Frequent Miler on the Air - Hawaii vs. Bora Bora; Conrad vs St Regis; and the Delta Vacations Deal

Episode Date: August 31, 2019

This week Nick is vacationing in Bora Bora. On our weekly FM on the Air, he compares the Conrad to the St Regis Bora Bora. Which is better? He also talks pros and cons of Hawaii vs. Bora Bora. Next, we talked vacation packages and shared tips for getting the most out of them. Finally, I talked live with a Delta Vacations rep to find out if the SkyMiles deal of the year has been extended (it has!).

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the Air. I'm Greg, the Frequent Miler, and I'm here with this week's guest and every week's guest, and my right-hand man, Nicholas Reyes, who, now I'm back from Hawaii, back at home. Right, and it looked like a great trip. It was a great trip, but Nick is not at home. Can you tell us where you are? I'm definitely not at home this week. No, I am at the St. Regis Bora Bora coming to you live from Bora Bora in French Polynesia. Beautiful St. Regis, which we wrote about last year. It was a great opportunity because for a short period of time, you were able to book this with Marriott points. If you did a fifth night free, it came out to 48,000 points per night, and it is the best 48,000 points per night I have ever spent.

Wow, that's high praise. Now, I've been following along on Facebook with you and your wife have been posting amazing pictures, mostly though, of the Conrad Bora Bora. That's true. That's true. And so tell us a little, do you like, how does the St. Regis compare? Well, there will certainly be a post coming about comparing the two because before I came, I had read Lucky's reviews at one mile at a time of both the Conrad Bora Bora and the St. Regis Bora Bora, because he kind of beat me to it and came to both of them earlier this year. And, and he had high praise for the Conrad Bora Bora and not

very many nice things to say about the St. Regis Bora Bora. And it's interesting because my experience has not matched his. First of all, both of these places are phenomenal. The Conrad Bora Bora is gorgeous. The grounds are so well taken care of. Service is excellent, very personalized. Everyone was very friendly. And it has a terrific, gorgeous view. But if you're only going to pick one, the view at the St. Regis is unbeatable. The view at the Conrad was nice. The view at the St. Regis is just out of this world. So if you had to pick one, I think it'd be the St. Regis. The St. Regis is also a much larger property. So there's a lot more to do here, I would say, in terms of activities. And it's just much more spread out.

But there are pluses and minuses to both. And when I write a post, you're going to read about the comparisons. For example, at the Conrad Bora Bora, there's a bunch of restaurants, never had to make a reservation, was able to just get in on, you know, when we, when we wanted to eat here at the St. Regis, it's very busy. And the first night we couldn't get a reservation before 8 PM anywhere. So we ended up having to eat at the pool bar. That was the only option, despite the fact that they have five restaurants here. So, um, so yeah, it's, it's. Yeah, it is. I don't know how many rooms, but it's very big and it's packed. I know that a couple of days before I came, I was looking to see and there were no available rooms for the days that I was here. And then there was availability and there wasn't.

It kind of went back and forth, but pretty close to sold out anyway. So that's a potential downside for the St. Regis. But I'll tell you what, probably as a family traveler, the hottest thing about the St. Regis, but I'll tell you what the, probably as a family traveler, the hottest thing about the St. Regis is that kids under seven eat for free, which is huge in Bora Bora because food is expensive here. So can you, can you just go and, and like get a plate for your son? And then you pick off his plate. You know, I probably not, not going to be that.

They probably would frown on that. Although last night we ordered an appetizer and the, well, actually the waiter asked if we wanted an appetizer and we, we didn't answer immediately. And she said, or perhaps you just want to share the pizza with Conrad because he was getting a pizza and we decided to order an appetizer, but certainly I guess we could have, cause he was getting a free pizza. So they have a kid's menu that they eat off of for free. But also at the pool, you can order like potatoes and vegetables and stuff like that for kids under seven.

It's all free. Ice cream is free for the kids. So basically, as long as your kid doesn't yet have a mustache, they're under seven, right? That's the right answer. Do they take their passport? They take your passport when you check in. So I imagine it's probably marked. It's yours, not everyone's? Well, they took everyone's. I don't know. We probably can't really get away with that. Probably not, but we'll be back. It's not like going to a movie. No, no. They don't have to take your word for it.

Okay. No, but even after seven, i guess from seven to twelve they pay half price on the menu items which you know by contrast the conrad borobora treated us fantastically and you'll see that when i write a post about it they were amazing to us but like one day we ordered a cold glass of milk for him i don't know if it was breakfast or dinner and and it was like eight bucks for a cold glass of milk here we ordered a cold glass of milk and they said do you want a whole carton of it to bring back to your room? And they gave us like a full like, you know half gallon carton to bring back to our room for no charge So, um, so if you got a family st. Regis is working. Yeah, clearly so don't give away too much right now, but I won't but

Elite perks which one? Compare compare the two. Which gives you better? Right. Well, so at the Conrad Bora Bora, Hilton Diamond members or Gold members would get free continental breakfast. And continental breakfast is a buffet. It's quite good. They also have the ability to add on for $12.

You can add on eggs or pancakes or stuff like that. So breakfast is filling. We didn't do any of the add-ons while we were there for three nights, four days or whatever that comes out to be. We didn't do any of the add-ons. So the buffet was plenty to eat. And I'll have some pictures of that in the post. But that was basically it. Also a room upgrade. And we did get a nice upgrade.

We didn't want an overwater villa because we're traveling with a child under two. And we thought that might not be the safest bet but we did hope for something with a view and they did give us an upgrade to a nice horizon view villa that will have some pictures of the view and we both said that actually i think the view from those at the conrad specifically is better than the overwater bungalows because they just those just face the open ocean at the conrad so you really don't see very much if you're in one of those the horizon Horizon View Villa was where it was at. So that was a great, great elite perk too. And then also you get 20% off on certain food and beverage.

To be honest, I didn't ask. They didn't tell me. I just saw in the bill that there was a discount. So I can't remember exactly what it was. I'll have to go back and check. So those were basically the elite perks there at the Conrad Bora Bora. There's a lot of perks though, like there's free sunscreen at the pool and water and stuff like that for everybody.

Exactly. So then at the St. Regis, the elite perks have been really good. The breakfast here, I've been really impressed. It's a great buffet. Quality of everything is on par with just about anywhere I've been. And then additionally, you can order eggs or pancakes or crepes or things like that. No charge. That's just part of the breakfast. Now, of course, as a Platinum member, you have the choice. I can either choose 1,000 points or two St. Regis mugs or breakfast every day. And my wife at check-in said, you know the mugs are kind of tempting but

but we opted for breakfast every day did you check how much breakfast would be if you had you know i haven't checked it yet i will check the mugs have cost you right right i mean the mugs might have been pricey but but certainly wouldn't have held a candle to the cost of breakfast just based on the dinner entrees. Right, right. Okay, did you get any welcome gift in addition to that? I did, and, you know, I had it on my table here, and then I moved my table, and I forgot to grab that. So when we got here, we got a bottle of champagne, a nice bottle of champagne, $50 bottle or so.

So it was at home. Here, much more for sure. So it was a nice little welcome amen more for sure. So so it was it was a nice little welcome amenity. Plus, we had cookies. So we got these cute little macarons and a bowl of fruit. And then for our son, because they knew we were traveling with a baby, they gave us several bottles of juice for him and some marshmallow snacks. And then the second day when we ordered our morning coffee, the butler brought us a couple bottles of rum too so hold up wait you have a butler well yes we have a butler it's the saint regis so we do yeah i forgot about that the saint regis hotels all have butlers and the resort would be

no exception right right so we had a butler who showed us to our room on the first day and has taken care of many things for us throughout this day. Made reservations and everything else. So she's been phenomenal. She's been really terrific for us. And she comes to seek us out and find us a breakfast and things like that. So it's been very good. All right.

And actually. Okay. So one thing I do want to point out to people watching or listening is that getting elite status that gives you free breakfast with Marriott is a lot, lot harder than the same thing with Hilton. With Hilton, all you have to do is have a credit card and you could have a credit card that gives you gold status. You could have a credit card option to free breakfast is to spend $75,000 in a calendar year on one of the certain premium cards. Ultra premium cards, yeah. So anyway, with that out of the way, let's save the rest. I have so many questions about St. Regis and the Conrad, but I think we need to stay filming that for a blog. And we can talk more about it in the next week.

But what I want to talk about today, what I'm really curious about, this is my top curious thing. Last week, we talked about how great Hawaii is. In particular, how great Kauai, the island of Kauai is. Beautiful island. But now, you're in a place that might be better. Is it? What's the, you know, what do you think now that you sort of know both of them?

What would you? Right, you know, that's a really good question. And we've debated that. We talked about that over the last few days, quite a few times, in fact. I think that if you're talking about which place is more beautiful, it's not even a question. Bora Bora is the most beautiful place I've ever seen. Some people consider it to be boring because you're isolated at the resort. And that is true. You are isolated at the resort for the most part. You can take tours and get out. But my goodness, the water is

the most crystal clear blue I've ever seen. The scenery is unbelievable. I'm sitting here, actually outside of my room. There's a hammock behind me. The sun, unfortunately, is in the direction of the view. Otherwise, you would see the mountains behind us and the blue sea. It's just stunningly beautiful. And Kaui is really beautiful you sit up behind you still so that it looks very completely fake um yeah okay so borobor is more beautiful more beautiful hands down and kawaii is beautiful kawaii right yeah yeah and it's not even close you're saying it's not even close and and we talked about that and we said it's not even close, you're saying. It's not even close. And we talked about that. And we said, it's crazy to say that because Kauai is like show-stoppingly beautiful. But then you come here and you're like, wow, I hadn't.

The word beautiful is going to be hard to use again after this to describe something. That's how nice it is. It's just unbelievable. So next time you go to Kauai, you're going to be like, meh. I'd like to think not because Kauai is still amazing. And you know, the thing about it is Hawaii has so much more to do, right? You can rent a car and drive around and, and Kauai as, as anyone who has seen your pictures from Kauai has seen has such a variety. You know, you have the Canyon and it's very dry. And then of course you have the, one of the wettest spots on earth

in the center of the kind of volcano area there and some amazing coastlines so kawaii has a lot of variety and that's one thing that bora bora is lacking and there's not much else to do you can't really go hiking and biking and all of those things oh really you can't yeah there's not as much to do here yeah you would have to take the probably the the ferry to get into town to be able to do much else and that's kind of a bit of a rigmarole, although it is free here at the St. Regis versus at the Conrad, which is closer to the town.

They charge you to get to the town, but from, uh, from the St. Regis, it is free, but it's only once a day. So it's not super convenient.

You can bike around the resort. There's free bikes, but there's not really any sort of like exterior hiking and stuff to do unless you pay for a boat to go somewhere, and those aren't really cheap. So Hawaii's got a major advantage there. You're not resort captive to the food in Hawaii, whereas here food is really expensive, though I'll note how we saved money on that in the post coming

when I get back from vacation here. So food is definitely much more expensive here. You have much more variety in Hawaii. You have the ability to go on your own, and you can get there for 7,500 points or 12.5 or even 22, or if you're paying United Miles, 22.5 or something. Much easier to get to Hawaii. So if I have to really pick one or the other,

I guess it'd be Hawaii because it's easier to get to. There's more variety of things to do. I think it'd appeal to a wider range of people. But if you're in the points and miles game, hello, you have got to get to Bora Bora. It's all right. Because you can't. Most people can't. And this is phenomenal. I don't know. Have you ever been here, Greg? No, no, I have never been. But I'll tell you you what the pictures that you and your wife posted on facebook have made me uh you know really anxious to go so yeah did you think about it before that though i mean was it something that was seriously on your radar um only only because um only because of the the marriott deal so when when marriott acquired Starwood and suddenly that particular hotel was one of the

many, well, many, one of about a dozen or so that were so outrageously overpriced with points in the SVG system, but are not cheap, but are doable in the new program. And so I did think about it starting then, but I didn't actually pull the trigger on any of those ultra luxury ones. And so now if I do it, of course, it's a little bit more expensive. And then if I wait till September, oh God, I forget what, 1414. I forget what the date is, but they're

going to start doing the peak pricing and then then it could go up as high as 100k a day. Right now. If I lock it in now at 85, can I lock that in now at 85 for a future points advance reservation? Is it 85? Is that the standard right now? Right now? Yeah, that's the standard. Can you lock it in? Yeah, you could lock it in now. Right, and for the future. So if I want to book a stay for next year or something,

I could book it for 85K now. As long as the award's available now, yes. Award availability is much easier to come by now, I should note. And actually now, for the $85,000, I think you can get an overwater bungalow. I saw when I was looking at availability at some point. So I think you could do that if you wanted to. Though, to be honest, we've been in a beachside villa.

The villa is behind me here. There's a hammock behind me and then our own little pool and the villa behind me. And actually, I love the beachside villa because on the opposite side that you can't see, I've got the ocean another 20 feet away. Okay. Yeah. So I'm still on the opposite side that you can't see, I've got the ocean another 20 feet away. Okay. Yeah. So that's, you know, I'm still on the water. Do you have a private pool too? Yeah, a little private pool. Yeah, there's a little private pool behind me.

It's not huge, but it's enough that we were able to take a dip just a little bit before this. So it was nice to be able to do that, especially, you know, traveling with our son again. Nice to be able to get him in the water here and there. Although I'll tell you what, the little lagoon that they have here that's full of fish that you can get into kind of on the inside uh the other side of of the the villa behind me here is just amazing the number of fish in there is incredible they did a feeding at 10 30 and you can get right in with the fish and swim with them while they're doing the feeding so uh just tons of

beautiful gorgeous fish and and the water's 10 feet deep while they're doing the feeding. So just tons of beautiful, gorgeous fish. And the water's 10 feet deep and you can see the bottom. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you were not long ago, you were in Greece. You were at the Domes of Alunda.

Right. You really like that. What about that? What about that compared to where you are now? Yeah, that's a great question. So the Domes of Alunda is gorgeous. And the upgrade we got at the end there was out of this world and by far the nicest room I think we've ever had. But if you take that out, if you take that upgrade out of it and just compare Domes of Alunda to this, Domes of Alunda is beautiful scenery. The scenery is gorgeous, different, but very pretty. And the food surrounding it is

terrific and very reasonably priced. The St. Regis, the rooms are nicer. I have to say the Domes of Alunda, the one kind of disappointment I had was the rooms I felt like were not what I would expect for the top tier of Marriott. They were nice. Don't get me wrong. They weren't quite as luxurious as what I expected, like a St. Regis or a Conrad. And that's one area where I think the St. Regis and Conrad really excel. The room feels luxurious. Everything is nice furniture and all that. So if you want to be comfortable while you're in the room, I would say this. And also there's more to do in the ocean here. Whereas in, uh, at the domes of Alunda, there was a little bit of a beach you can get into, but no beach activities. Like here, we've taken out kayaks. We've taken out one of those pedal bike things into the water and it's all lagoon there's only

one channel in and out so it's not like you're going to float off to sea so there's really no fear as far as taking out those things for water sports so for for those types of things i would say again this uh over the domes of alunda also the domes of alunda can be relatively cheap i say relatively cheap relative to this. In cash. Yeah, exactly. Available less than $300 a night, sometimes less than $250 a night. So it's accessible, whereas here, I think the standard rates are probably $1,300, $1,400 a night. So it's much less accessible to the masses, I would say. So theoretically, you could use like a vacation package, for example, like Delta Vacations, book something like Domes of Alunda at a reasonable rate, probably, depending on how high the

rates are at the time you're going. But whereas this would be very difficult to get at a good rate. I would never want to pay cash. Which brings us to our second topic for today. Right, right. Is the vacation packages. We wrote quite a bit about vacation packages this week. You wrote a post about sort of vacation packages in general. Now we're not talking about the old Marriott travel packages.

That's a different type of thing. What we're talking about is where you can book a bundle of airfare and hotel. Usually, it's that combination, pay one fee. And as you pointed out in your post, sometimes it can be a lot cheaper booking that bundle. In fact, sometimes it can be a lot cheaper than buying the airfare alone. So you could- Have you ever done that? Have you ever used that and saved money? Yeah, absolutely. I've done that a number of times. So one time we did it in Australia. We booked, actually, I'm going to tell that story in a second. What we've done recently is my wife had a business meeting in London. And the way Delta does their pricing for flights to London is they charge way, way less if you

get there before a Saturday night. So you have a Saturday night layover, basically. So if you leave here on Saturday, that doesn't count because you get to England on Sunday. So you don't have a Saturday night stay. But anyway, the point is an economy flight to London without a Saturday night stay tends to be, this is crazy, but over $3,000. That's nuts. Whereas with a Saturday night stay, it's usually 900 or somewhere in the $1,000 range ish, you know? Um, anyway, so we were going at a time and her schedule was such that she couldn't do the Saturday night stay. So, um,

they were going to just pay the 3000, whatever, you know, let's call it 3,600, something like that. Um, but then we found this, uh,

the Delta vacations, uh, had the exact same flight, uh, plus hotel. We actually booked the, um, St. Pancras hotel, which I i've talked about written about a number of times we booked a junior suite which is the really elegant suite that gets you into the lounge and everything we booked that lounge with status right uh you can with titanium

not with platinum titanium okay yeah uh but still you want to be in the special wing that the they're in these these suites are in a special, you want to be in the special wing. These suites are in a special wing. You want to be there. Anyway, so got us into there, and the whole package was way the heck less. I want to say maybe it was like, I can't remember, $1,900 or something like that. Way the heck less than they would have paid for my wife's airfare alone, not to mention if she had booked a hotel as well, which of course she would have had to do. So, uh, that was an incredible deal. Um, both for us, cause we got to stay in a nicer lodging, um, and of course for

her employer. So, uh, yeah, yeah, they can make great deals. Uh, so I know Delta has this limited time deal that ends tonight, right? So yeah, so the limited time deal, well, let me get to, the limited time deal is that you get two cents per SkyMile value if you use your SkyMiles to pay for Delta vacation. Now that's a great deal for anyone

who's sitting on a lot of SkyMiles because yes for Delta Vacation. Now that's a great deal for anyone who's sitting on a lot of SkyMiles because yes, you can sometimes get that much value booking award tickets, but this is like a sure thing. If you could find a good paid deal on Delta Vacations, then you can get good value for Delta SkyMiles and any airfare you book, you're going to earn miles for as well. So it's sort of a double good deal. And it, yes, it's supposed to end something like midnight tonight, but there are rumors now, apparently the call center's telling people that it's going, it's being extended till September 6th. So, yeah, um, uh, before our talk here, I, I called Delta Vacations to try to confirm this. I got one of those things saying, there's a 45 minute hold. Do you want to call back? So I said, yes. If I get a call during our talk, I'm going to answer it

and we could all find out the truth. So that'll be fun. I was hoping it would have happened by now, but not yet. Right. Right. Hold on. Oh, is this it? Live.

Hello. This is Greg. Hello. This is Delta vacations with a callback. If this is Greg and you're ready to speak with a representative. Oh, we are. Yes,

we can hear it. You don't need to speak to a representative. All right. I pressed one. And you can hear that pretty clearly? Yeah, definitely. Okay, good. Looking forward to finding out. Please stay on the line at the end of the call for a one-question survey.

Thank you for calling Delta Vacations. All representatives are currently assisting you. That is the way it would be, huh? All right. Well, I probably jumped to the top of the line, maybe. Maybe. Maybe you jump to number one here and they'll come on and tell us, give us the good news that it's getting extended to September 6th. Or maybe someone from Delta is watching and they're trying to get just the right person on the line.

It could be. They're like, oh, okay, call Greg. So while we're waiting, I mean, I know you've been busy vacationing, but did you take advantage of this deal? No, I haven't taken advantage of the deal. So I don't have a stash of Delta SkyMiles sitting around collecting dust because I was never particularly interested in collecting them, though I know there are some great deals to be had. Oftentimes I find deals with other airlines

and I don't fly Delta usually. So I didn't have a stash. So I could transfer for membership rewards. I wasn't excited enough, or honestly, I didn't want to take enough time away from going to the beach this week to try to find the right opportunity. So I haven't. No, but the deal is you could potentially bank these, I guess, right? Or maybe, or find the right opportunity. So, so I haven't, no, but the deal is you could potentially bank these, I guess, right. Or maybe, or maybe not bank these. So I'm sure you're going to talk more about that. So, right. So I wrote about that this week that, um, the terms and conditions say that if you book one of these and cancel it, instead of getting your miles back, you get back a voucher. And so, you know, when I saw that,

my first thought was, whoa, we could basically cash out our SkyMiles at two cents each and have these vouchers that are good for using whenever. I mean, that's true. It's a great deal because typically you're not going to get more than two cents a mile on anything Delta related. So, you know, you may own a partner award, but that's a great way to cash out SkyMiles if it would work. If it would work. And there was, there is one catch that we learned about early on that the vouchers expire after a year. So it's not like forever, but still it's way better than just having the one week of the promo to book things. You have, you have a whole year to book what you need if you know

how much money you're going to need that now that's how much of a voucher you're going to need then then you can you know work it all out so there's some complexities there I also ran into a lot of issues so it was it was a hassle so I did a little test. I did like about a $400, so about 20,000 mile test where I booked a little tiny vacation. And then I went to cancel it. I found out you can't cancel it online. So I called and canceled it. Oh, no, first of all, just booking it with the miles was a problem. It appears to work online, but then on the last screen, it forgot that I was trying to use miles.

So I put it on hold, called up, got them to apply the Miles, hung up. Later on, I called up to cancel. So there's some time investment there. There's time. As we can see, it's not quite instant getting to an agent. There's different opinions about whether you'll get miles back or the, or the voucher. In my case, it does look like I did this today, get a call back from their accounting department who said, they actually gave me the option. Do I want the miles back or a voucher? I said, I'll take the voucher. And so they're going to mail it to me. It's going to,

so it's going to take something like two weeks to get the voucher in the mail. So anyway, the point is, it's kind of a hassle. I don't actually recommend people go through this. Also, the latest reports on our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group is that they seem to be aware now that people are doing this on purpose and they're telling people

you're just going to get miles back. So it seems like even less likely now that it will work. Which may be true, but on the flip side, I mean, if the worst case scenario is that you get the miles back, you're really not out anything but the time to make the phone calls. So I mean, I guess if you really wanted to cash out miles, maybe it's still worth a shot even if i guess set expectations low but it might still be worth a shot i figure if you're looking to cash out your miles you're ready for some headache i guess is yeah that's the problem i do think i mean it's it's a great deal i mean from us for sky miles anyway right getting a guaranteed two cents per mile, that's a great deal. So I'm pretty happy about it.

And if they ever get on the phone and confirm this. I can't believe they called me back. Hello, is anyone there? I was wondering if someone tried to talk. Right. Yeah. I'm here. I've been waiting.

Oh, I'm sorry. I've been talking. I didn't hear you come on the line first let me tell you I'm actually in the middle of doing a Facebook live so anything you say is gonna be heard online I hope you don't mind I was calling just actually to find out if I had heard that the two cents per mile deal is going to be extended do you know if that's true that's awesome so how long do we have up to 11pm or 10pm Central Standard Time. Okay, until 10pm

Central next Friday and that's September 6th. Is that what you said? Correct. It has been extended and for every mile that you use, we double it. That's so good to hear. Alright, thank you.

And is there any place online that lists this new end date? Do you know? I don't believe so. If you are a Scott Miles member, because, you know, we we sent the email to all Scott Miles members and letting them know about the sales and the new email has gone out to show that it has been extended. Okay. And let me take a look here a moment here. Okay, so it says that it has been extended to 1159 p.m. on September 6th. 1159 p.m. Is that Eastern Time? That is Eastern Time. Okay, great. So you're looking at the other box Central Time.

Yeah. Okay, alright. Hey, thank you at the other spot central time. Yeah. Okay, all right. Hey, thank you so much. That's really all I needed to know right now. All right. Well, you have a good night, and thank you for calling Delta Vacation. Bye-bye. You too.

Thanks. Bye. You're welcome. Well, that worked out well. Great. Good news, huh? Yeah. So there's no mad rush hurry tonight to get it done.

There's no mad rush. So you could relax. You don't have to end your vacation just to book a Delta vacation. Sounds good. Well, you know, the other thing that makes that potentially good news, it doesn't give you a lot more time. But I guess if you're going to cancel and get a voucher that's good for a year, your voucher will be good for at least a few more days. If you wait a few more days to try to cash out this way. Theoretically, if you're able to get the voucher, that is, of course. That's true. But I really think that people should try hard. If you know what you're going to need vacation-wise, see if you can find a good deal.

Might as well book it straight up. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. That's a great opportunity to find the right thing to strike while the iron is hot and book one of those vacation packages and do pretty well for your miles. It'll probably actually be fun. I think it'd be fun to do a little bit of a hunt to try to see what you could find for 50,000 miles

or 80,000 miles or 100,000 miles and see how it compares to booking award tickets even. Sounds like it could be a fun challenge. Could be a fun challenge. Yeah. How it compares to booking award tickets also with Delta's partners, because of course, you know, Delta charges a bajillion miles for a lot of their awards, but then you might be able to book those awards through Virgin Atlantic or Air France or that kind of thing. And I'd be curious to see a couple of example packages and whether or not

you could do better using partner miles. Right, right. And I do have a few tips for people who, if you're going to be booking a Delta vacation, here's a few tips to know. One, there are things that they can do on the phone for you that you can't do online. So for example, if you want to book, what you really want is the airfare, not the hotel. This promo does require two nights of hotel. But first of all, there are some locations where Delta Vacations requires three nights or even four nights of hotel. But anyway, the point is, if your flight spans, let's say a week, you don't have to book the whole week of hotels. What you can do is go online to book everything as close as you can get it online, and then put it on hold on the last screen. Then call Delta Vacations and say, hey, I only really need two or three,

however many nights of the hotel it is, and they'll take it off and they'll reduce the price accordingly. That's tip number one. Tip number two actually is very related. You also don't need to have a pure round trip. It doesn't have to be fly into one location and fly right back you could do for example fly into London and fly home

from Paris or things like that so as possible huh open jaws you could even have a flight in between so it could be a through a triangle a trip you know it's you could fly to London then to Rome Rome, then to Paris and home, um, that kind of Are you able to use this on, on, on partner flights as well then? Uh, yeah, I believe so. You know, as long as they're, um, I don't know if all partners show up, but certainly I've seen, um, Air France and KLM, I think. Um, so yeah, so again, what I would do is book just the straight up round trip, put on hold, and then call up and say, hey, I really want to go not just to London and back, but tell them the other locations. So that way you have, you know, 70% of it already set,

and you don't have to walk them through that part they can help you with the rest as well as of course the hotels is going to have to hotel part is going to have to change up once you move around so those are a couple tips another tip is um not so useful probably for this week but um something i discovered a long time ago is if there's a airfare deal that's really good and you just missed it I'm just talking about regular airfare deal not through these vacations sometimes these vacation packages somehow still have that pricing available sticks around a little bit yeah so we did that uh once way back way before I I got into this travel points and miles stuff. We had seen these great airfare deals to Australia. And we talked about booking it.

We talked about booking it. And we said, well, let's sleep on it. And so we go to bed the next morning. The fare's gone uh but then uh you know something made me think of looking at i don't know what it was let's say travelocity's vacation packages or whatever they still had the fair so we were able to you know uh the airfare in the hotel for just crazy cheap so just something to think about next time that happens to you. Yeah, that's good to know. So if you see one of those great airfare sales that get posted on

Frequent Miler or somewhere else, then you might still be able to catch it even a few days afterwards. So that's a great tip to be able to know where to look for your vacation packages if you're looking to be able to get a particularly good deal, a good cash out value. Yeah, yeah. I say cash out. I mean, I mean good using it towards a paid airfare. I mean, that's, and, and we should also note for anybody who hasn't been following along that these do book into paid fair classes. So you'll earn miles, right? Uh, yes, you will earn miles. Um, they don't always book into named fair classes.

So, so, so we had this problem with one time we booked a Delta vacation and tried to apply global upgrade certificate. And we're told, no, sorry. You can't, you can't with this fair. And we were like, but the global upgrades are supposed to work with any fair. And they're like with any published fair and we were like but the global upgrades are supposed to work with any fair and they're like with any published fair and true enough that's what the term says works with any published fair these are not necessarily public fairs i think that happens when you're getting especially good deals i think when when you book it and it's the same price as if you book the airfare and hotel separately i would guess you get a published fare then,

but I'm not sure. Well, but on the unpublished fare, did you still earn SkyMiles and MQMs? We ended up canceling that. Oh, okay. Yeah, you would. It's just that it uses different rules. So it does a percentage of miles flown

for those things rather than, well, MQMs is always of miles flown for for those things rather than um well mqms is always actually miles flown but uh for the miles earned and the mqds which is the dollar spent it's a percentage of miles flown instead of um how much you paid so it's being based on how much you paid right yeah yeah and so you know it'll be a way way anyway to use your miles and get a cheap vacation and then potentially earn a little something back too. So really, it seems like a win if you can find anything with Delta Vacations that fits in with your travel plans. And I assume the booking calendar probably goes out as far as it does for airfare. So you're probably looking at about a year in advance. So really, if you want to travel anytime in the next year, it's worth a look. Is it worth transferring membership rewards points to do this though? Oh, it can be. I mean, yeah, if you find a, if you find a vacation package that is a good deal, I mean, hopefully you shopped around and compared the price booking separately. If it's the same price as booking, well, if you were, if you would have purchased it in any anyway, then transferring membership rewards means you're getting very close to two cents per point value from your membership rewards, which we used to be very excited about when the business platinum card offered that 50% rebate on points. And that gave you, at the time, the two cents per point.

And we were excited about that so i don't see why you wouldn't be excited about this yes you have to pay a small excise fee which makes no sense whatsoever uh amex charges us a small fee to transfer points only to american airlines i don't mean aa i mean u.s based airlines so if you transfer to virgin atlantic I don't mean AA, I mean, US based airlines. So if you transfer to Virgin Atlantic, they don't charge you anything. If you transfer to Delta, or JetBlue, they charge you this fee. Which is so weird. Nobody else charges that, right? Nobody does. They call it, they'd say it's some kind of airline excise tax or something. I don't know what that is. But I'd love to know more about that. Because I mean, where's that money going?

Nobody else is charging you. where's that money going but they were first in the game and they were charging it you know way back when so i don't know i mean i it almost it feels like some legacy thing like someone thought they were supposed to do it maybe and nobody has uh has questions if you call it a tax then you think it it should go to the government right but i mean nobody else is charging that tax it doesn't really seem like tax is the right word for it right right okay yeah maybe they should call this surcharge right it's surcharge transfer surcharge does which which by the way we weren't uh necessarily going to talk about this but really quick before we sign off um the chase british airways card um now has a new feature they'll they'll when you book an award ticket originating the u.s and crossing the atlantic ocean which means going to england i mean because uh oh you

have to fly on ba um and you have to book with ba avios, not Liberia Avios, not with American Airlines miles. With British Airways Avios, fly BA across the pond. Then they'll rebate you $100 if it's an economy or premium economy or $200 if it's first class or business class. It's a nice feature. They'll do it up to three times a year. Nice feature. I don't think it really does enough to change the math i mean british airways awards especially in that direction are absurdly expensive when it

comes to surcharges that they impose that's why i've never flown them because it's just yeah unbelievable it's great it's so much more than you'll pay with anybody other than maybe lift anza it is crazy i'll tell you though, if you were going to pay for a flight, though, to fly across the pond, you might find that even though the surcharge is a lot, if you only have a specific day to fly, you might find the other airlines don't have award availability. BA, especially in business, has it all over the place yeah so so there are times where it definitely makes sense and and if you have the card great you can save a little bit of money and maybe the the fee isn't as horrible because of that um if you don't have the card, I decided, I don't think it's a must have chase card. I, you know, it's, it's a very nice to have, but I'm not going to go out of my way to try to get it. Not that I could anyway, since I'm over in 524, but, uh, any other thoughts and different from

mine about the card? No, no. I read your post and I had the same exact thoughts that it's still not a must have for me. The surcharges are still ridiculous. So I would really say, like you said, unless you often have to travel on very specific dates and you have to fly British Airways for one reason or another, I just don't see it as being compelling. It's nice if you already have the card, great. Maybe there'll come an instance where it'll be useful, but it wouldn't be a compelling reason to get the card. If you want to get the card for the signup bonus or the other ancillary benefits you're going to spend for the travel together ticket, which is already questionable value in my mind, I'd say, but if you're getting it for some of those other reasons, okay, great. Why not?

Nice benefit to have, but certainly not a reason to get the card. Not in my opinion. Yeah, I agree. All right. Well, I don't want to take up any more of your valuable time. Here in paradise. Let's get back to serious vacationing. Right, right. Is it today though? You're not across the dateline, are you, from here? No, I guess not. So let's see. Yeah, it's the 30th here. It's the 30th here so yeah you know it's the same time zone as hawaii

little did i know same time zone as why so that actually made for a good stop on the way here we stopped in hawaii on the way here in order to adjust time a little bit yeah so i i would say again if you're traveling with a family that's a nice little tip spend a couple of days in hawaii i mean twist my arm to have to spend a couple of days in hawaii to begin with comparatively speaking how many flights did it take to get from hawaii to uh where you are right now one so there are only eight airlines that fly well okay two to get to bora bora so there are only eight airlines that fly to french french polynesia period And only four of those fly from the United States, if I remember correctly. But one of them is Hawaiian Airlines.

They fly direct from Honolulu to Papeete, French Polynesia. So it was one flight to French Polynesia, about five and a half hours or so from Hawaii and then from Honolulu. And then you do have to take another flight to get to Bora Bora. The inter-island flights here are all on Air Tahiti. So I did have to take a second flight. Is that like a little tiny plane or is that is that sort of like hawaiian airlines that they have like normal size planes that shuttle people between the islands somewhere in between so the flight we had had 17 rows two on each side of an aisle so not too bad 72 or whatever yeah it's not

a not a puddle jumper puddle jumper but not a big plane big enough that my wife was willing to get on it. Big enough for your wife. That's, that's, that's the criteria. Right. It is. It is. Cause she definitely has a firm line in the sand where she won't hop on a plane if it's too small. And in fact, she saw some of them because they do fly some smaller planes too. She saw some of them at the airport and she said, we're not on that. Right. Cause I'm not getting on that. I said, no, no, no, it's got 17 rows. We're okay.

My wife still talks about the little tiny plane we had to take to get over to Necker Island. My wife has read that post. I loved that plane. I thought it was so much fun. But the pilot that had bare feet or something, right? He had to climb onto the wing and into the and through the window to the pilot seat yeah you see my wife would not do that she'd love to go to necker island but she said there's no way she's doing that plane so you don't have to go on that plane it was just when i booked it there's a lot of reasons but there are bigger planes but yeah anyway um i think we we this has been a great talk, but I think that that's,

I think it's time to call it a, call it a night or a morning for you. Yeah. Since you're so good at doing the sign up, do that thing you do. Well, if you guys are just tuning in, if you're watching this live and you're just tuning in,

of course you'd be able to rewind the video here on Facebook or also take a look at our frequentquentMiler YouTube channel where this will be posted. And it will also be available on all of your favorite podcast formats, both for Android, Apple, and from the web. So you'll be able to look for those links in the week in review post, which comes out every Saturday morning. So that'll be tomorrow morning, August 31st. If you're listening on the podcast, and you'd like to come check out the site, it's thefrequentmiler.com. Again, T-H-E, thefrequentmiler.com. You can also find us on Twitter, at Frequent Miler, or find me on Twitter, at Nick at FM.

And in our Facebook group, the Frequent Miler Insiders, which is a group you'll want to check out if you want to be able to connect with other Points and Miles enthusiasts and get the answers to some of your questions from other readers who are excited about using their points and miles too. So those are all the many places you can find us. Thank you guys very much for watching, for listening in, for commenting. We'll take a look at all those comments afterwards and answer any questions you guys had. And we look forward to seeing you guys again next week. All right. Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye. Thanks, Greg. Take care, everyone. Bye-bye.