NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast - Nerdy Travel Diaries: Getaway to Costa Rica

Episode Date: May 19, 2022

After two years of sitting on credit card points and staying at home, you might be in a great position to book some luxurious international travel.  In this episode of our Nerdy Travel Diaries series, Sean talks with NerdWallet travel editor Kevin Berry about his recent trip to an all-inclusive luxury resort in Costa Rica that he booked with points. They also discuss how you can use points to book your own international vacation.  To send your money questions, call or text the Nerd hotline at 901-730-6373 or email [e-mail]. Like what you hear? Please leave us a review and tell a friend.

Welcome to the NerdWallet Smart Money Podcast, where we usually answer your personal finance questions and help you feel a little smarter about what you do with your money. I'm Sean Piles. This episode, we are continuing our Travel Diaries series, where we'll hear from our travel nerds about the trips they've taken and the money they've saved along the way. This time around, we are talking with one of our travel editors, Kevin Barry. Kevin is going to share the details of a luxurious international trip he booked for a wedding anniversary using points and miles. He'll also give some tips for how you can do the same. Welcome to Smart Money, Kevin.

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. It's great to have you on. And one quick note before we get into this conversation, we're going to talk about a few credit cards that are NerdWallet partners, but that doesn't affect the way that we talk about them. So you had, as I mentioned, a luxurious international trip. Give us the details of it. Yeah, my wife and I had our 15th wedding anniversary coming up, and we were just sitting on a pile of points, hotels, airlines, travel points that had accumulated during the pandemic because we just hadn't traveled, obviously, during the COVID times. So with a big milestone anniversary and a bunch of points, it seemed like a pretty good opportunity to try and book something extravagant. And we had traveled pretty extensively domestically and been to the beaches of Mexico a

lot. But we wanted to try something new for the anniversary. And we had a bunch of Marriott points. So we set out to figure out how to burn all of those on a nice big trip that maybe we wouldn't normally pay for. And so we started looking at all-inclusive resorts. Interesting. So it seems like you had these points and you let that dictate where you were going to spend them, the location of your big trip post-COVID or semi-post-COVID as we are. Yeah. I mean, certainly because, you know, points generally, they are not an investment. They devalue over time and they expire. Hotels will change the amount of points it takes to book a hotel, making them less valuable.

So we want to spend the points that we had with the brand that we had and Marriott was the major one. Yeah, sure. And I think a lot of folks were in a pretty similar situation and still are with a lot of points built up over the pandemic and they haven't been able to use them. So can you walk me through your thought process on how you ended up picking that specific location and what factors were the major drivers for you? Yeah, sure. As is travel in the COVID era, that was always the first obstacle, right? Where can you get in? Not all countries are letting people in.

What's your tolerance in terms of vaccination rates and where do you feel comfortable going? You've got to have a COVID test to get back into the US. So how prevalent are those in the country you're looking at? So that was part of it, as I mentioned, we knew we wanted to go to a Marriott and we knew we wanted to go to an all-inclusive. That pretty quickly narrows you down

to about 20, 25 resorts. And I think the big thing that we were really looking for is we wanted a place that, since we were using our points, we wanted a place that we would never pay for with actual money, right? Like to have an experience that we wouldn't shell out the cash for,

but since we're using these points, it's something that you wouldn't get to experience otherwise. Yeah, it feels like free money in some ways. And so you can spend it in perhaps a more luxurious fashion than you would your own dollars. Right.

There's no literal way for me to turn all those Marriott points into cash in my hands. I might as well use them to stay at a resort I wouldn't otherwise pay for. Cool. So where did you land? We ended up at a Westin All-Inclusive in Costa Rica, which was a new country for us. And we should clarify that Westins are Marriott properties. Right. So it checked all the boxes. Great weather, easy to get to, Marriott,

all-inclusive, and the COVID logistics were pretty manageable. And Costa Rica is beautiful. So it's a great place to visit. It's actually the last spot that I traveled to internationally, August 2019. And I'm glad I was able to actually take that trip because it's been a long time since I traveled internationally. Yeah. It's hard to go wrong in Costa Rica. Anyone I talked to prior to the trip that had been, no one ever wavered. They were always like, oh, you're going to love it. It's fantastic. It's unlike anywhere else.

The natural beauty of the place, the cloud forest, the animals everywhere, the indigenous culture, it's incredible. Yes, it definitely is. And you get a wide range of geography in that country, too, depending on where you want to go. Yeah, very cool. Well, let's get into some of the specifics of your travel plans and see what we can learn from your strategy. So let's start with your hotel or the details of your booking. And what advice do you have for the rest of us looking to book big trips like this? When I said a mountain of Marriott points, specifically, it was 370,000 of them.

Oh, wow. So that, you know... It's a huge amount. It is a lot, but that's not necessarily a unique situation to be in. Credit card signup bonuses, you can get 100,000 points if you qualify for those and meet the minimum spend. And I traveled for work quite a bit in my previous job,

and those points had piled up. So we took that and cashed it in for five nights at the Westin All-Inclusive. This is a resort where the cash rate is $500, $600 per night. So paying $3,000 for a trip is just not something that we would normally do. Maybe some people travel like that. Good for them. That's not how we travel. It was a fairly good use of our Marriott points.

Here at NerdWallet, we do all these valuations of what are your points worth and what should you try and get. And a Marriott point is worth about seven tenths of a cent per point. And I got a little bit better rate of that. But I think the big thing that you want to look at when you're booking a trip is you don't have to maximize the value if you're getting an experience that you wouldn't otherwise get. And so that was really what it came down to for us. It was like, this is a good redemption, but we would never get to go here otherwise. And that's what made it enticing for us. Yeah. So what was so appealing about that property itself? What were you getting

from this booking where you said, this is the luxury travel that we want? I think it was a combination of a couple things. First of all, in the Marriott system, you're able to get a fifth night free when you book. So we only had to pay four nights worth of points, but we got to stay for five nights. So when you take that on top of a $500, $600 a night, all inclusive, and you've got this beautiful resort and these high-end

restaurants, it just really starts to pencil out because you feel like you're getting a good deal with the fifth night free perk. And Marriott's not the only one that does that. Hilton has a fifth night free benefit. IHG has a fourth night free benefit. So it kind of gives you this opportunity to get outsized value if you are strategic about the types of hotels that you pick to spend your points at. And you can do fifth night free at the courtyard by your local airport, or you can do fifth night free at an all-inclusive in Costa Rica. So there's a little bit of strategy there that played into that. I would love to hear a little bit about the other amenities of where you stay and the location itself. For example, when I stayed in

Costa Rica, my partner and I stayed in the cloud forest at a hotel there. And the hotel offered guided tours of flora and fauna at night, we did a night tour of the local jungle in the area, which was very beautiful. But then we also stayed at an all inclusive resort that had nothing of the sort. It was close to the ocean, but most folks stayed in the pool, which we found kind of baffling. So did you get to experience the natural beauty of the area? What was that experience like? Our trip was a little unique. The first two days and the first night that we were there, we actually stayed in this little beach town that was seven minutes from the resort. And we did much more of the local

bed and breakfast, local restaurant, eating down by the beach, and just walking around town. And then we went to the resort for the five nights. And when you're at the resort, there's so much to do at the resort that we never felt the need to leave it. I now feel the need to go back to Costa Rica and do all the other things. But the resort had these nightly shows, whether it was this fire dancing show or a Caribbean-themed show. There was coffee tasting and drink making. So there was all these different activities. And really, at an all-inclusive, at least at a high-end one like we were fortunate enough to go to, the food became the activity. Where could we get the reservation for dinner tonight?

And you started scheduling around that because the steaks were so good and the Italian food was so good. It became a foodie trip, really. I kind of love when you're at a resort like that, and it almost feels like you're regressing back into your childhood where you're just being fed and taken care of. You don't have to actually make any decisions on your own except for where your next meal is coming from. Yeah, exactly. It was definitely like that, especially with the drinks just coming to the pool whenever you raised your hand. Very nice. Well, did you make it out to the Cloud Forest at all when you were in Costa Rica?

We did not. Cloud Forest is on the next trips list. You got to do it. There are a number of ways to do it. Some folks will take a bus from San Jose. And we thought about doing that. We ended up renting a car because we had to drive beyond the cloud forest to where the actual resort was that we were staying at eventually. And if you like to drive

off road, and you're not scared of steep mountain roads, I would recommend it. It was a lot of fun, and it gives you a certain amount of freedom. It was a great time for us. Very nice. Yes, I will take that recommendation to heart for my next trip. Well, I want to go back to all of those points because you accrued a massive amount of them. How did you actually get all of those Bonvoy points? The big way, and this is open to most people, and this is what we talk a lot about at NerdWallet, is credit card signup bonuses. Marriott has cards with Chase and with American Express. And if you qualify, they give you a welcome bonus or a signup bonus for spending a certain amount of money in a certain timeframe. Now, obviously you want to do that and pay the bill

on time. You don't want to incur interest charges because then that takes the value away of the points, but you can get upwards of a hundred thousand points or more depending on the promotion they're offering. So that's part one. And then part two is, depending on your financial situation, sometimes you want to pay cash for your trips. When we go to Mexico and the rates are affordable, right? They're $100, $120 a night. We choose to pay for those. And then because we have status at Marriott and I have a Marriott credit card, I earn like 23.5 Marriott points for every dollar that I spend. So you can do the math on 23.5 times a week in Mexico, that starts to add up pretty fast. Thirdly, I would say if you travel for work, it's worth it to go out of your way to stay at a consistent brand

because those points start to pile up even if your company's paying the bill. You're still the member and you're still acquiring those points. So you want to consolidate those between work trips and paying cash and earning points and credit card signup bonuses. Getting to 300,000 or 400,000 points is actually not as hard as it sounds. I want to talk a little bit more about the time that you spent in Costa Rica. You mentioned that you had some incredible food, some great coffee, which Costa Rica is known for. What else did you do during your time there? We had a very different experience the first two days versus the last five days. And the first two days that we were there when we were down in the beach town,

little bed and breakfast, local restaurants, local coffee shops. And that was just a really cool kind of get a feel for what a beach town in Costa Rica is like. It was just a much different feel than once you got to the luxurious resort. And once we got to the resort, it became all about the food. And there was like a schedule every day of where you could get reservations. There was a schedule of activities every day. It was about finding what seat at the pool you could get and hunker down with for the day. So there was some logistics involved with that. But yeah, it was just a very different experience being at this luxurious resort, but also getting to experience the local

Costa Rica vibe the first two days. It sounds kind of White Lotus-esque without maybe the horrible snobbery, I'm hoping. Yeah, exactly. Okay, cool. So how much did all of this cost, these activities during the day? And what did you do to save money? Yeah. I mean, the beauty of an all-inclusive is much of it is already in, in the cost. We didn't have to pay for the shows. Obviously, we didn't have to pay for the meals. The only things generally when you go to an all-inclusive... If you want to go to the spa, it's extra. If you want to play at the golf course, it's extra. So other than some souvenirs, when we were on the resort, we didn't spend any money. We really focused on getting the most out of our time on the resort. There was this cool bar

and they'd have music and dancing at night. No cost, no cost for the drinks, no cost to show up. That's the bonus to an all-inclusive is right. You remove this decision-making and it sort of allows you to just enjoy the trip a little bit more because it's just all included there. One tip that I have for folks who might stay at an all-inclusive resort like this is to buy sunscreen before you arrive at the resort, because that's something that I did not purchase before I got to my resort in Costa Rica. I ended up having to buy some there and it was $50 for a not big bottle of sunscreen, which you had to have. So that might be one tip. Stop by the local pharmacy before you get there, because once you land there, you're not going to want to leave.

Yes, exactly. We did just that. The day we were in the beach town, we hit up a local grocery store and picked up essentials. And the sunscreen was very reasonably priced down there. So we bought through. Not $50. No, not $50. You know, we got waters and sunscreens and all the toiletries that we didn't want to pack. It was like $60 for all of it. And yeah, not bad. And it was enough sunscreen to get us through the week. And it was great. Cool. So Kevin, when it came time to book flights, what was your thought process there? Flying in this COVID era, especially with all the reductions that have happened staffing-wise with airlines, we were legitimately nervous because, I mean, look, you read it in the news all the time about flights getting canceled and delays and nobody wants to miss a connecting

flight when they're going on vacation, right? And you've spent 370,000 Marriott points. You want to get there on time. So we chose to mitigate some of that. And I live in Portland, Oregon, and it's not a direct route down to Costa Rica. So we booked a separate flight into Denver because we could get from Denver to Costa Rica direct. And we just went a day early and we just used a free night certificate at an airport hotel. So that way we knew we were in Denver the night before the flight. We were on a direct flight to Costa Rica. And that mitigates a lot of the risk of missing a connection or something going wrong. And it all worked out and we got there on time, but just less stress on our end. And normally when you price it out,

it doesn't cost more. Sometimes it's actually cheaper because you've got some flexibility, right? Like I can pick the cheap flight from Portland to Denver to get there. And then I buy my ticket Denver to Costa Rica, and it ends up being cheaper than the airline routing me there themselves. Yeah. And I think the fact that you could get a practically free hotel that night makes a big difference as well. Because I was looking to book some travel from Portland to London for the summer. And I was considering flying into Chicago first spending a night there, and then flying from O'Hare to Heathrow because O'Hare is such

a big international hub. I ended up looking at the price of a hotel and everything else that was going to be involved in it. And it didn't make sense for me. I think because of lodging alone, it really pushed me over the edge. And I said, okay, I'm going to spend a few hundred bucks more for a flight straight from Portland to Heathrow. But in the end, I'm coming out ahead. So the fact that you had some points to use, I think makes it worth it for you. Yeah. And I also encourage people to check your hotel accounts because you might have free night certificates you've forgotten about. You may have earned them through a credit card perk you used to have. There's various ways, depending on the brands, that you get these free night certificates. And they're usually only good for a certain level of hotel, a certain amount of points per night. But those airport hotels are usually on the cheap end. And that's sometimes a good way to burn those. Right.

All right. That makes sense. Well, so what about your return flight? And how did that go? We had an interesting return flight. We were similarly booked Costa Rica direct back to Denver. And our airplane on the way back, the toilets stopped working. Oh, no.

And our flight almost got rerouted to Houston, which obviously would have caused us to miss our connecting flight to get back home. And the pilot came on and explained the situation. And there was very much the sentiment on the plane of like, we all need to get to Denver. We're all just going to hold it. And we did. We got to Denver. We all stopped using the toilets for like an hour and 20 minutes. And the airline was good to their credit.

A week later, we all got $100 vouchers for the inconvenience. So that's, you know, okay, yeah, we'll take that. That's nice. It could have gone a very different way. So I'm glad it definitely could have. And then once we got to Denver, we were on actually on United Airlines from Denver to Portland. And we got upgraded to first class for free, which was great. I have silver status with United, which I actually got as a benefit of being a titanium member with Marriott. This is a thing that I think gets overlooked a lot of times. If you have status through whatever, through your work, through a credit card, or you've just earned it, you might have elite status with one of their partners as well. And sometimes you

have to activate that. So like there's a page on the Marriott site, right, to activate that silver membership for United. And just by doing that, we got fortunate and got upgraded to first class for the ride home for no additional cost. So that's pretty cool. Yeah. You want to know what your options are. How can folks know what their options are? Because these various platforms can be kind of confusing to navigate their options are? Because these various platforms can be kind of confusing to navigate because there are all of these different relationships between different companies. What did you do to figure out that you had that opportunity? First of all, if you have elite status somewhere, go look at their membership page. Go look at the Marriott titanium page or go

look at the Alaska Airlines gold page or whatever it is that you have. And they're pretty good at explaining what those benefits are. And shameless plug, check out NerdWallet's content as well, because we have elite status articles about all of these airlines and hotels that will lay out what comes with them and what else you might be able to get with them. And the second thing I would say is, if you check with your employer, a lot of companies have travel benefits because of larger contracts or deals that they have with travel agencies or the airlines directly. My wife, for example, has perks on three or four different airlines through her work, but she has to opt into it. So you need to know about them and you have to give them your frequent flyer number in order to trigger those benefits. So ask your HR rep, ask your travel person or however your work is set up and see what you might have access to through work as well.

Well, I would love to hear about your favorite moment of the trip. Oh, that's a great question. I'm going to cheat and give you two favorite moments. I think the first one that comes to mind was the first dinner meal that we had there on the first night. We didn't know what we were in for. I think we knew we were at an all inclusive, but we didn't know about the quality of the food. And we went to a steakhouse and the filet mignons came out. And like you cut into that for the first time. And we were like, Oh, this is what we're in for all week. That's when the light bulb went on that this was not going to be average food. This was high-level stuff. I would say that, and then also just the first night of the trip in the beach town, walking through the little local town

and eating at the beachside restaurant at sunset, it was just a really low-key Costa Rica beach vibe. What a great way to start a trip and just relax and just sort of reset yourself. And especially, we've all been through a rough two years and it was great to finally get away and feel safe about it. Those are the two that stick out to me the most. Yeah. I totally relate to that last one. Sometimes when you have that moment on a vacation where you're with someone that you love and you really take in the place that you're in together can be so meaningful, especially after all that we've been through over the past couple of years.

Yeah, for sure. Well, Kevin, do you have any takeaway tips for our listeners? One, if you're going to book hotels, make sure you understand your hotel's free night policy. Like we said earlier, Marriott and Hilton, if you're booking on points, your fifth night's free. IHG, fourth night's free. You can get a lot of outsized value and extend your trips for no cost when you do that. Number two would be, you know, use your points to take trips you wouldn't otherwise be comfortable paying for. That's the time to splurge is when you're not spending, quote unquote unquote real money on a trip. And I would say this, and we haven't talked about this yet,

but like, don't be afraid to spend money when you need something that is quality. And I say that in the sense of we spent money on transportation to and from the airport. We didn't try and be cheap about it. We didn't try and like frugal our way through it because it was, you know, an hour long ride and we got private van transportation.

We had great guides that got us there. As you mentioned, the roads in Costa Rica can be quite bumpy and hard to navigate. That was just well worth it. So there's times to be frugal. There's times to use your points. And then sometimes you just need to pay for something really good and that's okay. Just to make things easier for yourself. That makes sense. Yeah. There's certainly a convenience factor and just not having to worry about certain things. If you have the money to solve a problem, you no longer have a problem. So don't be afraid to spend it if you have it. All right. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story with us, Kevin. Thanks. No problem. And that's all we have for this episode. Do you have a travel or money question of your own? Turn to the nerds and call or text us your questions at 901-730-6373. That's 901-730-NERD. You can also email us at podcast at nerdwallet.com. Also, visit nerdwallet.com slash podcast for more info on this episode. And remember to follow, rate, and review us wherever you're getting this podcast.

And here is our brief disclaimer, thoughtfully crafted by NerdWallet's legal team. Your questions are answered by knowledgeable and talented finance writers, but we are not financial or investment advisors. This nerdy info is provided for general educational and entertainment purposes and may not apply to your specific circumstances. And with that said, until next time, turn to the nerds.