Frequent Miler on the Air - Private Island ultra-all-inclusive barefoot luxury: $2,500 rebate | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep345 | 2-13-26

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

In today's podcast, we'll talk about why you might not want to toss out that United credit card mailer, how Bilt has led us to coin a new term, and how Calala Island wants to pay you to book with points!Private Island ultra-all-inclusive barefoot luxury: $2,500 rebateGiant Mailbag(01:21) - Vijay: Using BOA Premier $100 airline fee creditRead more about Amex Airline fee reimbursements hereCard News(05:18) - Fast track to United Silver status with targeted new card offersRead more about the fast track to United Silver status hereMattress Running the Numbers(07:20) - Marriott Earn 2,500 bonus points per stay + 1 bonus elite night per brandRead more about the new Marriott promo hereLearn some shortcuts to Marriott elite status hereBonvoyed: Bilt(12:33) - TBD about denied mortgage paymentsRead more about various Bilt issues here(18:14) - Should we introduce the term "Biltvoyed"?Awards, Points, and More(21:42) - Nick's EU261 compensation claimRead more about Nick's EU261 copensation claim here: https://frequentmiler.com/finnair-flight-booked-with-alaska-atmos-rewards-eu261-claim/(25:38) - Instacart and United team upPrivate Island ultra-all-inclusive barefoot luxury: $2,500 rebate(30:00) - Calala Island: Private island with only 6 villas. All inclusive. "Barefoot luxury" "Ultra-all-inclusive"(37:00) - Two Big Buts...(38:53) - Read about getting to Calala Island here: https://onemileatatime.com/how-to-get-to-calala-island/(43:03) - Derrick Dye at Travel on Points: Read a review about this property here: https://travel-on-points.com/review-calala-island-a-nicaribbean-luxury-property/(47:09) - Is Calala Island worth it?(52:54) - Are we going to visit?(57:41) - Is this a luxury hotel point farms?Read about One Mile at a Time's "Point Farm" concept here: https://onemileatatime.com/insights/hotel-points-farms/Question of the Week(1:09:02) - A question about travel insurance: what do I need on the front end (especially in terms of documentation) to prepare for contingencies?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderMentioned in

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. On today's episode, Built leads us to coin a new term. We'll talk about why you might not want to throw out that United credit card mailer, especially if you're interested in elite status. And Kalala Island wants to pay you to book with points. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, Private Island Ultra All-Inclusive Barefoot Luxury with a $2,500 rebate.

Kalala Island is a resort hotel property that's part of the small luxury hotels of the world collection, which is bookable through Hilton, and you can book it with Hilton points or with Hilton free night certificates. and they are out with a deal where if you book at least a four-night stay, even with points, you can get a $2,500, actually $2,510 dollars back for your stay. It seems like an unbelievable deal. We're going to get into that in today's main event. And if you'd like to jump ahead to that or you want to come back to something later on, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes, just expand the description box,

and you find links to all the topics that we talk about today. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this. Give us a thumbs up. We always appreciate that. Let's drag out this week's Giant Mailbag. Today's Giant Mail comes from Vijay, who says, In your episode on using year-end credits, I'm not sure whether you covered Bank of America's premium rewards cards,

$100 airline incidental credit. I recently utilized the credit just by re-booking my Alaska flight. I wanted to utilize my Amex offer on Alaska Airlines. It was $60 back on $300 or more purchase with Alaska Airlines they had. However, the day I wanted to travel was around $380, but it costs around $310 if I traveled two days later. So I booked the Alaska flight for $310 with my American Express card. then I rescheduled the flight to the day I wanted to fly and paid the difference with my premium rewards card.

So basically they paid about $70 on their premium rewards card to change to the day they actually wanted to fly. That triggered my incidental credit. At the end, I got $60 rebate from Amex and $70 credit from Bank of America. I would have never thought about trying this trick if I hadn't listened to your podcasts. Smart. Well done. Very good. VJ. I like that move. So, yeah, I don't know if we talked about the Bank of America Premium Rewards airline incidental credit. It's one that's relatively easy to use because a lot of stuff is automatic like that. So it's a good one to point out. Though I think now, I'm going to say this wrong. I think it's a card member year benefit and not a calendar year benefit, if I remember correctly.

I got burned by that at some point where I assumed that I was eligible. for it, but then found out I wasn't because I had used it within the card member year, even though it wasn't the same calendar year. So you have to check the terms on that. But otherwise, this is a great technique. This is one. I was just recently looking for an opportunity to do something like this with a different card where I said, oh, well, in fact, it was a frequent miler thing, where frequent miler was going to reimburse my flight for something, but I thought, well, you know, I kind of like to fly first class. And can I, can I later on change to the flight I want and use one of my cards with an airline incidental credit in order to upgrade. And so this is a technique that certainly I

think about when I'm booking things like that. So I think that that's great that you did it. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we have a post about American Express airline fee reimbursements and what works to trigger those because it's not only the things that are advertised to work that work. And doing things like this with an Amex card often will. trigger those reimbursements for like Amex Platinum cards, for example. However, you know, if you want to get ideas for how to trigger things

like this with other cards, the types of things that work for Amex cards tend to also work for cards like the Bank of America card, but it's actually easier because Bank of America works with any airline fees, not just the one that you pick as your primary as as MX requires. Yep, absolutely. Definitely worth checking out that post, though,

because it does vary from one airline to another in terms of what works and how much, perhaps, because the size of the charge might make a difference. There's a lot of little variables. So check that post. If you see something in there listed that works, if it's under the what works sections, that means that we have not gotten a data point saying that it doesn't work. And you can be almost guaranteed that anything that stops working, someone will let us know when it does.

So if you see that it works, it probably does, even if the data point is a little bit older. I always advise people that if it says it works, it probably does. All right. So that clears up that. And so let's move on to this week's card news. So in card news, we've got a fast track to United Silver status with some targeted new card offers. How's that work? Yeah.

People have been getting mailers for signing up for a new United credit card. and the offers look pretty typical. Like, for example, you get up to 80,000 miles, you get 70,000 after spending $3,000 in three months, and then another $10,000 for adding an authorized user. Very typical airline credit card offer. But it adds a little twist, which is that you can get Premier Silver status after you complete four flight segments on United or United Express. in 2026. And a cool thing is award flights count. So it's, you know, if you fly United, just even a moderate amount and you could use silver status. This is, that's a nice little

extra on top of the points for this, that type of card. Yeah. And silver status will get you a free checked bag, although your credit card will probably get you that too. So the nice thing, though, about silver status is you'd get it even if you didn't pay for your flight with your card. United requires, is one of the few out there that does require you pay for your flight with the card in order to get the free checked bag. So having United Silver status would be valuable if you want to be able to pay for your flights with some other card. And of course, you get a chance for some upgrades and preferred seating or all that type of stuff as well. Yes. Yes, exactly. So it's not a lot of benefits above what the card probably gives you automatically, but there are definitely some. And so

that would be nice to have. And especially for those of us who used to get United Silver status from having Marriott titanium status, if you've given up titanium status, then you could be looking forward to other ways to get United Silver. Yep. All right, mattress running the numbers. Marriott, speaking of Marriott titanium status, Marriott is out with a promotion to earn 2,500 bonus points per stay, plus one bonus elite night per brand.

So this is sort of like a brand explorer, I guess, like what Hyatt offers for a brand explorer, except it's a bonus elite night credit for each individual brand, each separate brand you stay at during the promotion period, right? That's right, that's right. So you need to register by April 26, and you need to complete your stay by May 10th,

and no earlier than February 25th, actually. And this one, it's only paid stays. So they're not giving you anything for award stays. So, you know, at a high level, if you look at this 2,500 bonus points per stay, it's not per day. So you're talking about no matter how long the stay is, you're getting only 2,500 bonus points. our reasonable redemption value for Marriott is 0.76 cents per point, which means you're getting about $19 of value from your entire stay, extra beyond what points you would normally earn. So, I mean, we can write off the bat say it's not worth mattress running this deal for the points. But what about for the bonus elite nights?

Would it be worth doing one night stays? So each one night's day, then, you would earn two elite nights towards elite status, two qualifying nights towards elite status, as long as you mix up every time which brand you're staying at. Yeah, I mean, would it be worth it? You know, it depends on, I guess, how much you value those elite nights. You'd have to kind of put a price tag on that. I think if you were able to find a property that's very inexpensive, I don't know,

$60 or $70 a night. and you're able to get this $19-ish back in points plus whatever you would ordinarily earn on this day. I don't know off the top of my head the value of what you'd earn off this day. But let's say it's another $10. So $30 worth of points back. So maybe your net cost you could look at as being something like $40. I say something like because points aren't exactly like cash.

But maybe you click through a shopping portal. So you earn a little something back by clicking through a shopping portal when you make your booking. So, I mean, if you were paying a sort of a net 40-ish dollars for two elite night credits, I mean, $20 a night for elite night credits, maybe not so bad. You know, I wouldn't mattress run all the way to platinum or titanium status for that. But if I feel like I'm going to be a little short of a particular threshold, then I might be willing to do a few. I always caution people, though, about mattress running this early in the year because you don't know what's going to happen the rest of the year. And so, you know, if you end up going way over what you needed for status later on because something comes up, you end up needing some extra hotel stays, you have to travel for work and you didn't realize you're going to have to, et cetera, then it becomes money that you've just kind of flushed if you didn't actually end up needing the elite nights.

So I think it could potentially be okay, but I'd caution most people probably shouldn't be mattress running this. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. there are so many shortcuts to Mariette elite status as well that like, you know, I was going to say something like, well, if you have a stay at a, you know, expensive property coming up, you're going to be at the St. Regis, Bora Bora or something. And so you want Marriottet platinum status in time. So you get free breakfast and everything. Then maybe it makes sense. But you know what? If you have the ability to pick up a Bonvoy Brilliant card, you get platinum status. automatically with that, and that'd be much easier than going around mattress running. So I don't think there's a lot of, I'm sure there are edge case situations where it makes sense to do, but I think for most people, it just doesn't make sense to go out of your way to do this. Yeah, I think actually, to be honest, it would more so potentially be appealing for somebody

looking to fill the gap between 50 and 75 nights. For somebody who really wants titanium status, and at 75 nights you get the ability to select a 40K free night certificate and you get United Silver and what Air Canada, something like United Silver. Canada, 25K status, I think it's well. So if you know you're going to hit 50 or you're pretty confident you're going to hit 50 and doing, you know, five or 10 cheap brands and that's convenient for you and all the rest of that, I don't know, maybe it could be worth putting some money.

But yeah, edge, very edge. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, edge cases. If you're interested in this, then what I really recommend, make sure to read our post about shortcuts to Marriott Elite status. We'll have a link to it in the show notes because, as I said, there are lots of ways to get to where you want to be. And mattress running is just one of many ways. And so it may or may not make sense for you. All right.

Next up, let's talk about being Bonvoy by Built. So Bilt's 2.0 rollout just continues to underwhelm, or I guess, overwhelm. Right, right, but not in the way that one would hope. That's right. We are all overwhelmed by how many problems have occurred with the rollout. And so, you know, we've posted about some more. So we've posted about problems in the past, but now, yeah, we have. We have things happening like built as denying mortgage payments that people are trying to make through the card.

That's supposed to be like one of the top billed features of these cards is ability to do that. They are overall, you know, new account holders are finding that charges they try to make with their credit card are getting denied. And in some cases, their accounts are subsequently being frozen. in people who signed up through the points guy had an offer for an extra five points per dollar on top of the regular welcome bonus for the palladium card. And people who signed up through that link while it was still active, not everybody's getting that offer attached to their account. And they're getting, most people are getting nowhere by going through TPG support.

and even worse, some responses back have been basically like saying, well, there's been so much basically fraud people trying to claim that they signed up under that offer that we're not going to approve it for anyone who complains about it, which is a problem because, you know, we know real people who really click through that link that are not getting the 5x. And that's just the worst policy I can imagine for that. So all of this is just a big mess. Yeah, some of the email exchanges that have been shared with me by people that, you know, long time readers or longtime points in miles folks, it just made me shake my head as to what the thought process is behind how to respond to those because they're folks that I know aren't trying to game the system.

But way, they're just being treated that way. Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It just, it doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of the response. And crazy stuff like denying mortgage payments. We've seen some posts now from people who have their mortgage through Bill's mortgage partner, that United Mortgage Service, whatever UWM or whatever it might be. People that have their mortgage through that had their payment declined as a non-housing payment, it's going to their mortgage partner.

Come on now. that just it's mind-blowing that there are those types of problems because some of those things are things that one would think could have been easily anticipated and so you know like the charges being denied and accounts being frozen and and that all happening on a Saturday and a Sunday because the card got launched on a Saturday like you had to know that a lot of people were going to start using their card on the first day that you promised the seamless transition right so so you'd think that you'd have the systems in place to be able to handle that and and take care of of clearing fraud alerts and stuff and just didn't seem that way. And again, with the, the, TPG offer, not attaching properly for people and not having, again, a clear mechanism to get that figured out. And more importantly, a clear tracking system so that it would just work automatically like it does with almost every credit card on the market. That's mind blowing to me. So it's

unfortunate now. And I mean, in my household, my wife's palladium card worked on day one, only used it one time the first day. But then we went to use the $10 in built cash for a $10 Walgreens gift card. And it seemed like it worked. It looked like it generated. It says, hey, congratulations. And it has like the asterisks where the card number would be. And you can click a button to reveal the card number. And when you click that button, it reveals the card number. Card number is none. Be careful what you reveal on the show. Nick, people might go out and spend your $10. Right. Believe it or not, Walgreens didn't know how to redeem a gift card with no gift card number belt. So, yeah, anyway. So stuff like that is stuff that you think would be tested and ready to rock and roll. So it's disappointing that all of that has happened because it's a card that I do, you know, we talked to last week. It could be a good fit for some folks. But man, if you're in that crowd, you probably haven't been too impressed with all of those things that and I don't want to hear Bill, refer to it as noise, because it's.

It's not noise. It's pretty real. This is real. It's real, very problematic stuff happening. You know, I think we both came to the conclusion. So Bill 2.0 lets you explicitly allows you to pay rent or mortgage for other people. And my original plan, when this stuff was first announced, was to pay rent for some other family members. But I think we discussed maybe last week that, you know, Sing Stand right now, that's not

something, it's certainly not something I'm going to do. I think, Nick, right? You said you weren't going to do. You know, because of all the problems with the rollout, we wouldn't trust built with these rent payments at this time. And what's happening with the mortgage payments makes, you know, that look so, you know, absolutely the right answer. It's, yeah, it's, it's really awful. So we've been calling this segment, bond void for, for years next. now because Marriott introduced the term Bonvoy years ago, and they subsequently went on to make lots of very customer unfriendly changes to the rewards program. And so Bonvoid became, you know, a description for when programs do that. And someone in our team, I don't know if it was you, Nick, someone talked about this. It was, yeah, talked about what's happening now as being built void.

And my thought about that is that there's a slight difference here. So bond void, I think, is when programs deliberately make customer unfriendly changes. All this built stuff, or most of it, is not deliberate changes to what they're promising. It's just incompetent rollout of all this stuff, right? So I think there's a difference between being Bonvoid and Built Void and a lot of us are being heavily. built void these days. heavily built void. I did coin the term. I did not come up with the distinction there, but I think that that is a perfect distinction. So yes, errors due to incompetence

definitely is being built void. And like you could you could go back to like things that happened last year with other other programs like, you know, city built void a bunch of people initially with a strata elite rollout when they lock their accounts, right? Right. Now they made up for that. They just didn't know it. They were very forward thinking with that move. They were. They didn't even know what they were doing, but they were billed-voying before it was a popular. Well, they didn't know what they were doing, which is what they were doing. They were bill-voying people. Right. But then take like when Chase suddenly decided that the edit no longer would automatically get two cents per point redemption value. Like sometimes you will, but sometimes you won't. And then they pretended that that was always their plan. land all along. That's bond void because that's an intentional program devaluation. It's not incompetence

except decision-making incompetence, I guess, but not in the rollout of the change. Right. Right. And there we yeah. So there we there you have it. There you have it. In terms of like paying rent and mortgage, that's something that maybe I'll consider down the road once this all gets smoothed out because I have to imagine they'll smooth it out. I'm really disappointed that that wasn't all worked out ahead of time and ready to rock and roll. I imagine eventually, hopefully it'll get. But even when I do, I would make sure that anything that needs to get paid is paid well in advance of whatever the deadline is.

And that's my practice in general. We've talked on a recent episode, I think it was 343 where we talked about ways we increased spend. And one of the things I said I do is I pay a car payment for a family member. And I schedule that car payment to deliver weeks before it's due because if anything ever goes wrong with it, I want to know well ahead. So I get the email that the payment has gone through and I take a screenshot of it when it has and I have a reminder set up. So if I haven't received that email, I'll know.

So I think that's good practice in general with stuff like this. But yeah, I'm going to hold off on anything like that until they smooth out my Walgreens gift card because if that's a problem, then I'm not ready to jump into anything else. All right. Let's talk about awards points and more. And awards points and more this week, I wrote a. about my EU-21 compensation claim with Finair. So we talked on the show while back how in December we had a delayed Finair flight that led to a misconnection, and so had to overnight in Helsinki

and take a flight the next day. And under EU-261 regulations, that meant that we reduced some compensation, or at least I assumed so. Finair had provided a free hotel and meals and all the stuff that they would be required to under EU-261. They proactively made that part really easy, I've talked about that before I was impressed with how simple that was. But then as my, as per my read of the terms of EU 261 and the notification I got from the Tripit app, identifying this, I thought that we were due 400 euros a passenger,

400 euros per person, so 1,600 euros for four people in this case in compensation. Now, I had booked my fin air flights, the fin air flights here via Alaska Atmos for $7,500 miles and $5.60 each way. That doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how you booked. it because it was within the EU in this case. There are other situations where it'll apply if you're departing the EU, et cetera, et cetera. But in this case, it was 400 euros a person for the distance.

And it was super easy to do. It was possible to do it all online. I didn't have to call anybody. I didn't have to have any screenshots. I didn't have to upload any documentation apart from. They did require a power of attorney for him if you were going to file on behalf of the other passengers on the PNR and the other people on the same record locator, which was easy. provided a link to the form to download it and print it and you just needed to fill in name, date of birth, sign it kind of a thing, authorizing the primary passenger to file the claim and receive the compensation. So it was very easy to do. It took me, I don't know, maybe 10 minutes to file the claim, if that. And then the way they handle it, Finair handles it in a way

that probably a number of airlines do, they would rather not give you the money. And so they first give you the option to accept an airline credit, but they know you're not going to take 1,600 euros in airline credit. In this case, that's what we were doing, 1600 euros. They knew we wouldn't take 1,600 euros in airline credit over 1,600 euros in the bank. So they offer 50% more in the airline credit. So they offered 2,400 euros in gift card credit. Now, the way Finair does it is you have to take it in gift card form initially. So we received a gift card for 2,400 euros for $1,400.

in air. And then within the email that provides the gift card, they provide a link to convert that to cash. So if you'd rather have cash, you can get your cash, but of course, you're only going to get the, in this case, the 1600 that I was due, 400 euros of passenger. So if you convert to cash, you're going to take the lesser amount, which was fine with us. That's more than $1,900 at the current exchange rate for four passengers. So that was plenty to cover our costs and needs for that situation. So again, very impressed with how easy it was. Took about 10 minutes to file the claim, took about two weeks to receive a response. And first response was, we're sorry, we're going to pay the claim out. And you'll get a separate email with the gift card in a few days. A few days later,

sure enough, received the email with the gift cards. I was patient at each step along the way. I didn't follow up with a million messages asking, you know, what's the status of the claim? How come nobody's responded? But when am I going to get my gift card? I just left it all to see what would happen naturally. And so not doing anything meant no stress for me and it all just happened. So if you run into that situation with thin air, it was pretty easy to handle. Yeah. So that's so good when those kind of things work out. And especially if it's easy, that's, that's fantastic. Yeah. So good to know. And so something to keep in mind when you're traveling around Europe or from Europe and something goes wrong. Let's see if you're entitled to

some money. Yeah. All right. Next up, we have a Instacart deal. United has teamed up with Instacart and they're offering up to the ability to earn up to 10,500 miles if you're new to Instacart. So you could earn 500 bonus miles just by linking your Instacart account to your United Mileage Plus account and placing your first qualifying Instacart order within 60 days of doing that. You will also earn 5,000 bonus miles after completing four qualifying Instacart orders within eight weeks of linking your account. So those two seem pretty darn easy.

5,500 bonus miles right there just for being a new Instacart user. Next part, though, earned 5,000 bonus miles when subscribing to an annual Instacart Plus membership. So if you're interested in paying for an Instacart membership, then that's good. But there have been many deals lately for getting kind of three months at a time a free Instacart Plus membership just by linking various Chase cards, for example, and they stack together to extend your Instacart Plus membership. So personally, if I was looking at this, I wouldn't go for that part of the deal.

You also get $0 delivery fees for seven days before a qualifying United domestic flight and up to 14 days afterwards. So there's some, you get sort of a discount there by not having paid delivery fees for a little while. Yeah, I mean, that's actually kind of cool. I like that. That's a smart way to kind of tie it in with the brand, I think. It's a unique idea that I haven't seen elsewhere. And I'd love to see some other of the Chase co-brands.

Think of something like that. It'd be nice to see that. Anyway, yeah, I think. So the thing for me with Instacart is I had mostly ignored the Instacart stuff for a long time because we don't have a grocery store like in my town. There's some grocery stores 30 miles away. but then I got a plan in advance. And my thought about it for a long time was like, eh, for $10, it wasn't necessarily worth it.

Now I say $10 because most Chase co-branded cards, or I think all the co-branded cards, offer a $10 monthly credit for Instacart purchases. It's not even a credit. It's a discount. So it's like a coupon that comes off of the total. And you can link multiple Chase co-branded cards. So like we've got our Southwest cards and our Ritz card and our IHG card

and all of that. in one Instacard account, both my wife and mine, they don't let you do more than one of the same card type in an individual account, but you could do a bunch of different cards. So we got a whole bunch of them and ink cards, also the no-fee ink cards, get some credits. So I finally started saying, you know what? This is too much money to pass up getting all these credits each month.

And it's not quite free, but it works out to be a decent discount on my groceries. So I finally did that. And so if you're in that boat like me where you were like, eh, I don't know about Instacart, but you have a United card, it might be worth checking this out because you get three months of free Instacart Plus anyway by virtue of having your United Card and linking that up through the promotion. We have links in our post about that.

You'll get $10 off your first order each month when you're using that card. And pretty easy to hit the minimums here. You need four qualifying orders within eight weeks. So, I mean, you're getting a $10 coupon in the first month and a $10 coupon in the second month. So I think it'd be pretty easy to only have to pay for one or two. And if you've got multiple qualifying chase cards, then it might not cost you very much at all to earn 5,500 miles here.

I wouldn't bother, like Greg said, with the annual thing. But otherwise, this is pretty easy. To be clear, though, we do think that you'd have to do it in the right order of, of like, sign up for this promotion first as a new Instacart user, then add your other chase cards to, extend your Instacart Plus membership and to get additional coupons. I think that would be required to make all that stack. Good point.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. But an easy 5500 miles to stack on top. So if you've been sitting on the sidelines on that and you're ready to hop in Instacart, might as well pick up your 5500 miles along the way. Mm-hmm. All right.

We'll be right back with our main event, the Kalala Island $2,500 deal after this. We hope you're enjoying the frequent miler on the air podcast. Did you know that Frequent Miler is also a website? At Frequentmyler.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, best credit cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to Frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for free. And we're back in its main event time. Private Island Ultra All Inclusive Barefoot Luxury with a $2,500 rebate. Kalala Island.

It's a private island that only has six villas. It's all-inclusive. They advertise themselves as offering barefoot luxury and also describe their offerings as ultra all-inclusive, I think because it's more than just food and drink that's included. it's also various activities and things. And they are available to book through Hilton, and you could use points or free night certificates, and we'll get more. We'll go into that some more in a moment.

But the reason this made our main event is because they are celebrating their 10-year anniversary with a big promotion. They are offering guests who book before May 10th, 2,500. actually $2,510. I don't know why they text on an extra $10. $2,510 for booking for staying four nights or more. And the rule is that you have to book before May 10th. You have to stay by June 10th, 2027.

So you've got well over a year for your stay from now. And amazing thing is that award stays count. So you can book through Hilton, book with points or whatever, and you should be eligible for that rebate. Cash rates, though, started around $4,500 a night. So if you're looking at this like, wow, what a great rebate off a cash stay. Not really, because four-night stay is going to cost you $18,000. And so the $2,500 is not going to seem very significant in light of that. That's a little more than 10%, I guess.

But yeah, right, right. Not my style to spend $18,000 on four nights. Let's put it down by. But Nick, tell us about Hilton award prices and how, even if you want to pay with cash, you could do much better than $18,000. Yeah. So this property goes for 240,000 points per night for a standard room. Now, I say that, and of course, Hilton is dynamic.

So that could change. It could be more or less when you listen to this. I don't know if and when it'll change at all. But at the time we're recording this anyway, 240,000 points per night or you can use free night certificates. I'll come back to that in a second. If you're using points, then a four-night stay or a five-night stay either way would cost you 960,000 points.

The reason I say either way is because if you have Hilton Silver status or better, which is pretty easy to get from lots of different avenues, then you get the fifth night free on award stays. So you'd be able to pay for four nights and stay for five. So 960,000 Hilton points is a pretty good deal there because you can often, including now as we record this, buy Hilton points for half a cent per point. So 960,000 points would cost you about $4,800 or in fact, $4,800 even. Now, I don't know if you can buy that many in a single account, but Hilton allows you to pool with up to 10 people. So you could have a few people in your family, each buy whatever the max is in order to come up with the 960,000 points. So it cost you $4,800 to buy the 960,000 points. So if you were to do that, if you were to

buy all the points you need for this day, don't have any Hilton points to start. You'd spend $4,800 on points. You'd get a $2,500 rebate, $2510 is Greg notes. So you're going to pay about $2,300 for potentially five nights. So it's about $460 a night. That's really cheap compared to the cash rate of $4,500 a night. Yeah. And it's really cheap, too, for an all-inclusive luxury, you know, property that's on a private island with only six, you know, individual bungalows kind of thing. So, you know, from that point of view, it sounds like an amazing deal. For those wondering, if you you might have free night certificates, but maybe not enough to do the full four nights. So maybe you want to do a combination of free nights and points.

You do want to get it all on one booking, which you can't do online with your free nights. But what you can do is either call Hilton or online chat with them and tell them you want to book these four. four nights and apply, let's say, two of your free night certificates and apply points to the rest of it. And that will all be booked as a single stay and we'll qualify for this. Yeah. Now, be aware that if you do that, if you mix free night certificates and points, you won't qualify for the fifth night free based on your free night certificates anyway. So if you were to try to book, say, five nights and pay for, you know, two with points and two with free night certificates and get the fifth night free, it doesn't work like that.

To get the fifth night free, you need to pay for five nights with points entirely. Now, you could do five nights with points and two nights on free night certificates, and you'd pay for four nights worth of points plus your two free night certificates. But they can't be part of the fifth night free. And that's universal. That's true with all the various programs that offer something like that. So you can't mix in the free night certificates for that type of thing. And the free night deals have to be paid for with points.

Right. Another limitation, does it still exist, uh, that Hilton requires. like silver status are better to do fifth night free? I thought so. I mentioned that before. As far as I know, it does. So yeah,

yeah, so you'll need Hilton silver status, which is relatively easy. I mean, if you've got a platinum card, you've got Hilton gold status or you can't anyway. You need to activate it, but that would give you Hilton gold status.

The Hilton surpass card gives Hilton gold status. And Hilton silver status itself only requires, I don't know, not that many nights. So it's not terribly difficult to get. Hilton often does status matching. So plenty of easy ways to get a level of status. with Hilton that you would need.

And in fact, silver status might even be a benefit of another Hilton card. I can't recall off the top of my head, whether the no fee card comes with it or not, but it might. At any rate, it's pretty easy to get that deal. So sounds pretty good, right? I mean, if you were just buying the points, $4,800 to buy the points, you get $2,500 back, pay $23 out of pocket. So $4.60 a night, which Greg made the great point that for such an exclusive sort of luxury, all-inclusive type of experience is a pretty good deal. And that's not even mentioning all of the stuff that's included, which we'll come back to in a little bit.

Because like Greg said, it's not just like food and drink that's included. There's also some epic transfer that is. That's right. Transfers are included. The, yeah, I mean, at a high level, this looks too good to be true, right? You're talking about you can book this $4,500 per night property for less than $500, even if per night. even if you don't, even if you don't have any Hilton points to begin with, you could get them by buying them during a sale and then book it. Like so, you know, at the high level, that's what it looks like.

Of course, the devil's in the details. And I want to mention two huge butts here. Like, but, but, but, wait, but, but, there's this. But the first big but is that there's a 90 day lock-in period. What I mean by that is you get free cancellations on these bookings until 90 days before the stay. And then what they do is they charge you up until 29 days before the stay. They'll charge you 50% of the total stay if you cancel. And I believe that's going to be based on the cash rate, not the points rate, is my understanding.

And then if it's within 28 days of the stay, they'll charge 100%. And so, I mean, you don't want to be paying $18,000. Or if it's a five-night stay, I guess it would be 22. Anyway. Or even if it is just the points, even if it is just because I remember when the Montana ranch place came out, there was a 20% cancellation penalty. did charge that in the form of points. They took 20% of points away from people. So it may actually be the points here.

But even if it is, still, your point stands. You don't want to lose 960,000 points on this. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. So if you're going to do this, make sure you're committed.

And if you're sure you're committed, make sure you've read or watch videos or listen to people talk about how you get to and from the island. Because that's the other big butt, right? That's the other big butt. It's an adventure. That's what we've been told. It's an adventure. At a high level, you need to fly to Managua and overnight there so that you can take a very early morning domestic flight, then a car ride and then a two-hour riverboat with in between the two hours as a government security checkpoint.

So it's an adventure. And I wanted to read One Mile at Times view of this. Ben at One Mile of Time wrote about how he and his husband did this trip, and his husband Ford said, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever voluntarily put myself through. And then Ben goes on to say, you spend the first hour going through. And then he's talking about the boat. ride itself, the two-hour boat rife. You spend the first hour going through mangroves and lagoons, which sounds nice, except you're going really fast to the point that your eyes are watering

and you can barely look outside, even with sunglasses. I spent most of the boat ride just looking down. The boat just constantly hits the water over and over and over. It's physically painful. Make sure you put on lots of sunscreen since there's no shade. Similarly, if it rains, you're exposed to all the elements and weather in this region changes very quickly. Your bags are put into plastic bags and trash bags so they don't get wet and you're given a poncho. And then so that's just the start. That's the first half of the boat ride. The boat is by the way, it's just like an open, you know, metal like. Yeah. Imagine a canoe with a, yeah, with a motor. Or rowboat. It looks kind of like a row boat. There you go. Ro boat. Yes. Row your boat, but with a motor.

Yeah, yeah. So then he says when you get out of the mangroves area, you arrive at a military checkpoint where armed military offers check your boat very carefully to make sure you're not bringing anything you shouldn't be. I guess this is the coastal entry point to Nicaragua, which is why this is there. That took about 15 minutes. And then you go into the open sea. OMFG. I'm not going to say what that stands for. Oh, no. Here's the thing. And I'm still quoting, Ben. A rough boat ride is kind of fun. for like five minutes or maybe 10 minutes tops, but you spend the first 60 minutes of the ride with the boat constantly hitting the water every couple seconds, and then the last 45 minutes or so is spent just rocking back and forth to the point that you wonder if you're going to make it. When we were on the open sea,

Ford started asking me already about what the other options were for leaving Kala Island as he was seasick and had terrible back pain. We asked Shorevin, who was the guy escorting them, if the roughness was normal, and he said it was, noting it was actually a fairly calm day. Yeah. So, you know, if you haven't been on a small boat like that on an open ocean before,

let me tell you that you've got to be ready for that. Some people are good with that, and I'm not in that category of people. We were in Montenegro, actually, over the summer last year, and we took a boat tour to the Blue Lagoon, which is like one of the things, if you look up on, I don't know, whatever lists of things are to do, that's the kind of the thing there in Cotor. Big mistake. Big mistake for us. Because you're in the Bay and it's exactly like Ben describes this. You're in the bay just bam, bam, bam, bam, bam for the first however long it was. And then you hit the

open ocean. And you were thinking in the Bay that it was kind of rough. And then you hit the open ocean and it was just a whole new ball game. And so yeah, that was not my idea of a good time. However, however, like I read that and I got a good laugh and I was like, okay, this is not the thing for me. But not everybody has that perspective. In fact, there are many people out there who think that it's kind of part of the fun, right? Right, right. I think it's worth reading what Derek Die at Travel On Points had to say about his experience arriving at the island. Do you want to read this part? Yeah, so Derek says the beauty of this ultra, all-inclusive property is that once your free cancellation window closes at 90 days prior to this day, Kalala Islands team jumps in and plans,

pays for and supervises all aspects of your Nicaraguan transportation. All transfers, including the boat rides and inter-Nicaraguan airplane tickets, are included. Approximately 30 days before our stay, we received an email requesting international flight details, our passports, our food and beverage requests, any food and beverage preferences, restrictions, or allergies. The staff assured us that they'd take care of all aspects of our intra-Nicaraguan travel and escorted us throughout our journey. So that already sounds pretty luxurious in terms of everything is going to be handled. and then he went on to talk about the boat ride itself and say that the boat ride itself was very uneventful.

Broken into two parts, first hour is riding through the mangroves on the river to a small village called Pearl Lagoon. The water was like glass the entire hour and was extremely smooth. We were also surprised to see a couple dozen monkeys in the trees. They weren't so excited to see us, so they didn't get any pictures of that. Then they go on to say after an hour, we reached the Pearl Lagoon. We were served breakfast, which was a bottle of water, an apple, a cold tortilla, filled with egg, cheese, and ham.

afterwards Jake took us for a tour of the small village, which you learned as his hometown. While the village of about 300 people is tiny, it serves as a home base for most of Kalala Island staff. After a 30 to 40-minute break, we set off for the final leg to Kalala Island. Once we were off from there, a quick five-minute boat ride to the Nicaraguan military checkpoint at the mouth of the river. This naval base helps deter drug smuggling via the river system. This checkpoint took only a few minutes, and we're not questioned at all or asked for our passports. after leaving the naval checkpoint, we reached the sea a few minutes later. It was a very calm day and the water was very nice. We arrived to Kala Island promptly at 11 a.m., which is our targeted time frame from the phone call with Claudia the night before and one hour after departure from Pearl Lagoon.

So Derek describes it as a pretty easy situation. And a number of readers commented too that have been and said to them that's part of the adventure. And it certainly does look pretty adventurous. If you take a look at the pictures and things. So I can totally see where that would be, you know, that would have some appeal for some folks. And Derek actually ran into him at an event and he talked about this with me for a little bit and talked about how much they loved it. They had a great time to plow Island and he'd gladly go back kind of a thing. So I think that there's definitely two schools of thought here.

Now, I do want to mention he highlights in there arriving promptly at 11 a.m. when they expected. I want to highlight the fact, though, that I think you have to show up at the airport at like 5.30 in the morning to get this process started. So it is still like five and a half hours from the time you get to Managua to the time you get to the island. No, I shouldn't even say the time you get to Monagua because you have to overnight in Managua and then get back to the airport at 5.30 in the morning to start this. So it is a bit of an involved process. Right, right, right. It's definitely extremely remote. So even if you're like if you're coming from the Americas, like it seems like more difficult to get there.

than like a, you know, island in Southeast Asia. Because generally you could get much closer to the island, you know, in Southeast Asia with a flight. Anyway, so, yeah. That's all. I find it fascinating how different those two takes are. And I think it's worth, it's worth, like, if you're going to do it, you know, be familiar with these different takes because certainly many people, if they just read one mile of time would be like, no way. whereas, you know, and they might miss out on great experience, the flip side is, if you just read Travel on Points and you have an experience like Ben's, you might be like, oh my God, what did I get myself into? So it can go either way.

All right. So let's discuss this. Is Colala Island worth it? So given that it's an adventure to get there, whether you like that adventure or not, it's an adventure, right? What about the experience on the island? Is it worth it? And so, you know, there are tons of reviews out there for the island, and they range from great to middling to poor, as any property does. I'm going to read first just when we posted about this $2,500 deal, a commenter, Kurt S.

wrote on our post, I just got back from Kalala on February 6. So that's really recent. And in my opinion, this is an insane deal. Six total units, but each is a standalone house with your own private beach area. Layer in the fact that is all inclusive for less than $500 per night for two people. There is no AC, but there are ocean breezes. They have tiny bugs like mosquitoes, but provide custom-made bug spray that smells great and is easy to reapply. Food was fantastic and the bar had a decent selection. The trip from MGA to the island and back is an adventure, so if you don't see travel that way, this place wouldn't be a good fit.

You know, I thought that was a nice balance. Yeah. So clearly, Kurt loved the experience, had a great experience, but, you know, admits that it's probably not for everyone because of the sort of adventure aspects. I also looked at TripAdvisor, and the average TripAdvisor review is 4.7 with, you know, the majority of reviews gave five stars, and there was a handful, there were just a few four stars, a few three stars, and one, one star. I'm going to read parts of a five star and parts of a three star to give you some balance here. The five star one is from Kevin P. who wrote, we had an amazing holiday experience from the most of the most of the most of the most. moment you are met at the airport and transported by flight and boat, the care and attention

of the team is first class. The transportation too from the island was part of the adventure and was a wonderful experience. The hospitality and food and drinks that the team provided was memorable, and they all created so many happy memories that will last with us forever. Nothing was ever a problem, and even the bugs were not a major issue as there was repellent provided everywhere you went. The team made themselves available every day to take us out on their boat for fishing trips that were fantastic and they were a great company. We managed to see baby turtles that had hatched and it was a truly magical experience. And we would recommend this once in a lifetime trip to anyone thinking about it.

Okay. The three-star example comes from Stacey S. who had booked with Hyatt points when S.L.H used to partner with Hyatt. Stacey S. writes, the website makes it seem like this is an ultra luxurious five-star private island resort like the Maldives. It is a beautiful little island in the remote regions of Nicaragua. They do a very good job taking care of the island, but this is more like a three-star resort at best. The room was equivalent to glamping. If I was someone who paid the cash rate to stay here, I would have been

extremely upset with what I received. It's a unique property and has its charm, but also issues. Would I stay here again? Probably not. Did we enjoy our time? Yes. Did I feel like it was, I was sold something else? Yes. Yeah. So that's, you know, I think that's, that's the thing. I think how you're going to feel about that is going to vary quite a bit. I think Stacey's review there is also very fair and balance. It's interesting because, you know, you look at Kurt's review that we mentioned from the blog where he said, this is an insane deal. Really had a great time, but balancing it out, saying, well, there's no AC, and there are bugs. They give you the repellent, blah, blah.

So he kind of hits both sides of it there in a positive overall kind of note or a positive tone. And Stacey is sort of on the flip side of that, where it's also pretty balanced. Like, did we enjoy our time? Sure. You know, would I go again? No, probably not. And did I feel like, I think that last part is really the part that stuck out to me.

Did I feel like I was sold something else? And she said yes. And so I think that's probably the most important thing if you're considering Kala Island is to understand what you're getting because I think it probably is easy for it to seem misrepresented or represented differently than than what the experience might actually feel like. And I think if you know what you're getting, then you may love this. And this could be an amazing, amazing deal. If you're thinking about it like the luxury Maldives property, then my take on all the

reviews I've read is that you'll probably be a little disappointed if that's what you're expecting. Yeah, exactly. You know, and I think, you know, Stacey mentioned glamping as a negative, but, you know, a lot of people like having that combination of like sort of not luxury, but, you know, the things you're used to having, having real, you know, toilets and things and good food prepared for you. But at the same time, being out in nature and enjoying, you know, enjoying nature. And this sounds to me like more like that than, you know, more, yeah, more, you know, designed experience as you would get, typically in a resort in the Maldives. So I think a lot of people would like that and obviously a lot of people wouldn't. All right. So now that we know a lot about what to expect here, I want to know now.

Are you going to take advantage of this deal? Absolutely not. No, not me, you know, for a few reasons. So first off, I read one mile at times review of the transfer experience to my wife, and that sealed the deal that will never go. She had no interest in that, nor would I, to be honest, I don't love boats to begin with, and two hours on a rowboat with a motor does not sound like a good time to me at all,

whatever is at the other end of that. I'm not sure that I can imagine the thing at the other end of that that would be appealing enough for me to do that. So the whole transfer experience is just, it's too many steps for me to get to a beautiful beach. There are a lot, there's so many beautiful beaches and I love a beautiful beach as much as anybody that I know. I love beautiful remote tropical beaches. It seems like a little bit more effort than I want to go to for just that. So the transfer experience kind of has me out to begin with. And I don't necessarily love the, you know, no AC and lots of bugs. I mean, all that stuff is sort of comes with the bugs and stuff.

That comes with being in a tropical environment. You're going to get that anywhere to some extent. No AC. I, you know, I like to be comfortable when I go to sleep at night. And ocean breeze might do it. It might not, depending on the weather, being uncovered on the boat for a couple hours to get there to. There's too many things, too many little things that put me off on this and too many other places that I am interested in going. So it's not for me.

however, I can completely recognize that it would be for some people. And I think maybe when we were younger, I think maybe when we were, if we had been into miles and points in our 20s and this had popped up, I think maybe we probably had more sense of adventure and would have been more into it. These days, I just don't think that's where we are. So I'm not probably going to do this, but it does look pretty cool. And for the price, there's part of me that wanted to do it, just for the sake of doing it, being able to write about it and explain my experience with it, but not enough to actually do it.

What about you, Greg? You're going to check this one out for us? I am not going to, unless something strange happens with my marriage. So similar to you. So last night, I discussed this with my wife about, like, this amazing deal, but then I explain the whole transfer thing because she sounded interested at first, but then, you know, once I explain how the transfer works, she's like, no way. And to go back a little bit, you know, not everyone may know this, but years ago, I used Virgin Atlantic points, 1.2 million to go to Necker Island with my wife.

And that was an amazing experience. And part of getting there is, it was for us, it doesn't have to be, but was for us a tiny six-seater plane from, I think it was from Puerto Rico to, to Beef Island. And I enjoyed that little rickety plane and flying there. And it was only 20 or 30 minutes. My wife hated it. She was like trying to remember if our son knew where the will was and things like that. Fair, fair.

And that was only, you know, half an hour or less. So the idea of subjecting her to that for, not that, but, two hours of the boat plus however long the plane transfer on the little plane, all of that just sounds like stuff that my marriage might not survive that. Now, in fairness, Greg, I did read in one of the reviews. I don't remember if it was Derek dies or if it was one mile at a time. But I did read that so the domestic flight you take from Managua, Managua, of course, Nicaragua, you take that domestic flight to I think it's called Bluefields.

And then from there, that's where you take the taxi and then the boat. I did read that it is an option to take a helicopter from Bluefields. So I think it costs $18,000. So you could do that if you would rather. Maybe it was, I think it was one mile of time that wrote about that. So maybe the number has gone up because prices have probably risen since one mile of time wrote about this. So it's possible it even costs a little more. But that's your alternative.

So if you're looking at this and you're like, is there another option? There you go. Yeah. Hey, once Blade helicopter takes over that route, we can use our built cash to try to book that and hopefully not cash on the crash on the cash. Okay. So, yeah, so neither of us are going, although I do think that I think I would enjoy it. I just don't think it's right for my wife. But this whole situation brings to my mind the topic of what one mile time coined.

I think, as luxury hotel point farms. This is something that we posted about on a, we have these posts called Saturday selections where we post a collection of things from around the web. And we had a post with discussion about this idea of luxury hotel point farms. This is where hotels that lean on loyalty program participation to fill their hotels basically, rather than winning guests by the merit of the product that they provide.

So I'm wondering, you know, this whole thing makes me think that's what's going on here. And it's really tied into with the economics of how the Hilton partnership with SLH works and how these things typically work is that typically when people book a hotel with points, The hotel will get paid for that room based on their occupancy rate at that time. So if they're full or close to full, let's say 90%, I don't know the exact numbers, they might get what the rack rate is for that room from the loyalty program or close to that rack rate, let's say 10% off, whatever. But if they're only like 50% full, they'll get a very small percentage,

of that, right? So what's happening, I believe, you have these small properties, like in this case, only six villas, where filling it up so that it's always at 90% occupancy is fairly easy to do if you make it very attractive to people who have points. And so I think that what's going on here is that Kalala Island was smart enough to recognize this situation and say, well, I think a couple of things happen. One, I think that their cash rates got inflated over the years because of this whole thing. Like, they're not trying to attract paid guests. They're trying to attract loyalty program guests primarily, right?

And so, you know, even getting 50% of the rack rate of $4,500 or more. is pretty good when you consider that I remember when they were with Hyatt, I think my memory tells me the rates were more around 2,200, maybe 2,400 a night. So they've doubled the rates over, now yes, there's inflation, but that's a lot. And I think what they're doing is basically trying to be attractive to Hilton participants so that Hilton people will book it and that they'll fill up. That doesn't mean it's a bad hotel. It just means that someone looked at it and said, wow, we could be like nearly 100% full all the time if we make ourselves very attractive to people with points. And I think that this promotion is probably, if not originally conceived

over this reason, it certainly does that. And I think that they'll find that it's a genius move because they're going to fill up their little island for most of the year, probably, and get close to full rack rate for that whole time, which is just insane. So what do you think? Do you think that's what's going on here? I mean, it's got to be, right? It seems like really smart business. So if their rate is $4,000 a night to keep the numbers simple,

and they're getting 75% back from Hilton when they're pretty close to free, that's $3,000 a night. So if they get you to book a four-night stay, just four nights, they're getting $12,000. So if they rebate you $2,500, they're still getting, what's that? I said, don't forget the $10, $25, $20. They rebates you $25,10. They're still getting, you know, more than $9,000, $9,500 for $9,490, if you want to be. That's it, Greg.

That's pretty good for four nights than Nicarious. agua probably, you know, that probably covers their cost and then some. It seems like smart business to me. Now, they used to have four villas. They've expanded to six. Part of me wonders where the cutoff is for occupancy for Hilton. And if that was an intentional move, like with this five out of six villas, that's like 83% occupancy. Is that like where they need to be for their reimbursement? I don't know. I'd be interested to see or to look at some of the luxury properties and see what the kind of minimum number of rooms seems to be, because I wouldn't be shocked if that has something to do with it.

But yeah, I mean, that seems to me like it's got to be what's happening. And brilliant, whatever a business person came up with this, like, that was a great idea, whoever recognized that possibility. And particularly with the move to Hilton, now I can't imagine that that was all like pre-planned and thought out. But for SLH, this has to work out really. well because Hilton sells their points so cheaply. Like when they were partnered with Hyatt, okay, the same kind of thing could work, but Hyatt points are harder to accumulate. And so

probably not quite as easy to get as many people with lots of points, but Hilton points are so easy to accumulate that as we mentioned on this show wrote in our post and probably I didn't read everybody else's post, but probably any other Miles and Points blogger that wrote about this, probably pointed out the fact that you could buy the points really cheaply from Hilton. So yeah, I mean, It seems like that's got to be what's going on here. It does. And even if it's not, I mean, it would be kind of crazy for other small luxury properties not to do something like this themselves. A property could, if they charge enough, a big enough cash rate and they get a big enough percentage of it, they could pay you exactly what it costs you for the points to book a stay with them and still come out way ahead.

You know, it's possible. Now, if that happens with a lot of properties, that's not going to be sustainable for Hilton, right? I mean, it's already probably not sustainable. And that's why we've seen this spiraling inflation in the top level of Hilton point costs. So before all this started, the top, most expensive property costs 150,000 Hilton points. They acquired SL or they partnered with SLOH and then soon after it went up to 200,000. And then soon after that, it went up to 250,000 the most. It seems to me that as this starts happening more, which seems inevitable to me,

they're going to have to raise that cap more and more. And maybe cap free night certificates, which would be a real shame. It would be a real shame. So I hope that doesn't happen at the same time, you know, worth keeping an eye out for things like this because I never would have anticipated this type of promotion, but it probably, as we've said, makes a lot of economic sense. And like Greg said, if there's no other SLH owner out there paying attention to this, I'd be shocked. So it does seem like something that maybe we would see again. Now, I can't imagine that Hilton's going to love that. So I don't know how that'll all get

worked out, but I have to assume that the reimbursement rates and things are probably negotiated and contracted. So I don't know, I don't know exactly what would happen that would change is apart from raising the award rates like Greg said. So jump on a deal like this when you see it if you're interested because I can't imagine it's going to last for years like this, you know. Yeah, yeah. One interesting thing I found when reading some of the TripAdvisor reviews of the island

is that they seem to have another trick for filling up their island if these reviews are to be believed, which is that. It seems that in the UK, at least, they run auctions and auction off rooms. And so I think that's a similar thing. Like, one person claimed that it didn't matter whether you were the winning bid or not, you'd still get a room. So basically, as long as your bid was high enough, you know, they'd be like, hey, you won the auction. And, you know, so that could be another way to increase occupancy by. making it look like you're getting this $4,500 per night room when, you know, the real value is something considerably less than that.

That's not to say it's not worth, you know, $1,000, $2,000 a night. I don't know how to really judge that. Right, right. But I do definitely think 4,500, which is the lowest price I saw, it's often more like $6,000 a night, that that's a way inflated price. based on, you know, and it's designed to encourage people to bid up these auctions and to use points to bucket. Yeah. And to be clear, like this is not a new concept necessarily. You know, when you think about some of the popular points in miles properties out there in chains, you know, your, whatever, your park hyats and endazas and things like that, oftentimes they have public rates. So they're

pretty high. But if you have a corporate rate of some sort, if you're, work for a particular company. Oftentimes, the rates that you'll have access to are significantly less. It's sort of a similar type of a thing, right, where they're willing to sell the room for significantly less money, you know, but it probably doesn't hurt them to have higher looking rates. So it seems like a great discount for those folks. And also it seems like a great deal for people using points, even though perhaps in some cases a lot of their rooms are sold at corporate rates. I imagine that there are some places that are very much in that type of a situation, too. So it's probably not a new concept, but it's very glaringly obvious, I think, in this particular situation.

Yeah, yeah. The disappointing thing, and I'm not at all suggesting that's happening here is when the disappointing thing is when hotels rely so much on these loyalty programs or other methods of filling up their hotel that they decide that they don't need to compete for business and stop having great service or food or whatever it is. might decline because, hey, we're filling up anyway because we're a popular Marriott property or whatever it is, right? Right. So there's definitely those type of properties out there. And that's, yeah, that's a shame. And that was the point of the post from one mile old time that I mentioned that was about

luxury hotel point farms that some of them were really just not, you know, not good hotels because they filled up too easily, basically. Yeah, yeah. All right. All right. I think that brings us to this week's question of the week. That wraps up the main event. It brings us to the question of the week. So this week's question of the week is a travel-related question, but a little bit different than what we've been talking about here. So Carl writes in and says, or asks about travel insurance and says, I use my Ritz card to book most flights due to the tout of protections. I've never needed them yet. However, I'd be curious to know the specifics of what I should do if my trip or baggage is delayed or baggage is lost. What do I need in order, or what do I need to do on the front end

to prepare for these contingencies? Do I need to document slash photograph my luggage prior to the trip in case any reimbursement later? What sort of documentation do I need from the airline in these situations and how do I get it? Any specifics you can provide or appreciated. Also, can you remind us of how much the trip charges need to be on the Ritz card in order to collect travel benefits for both cash and award tickets. So what do you need to think about or what have you thought about? What would you think about? What would you do even if you don't know what to think about if you were wondering how all of that works, like or to prepare for that type of situation? I guess first, do you prepare for it? Do you do anything proactive? And then second, what would you do if you ran into one

of those situations? Yeah. No, I don't really do anything to prepare for it, to be honest. and it probably should in some ways, but the one thing, the question about like how much needs to be put on the card, it actually varies for what kind of protection you're talking about. So some cover it, almost all coverage is activated if you put any amount of the travel on your card, but some of the payouts are limited by how much you paid on the card.

So it depends what kind of coverage you're looking at as to whether it's limited to the amount you put on the card. So for example, if you had, I don't know, like $400 of flight credits and you paid $10 on your Ritz card for your flight, you know, are you covered for some things you're fully covered and for some things you'd only be covered up to $10? And I don't know how I had which ones. Yeah, to give an example, like trip delay protection would be fully covered. If your trip gets delayed by six hours or more or overnight, then you'd be covered for reasonable expenses up to like $500 a person, for instance, just by putting that $10 on the card.

Trip cancellation, on the other hand, if you canceled your trip because somebody got sick or whatever else, you'd only be covered for the $10 you put on the Ritz card. So baggage delay, that's going to be covered in full or lost baggage. That'll be covered in full by putting part of the trip on your card. So, you know, that's what Greg means when he says it varies. It depends on which type of problem you end up running into or needing to fix. Yeah. Yeah. So what about you?

What do you do to prepare or what should people do? Well, so not regularly, but, and I don't tend to worry about this for flights. Knock on wood, we fly a fair amount, right? And we always check a bag when we're traveling as a family. And in all of our travels, in all of the time that we've been around, I think we've only ever had one bag get lost. And it was the time where we forgot we had sunscreen in our bag. So we checked a draw string bag with sunscreen coming from Honduras back to the United States. Didn't shock me that it got lost somewhere. So that was, you know, that's the only time we had a bag get lost.

Again, knock on wood, because we do always check stuff. We have had some things delayed here and there time to time, usually not a big deal when it has happened. However, when we take a cruise, typically with the cruise, the night before you get off of the cruise, you leave your bags outside of your room and they just pick them up and then bring them in to wherever when you pick them up when you get off the ship. And so I actually do usually take a picture of the bags when I put them outside of the room, mostly so that if they get lost, I can show somebody what they look like because I feel like in that situation, there's a non-zero chance they get lost. In fact, just the last cruise we took, the first person we asked where our zone was for our bag, they told us and turned out that

wasn't the right zone. Eventually we found our bags somewhere else, but it wasn't where they were supposed to be. So having a picture in that case helps. I don't take a picture before every, before we check bags every flight. I don't tend to worry about that for the most part. But I guess it would be good practice to have a picture of your checked bags in general, again, so that you can provide it to say, hey, this is what it looks like. So they can find it if it gets lost. But that's not so much for the insurance part of it. Now, in terms of baggage insurance for the stuff that's inside your bag? I don't know. I haven't ever had to make a claim for that. I'm not sure what documentation they're going to require. In terms of trip cancellation coverage, this is fresh in mind,

because today as we record this, my son spent the entire previous night vomiting all night long, and we're scheduled to fly tomorrow. So, and of course, this is the one time a year where I booked a low-cost carrier. And so, you know, completely non-refundable, non-cancelable, changeable at this point. But booked on our Ritz card specifically for this. protection and to be able to use the airline incidental credit since it was a low-cost carrier. So I just got looking into that and it looks like I'm going to need some documentation from a physician and they exclude like a massage therapist or a couple other things like that. So they're a little specific but not particularly specific in terms of the documentation.

And I will update when I know whether or not my claim goes through and what type of documentation I provided once I have all of that sorted out because we're working on collecting all of there today. So fresh in mind. So look out for that sometime. I don't even want to say soon, Carl, because I think that sometimes these claims drag on for a while. So it might be a month or two until I know whether it gets approved or denied. But I am going to be working on the trip cancellation coverage in particular because I am going to be canceling tomorrow's flight. So that's that. In terms of delay, I always take a picture of if I'm in that situation. I say always. It's a bit rare that I end up in that situation either. But I take a screenshot of like flight aware or flight

stats showing the delay and the time that it arrived so that I have a record of what time that flight arrived. Now you could go back and find that a year later too. So you don't necessarily have to do it in real time, but I usually do take a screenshot if it's significantly delayed to have that for my records in case I need it. In terms of trip delay coverage, I did once have to file trip delay coverage with City, and the process was relatively simple. I've done other purchase protections as well a couple of times,

but phone I broke. I wrote about at some point, actually a couple of them I think that I broke with different types of coverages. It's all done by a separate claims administrator, so your experience with all of these things could vary depending on the adjuster that you get. So try to get as much,

documentation of whatever it is as you can. That's going to be the general advice. But again, look out for my post on trip cancellation sometime and listen to the show and we'll probably mention it whenever it gets published. Yeah. I'm looking forward to reading that too or hearing about it on a future show. Right. I'm looking forward to hopefully getting reimbursed. All right. So anyway, that brings us to the end of today's episode. If you've enjoyed this and you like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week, you want to go to frequentmyler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequent myler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media, join our frequent miler insiders Facebook group where you can ask and answer questions like that one all the

time. That, by the way, is a great resource for this type of thing. If I was live in the moment with a trip cancellation type of a situation or delay and I had questions, I'd go to Frequent Miler Insiders because we almost guarantee there are people there who have dealt with that who'd be able to answer it. Yes. Anyway, wherever you're watching, you're listening, don't forget to like, give us a thumbs up. We appreciate that. And if you have a question that you have a question that you like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback for a giant mailbag. You can send that too. Send it to mailbag at frequent miler.com by everybody.

Travel Tales with me, Mike Siegel, is full of funny, inspiring, and wild adventures. Listen now at voyescape.com. If you love travel, you'll love Winging It Travel Podcast. Every Monday, I share stories from 75 countries, from backpacking and tip. epic adventures and plenty of travel inspiration. Alongside that, I host guest interviews every two weeks. Check it out at voicegate.com.