you could always cash out ultimate rewards points at one cent per point. You don't have to pay yourself back. You can do that any day of the week, right? That's a really good point. There's no point to paying yourself back with a Sapphire Preferred

if you're just getting one cent. Why not just cash them out to your bank account and pay your credit bill like you normally do? There's really no difference at that point. No, there isn't. But that makes the aeroplane card really, really interesting. Now, if you listen to that and you're a little more advanced and you're like, wow, I've got a boatload of Amex points I could transfer over to aeroplane and redeem them this way. I'm just going to say again that that's probably not going to be as generous as you think. So I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't transfer over a huge, huge amount. And I'll say that much and leave it at that that you know go easy on it if you're going to do that kind of a thing i think you're going to need to stick with more reasonable amounts and yeah because this was

intended to be a uh a chase thing really exactly exactly and so but it should be said if you i would think yeah cash out your chase sapphire preferred points for 1.25 cents, it seems like the way to do that is transfer them to your aeroplane card if you have that and then pay for travel and pay yourself back through there. That's a way of indirectly cashing out your Sapphire preferred points for 1.25. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you.

I feel like that would be safe in whatever quantity it is that you want to do it. So I think points for 1.25. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you. I feel like that would be safe in whatever quantity it is that you want to do it. So, uh, so I think that's crazy. I think it's good. I think it's really positive and I think it's smart for a co-branded card to offer that. I think it's weird for chase to allow the co-branded card to be better in that regard than their signature cards. But I think it makes a lot of sense for arrow plan. I mean, why wouldn't you want to make people feel like this is the only card they need for travel? They can use the miles to book their flights and they can use the miles to book their hotels and everything else at good value. It makes it feel like this is the one card to roll them all. Even though it wouldn't be for

me, I can certainly see how they could sell that idea to the average person. Yeah. Yeah. And once you spend a million dollars on the card in a year, you get a companion pass that's good for a year's worth of unlimited award flights where you can bring a companion for free. And then you cash out your millionaire plan points at 1.25 cents a piece to pay for all of that travel. So there you go.

All right, that was crazy. Let's talk about Mattress Running the Numbers. And so this week's Mattress Running the Numbers is a timeshare offer. We've seen these before. Choice Privileges has a tie-in with Blue Green Vacations. And the latest Blue Green Vacations offer is that you can stay at one of eight different resorts

for, I believe it's four nights. I'll double check that as I'm talking for $299, three nights, rather three nights for $299. So you're paying about a hundred bucks a night and you have to attend a timeshare presentation, of course. And in exchange, you get 40,000 choice privileges points and a $100 American Express gift card. So $100 and 40,000 points and three nights at one of these blue green resorts for $299. What do you think, Greg? If you don't care about the stay at all, you don't even really care about staying the three nights, you just want 40,000 points and $100 gift card. Is that worth 300 bucks? Well, you're having to, if you just had to pay it,

absolutely. But if you, you have to attend a timeshare presentation. And so you have to think about how painful is that to you? But I mean, I think this is a really solid offer. And so if, I think if you're interested in the, in the three night stay and they have some nice looking properties. I haven't stayed at one, but I've seen some, you know, from the outside and, you know, I think they have some nice looking properties that you could probably have a very nice stay at one of these. So I think if you're interested, it sounds like a good deal. I would caution that if you haven't been to a timeshare presentation before, they have this ability.

They do a really good sales job, really good. And you'll go in promising yourself you're not going to buy a timeshare, but then they cast this magic spell. And they make it all sound like a really good deal, even though you had done your research and you knew it wasn't a good deal ahead of time. You go in, you're convinced it's a good deal in if if you can get uh away out of out of that timeshare presentation building and about i think you have to go about um at least 500 feet away before the spell is broken but if you can get away from there before signing anything, the spell will break and you'll be able to just walk away and accept your 40,000 points and $100.

But it's just a caution for you that you might end up in a lot of timeshare debt from buying this thing if you're not careful. Yeah. If you're somebody who can get convinced to buy something, then you definitely want to think about this twice and make sure you're attending with somebody who can talk you down off that ledge because they do. They come with an offer that's way too high initially, but then they keep coming back with different things and throwing in bells and whistles and trying to make it sound good and trying to figure out why you're saying no and how they can change the deal to make it sound better. So you're right. That's a good caution. And it's two hours is what it says on this one. And I always figure that they're going to take about an hour longer than whatever it is that it says

it's going to take. So I would bank on three hours. And I'm sure some people are like, nope, I set a timer on my phone when I sit down and at two hours, I tell them I'm done. And maybe, I mean, if you're good at that kind of thing and being really firm, maybe that'll work out. But oftentimes anyway, I find it takes a while. Now, a couple of things like kind of to be aware of with the choice privileges. credit score of some sort. And so I've always wondered, like, are they doing a hard pull? And so I like I would never give them the information for a hard pull for a timeshare presentation. So I don't know how they're verifying that part of it. I know there are other ways they can soft pull it probably with your license information. But but that's something to be aware of and be careful and don't sign things when you're sitting down for one of these. The other thing is the late cancellation. And so the late cancellation policy on these blue-green vacation

ones is if your check-in date is modified less than 14 days in advance, you have to pay $125 cancellation fee. And if you no-show, it's $200. And then there's some other stuff around refunds and whatnot. So check the post for details. You have to be pretty sure you're going to go. And that's especially this day and age when plans are getting canceled and you may not have any control. It's something to be aware of. You've got to be able to get there. Now, all that said, I find this pretty interesting because the eight locations are decent. And I've always heard that Blue Green Vacations properties are particularly nice. So I would give it a shot probably if I had plans to travel to any of

those eight places. I can't remember all of them off the top of my head, but I know one of them is out in like the Pigeon Forge, Tennessee area. I know one was in Myrtle Beach. I think one was Hilton Head. So there's a few places that I'm sure people would find intriguing for the cost anyway here, especially considering the 40,000 points. And we didn't even really address that. We probably should have. How much are choice points worth? The 40,000 points. And we didn't even really address that. We probably should have. How much are choice

points worth? The 40,000 points we're worth about what? Yeah. I can't remember what our latest reasonable redemption value is off the top of my head, but I think it was around 0.8 maybe. I'm pretty sure that's what it was too.

So you could do the math on that. oh no 0.68 0.68 is our most reasonable so yeah i thought 0.8 also but that's what it says anyway so 0.68 times 400 we're talking what 272 worth of points and 100 gift cards so a small win not a huge win if you don't value this day but if you you do value this day, nice deal. Yeah. And let me say that, you know, just because our reason for redemption value is that low, we do find it very easy to get one point or better from choice points when you, you know, kind of cherry pick your awards.

And in some cases, you could get a lot more than that. So it's not a bad deal. And yeah. So yeah. yeah great point great point yeah choice pillages points can be quite valuable depending on how you use them so you can certainly do much better than that good point all right speaking of points let's talk about awards we booked this week uh now you did a lot of award stays so i don't know we are are we going to talk about so? We'll hold that for the main event. That's what I figured. How about you? For me, well, you know,

I booked a stay and it wasn't an award stay but I thought this is the best place in the show where it fit to mention that Capital One Shopping continues to come with these crazy offers. And so I got an offer earlier this week for 18% back at Marriott. So, I mean, 18% back is pretty significant.

And I looked at a trip that I was planning next summer in Europe, and I found a residence in that was like just over 100 euros a night. So 18% back to I thought, Oh, man, this is a great deal is better than booking an awards day. So you know, it's always worth looking for those things. Now, my plans on that might change, but I don't have to book a prepaid stay. Of course, I booked a rate that I'll pay at the hotel. So I don't expect that I'll earn the Capital One shopping rewards until after the stay. And in this case, the stay isn't until seven months from now. So it's going to be a while down the road. So I obviously will have to remember that. Is it going to track right? I don't know for

sure, but my experience is that usually these things do track properly. It's just not until after you complete your stay. So I expect it will. I used it for some other Marriott stays recently and it tracked just fine. Now that wasn't 18% of my other ones. It was like the 6% they've been offering me on the app or in the website. I can't remember which it is, but somewhere I've been getting 6% Marriott and those have all tracked fine. So can't remember which it is, but somewhere I've been getting 6% Marriott and those have all tracked fine. So I expect this one will too, but it's just a good reminder that whatever browser you have the Capital One extension installed in, do some searches like go to Marriott now and then if you want to get a good offer for Marriott or IHG. I

heard others getting the same offer for IHG the day that I got. I just got that myself recently, just a few days ago. Yep. It's probably the same day. So Viator is another one. I keep getting big offers from them, from Capital One for them. Yep. Yeah. For sure.

For sure. So just a reminder, play around with the browser where you have the extension installed because the offers keep coming. And I keep seeing excellent, excellent offers through Capital One Shopping. Yeah. I think if you have a browser where you do all of your shopping and both for stuff and for travel, where you do the research, but you don't normally do the paying through that because normally like we always advise having a separate portal for having a separate browser uh for doing um portal rewards so figure out what you're going to buy in one browser and and do your shopping in the other but in the browser used for figuring out what you're going to buy have the capital one extension on there so that it sees where you're going

and will and you'll get emails offering you great deals every now and then. There's no obvious rhyme or reason about when they send those deals, but I promise at some point you should get them. Yeah. And I want to mention very quickly here, we have had some readers report difficulty with things tracking with Capital One Shopping. There've been some readers that have had really bad experiences, at least from what they say. And some people have asked, well, why are you pushing this? Because some readers have had problems. And I'm not trying to push it. I want to be clear. We don't have any sort of affiliate relationship on this right now. So there's nothing that we're getting out of talking about Capital One Shopping. It's just that we've been getting great offers.

And everything that I've done, except for Saks Fifth Ave, everything else that I've done that I expected to track is tracked. I've pushed the envelope and tried some things that I've done except for Saks Fifth Ave, everything else that I've done that I expected to track is tracked. I pushed the envelope and tried some things that I didn't think would work, and those didn't work. But all of the orders and bookings and things that I've made otherwise have all tracked and eventually moved over to paid. And I think it's been the same situation for you. And we've done quite a bit of this and quite a bit of portal shopping overall. So I don't know why some people are having issues with it, but we certainly haven't seen that between the two of us, right?

That's right. And I've had the exact same experience as Nick, which is that for some reason, my more recent Saks Fifth Avenue purchases haven't tracked or haven't tracked correctly, meaning I didn't get the payout I was expecting. Whereas, you know, in the beginning of last year, they did track correctly. But everything else has tracked perfectly and I've gotten the payout expected. And even if I didn't buy the thing that the email suggested, and what I mean by that is you might go shopping online at Dell, for example, and be looking at a certain product. And then you're going to email for that product saying, you know,

say, get back, I don't know, $300 if you buy this laptop or something. You don't have to buy that exact laptop. That's an example of a percentage rebate. And so you could go in and buy something else and you should still get that high percentage. Yeah, it just happened to me earlier this week, in fact, because I bought a portable monitor for my laptop and I got an email or had an advertised offer in Capital One Shopping for Bose headphones for 15% back on Bose headphones at Dell. And I clicked through that link and I bought a monitor in the 15% track. And a reminder, we say this every time, but it bears repeating. You do not need a capital one credit card.

You do not need a capital one bank account. You do not need any relationship with that, with capital one in order to sign up for capital one shopping, you could pay with any credit card you want. It really has very little to do with capital one the whole the whole experience other than the name capital one shopping so right all right okay so then next up i think we have what is it are we are we ready for the main time for the main event doing new zealand with points so let's start with i'll give a a brief overview of the I just took, and then we'll dive into ways to book flights to New Zealand with points and ways to stay in New Zealand with points beyond what I did. United Award sale or maybe mistake. We don't know, but basically they were offering,

we were able to find 60,000 points with United Miles to fly to one way in business class to almost anywhere far away in the world. So there was like Asia, Maldives, New Zealand, you know, so, so I booked New Zealand. I had booked a few different one way awards because I wasn't sure exactly when I would fly and when I'd fly back, ended up, of course, canceling the ones that I didn't want. In the meantime, somewhere along the way, a Qantas award availability opened up. So I was able to book business class Qantas to fly through Dallas and then American Airlines home to Detroit from there. And so I booked that with more miles. I mean, it cost me 80,000 American Airlines miles. It would have cost fewer with Alaska, but I chose American just because I have so many of those miles and canceled my United flight. I did that really only because I wanted to try out Qantas business class. I've never had a chance to fly them before. Whereas I have flown United Polaris business class before. So that was my flight route.

And I guess let me quickly give really tiny reviews. Before we even talk about different ways to get there and places you stayed and all that, I'm very interested in a comparison there. Talk to me about United Polaris and what you thought about it. I know you've been on it before and about Qantas separately and then compare the two. I'm very curious.

Sure. Yeah. So United Polaris, this is on, I think it was the 787 Dreamliner. Just as I had flown before to Japan, it was the same kind of airplane. They have these angled seats, the reverse herringbone design, and they're pretty private, even though they don't have doors. Just the way they're angled away from the aisles and sort of the walls that are partially on the sides and everything, it makes the seats feel pretty private, which is really nice. I also really love the seats themselves seem to be plusher, softer, whatever, than most other business class flights I've been on.

So I actually find them comfortable to sleep on, which I've not found on very many business class products at all. In this case, they automatically provided mattress pads. Apparently on my flight to Japan, which was under 12 hours, apparently I could have asked for a mattress pad, but I didn't know that. And, but on longer flights like this one, they, they provide it automatically. They provide pajamas. They provide slippers, which Qantas did not. Even at, even when I asked, they said, no, no slippers for you. So, so thank goodness you had like 16 pairs in your bag, right?

Every hotel you stayed out of the way. You know what? I had dumped them all because I was pretty sure Qantas would have them and our bags were overflowing. So no slippers for me on the return flight. Yeah. So anyway, I found the seat very, very, very comfortable. The meal, the evening meal was excellent. It's presented all at once, even though the menu suggests that it'll be presented in courses. It's not. It's just all at once.

Boom. And that's fine with me. And the only reason I even noted that is I asked the flight attendant, hey, can I have it all at once? And she's like, that's the only way we do it. You sure can. Yeah. But it was excellent. It was really good food.

Breakfast was meh. You know, it was sort of the, I don't know what to compare it to. I guess you could compare it to a cheap hotel brand's free breakfast, you know, the sort of runny eggs and, you know, the, the sort of runny eggs and, you know, not, not many choices. So, and so, but still both of us, my wife and I slept really well on the outbound flight, woke up as we were, you know, getting an hour or two away from Auckland. And so we were pretty

close to adjusted to the time zone just on the way out, which was great. Also, I had a, on my side of the aisle, the flight attendants were notably awesome, or at least the flight attendant, there was one with short hair, it was incredible. And this is like a really minor detail, but whenever I had any kind of trash at all, like you open up the blanket and you have all that plastic or, you know, you just have trash from different things. The flight attendants picked that stuff up like almost within a minute each time, which I found amazing. I haven't flown, you know, anyone in business class who's done that. And so I really like that.

I mean, it's such a weird little thing to care about, but I really like that. So I was impressed. I had a great flight on United. Yeah. I mean, that sounds really, really good. I mean, much better than I would normally expect. I think that that last point you made about picking up the trash from the blankets and that sort of thing, as soon as it's kind of created, that's the type of service that I generally tend to expect more on foreign airlines, specifically some of the major Asian or Middle Eastern carriers maybe, but not something I would expect on United. So that's great.

Yeah, yeah. One minor issue, which was true on both Qantas and United, is that the menus suggest that there's sort of a mid-flight snack. And if you don't know that the way to get that mid-flight snack is to go up to the galley, and if you're sitting around waiting for it, it's not going to come to you. And so that kind of was a problem for my wife. I didn't think to mention it to her. And she had skipped the evening meal because we had actually eaten dinner before the flight. Rookie mistake. Rookie mistake. And so she woke up hungry well before breakfast was served and didn't know until I got up a little while later and showed her that she could just go up and get this.

I wouldn't have made that mistake because I would have known that on United, I do not want to wake up hungry because I would not have expected there to be any fix for that at all on a United flight. So I would have definitely eaten just proactively thinking, you know, I have no idea what's going to happen. So I'm going to eat now while I can, while they offer me food. But no, that's a really good point. I've actually noticed that on several of the trips we've taken this year, actually, not just on United, but on other carriers too, where those like mid flight snack type things

have been sitting in the galley. Like, like everybody should know that they're there. And, and I mean, I've flown enough, but I feel like if that's something that everybody should know, I would have probably known it before this year. I think, I feel like that's, I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but I feel like that's a newer development. But it's become. Yeah, I don't I don't know if it's newer or if I'm flying more like longer flights where it's an issue. It's hard to tell in my point in my case, but I don't understand why the airlines don't just let people know. Why does the menu suggest that this stuff is going to be coming to

you why doesn't it just say available in the galley from these hours or something like that you know in the middle of your flight go look in the galley and see what see what's there that would just solve the issue and it wouldn't cost them anything to do that i don't understand that at all totally no i had the same situation because i came back to the seat with my you know my little chocolate bar or something and my wife like, where'd you get that? And I said, Oh, well,

they're just up in the galley. I didn't think to proactively tell her that either. Luckily she, you know, noticed that. And then she went and got a snack for herself too. But yeah. Otherwise we wouldn't know.

Very similar, very similar. What happened with my wife? And, and also in the galley, it's, it's often on one side where if you happen to be on that side of the plane and going to the bathroom, you would notice it. If you're on the other side of the plane, you go to the bathroom, you're not going to see that food that's out.

And so you have to actually walk past the flight attendants, brush by them to see that there's food there. So it's not even something that you're likely to notice by accident if you're on that half of the plane. So yeah, crazy stuff. Okay, so that was a united flight um quantus the the uh so both both were 787s both had uh in business class one-to-one configuration meaning um there there's one row of seats along the window, then there's an aisle, then there's two seats together, and then there's an aisle and then one more seat against the other window. That's very common in almost all international business class products these days. So they're both arranged that way. The Qantas seats were, uh, I think, uh, uh, wider. So if, if you're a big person,

they might be more comfortable for you, uh, from a width point of view. Um, what I didn't like, there were two things I didn't like about the physical seats. One is that they were wide open. Like you, you didn't feel private at all. And so that to me just made it, it's like a bit harder to sleep when it feels like you're wide open with like everyone else in the airplane. The other thing is the seats just weren't as comfortable as United.

So both of us had a lot more trouble falling asleep and staying asleep on the Qantas seats than we did on the United seats. So the physical product, we liked United a lot better. Wow. I think that's kind of surprising. I wouldn't have expected to hear that. Right. I didn't expect that either. Everybody seems to like Polaris business, right? I mean, I feel like I, I do often hear that people like Polaris business, but, but I don't ever think of the U S carriers as having like a super competitive product internationally, but keep in, keep in mind when United says Polaris, that's a wide range of things.

So, so when we've, when Maisie and I flew from Bergen to the U S on Polaris, it was a daytime flight, but it was just a two-two configuration, meaning Maisie and I were right next to each other. So she didn't have direct aisle access because she was at the window. It was still a very nice flight, but it's a whole different thing. You wouldn't want that for an overnight flight or at least a very long. No, you're right. You're right. they brand everything with polaris business and when i say that i mean like what i think of as the real polaris but i i clarify that so it's good yeah yeah yeah it's not groundbreaking it's not you know cutter but right and it's not turkish but it it's it's good it's good um very good the the uh the other thing I want to say about Qantas, some notable things.

Service-wise, I started to set up my seat as a bed because they do provide padding and everything. And a flight attendant rushed over and said, let me do that for you. And so I went to the, I went to the bathroom to change into my pajamas, which again, both airlines provided. Um, and when I came back, my bed was all made up, which, which was a very nice touch. Um, although let me say that that did not happen to my wife. She had to look at how mine was configured. Uh, the the the padding actually like tucks in like like a fitted sheet to the seat which is which is also very nice um so it stays put the united one is just lays there on top so it can move around which is which is not great but um so that was a nice touch at least

for me and um the other thing i'd say the the food was notably better than United's. It was really good. The dinner, I actually asked the guy who came around taking our orders, what do you think of the steak? And he said he sort of was noncommittal. And so I said, well, what would you recommend on here? And he said the fish is excellent. And I know you don't like fish, Nick, but I said, well, what would you recommend on here? And he said, the fish is excellent. And I know you don't like fish, Nick, but I got the fish and it was actually one of the best fish dishes I've had in quite a while.

It was, it was really tremendously good. Um, so good that like, if it was at a restaurant, I would have probably said, oh yeah, I'm going to return to this restaurant. It was that good. And the other notable thing about the food breakfast was they had a ton of options and it was, I can't say it was great. Like it wasn't, you know, great restaurant quality, but it was really nice that what they had you do at night is fill out a card and just check all the things you wanted for breakfast so that was very nice so much better breakfast uh options than united much better um even though the united food was good this was much better um well i've got good news for you

if you want to go back if you want to go back to that restaurant it's only going to cost you 80 000 american airlines miles you can go back anytime want. If you could find a word of it, which Qantas is known to be very stingy on. So that's why I jumped on that one. I would not, you know, it was, it was a indirect route compared to what I was able to fly on United. So doing it again, I wouldn't go the indirect route just to fly Qantas because it wasn't. Restaurant wasn't that good? Restaurant wasn't that good. Well, I prefer, you know, to me, the seat and the privacy is more important than the food and the service.

So. Right. Right. I'm surprised to hear that the service was overall just kind of so-so, I think is what you're saying. Because, I mean, you got your bed made up and everything your wife did. And so overall, the service wasn't memorably good. It was mixed. It was mixed. Yeah. because I mean, you got your bed made up and everything your wife did. And so overall, the service wasn't memorably good.

It was mixed. It was mixed. Yeah. You know, other than that one incident of of him rushing over to do my bed, like there was nothing that distinguished it from a U.S. carrier service that I noticed. Well, good to know. Good to hear. All right. So so those were, I think, two interesting reviews. And I think probably surprising for a lot of people that it sounds like you would pick if you had them both to choose from, you'd probably pick United Polaris over Qantas if they were both flying the same route. Is that fair to say you would have taken the United Polaris or you would take it that's true if if Qantas doesn't update their cabins yeah yeah uh you know if they got

new seats right I'd be I'd probably pick Qantas um but as things stand now I know United United is great you know I'm very happy with with the United uh Polaris seats so yeah awesome United awesome very good all right so let's talk about how you can book that because there's not a United flash sale on today. So you can't book it for 60,000 miles right now. And Greg is totally right that you may be able to book Qantas for 80,000 points, but A, you may prefer to use your Alaska mileage plan miles because they would charge 55,000 miles one way to get to anywhere in the South Pacific. So you could fly on Qantas in business class, or you could fly on Fiji Airways in business class for 55,000 points to get to New Zealand. Either way, you're going to have to connect. Fiji Airways, you connect in Fiji. Qantas, you would probably connect in Sydney, although it depends. They do have some routes to Melbourne and I think also to Brisbane out of Los Angeles, if I remember correctly. I might be wrong about that, but you have to double check. Anyway, and I think they fly to San Francisco also. So you got a few options. Now, if you

book with Alaska miles, you can add a connector on Alaska. So let's say you're based in New York. You could fly Alaska Airlines from New York to Los Angeles or New York to San Francisco. I can't recall if Alaska flies New York to Dallas. That used to be a Virgin America route. I'm not sure if they kept that up or not. But the point is, you could book an Alaska leg along with Qantas. But I believe still at this point, you cannot, I believe, book a connector flight on American, on a flight, on an airline other than Alaska. You can only mix Alaska and one partner. You can't mix two partners on an award. That's always been the rule anyway. I don't think it changed with the award chart update. Do you know any differently than me on that? I'm not aware of that changing, but we should

keep an eye on that because I wouldn't be surprised if it changes, right? If they're getting more integrated into one world. Yeah. I mean, that would be great if it does change. So that would be your cheapest way to book it. If you want to fly Qantas or Fiji Airways, then American is a good option. If you've got a lot of American Airlines miles and certainly a lot of us probably still do have some left over from that Simply Miles deal of 2021 or whatever that was. So if you do, that's a good way to do it now. United Polaris,

you want to fly United to get to Australia. What are the best ways to do that with points and miles? I think I think or to New Zealand or to New Zealand. I'm sorry. I say Australia because of Qantas. And yeah, it's throwing me off to New Zealand. You're right. We're talking about. So I think United flies to New Zealand. First of all, which airports do they fly from? San Francisco is where you flew from. Is that correct? So the only one I know of is what I flew, which was San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand.

The other way is to get there on United is to fly to Australia. And then you'd have to have award availability on Air New Zealand to get to New Zealand on the same ticket, which Air New Zealand doesn't release a lot of space. Certainly not in business class. Yeah, you'd probably be flying economy on that leg, which is about a three-hour flight or so, depending on where you're going. Right. So that's usually fine with me for that length of flight. So anyway, so the United flight, United is going to charge you, I think at best, correct

me if I'm wrong, around 80,000 miles. Is that usually the rate for New Zealand or is it 100K? I don't even know because they don't have an award chart, right? So that sounds right though, 80K range. Yeah, that's probably right. And so then the same type of pricing through Avianca Life Miles, I believe it's 80K through Avianca Life Miles. Also, if you're going to book with Aero Canada, that's another option for booking that. Now, if you book from San Francisco, I got to double check the distance from San Francisco to Auckland, because I think that that would actually

cost you less than some other options. Although, aeroplan, I think, could become a better option overall. So 6,500 miles in distance. So yeah, I was right. That'd be only 75,000 aeroplan miles if you fly just from San Francisco. Now, if you're going to go from the East Coast, that's going to bump you up to the 87,500 mile distance band. So that would be another way to potentially book that. Now, the advantage of booking with Aeroplan, of course, is that you can add a stopover for 5,000 miles. So if you were to book San Francisco to Auckland for 75,000 miles, you could stop in Auckland and then continue on somewhere else on, you know, whichever carriers you want. And remember, they partner with not only Air New Zealand, but Air Canada also partners with a number of other airlines that serve Auckland, namely Virgin Australia. If you want to visit anywhere in

Australia also, that would be another good option. Yep. Yep. Yeah. So great, great points there. So that's all for flying Star Alliance. What about if you want to fly One World or Sky Team or something else? Yeah. So if you want to fly Sky Team, I tell you the truth. I don't even know. Good luck. Good luck to you. I suppose probably booking Korean through like Delta may work, but who knows what Delta

is going to charge you? Also Air France, I believe you could probably book through Flying Blue. But again, awards to Australia are hard to find to begin with. So programs that don't have award charts are not really your friend in general when it comes to Australia, because you have no idea what it's going to cost. And I can tell you when you have no idea and it's something with a high demand of Australia and New Zealand, rather, I keep saying Australia, then it's going to be a lot with those types of programs. So your best bet, if you want to get to New Zealand, if you're really lucky in terms of the number of miles, the cheapest is going to

be using ANA because ANA on Star Alliance Airlines, I believe, and I just said that without looking at it, but from my memory, the 120,000 miles round trip on Star Alliance. Now, that would mean probably flying via Japan, I would guess. You're probably going to fly from the U.S. to Japan and then Japan onward. And the thing of that is that the only route served from between Japan and New Zealand is Air New Zealand between Tokyo and Auckland. And good luck finding award availability and business class on that. Not necessarily impossible. I did see a seat recently, but not likely. So ANA doesn't fly that themselves? Unfortunately, they don't. So you could, of course, fly to Australia and fly via Australia and then have that connector

onto New Zealand from somewhere on air New Zealand. Again, accepting the fact that that connector is probably going to be an economy. Of course, before when we were talking about booking United, United Flight, we were sort of making the assumption that United magically opened a ward space from San Francisco to Auckland. If that happens, you can use ANA miles to book that, but only if they have both outbound and return flights available. So that's tricky because you have to book round trip. However, you could add a free stopover on a one-way award. So if you found something like

San Francisco to Auckland and then a return flight from Sydney, for example, to somewhere in the US, I think they have a few flights, then you should be able to book that and and get yourself between... Well, actually, I think you could add the leg from New Zealand to Sydney or to wherever in Australia you have to fly back from, but it'd probably be easier. If you can't find a word availability, just book that yourself separately.

Then you could use ANA for 120,000 miles round trip. Yeah, and if you can actually find availability on ana if you you know because finding it on and united is probably going to be a difficult proposition if not impossible especially very difficult yeah yeah you know you may you get lucky and find it one way good luck finding it on the way back uh if you can find availability on ana nowA does not fly to New Zealand but they do fly to Australia so you could fly round trip to Australia on ANA metal for 105,000 miles round trip round trip I mean wow 52.8k each way yeah that's that is pretty

amazing so if you can find the space that could be a great option remember that ANA allows a stop over on a round trip award so you could stop over in Tokyo on the way potentially for that 105 K. So that's, I think, a pretty darn good deal. Now I mentioned the stopover and I'm going to come back to this in a second, but the stopover can be useful even if you didn't have a burning desire to visit Tokyo on the way, because maybe you'll find an available seat between, let's say, New York and Tokyo, and you find an available seat between Tokyo and Sydney, but they don't line up on the same two days. They don't line up on the day you're going to arrive and the day you'd have to fly out. Maybe they're a few days apart. And if that happens, then being able to book with a program that allows a stopover is really valuable because if you book with a program that doesn't allow a

stopover, you're not going to be able to put those two things together. So, uh, so I think it's helpful for being able to look and not just search New York to Sydney, for instance, because you don't need that. You need New York to Tokyo and then start every day for the next few days, Tokyo to Sydney searching for that connector. Right. Right. And you know, if you're forced to have a little, uh, mini vacation in Tokyo, Oh, well. Right, right, right. There are worse things. There are worse things. So that's, I think, a good one to keep in mind.

Another one, when we talk about Star Alliance there and the 120,000 ANA miles, and we should mention ANA is an Amex transfer partner. So you would need to have Amex membership rewards points to transfer to ANA in order to be able to book this. But another option to keep in mind in terms of getting to Asia. Now, and I'm going to come back to that in a second to what I want to talk about on that in a second. But if you're looking at other ways to get to Asia, Asiana might be another option to consider. But now I'm talking about getting to Asia and you wrote a great post years

ago that I feel like we're kind of touching on and dancing around. So it was how to book impossible awards or something like that. Can you tell me a little bit about your approach to impossible awards like this? Because it's really, really difficult to get an award to New Zealand or to Australia either way. It really is. So if you're looking for a single award flight from the US to Australia or New Zealand, good luck. I mean, as I talked about, I got them in both directions, but they're rare. And so, you know, you have to jump on it when that happens. But if you don't have that flexibility, another option is to book an award to a part of the world that is closer to Australia and New Zealand, but easier to get to. And so what is often available in awards is to fly to Asia. I mean, Asia is a very large area, obviously. So there are lots of

options. I mean, Nick just mentioned Japan as being like one option for, for some awards, but in the, in the post I wrote back when I can't remember where it might've been Seoul, Korea or something like that, that, that I had as an example. But the idea is to, is to book awards to some intermediary place and then book awards from there. Hopefully you can enjoy that intermediary place and then book awards from there to Australia or New Zealand and then enjoy your trip there and do the same in the reverse. So that's the basic idea. It does take kind of knowledge about what routes tend to have good award availability, or, you know, you could use various tools to try to find them. And, you know,

it's something that if you have enough persistence, you should be able to find something. And in that post I read, I mean, my example was like booking four people during the Christmas holidays to get to Australia. And I showed that it was possible in business class. And so that's like one of those types of things that an award booker would say is impossible to do direct, which I agree. But doing it with an intermediary place like Asia or Middle East should be possible. And now that you mentioned an intermediary place like Asia or the Middle East, the program that I think comes to mind for an impossible award like this. And I speak from some experience in that I've been looking and trying to piece something together myself for the return from a trip later this year is Air Canada Aeroplan. Air Canada Aeroplan is

a go-to for a trip like this these days because of their partnerships. So it gives you way more ways to piece this impossible award together. Because like Greg's saying, you could transit through Tokyo perhaps to get to Australia or New Zealand. You could transit through, potentially through Seoul, like you said. I think the only Air Canada partner that serves Seoul is Air New Zealand. So that, again, is very difficult to find business class award availability

in a long flight. Another option, though, is Singapore. And Singapore has a flight from Singapore to Auckland and they partner with Air Canada. And Air Canada seems to have access to more Singapore business class availability than other partners. So very similar to Alaska.

So there's at least a chance that you would find a Singapore business class flight available there. And of course, if you can't find it to Auckland, Singapore serves a whole bunch of other places in Australia, too. So you could search through Brisbane or search through Melbourne or through Sydney. And they also partner with Virgin Australia. So if you can find a way to get to Australia in general, you've got options to get to New Zealand, either on Air New Zealand or on Virgin Australia. Virgin Australia is better about business class availability, but I think it's just recliner

seats from Australia to New Zealand on Air New Zealand because they just fly the smaller aircraft these days. So I'm rather on Virgin Australia is what I was trying to say there. But then, of course, you have the Middle East carriers too. So you've got both Etihad and Emirates. They both serve various cities in Australia. So again, if you're booking through Air Canada, if you can find availability on either Emirates or Etihad to get to Australia, then you could combo that with a flight on either New Zealand or Virgin Australia to get to Auckland or, and I'm saying Auckland, but of course, they also serve other airports in New Zealand. So you can skip Auckland altogether.

If you really want to get to Christchurch or one of the other places that Greg will tell us that we ought to visit there, then you can get to different parts of New Zealand if you get first to Australia. So you've got those options. And then of course, you pick up a multitude of options for getting to Asia because Air Canada also partners with Gulf Air and with Oman Air. And so if you can get to the Middle East, you can get beyond there into Asia. So you may have to put together a few stops. And this is a trip where you may have to accept that it's going to take you a few stops probably to get to the South Pacific, but it'll cost you 115,000 Air Canada Aeroplan miles one way. You could add a stopover on the way for an

additional 5,000 miles. So at 120K one way, that's way more expensive than those options I talked about on ANA, but you also have access to way more partnerships. So there's a much better chance of being able to piece together that impossible award with a program like Aeroplan because they partner with so many different options to get there. Now, it's going to take you a while to search all those options and find the availability. It's kind of inconvenient. So this does take some time, but if you want to visit New Zealand or you want to visit anywhere else in that region, it usually is going to just take you a while to piece things together.

Greg got pretty lucky here. I did. I got very lucky, you know, and I think there was more availability than usual because of New Zealand just sort of recently opening up from their COVID restrictions. And so, you know, I think the carriers were a little more open to awards. Yeah. One last thing I want to mention on the piecing things together is also consider piecing together awards to different programs.

Because, for instance, if you were to find ANA award availability to Tokyo, know that in low season, that's 75,000 miles round trip from the United States. So you can fly to Tokyo for 75,000 round trip, and then piece that together with something else like American Airlines has a pretty good award chart from there. It's 40,000 miles each way to the South Pacific. And you can fly Fiji Airways, for instance, from Tokyo to New Zealand for 40,000 miles each way. So you could piece that together. And in the end, you'd pay about 155,000, I guess, if I just did the math right in order to get there and back round trip. But that's much better than not going because you went to some pretty incredible places,

right? Yeah. And that's not a bad price to pay. I don't think for that type of trip at all. Right. That's pretty good. Yeah, no, that would be great. Okay. So let's talk about what are your options for staying in New Zealand? So I'll go over what I did and then talk about some other things that I didn't do, but might be interested in in the future. We flew into Auckland, which is on the North Island. It's the north end of the North Island and the biggest city in New Zealand. And we stayed for three nights at the Park Hyatt Auckland, which is a pretty new hotel in Auckland. And it's a category five, I think, Hyatt, which means you can't use your category one through four certificates but it also means it's it's fairly reasonable price with points uh for a park hyatt uh so i think i paid

23 000 points per night so it was on peak uh for category five if i remember right like standard it would be i think 20 000 points per night um the the uh funny thing is because of all that United Award availability there were lots of people who who play the points miles game who went to New Zealand during this time and and so while at the Park High at New Zealand I hung out with the guys who do the Nomos coach blog So John and Ben, it was fun to hang out with. And Jamie, who does Forward Cabin, was there too. So we all hung out together and did some things together there. And John and Ben had booked a, had, as soon as they booked the Park Hyatt, which was almost a full year ago, they had applied a suite upgrade award. In my case, so they were in a suite. In my case, I had waited quite a while before booking this Park Hyatt because I was unsure of what our plans were. We weren't originally flying right into

Auckland. So there weren't suites available for me. So in my case and Jamie's case, we were both upgraded to Waterview rooms that where you can look out at not just the water, but also the Sky Tower, which is a very, very similar to the CN tower in, in Toronto. It's one of those big towers with a rotating restaurant or something at the top. And, um, what's, what's special there is we were there over New Year's Eve and that, that tower is where they shoot off the fireworks from. So being able to, from your room, watch the fireworks across the water was a pretty, uh, cool, cool feature of, of that park hyatt um let me say that if this if it wasn't called a park hyatt i would give this hotel two enthusiastic thumbs up it was great the rooms were terrific uh the breakfast benefit was uh terrific for a Hyatt globalist. You get full buffet and menu breakfast and all of the other globalist benefits you come to expect.

As a Park Hyatt, though, I was disappointed, to be honest. So it was just missing some of the touches that I expect. For example, there was no turndown service at all. Now, that sounds like such a ridiculous thing to complain about. The horror. Right, right. How am I going to get in bed if no one turns down the covers? There's no chocolate?

Come on. We figured it out. But it's just that I just found that so weird as a Park Hyatt because Park Hyatt is like the top brand for Hyatt, top luxury brand. I've never stayed at a Park Hyatt that didn't have an elaborate like turndown service where they provide something nice each evening, you know, chocolates or whatever. And so that was kind of weird. The housekeeping was very inconsistent with things like did did they replace the, they didn't replace the coffee pods, for example. And so we were, you know, we were using those each morning and that was, um, it's just, it's, I don't like to have to, you know, call down for something like

that and have to wait around for it. Right. I mean, when you're, when you're paying a top tier property, you shouldn't have to, that's right. Right. Right. Now, all of that may have been unique because most New Zealanders go on vacation during the time we were there over the new year. And so they probably were, as is most of New Zealand, very short on staff during that time. So it could be that tur down service is a usual thing when they have enough staff, but didn't at this time. I wouldn't doubt that at all. The other thing this park I did not do was, and again, this sounds so spoiled of me, but- Preston Pysh, CFO Alphabet and Google Wait, wait, wait, there were no slippers? Were there no slippers?

No, there were slippers. Okay. Well, thank you. I think we might have had to request them. I can't remember. But we did get slippers. But the other thing. But the other thing is that the globalist free breakfast benefit did not include room service breakfast, which is something that a number of park Hyatts do offer to globalists. This one did not. And it affected us one morning in a bad way. But that's not a big deal.

As I said, from the start though, if it wasn't named a park, I'd say this is a fantastic category five Hyatt. You know, it's, it really is really nice hotel, great concierge service.

You know? So anyway, very good. Very good hotel. All right. Good hotel. I'm glad that it's a very good hotel i'm gonna park i but it's a very good hotel yes so we stayed there three nights only 23 000 points per night that was a good deal compared to i don't know how much it would cost probably 600 us or something per night something something like that. One notable thing in case people want to know,

we did an all-day tour where we went to Hobbiton to see the little Hobbit village that was built originally for the Lord of the Rings movies and then it was expanded for the Hobbit movies. And that was really nice actually. was it was what surprised me about it as a fan of Lord of the Rings things is is that one of the things I liked so much about it was it's actually just beautiful like that that Hobbit village is just beautiful if you're even if you're not a fan at all you know it's it's a beautiful place to visit I can confirm that I haven't been there but I saw your videos online and I hate Lord of the Rings

oh my goodness I'm not at all interested in Lord of the Rings but I saw that and I was like wow this is boring so slow they're just walking forever anyway but what I wanted to say was it looked gorgeous I saw

the videos and I was like wow I would probably go visit that even though I hate the rings. I would go see that. It looked gorgeous. Right. And then as part of that all-day tour, we also went to these glow worm caves where these worms actually have like LED lights attached to their butts somehow. And so they glow in the dark. And that was really cool. Just walking around the caves was neat. And then you get on a little boat and see the glowworms. So that was Auckland.

And oh, I guess I should mention that the concierge recommended going to Mount Eden, which was only like a 15 minute drive away to watch the sunset. And that was a spectacular thing to do. And what a great recommendation that was from the concierge at the Park Hyatt. So thank you, Nick. His name was Nick, the concierge there. Of course. He's a good it. You got to like neck. Um, and, uh, we flew then, uh, air New Zealand economy to Christ church, which is only a little over an hour flight. I think we just paid cash. The flights were cheap. Um, in retrospect, I should have used, I should have booked through capital one travel in order to, order to collect on the Capital One

Travel reimbursement of things like that. But I don't think I did for that one. I just forgot all about that. If you were going into a situation though, where those flights are expensive, of course, keep in mind Air New Zealand, Star Alliance. So via Turkish, 7,500 miles each way via United because it's so short, probably 8,000 miles each way for domestic. And Jetstar also serves that route because I know that because I booked my family on it once. So Jetstar is very inexpensive in general, but if prices happen to be high, Qantas, keep in mind, you can use Qantas miles to book Jetstar. So just my little interjection on award booking. All good to know. Thank you. So Christchurch, we stayed three nights

and we stayed in an SLH property, which is bookable with Hyatt points again. And this was known as one of the best hotels in Christchurch. It's called the George. And if you saw Greg's pictures, you'd'd be like that's only one of the best I looked pretty spectacular no I'm thinking I'm thinking I curse you're saying I curtson we got there that's coming up but the George was was actually a bit run down like it's a very old hotel and from the outside it doesn't look like anything because it looks very worn. On the inside, though, it's very boutique and in a good way. Like so the, you know, the person at the desk is very great greeting you and providing like advice, you know, where should I go to eat?

What should I do to walk around things like that so it was very like friendly place to be um the the base rooms which is what you get into if you use hyatt points to book are small bathrooms are very small and the bathroom sinks are at best micro sinks uh which which really bothered me for things like shaving and stuff it was difficult the first room we we were very unhappy with it it had a bad smell to it um and it was like better room than the first room for the next two nights. So they were great about handling that issue. The junior suite was nicer, bigger, and it actually had a small balcony the other rooms did not um the junior suite most hotels would classify it as a room

uh like there's nothing sweet about it uh s-u-i-t-eE. But it was sweet compared to S-W-E-E-T compared to the first room for sure. It was nice to have the extra room and not have a bad smell. It smelled a bit sweeter. A nice view. So anyway, long way of saying you don't stay here necessarily for the rooms

but they weren't bad. It had a very nice free breakfast benefit for I think everybody who stayed but I'm not really sure whether that was. SLH provides free breakfast, but you're only guaranteed free continental breakfast when you book through Hyatt, but they give us full both menu and buffet breakfast. So that was great. And the location, terrific. You're minutes from incredibly nice, free botanical gardens. You're minutes from, there's a windy river that goes through town and you can do like punting and kayaking and stuff on that river. Or there's a walkway along the river and it's beautiful. So, and if you want to go into the middle of town where all the restaurants are, again, 10 minute walk, something like that. It's great location.

And I'd actually prefer to be there than in the middle of town where it's a little more touristy and stuff. So I would, despite not liking the rooms much, I would stay there again. They also little touches. They, they give you a teddy bear as a free welcome gift and um i'm a sucker for the price for the free stuffed animal just to put that right out there yeah that's a great idea i like it yeah and i had booked with free night certificates and and so it was actually three separate reservations. And two of the nights they gave us a free bear

because it was like a new reservation. Somehow they figured it out on the third night, I guess. They're like, no, no more bears for that guy. It was another bear. A couple of bears right over there in his suitcase. He doesn't need any more bears. And they did have nice turned down chocolates. So very nice day, despite the room not being great.

Yeah, it's too bad that the room wasn't great, but so this was a small luxury hotel of the world property. And you're going to talk about another SLH property in a second. So for anybody who's relatively new to this whole award booking scene, Hyatt has a partnership with small luxury hotels of the world. They're not Hyatt properties, but you use Hyatt points to book them. And when you book through Hyatt, you get benefits like you're a globalist, no matter what status you have. You can have no status with Hyatt and you get free breakfast each day. You get theoretically, potentially a room upgrade and early or late checkout, or I think it's late 2 p.m. late checkout, I think. But the free breakfast really and the potential for an upgrade are the two things I've found to be worthwhile with SLH.

So that's nice. Like you said, a couple of SLH places I've stayed things I've found to be worthwhile with SLH. So that's nice. Like you said, a couple of SLH places I've stayed, I've wondered if breakfast was just included for everyone. But at the same time, they've generally been really nice places where for all I know, everybody's just fine with paying for breakfast. So I don't know which way it goes, but have you been disappointed by an SLH breakfast yet? By the breakfast? No, I don't think so. I don't think there's been an SLH property where I've walked away being like, eh, breakfast was meh. Almost every time I walk away saying breakfast was pretty nice at that SLH property. I've only been to a couple, but the couple of experiences I've had, I've been pretty happy with. So I just think that's notable because hotel breakfast can be hit or miss most places, but it's been pretty hit at SLH.

So that's good. So, all right. So the George, a good breakfast, good location, so-so hotel. What else did you say? Yeah, yeah. And you're getting very good value for the price. And it's a good way to use your Category 1 through 4 free night certificates if you have them with you. That's great, yeah.

Yeah, and Christchurch, I do recommend. It's a beautiful little town. They are still recovering from the earthquake. I can't remember, 2017 maybe. I don't remember when the last earthquake was there, but it doesn't detract from the stay at all. In fact, it's kind of interesting learning about the earthquake and how they're dealing with it, including putting in an unbelievable looking playground in the middle of right in the middle of the city. It's something they sought recommendations from kids. So what would you like in this playground? And they're building this really big, amazing thing there. So that's pretty fun. And I do recommend visiting there.

We rented a car there and drove the rest of the way. Driving on the left side of the road is uh you know a little difficult at first but driving around new zealand in general i found very very easy it's they have big roads just like in america um almost everything it's like driving in america but on the other side and you do get used to it so don't don't be scared about driving new zealand i think it's a great thing to do you'll be able to see a lot more than flying point to point. Just about an hour south of Christchurch is a little town called Oamaru. That's one where we didn't use points to stay, but you have to visit there, at least for a night. It is such an

interesting town. The town, I guess, used to be very industrial and they have a steampunk theme to a lot of the town. If you don't know what steampunk is, look that up. But they have a steampunk museum and they have a big playground nearby that's all steampunk themed. And we stayed in a hotel that had a bunch of steampunk themes to the hotel itself so it was very um very fun in that way and what what the town's also known for is blue penguins uh you can go and um check out this blue penguin colony during the day uh they'll let you in and let you look at the blue penguin houses that they built they actually actually have nearby schools build these little wooden houses that the penguins then... I don't know how each penguin picks which house is theirs, but somehow they negotiate. And they're set up in little neighborhoods.

So you have these different houses in clusters all around the property. It's really fun to see this and they're on little hills. And so it looks a lot like Hobbiton, but smaller and more square than the round doors in Hobbiton. And so that was fun. And then at night you can go and actually watch the penguins who float back from the sea after fishing during the day. They somehow find each other out in the ocean, hold hands or something. I don't know what they're holding on to each other. Flippers or, yeah, flippers. They float in. They call it a raft of penguins that float in together. And then they, you know,

sort of toddle up a very steep incline and to their their little houses that that were built for them and and so there's uh audience stands to to watch the penguins come up so that was really fun as well so ohamaru definitely worth a uh one night stay there i'm not sure that you you need more than that one one day and night but uh definitely good to do that um. Then tons of great stuff to do on the Southeast coast of New Zealand, which I'm not getting details of that right now because we didn't do any point related things there. We stayed in an independent hotel in Dunedin. And we drove across to the west, southwest side, where we did a overnight boat ride on Doubtful Sound, which was the most amazing experience of the trip. I loved every minute of that whole thing. Did not book that with points points just paid cash the normal way um and then we um

stayed in a great little town called um tno i'm sure i'm saying that wrong but um that's that's right on uh tno lake and uh we again we stayed in an independent hotel there let's back up for a second because you went right over that doubtful sound thing and if you haven't seen the pictures you should hopefully they're still on instagram somewhere all right you should go see the pictures from doubtful sound you should post those in like the frequent mail or insiders or something like that because that looked incredible so i know it wasn't point related it sure was but it was something that i was like wow if i get to new zealand i gotta go do that right yeah i mean i don't remember exactly how much it was it's not a cheap thing to do but it's worth it and that is a bucket list thing to do um we also did a day

um tour of milford sound where it just takes like two hours to go out on the boat and come back. And honestly, I was kind of disappointed. We'd heard so many great things about Milford Sound and it is very, very beautiful. But the Doubtful Sound, the whole experience was just so much more amazing in so many ways. It's hard to explain. Doubtful sounds way, way bigger than Milford sound. So the overnight trip, you go in and out of different arms of the sound and you stop and you could go kayaking or swimming. I did both of those. Or you could just ride a little like pontoon boat around if you want to get out. And when they stop the boat at night, it's so quiet and peaceful and beautiful. And especially if you go in our winter, their summer, the nights are so long that it's still light for a long, long time. So we were out, I think, at like 10 at night and it was still, um, kind of

light out and you're watching the, you know, sunset over the mountains. It's, it's spectacular. Very good. Very good. I did it code as travel because I, you know, that's, do you know, do you know if the charge coded as travel? Cause I'm sure people would be curious. I wonder, you know, if it does expect it to edit, it was booked by, you you know through a uh like a tour company so probably good chance so good so good chance you could use like the sapphire reserve 300 travel credit yeah a company called real nz or nz they call it there um it runs like so many of the tours in new zealand that uh we booked both of our sound doubtful soundful Sound and Milford Sound through them. They were a good company to work with. Then we went to Queenstown, which is a beautiful, beautiful town.

It's right on the side of a mountain. So it's very, very hilly and it's along a lake. And so you have views of the lake. You have mountains beyond the lake. And so in all directions, you have mountains and then the beautiful lake. And it is the one downside of Queenstown. It's gotten like in many ways overly touristy. So there's a lot of that, like a haunted house and all of uh adventure rides you could do on the water and

things like that um but but over but it's still that doesn't take away from how beautiful the town is and i really loved it one of the things that made it really special though is there's an slh property called eichert's house which is not the haunted house right. It's not called Eichert House. Sorry. It's called Eichert's Private Hotel. There you go. And it's right there in the middle of town. I mean, it's hard to explain how at this hotel. If you look at the lake, if you're along the lake, if you're walking along the lake from just about anywhere and look towards town, Eichert's is going to be right in the middle of your view. Can't miss it. So it's right there in the center of everything with probably the best close-up lake view.

And what I mean by that is there's others that have great lake views that are higher up on the mountain but further back. So this probably has to have the closest lake view that there is in town. So anyway, so great location. It only has something like, I don't know, 10 or 13 rooms total. And of those, we were booked directly into what was called a Mountain View suite, which I think is their lowest room type. And it was a true big suite, beautiful, luxurious. And it did cost 40,000 points per night. It's a category eight in Hyatt system, or you could have paid about $1,500 US to stay there per night. I'd take the 40,000 points. I'd take the 40,000 point price. Yeah. This was a great, great priority. I wish I could tell everyone, if you go to Queenstown, you have to stay there. The, the, the reason I can't tell everyone to do

that though, is award availability is really, really hard to find. I was so lucky that I booked these four nights. Um, but whenever I looked after that for any night ever, I couldn't find a single night available. Um, so I don't know what's going on with that, but the service phenomenal, the, the free inclusions phenomenal, the, the free full breakfast at the restaurant or in your room, a hundred dollar food credit, free valet parking uh every night uh you have an hour um drink like drink hour where where for for us like we were it was always private tusk like no one because there's not that many guests so we would go in at like 5 30 the concierge would be there and the folks spend 1500 bucks a night probably don't care about the free drink right there that's probably true um so you

go into this this parlor and um the concierge is there to to greet you serve you these these very nice wines um and or other drinks there's actually a menu you could get just about any drink you want. And then they actually inform the chef that we're ready. And the chef prepares canapes at that time. And each day they have like a unique creation. Actually, two different unique creations. So you each get two little servings of whatever it is. And they were all delicious. I mean, really like, you know, top restaurant quality, delicious stuff. And, you know, and it was a great opportunity to chat with concierge and learn about like

recommendations for things to do or places to eat and things like that. So just absolutely loved that. The whole experience of staying at Iker's private hotel. That sounds great. That sounds amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So I hope others can find availability. I hope it opens up more than it has recently. That would be great. If you can't though, I stumbled across, there's another SLH property in town called the Carlin, which also 40,000 points per night, much better availability than Eichert's private hotel, at least as things stand right now. Maybe after I report this, that might change. It is actually more expensive to pay in cash than Eichert's is. It's way up on a hill. Each room has fantastic ocean views and just big patios. it looks spectacular. I do have to say one, one negative of staying there. I did walk up the hill to it.

If you're not big into walking, um, up hills, it was extremely tiring to get from, from town to, to the Carlin. However, they'll drive you around in a Bentley. So you don't have to worry. That works. And that's complimentary, including, including um pick up and drop off at the airport from the carlin so so uh i would not hesitate to try that out i can't recommend it because i haven't stayed there no it does look very nice on it is available with dates when i

could probably make it happen so if you're thinking about booking it i am sorry i just booked whatever next next to be booking it up before this before this i'm like oh now i'm on the clock here i gotta put it out yeah yeah i i did see that that the booking engine let you put in um up to three adults and one kid two or younger if you tried to put in a fourth person who's over two, it won't let you, it won't let you book it that way. So just book it now while my two-year-old is still two. The other thing is that on the screen, it did say something like there might be an extra charge for more if you book more than two people. So you might want to double check

on that. Because a place like that, that extra charge might be like 500 a day per kid or something. I don't know. It's just another 500. That's all. Right, right, right, right. You know, I have been lucky in general. I got to say that I've seen that before on places and worried because of exactly that. I figure if they're charging $2,500 a night, whatever the extra fee is that seems nominal to the person who's paying $2,500 a night is not going to be nominal to me. But I've been very lucky so far. Any place that said that, I have not yet been charged an extra person fee for not yet. So I feel like it's the kind of warning that goes up on things

oftentimes as a catch-all. But with SLH, I feel like it's potentially an issue because I won't imagine that Hyatt would have that information necessarily for each individual property since they're a little bit more boutique sort of. So yeah, that's a good point. It's a good point. I should make a call. And just remember, teach your three-year-old that they are two, in case anyone asks. Well, you see, but my younger's only two, so I'm in good shape. So as long as I make that happen before his birthday, we're good. I don't know that I will. I don't know that I will. No lying required. Yeah, exactly.

All right. Some other options that I noticed in Queenstown for points, but I can't review because I didn't stay. There's a Crowne Plaza that's right in town. Looks like the rooms have beautiful lake views. So that might be a nice option. There's also up the hill, sort of towards the Carlin, there's a Holiday Inn inn express which looks like it has beautiful water views and it also has a very unique architecture so check out the reviews of that because that might actually be worth staying at um i you know it looked at least like i said from the outside it looks very interesting it might be a very nice hotel um across the lake there's a Hilton that's right on the water. And that would be very nice if you want to stay somewhere quieter. It's, I think it's quieter. It's very close to the airport. But at the same time, when we were visiting there, we walk there from, it's about five mile walk along the water to get there from town. And we enjoyed lunch there. We didn't hear any airplane sounds. So that was fine. It just depends whether you want to be in town a lot. If you want to be in town a lot,

I wouldn't recommend that Hilton. The other two would be better, but if you wanted to be more quiet, I think that would be a good choice. And the other thing I'll mention sort of in general about other options for staying around New Zealand is IHG. Uh, they have an intercontinental in Wellington that looks very nice that I was going to book with IHG points. Some of them are super high end, like the Eicherts or the Carlin that I was describing, but IHG doesn't have an award chart. So when you book those, look for prices to be like, for example, 180,000 points per night type of range. I knew you were going to say that. And I almost jumped in before you did, because I'm, so I'm looking at specific dates. Cause there's like a couple of days where I probably could get to Queenstown. I, it wasn't on my radar at all until I saw your pictures. And I was like, Oh, I don't know. I mean, maybe I can make that work. And, and so I'm looking at

those IHG properties that you were just talking about. And I was going to ask you, okay, between the holiday and express at like 23,000 IHG points, or there's a Holiday Inn that's 19,000 or paying 40,000 for iCarts, which is obviously a significant difference in terms of cost because you could buy the points for the IHG properties for under a hundred bucks a night or just over a hundred bucks a night anyway. So I was about to ask that. And then I see that the Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties there are 40,000 a night or 47,500 a night. So now what would you do? Would you stay at I-Carts? Would you stay at one of these? These are difficult debates sometimes when you're looking at that because 40,000 high points is a lot of points.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. I mean, I love my luxury. I love being able to stay places with points that I wouldn't stay at otherwise paying cash. I don't know. There were no Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties actually available when I went. So I didn't do enough research to say- You're right. I mean, they're usually like- Are these luxury properties? Tons of points if they're available at all. I was surprised when I just saw. And I'm sure that if you look on whatever dates you're going to look on, they're going to be 180,000 points. And just, I got lucky in terms of the dates that I happened to look at, but, but yeah, so you didn't, didn't research those. Oh, now I'm going to have to take a look. Yeah. Well, so, so there's, there's a huge range of

Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties. And so they're not all high end luxury. Um, some are, you know, cheaper, but boutique type of things. And so I would just look into that and see the reviews and see what, what you'd get. Um, I had found, um, when I was doing my searches, I, I'd found one, it wasn't in Queenstown, but I had found one available that was more in that 170,000 range that I'm talking about. And it did look like a property that would be like bucket list type of thing. It was north of Christchurch and with up on a mountain with views of the ocean and looks spectacular, but it didn't fit our plans. And I didn't have that many points. A lot of IHG points.

A lot of IHG points. That's right. I think I see probably the property you're talking about not available. But yeah, so those properties, those Mr. and Mrs. Smith properties in Queenstown look like they're not incredibly expensive anyway. So there probably is a difference in luxury between a place like I-Carts. And now if you haven't seen Greg's review, by the way, of course, we're talking about all this. And you can check out the review for I-Carts Hotel. And we'll have that up. I don't know, one of these sides of my head, probably a link to that.

So you'll want to check that out because that does look awesome. And and this Carlin place, like he mentioned here, if you look at the princess suite that that books into, that looks awfully amazing also. Yeah. Yeah. And let me say, if you're not worried about the luxury part of it, you just want a place to stay in a good location, the two IHG properties I mentioned, the Crowne Plaza, which is right in town, or the Holiday Inn Express, which is a short walk from town, but uphill. So I would happily stay in either of those locations and you're still going to be close enough to all the action. And I think have much better views. Our room didn't have particularly good views itself. You

had to go out on the balcony to see views. It was the rest of the hotel, like the restaurant, the Eicherts I'm talking about. You walk into the breakfast or into the restaurant for breakfast and you see this like just amazing view that like had my jaw dropping every day I went in. You might have that kind of view right from your room at one of these IHG properties. So there could be an advantage to doing that and save a lot of money or a lot of points depending on how you're booking it. Yeah. All right. Very good. So we've got a bunch of great options for Hyatt. If you've got Hyatt points, it seems like New Zealand is potentially a really interesting destination, or if you're going to New Zealand anyway, Hyatt points could certainly be your friend, which is surprising because in years past, we've always talked about how Hyatt has a pretty limited footprint. They aren't everywhere you need to be. And I feel like

in New Zealand, not all chains have a great footprint to begin with. I mean, IHGCs have a lot, but otherwise I feel like you don't really find a lot of great chain options really in New Zealand or Australia for that matter. That's absolutely true i was i was pretty shocked how little marriott had going on um and so i didn't book anything with marriott um and uh you know i booked 10 out of my 14 nights with hyatt points which is just incredible you know and the other the others were all independent um well one was the overnight undoubtful sound, but the other three were just booked independently. And so I did get some of my capital on venture X or my wife's actually a $300 travel credit by booking at least one of those through there. But that's good to keep in mind that that type of credit can be useful for that kind of trip. Because Australia, I've run into the same thing. I've done a few road trips in Australia and run into the same thing where there just aren't very many chain properties. And so you end up either booking something independent through some boutique hotel website, I guess, or using hotels.com and something of that nature. So you may as well be using your Capital One Venture credit.

And so good point there. Another option when you're looking for a backup plan there. And of course, obviously, you could use Chase Points through the Chase Travel Portal. So you got other options to book too, but that's enough of that. So back in the flights very quickly, I wanted to mention, I didn't mention when we were talking about it and should have, that we do have a resource for that. And not only should I should have mentioned it, but I probably should have reviewed it more closely because there are a couple other great options we didn't talk about. I'm not going to get into them because we've talked for long enough, but I'm going to have a link in the description. And again, above my head here somewhere to the best ways to get to the South Pacific using points and miles,

because there are a couple of other good options. If you were to find American Airlines award availability, you might want to book through Etihad. There's some other stuff in there. So I go through Honolulu because there's a flight from Hawaii to New Zealand to Auckland. So there's a few options there to discuss. So check that post out for other ways to get to New Zealand. If you want to make this kind of a trip happen, just recognize that it might be a little tough to get there. Once you get there though, you got all sorts of luxury with your high end points. Yeah. And New Zealand is great. Let me just, let me just say that what a beautiful country and beautiful people. They were so friendly. It's just so nice to travel around there. And it's sort of like super easy for Americans because of,

you know, everyone speaks English, just everything is easy there and the dollar is very strong right now. So everything felt cheap. So that was nice too. So a good destination. You overall, two thumbs up. Overall, great destination. Yes, yes, loved it. What is this week's question of the week?

This week's question of the week. Didn't want to come out here. Mike in our Frequent Miler Insiders asks, anybody able to confirm that I can do a free stopover with Alaska points going from Tokyo to Honolulu, stopping over and then continuing on to San Diego. I tried doing it with the multi-city search and it wouldn't pull up anything. But when I did the leg separately, there was availability. So do I need to call to book this? Is it possible? Now we know I mentioned earlier that when you make a booking with Alaska Miles, use your Alaska mileage plan miles, you can have a stopover on a one way award.

Is it possible to have Honolulu as your stopover point? Alaska serves Honolulu, of course, from a number of different places, not only San Diego. And then, of course, you can fly across the pond and there with their different partners, like, for instance, Japan Airlines, I assume is the airline that he was flying with here. Can you do a stopover in Honolulu? Do you know the answer, Greg? I assume you can as long as you're booking Alaska metal. So you're flying on Alaska Airlines from Honolulu to the States, as opposed to like American Airlines, because you can't mix two partners on one award. So that might be what he ran into is my guess. Well, I might

have run into the same assumption, but, and this is the reason I brought this up is because I probably would have the same thought as Greg, but when I'm not sure about that kind of thing, one of the places that I'll usually go is Frequent Mylar Insiders, because I know somebody there has tried to do it before and we'll know the answer. So that's why it was smart of Mike to ask in the Facebook group because there were people well-versed in Alaska that were able to answer and say, no, with Alaska, you can't do a stopover if it's not, or let me reword that, you can only have a stopover in the international gateway city of their partners. So for instance, if you want to book an itinerary with Cathay Pacific, you can do a stopover in Hong Kong. But and I've run into this before,

you can't do a stopover, for instance, in Seattle. I ran into that. I tried to do that actually once with one I booked a long time ago. So so it's got to be hub cities. And I believe it may be possible with some hub cities in the United States, but I don't know exactly what qualifies. However, Honolulu doesn't. So that was a piece of information that I thought was kind of valuable for how those stopovers work. And I also thought it was worth mentioning because again, Frequent Miler Insiders is a good place to get that kind of a question answered because you're definitely going to have people who've run into trying to do those kinds of things a bunch of times and we'll have valuable information for you.

So no stopover in Honolulu actually in that case. That's really good to know. I, you know, American used to offer stopovers on awards, but only at those kind of hub city or international gateways basically. Yeah. And but they eliminated this a long time ago yeah so but but that gives me a point of reference anyway to say alaska has something similar going which frankly i never had not for the run i never had that point of reference with alaska as to where the rule was so i've called and you know run into things where they said no you can't do a stop over here or

there and i didn't know why and i didn't spend the time to think about why or learn about why. So I thought that was an interesting question anyway. Because they don't impose that rule on their own flights. You can do a stopover anywhere if you're just flying Alaska itself. I don't know if that extends to their partner, American Airlines. Probably not. I don't know. I don't know. That's a great question, actually. So a question of the week just produced a question of the week with American Airlines. So if you know, comment in the comments on the show here on YouTube or on the website or wherever you're looking at this. Speaking of wherever you're looking at this, you should definitely sign up for our email list. And wherever you're watching this, you should make sure to like it.

Give us a thumbs up. Leave us some feedback. Share it with your friends. Again, if you want to join the email list, you go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. And if you have questions or feedback that you'd like to be considered for a future episode, you want to email that too. To mailbag at frequentmiler.com.

Thanks, everybody. Bye, everybody.