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00:01:34.680 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading
00:01:41.800 | your life, money, and travel.
00:01:43.640 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am excited to do something different today.
00:01:46.920 | In fact, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll already know why because
00:01:50.800 | I'm recording this from an overwater bungalow at the St.
00:01:53.680 | Regis in Bora Bora.
00:01:55.500 | These views are amazing.
00:01:56.880 | Now, so many of the listener questions I get are about how to maximize your
00:02:00.760 | points and miles for amazing redemptions.
00:02:03.000 | And I wanted to take this episode to share how we ended up taking a trip that
00:02:06.720 | would have otherwise cost me and Amy over $20,000 for less than $1,500 in points.
00:02:12.760 | And I'm actually going to walk through all the steps to search for flights,
00:02:16.560 | transfer points, and book hotels.
00:02:18.560 | So you can use those tips to get the best deal possible on your next trip.
00:02:24.440 | Two quick things before we get started.
00:02:26.060 | One, if you're new to the show and you want to get a good foundation for
00:02:29.900 | travel hacking, points, and miles, I'd recommend going back and listening to
00:02:33.820 | episode one with Lee Rowan on travel hacking, episode three with Brad Barrett
00:02:38.540 | on credit card points and miles, or episode 27 with the points guy himself,
00:02:43.220 | Brian Kelly, and two, if you're already thinking that a trip like this is out
00:02:48.140 | of reach for you, hold on, I want to read you this amazing email I just got a few
00:02:52.620 | weeks ago, Chris, my name's Zach.
00:02:55.280 | I'm a medical student currently finishing up my second year and have been a fan of
00:02:59.200 | your podcast since the first episode came out, I really like what you're doing.
00:03:03.120 | And I've been putting a lot of the hacks you and your guests talk about to work.
00:03:06.320 | As you can imagine, money is incredibly tight for a medical student.
00:03:10.400 | However, my girlfriend and I put some of your credit card signup bonus and
00:03:14.320 | flight hotel point hacks to work.
00:03:16.380 | And we were able to use almost exclusively points and miles to cover round trip
00:03:21.280 | flights and four to five star hotels for a 10 day trip to Europe to celebrate our
00:03:26.100 | four year anniversary in a few months.
00:03:27.940 | We ended up turning 350,000 points and miles from credit card, signup bonuses
00:03:33.400 | and other necessary purchases into flights and hotels that we calculated
00:03:38.060 | equals about $7,200 of value.
00:03:40.980 | I think this is proof that what you're talking about works for literally anyone,
00:03:46.120 | even a medical student who has basically no money, thanks again for what you're
00:03:51.160 | doing and I look forward to listening to more episodes of all the hacks in the
00:03:54.640 | future.
00:03:55.120 | So Zach, thank you so much for writing that in.
00:03:58.840 | I am so excited for your trip and I just hope that helps anyone listening know
00:04:04.960 | that these hacks are really accessible and I hope they help you take an amazing
00:04:09.180 | trip.
00:04:09.560 | And while I'm going to walk you through everything I did for this trip on the
00:04:12.540 | podcast on YouTube, I'm actually going to share some footage from the trip and
00:04:16.880 | I'll also share my screen as I walk through some of the booking steps.
00:04:20.840 | So if you want to watch that, head on over to all the hacks.com/49 because this
00:04:26.560 | is episode 49 and check it out.
00:04:28.840 | And if you have any followup questions or want some clarification, don't hesitate
00:04:32.480 | to shoot me an email, chris@allthehacks.com.
00:04:35.000 | So first off, how did this trip even come to be?
00:04:41.000 | Well, if you've been listening, you might know that my wife and I are expecting
00:04:45.000 | our second child in June this year.
00:04:47.560 | So we were trying to think what kind of a vacation we could take before the
00:04:51.040 | craziness of having two children come.
00:04:52.960 | And my parents kindly volunteered to watch our daughter for one week and told
00:04:58.240 | us this week would work best.
00:04:59.920 | So we started thinking about what we could possibly do with one week off.
00:05:03.960 | And we had all these points that we wanted to burn them on something amazing.
00:05:07.760 | And so we started looking and we kind of identified, we didn't want to go too
00:05:11.560 | crazy far just for the fact that we only had a week.
00:05:14.360 | So it was where can we go on flights for less than 10 hours and the options,
00:05:19.480 | unfortunately, from the West coast, a lot of the Caribbean is really hard to get to.
00:05:22.680 | So we looked at places like Turks and Caicos, so we even looked at Costa Rica
00:05:26.360 | and it just seemed like it was going to be a really tough trip to take multiple
00:05:29.920 | layovers to get to where you wanted to.
00:05:32.120 | And it just wasn't that convenient.
00:05:33.800 | And we'd come to Bora Bora back in 2018 and we stayed at the Conrad and I'll
00:05:38.920 | talk about the differences between that and the St.
00:05:41.000 | Regis in a bit, but it was so amazing that we thought, well, we might as well
00:05:45.520 | just look to see if that's possible.
00:05:47.320 | So we kind of had an idea from the beginning of let's just take the
00:05:50.760 | most amazing, relaxing vacation.
00:05:52.560 | We can, we know Bora Bora is one nonstop flight.
00:05:55.960 | It's about eight hours from San Francisco.
00:05:58.000 | And then you take a small plane from Papiete to here, which you could probably
00:06:02.440 | hear flying above me right now.
00:06:04.120 | And that is exactly what we thought we would do.
00:06:07.480 | So, so that was the idea was from the beginning, can we make Bora Bora
00:06:11.360 | possible with points with miles?
00:06:13.720 | Actually, before we get into everything, I just want to paint a
00:06:16.520 | picture of how amazing this place is.
00:06:18.600 | My wife and I have been on a lot of trips and we always say next time
00:06:22.280 | we're going to go somewhere new, but Bora Bora and Japan are two places
00:06:26.360 | that we always say, you know what?
00:06:28.080 | Let's just go back there again, because it's so incredible.
00:06:31.200 | The water is the clearest thing you could possibly imagine.
00:06:35.200 | Resorts have hammocks that just sit out in the ocean.
00:06:37.920 | So you can just lie, relax and enjoy just the most beautiful views.
00:06:42.920 | There's something super special about having a bungalow that sits over the
00:06:47.280 | water where you can jump off your balcony straight into the water.
00:06:50.600 | You get bikes and you can ride them all around.
00:06:52.960 | It's like the most relaxing manicured place to just, everyone is so friendly.
00:06:57.160 | I just, it's hard to be more excited about a place you can go on vacation than here.
00:07:02.880 | And one of the things I really love is that I've been to a few resorts,
00:07:06.680 | sometimes in Mexico or in the Caribbean, where it just feels like you took a
00:07:10.160 | bunch of American culture and you just plopped it down in the middle of a nice
00:07:13.840 | beach, and this is totally different than that.
00:07:16.560 | French Polynesia has a very distinct culture and most of the resorts here
00:07:21.280 | try to infuse that culture into the resort.
00:07:24.160 | So you really get a feel for it, whether it's activities, excursions,
00:07:28.440 | doing a Polynesian night, different types of food that you can try.
00:07:32.720 | The staff at most of these resorts is like the most friendly people ever,
00:07:35.680 | and you can spend time talking to them about their culture and understand it.
00:07:38.840 | And so I think that's another part of travel that's really important
00:07:42.280 | to us that you get to do here.
00:07:43.560 | I think that's it.
00:07:44.720 | I just wanted to paint a picture of what an amazing magical
00:07:47.800 | experience a trip like this can be.
00:07:49.600 | I know a lot of people say it's once in a lifetime, but the reason I love
00:07:52.520 | points, the reason I love miles, the reason I love all the hacks is because
00:07:56.000 | there's a way to make it possible way more frequently than once in a lifetime
00:07:59.520 | without having to spend the money it would otherwise cost.
00:08:02.400 | If you're watching this on video, I have overlaid a bunch of pictures
00:08:05.200 | and videos so you could really get a sense of how cool this place is.
00:08:08.160 | If you want to go check out the video, you can see all that.
00:08:10.600 | Or if you head on over to my Instagram, just @chrishutchins, I'll try to post
00:08:14.000 | some photos and videos so you can get a sense of how really magical this place is.
00:08:17.680 | So now that we know where we're going, I want to start looking at how
00:08:21.320 | we can get there, and then I'll look at where to stay.
00:08:23.680 | So we want to go to Papiete, which is the main international
00:08:27.880 | airport in French Polynesia.
00:08:29.600 | So I like to start all of these searches by going to flightconnections.com.
00:08:33.480 | And I do that because they show you all the routes that you
00:08:36.880 | can get to a certain airport from.
00:08:38.960 | So for Papiete, you can see that in the U.S.
00:08:42.080 | the only routes are from San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Honolulu.
00:08:45.840 | Now for us trying to take a week trip, which is going to be a short trip, flying
00:08:50.480 | from San Francisco to Honolulu, and then down to Papiete, it's just not in the cards.
00:08:54.920 | So we're really looking at SFO and LAX flights.
00:08:58.520 | So now that I know what the routes are, I first like to
00:09:01.480 | go see how much are the flights.
00:09:03.200 | And the way I typically do that is not looking for my home
00:09:06.200 | destination, but just looking at the specific nonstop flights,
00:09:09.760 | because you get a sense of what the international prices are going to be.
00:09:13.240 | So I'm going to go to Google flights and I'm going to search
00:09:18.120 | for San Francisco or LAX.
00:09:20.560 | And so you can search multiple froms and multiple tos at Google flights.
00:09:24.080 | And so you type SFO and then the easiest way to do it is once you hit comma,
00:09:29.680 | Google flights saves that.
00:09:31.200 | And so you can type SFO comma LAX comma, and then you search PPT.
00:09:35.200 | Now, unfortunately, Google flights will not let you search for
00:09:40.080 | nonstop flights from the get go.
00:09:41.920 | So you have to click into a search and then filter to nonstop.
00:09:44.640 | So now that I've filtered to nonstop, I'm going to look at round trip
00:09:48.160 | flights from SFO or LAX to PPT.
00:09:51.200 | I'm going to go in and search by clicking on the date field.
00:09:54.800 | You can actually in the bottom left say, show me five day trips.
00:09:57.880 | And you can actually look at how much these tickets are going to cost.
00:10:00.600 | And what I'm seeing is that on most days for the rest of March
00:10:05.000 | and a lot of days in April, the round trip tickets are 550 to 600,
00:10:10.480 | 700 dollars, which is pretty reasonable for a long distance international flight.
00:10:16.040 | So out the gate, I'm thinking, wow, I don't even know if I want to use
00:10:21.160 | miles, but, you know, it's a short trip.
00:10:23.920 | A lot of the flights are overnight.
00:10:25.960 | I've got a lot of miles.
00:10:27.680 | What about business?
00:10:29.200 | Every now and then I look at business internationally
00:10:31.680 | and it's really not that much more.
00:10:33.440 | In this case, I'm going to look and I already know what I'm going to see.
00:10:36.280 | It's going to be almost five grand or more, which for me
00:10:39.680 | just makes it completely off the table.
00:10:41.680 | So at this point, I've kind of said, all right, I'm going to fly economy
00:10:45.640 | or I'm going to see if there's miles available for business.
00:10:48.600 | Obviously, if the miles are available for business and it's a good deal,
00:10:51.520 | that's what I would prefer to do.
00:10:53.240 | So now that I know the flight routes there are, right,
00:10:56.440 | you can click through Google flights and you can see, OK, well, United has a flight
00:10:59.680 | Air Tahiti, Nuea has a flight, Air France has a flight.
00:11:02.760 | Keep in mind that for a lot of international destinations,
00:11:05.800 | the day you fly on might actually change what airlines have flights.
00:11:09.600 | They might not all have flights the same day.
00:11:11.840 | So if you're clicking through days, you'll actually see that on some days
00:11:15.720 | an airline called French B actually flies from San Francisco.
00:11:19.760 | It's the airline we flew down to French Polynesia the last time we came.
00:11:23.880 | And I thought it was a great experience.
00:11:26.400 | So definitely click around to make sure you know what airlines are looking for.
00:11:31.120 | Now, I can tell you in advance that French B doesn't have a mileage program
00:11:34.920 | that lets you book award tickets.
00:11:36.560 | So I'm going to start looking first on United.
00:11:38.600 | Now, if you search SFO to PPT and you search a date, you click award travel.
00:11:45.520 | You're going to get a list of flights for that day,
00:11:48.320 | but you're also going to get an award calendar at the top.
00:11:50.640 | And if you click under that, you'll see view 30 day calendar
00:11:53.760 | and you can actually see all the different award prices.
00:11:56.120 | So you'll see that on every Sunday and really Tuesday,
00:11:59.680 | almost all the flights United flies for the rest of March and into April.
00:12:04.040 | Almost every week you can find a flight for thirty five thousand or thirty
00:12:09.040 | seven thousand miles.
00:12:10.560 | But knowing that the flights are only six hundred round trip
00:12:14.480 | and if you dig into the one way prices, you'll learn they're about 380 going down,
00:12:18.440 | maybe 280 or 300 coming back.
00:12:21.320 | I'm not sure I'd rather use thirty five thousand miles for the ticket.
00:12:25.360 | But if I look in business,
00:12:28.240 | you'll see that seventy thousand points going down.
00:12:31.200 | United has availability on the next four Sundays
00:12:34.200 | and you can go search round trip, see when it's available on the way coming back.
00:12:38.840 | So now all of a sudden I've said, OK, that's low inventory.
00:12:42.120 | I know that that's one of the lowest prices you'll see.
00:12:43.960 | United even highlights it in green if it's the lowest price in the month.
00:12:46.920 | So now we're like, OK, so United has some tickets coming down.
00:12:50.600 | You can also check the other airline.
00:12:52.000 | So I said French B doesn't have anything, but there's also Air France
00:12:55.320 | and there's air to heating away.
00:12:57.400 | So you can go through the Air France website and do it for air to heating away.
00:13:01.280 | While I'm sure you don't have air to heating away in miles,
00:13:03.920 | you probably maybe have or have access from a transfer partner to American
00:13:07.520 | who are partners so you could book for American.
00:13:09.560 | So you can actually search those flights on their websites.
00:13:12.520 | I have a subscription to a website called Expert Flyer,
00:13:15.320 | and that site lets you search award inventory for a lot of flights.
00:13:19.480 | So I can actually go there and just say I'm looking for L.A.
00:13:23.080 | X to PPT and do a search.
00:13:26.000 | One of the great features they have is that you can search three days
00:13:29.120 | before and three days after.
00:13:30.480 | So you can search seven days at a time and I can go in and search air
00:13:34.080 | to heating away and I can say I'm looking for a business award
00:13:37.280 | and it'll come back and show you here's what we found.
00:13:40.440 | Now, I can tell you that it's hard to find a word availability
00:13:44.920 | far out in advance.
00:13:46.240 | A lot of airlines don't release all the inventory.
00:13:48.480 | But when you're trying to book something somewhat last minute,
00:13:51.320 | sometimes you get really, really lucky.
00:13:53.160 | So in the case of United, you saw that, you know, we got award
00:13:56.440 | availability on business class seats four days in a row on air to heating away.
00:14:00.760 | It looks like I'm currently looking and there's nothing to get down.
00:14:04.840 | But coming back, if you want to leave on the 30th of March,
00:14:09.320 | there's five seats back to L.A..
00:14:11.240 | So maybe that's an option.
00:14:12.360 | And the availability changes all the time.
00:14:14.680 | Expert Flyer actually lets you set alerts to say, hey, if something pops up,
00:14:17.920 | let me know.
00:14:19.000 | I'll save you the looking air.
00:14:20.320 | France had no availability, so I'll just skip over it.
00:14:23.200 | But if you really wanted to book that air to heating away flight,
00:14:25.880 | you can actually go on American Airlines's website
00:14:29.360 | and you can just search PPT to LAX.
00:14:33.000 | You can say book with miles and it'll show up.
00:14:35.320 | I happen to know that it's going to be 80,000 miles to book that flight.
00:14:39.480 | And so from my perspective, I'd rather just use the 72,000 United miles.
00:14:43.880 | However, one of the things to know is that when there's availability
00:14:47.600 | on an airline, that means that you can book it from any of their partners.
00:14:51.040 | So that's where a search like Point.me really comes in to benefit you.
00:14:55.280 | So I'm going to go do this search on Point.me and I already did it,
00:14:58.680 | but I have it pulled up in front of me.
00:15:00.840 | And what happens is they say, yep, we found the availability on United.
00:15:04.160 | This was for March 20th.
00:15:06.240 | And when you look at the options to book it, they say, yeah,
00:15:09.000 | you can book it with United with 72,800 miles.
00:15:11.920 | But you can also book it with Air Canada for 55,000 miles.
00:15:15.840 | And Air Canada happens to be a transfer partner of Amex Capital One and Chase.
00:15:21.200 | And let me tell you, like, I love Air Canada as a mileage program.
00:15:25.080 | The aeroplane program has some really great spots of redemption just like this.
00:15:28.960 | So now I'm thinking, OK, whether you have Amex points,
00:15:31.880 | Cap One points, Chase points, or you happen to be someone with Air Canada points.
00:15:35.760 | That's 55,000 miles down.
00:15:38.360 | You can find the return 55,000 back.
00:15:40.720 | That's 110,000 miles for your trip.
00:15:43.480 | So what is 110,000 miles worth?
00:15:46.680 | Well, if you know that the business class flight would have been about $5,700,
00:15:50.880 | then that's five cents a mile.
00:15:52.600 | To put that in perspective, if you were using a card
00:15:54.840 | that earns you three points per dollar on travel expenses
00:15:58.480 | and you can get five cents per mile, that's like getting 15% cash back.
00:16:02.440 | So I think that's an amazing deal.
00:16:04.360 | And in fact, that is exactly what we did to come down here.
00:16:06.920 | We got Air Canada miles and we used them to book
00:16:09.760 | United business class seats for 110,000 miles each.
00:16:12.840 | And the taxes, as you could see, were $36.
00:16:16.120 | And it's really easy.
00:16:17.240 | You can create an account on Air Canada's website.
00:16:19.520 | You can go search for the flights.
00:16:21.480 | And once you find the availability, you can go to Chase or Cap One
00:16:25.280 | and do the transfer.
00:16:26.720 | Usually you just log out, log back in and boom.
00:16:29.680 | There they show up right there.
00:16:31.480 | Make it really easy to book.
00:16:33.880 | So that's how we got here.
00:16:34.840 | We booked it through on United in business with Air Canada miles.
00:16:38.600 | It ended up being $36 each way per person, whereas the two business
00:16:42.840 | class tickets would have been over $11,000.
00:16:46.640 | So that's flights.
00:16:48.800 | That is how I typically do all of this searching.
00:16:51.000 | Point dot me is a great place.
00:16:52.880 | You could even start there if you want.
00:16:54.800 | It's pretty great at searching across lots of different travel sites.
00:16:58.240 | The challenge is they don't have any flexible date search.
00:17:01.080 | So when you go to United's website, you can look at a 30 day calendar
00:17:04.600 | and get a sense of whether there's something great one day with Point dot me.
00:17:07.880 | You've got to go search a day and then the next day and then the next day.
00:17:11.360 | So when there's only a few options of flights and you're flexible on dates,
00:17:15.840 | I like to start searching on the airline's websites.
00:17:18.320 | But if you're pretty strict on dates
00:17:20.080 | and you're going somewhere with lots of options like the US to Europe,
00:17:23.600 | it could definitely be easier to search on Point dot me.
00:17:26.160 | But keep in mind, sometimes there's strange things that happen
00:17:30.200 | where it might be availability from San Francisco to Paris,
00:17:36.040 | but not from Paris to, let's say, Nice, France.
00:17:39.520 | And it might be a really cheap flight.
00:17:41.560 | So definitely make sure that when you're looking for award flights,
00:17:44.560 | you're not just looking at the whole trip.
00:17:47.560 | You might be looking at the major leg that you really want.
00:17:50.560 | And you could maybe buy a cheap fifty hundred dollar ticket
00:17:53.400 | on either end to make make it all the way to your destination.
00:17:56.840 | Hey, everybody, I just want to interrupt because I've partnered with Point
00:18:00.440 | dot me, my favorite award search tool to give you a special offer of only one
00:18:04.960 | dollar for your first month of their standard plan.
00:18:07.480 | If you go to all the hacks dot com slash point me and use the promo code hacks
00:18:13.440 | again, all the hacks dot com slash P.O.I.N.T.M.E.
00:18:19.400 | Or find the link in the show notes.
00:18:21.160 | So definitely take advantage of that if you're planning a trip with points.
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00:19:53.000 | So now let's talk about hotels.
00:19:55.360 | Once I figured out we could get flights and I knew that there were a lot
00:19:58.120 | of different days and actually, you know, I'm speaking in Bora Bora right now.
00:20:02.000 | So when I was looking at this, United had a business class
00:20:04.800 | three different days in a single week.
00:20:07.200 | So I kind of knew I had a little bit of flexibility.
00:20:09.360 | We probably had 12 days and we wanted to go for six.
00:20:12.680 | So I kind of had a little bit of wiggle room.
00:20:14.520 | So I said, great.
00:20:15.080 | Now I know that the flights are there.
00:20:16.640 | Let's pause and let's look at hotels.
00:20:18.880 | And I think one of the first things to do when you're looking at hotels
00:20:22.520 | is just to get a sense of what are the rates, because sometimes miles
00:20:26.960 | and points for hotels don't make a lot of sense.
00:20:29.440 | Sometimes I like Google for hotels.
00:20:31.920 | Their hotel search is pretty good.
00:20:33.800 | Lots of websites to look for hotels, whichever one has the right filters.
00:20:37.520 | You like go for it.
00:20:38.840 | You could use TripAdvisor.
00:20:40.120 | You could use Kayak.
00:20:41.400 | It really just matters what you like.
00:20:43.000 | Right now, we're not trying to book a hotel.
00:20:45.040 | We're just trying to search.
00:20:46.600 | So if I go on and search Bora Bora on Google Hotels,
00:20:50.600 | you'll see that there are a lot of hotels that come up.
00:20:53.320 | You know, fortunately for Bora Bora, there aren't an unlimited number.
00:20:56.240 | There's like eight or nine hotels that are kind of high end.
00:20:59.280 | Go take a luxury vacation.
00:21:01.400 | And so I can look at them and say, OK, well, look, the Conrad $722 a night.
00:21:07.320 | St. Regis, $1200 a night.
00:21:09.040 | And I'm here looking March 21st to 26.
00:21:12.320 | Once you find a hotel, one of the nice things that Google let you do
00:21:16.680 | and it doesn't work until you pick the hotel.
00:21:18.880 | But in this example, if you go and click view prices on a Google hotels listing,
00:21:23.640 | now you can actually go to the dates and they'll say best prices for one night's
00:21:28.920 | day and they'll show you all the prices.
00:21:31.000 | And so you can actually look out and say, wow, you know, there are some days
00:21:34.680 | that are ridiculously expensive.
00:21:36.200 | Like I'm looking right now, April 4th.
00:21:38.480 | The average rate for a night at the St.
00:21:40.600 | Regis in Bora Bora is thirty five hundred to three thousand dollars a night,
00:21:44.680 | which means a five night stay is going to cost you almost 20 grand.
00:21:48.400 | When I actually booked this trip, the rate per night was about twenty one hundred dollars.
00:21:52.840 | For me, I was like, wow, there's no world where I could get comfortable
00:21:57.000 | spending ten thousand dollars on a vacation.
00:21:58.800 | So it's time to look at points.
00:22:00.800 | And fortunately, in Bora Bora, there's two intercontinental hotels.
00:22:05.040 | There's a Conrad, there's a St.
00:22:06.720 | Regis, all you different Hilton, Marriott or IHG points,
00:22:10.720 | all which have transfer partners.
00:22:12.440 | So when I'm trying to find the award hotels where I might get the best deal,
00:22:15.800 | I love this site award mapper dot com.
00:22:18.200 | If you're watching the video, you'll see that I actually have a pulled up in Paris
00:22:21.320 | because there's a bit of a bug on the site right now when it comes to Bora Bora.
00:22:25.000 | But I just want to show a little bit how it works.
00:22:26.840 | So you can go to anywhere in the world and you can click different filters
00:22:31.080 | for hotel programs, whether it's Hilton or Marriott or Intercon,
00:22:34.080 | and see all the hotels in that region that are participating in that program.
00:22:38.000 | So unfortunately, if you go to Bora Bora on award mapper,
00:22:41.440 | you will only see three hotels. You won't see all of them.
00:22:43.760 | Fortunately, I had done enough research to know what they were.
00:22:46.560 | So I looked at Intercon, I looked at St.
00:22:50.080 | Regis, I looked at the Conrad.
00:22:51.440 | And and basically the way I do those searches is on their websites.
00:22:54.440 | So if you go to the Marriott website and you say,
00:22:57.040 | I want to look at the St.
00:22:58.320 | Regis Bora Bora, you can say flexible dates, which I love doing.
00:23:01.840 | And I like to search for just one night.
00:23:03.680 | So you get a sense of all the availability.
00:23:05.680 | Click use points and click view rates.
00:23:08.560 | And what you'll get is a calendar of 30 days of availability.
00:23:12.800 | And you can see which nights have availability.
00:23:14.920 | Right now, you can see that there are six nights for the rest of March,
00:23:19.320 | which, you know, it's the 18th.
00:23:20.880 | So 50% of the days left in March still have availability.
00:23:23.760 | And in April, there's 13 nights.
00:23:26.720 | So a little bit less than half of April. It's not perfect.
00:23:30.080 | It's not like you could stay for 10 days in a row.
00:23:32.040 | But I will say when you search this availability, it changes a lot.
00:23:35.560 | I remember right before we booked it, one of the days we wanted to stay was gone.
00:23:39.440 | I waited six hours. It came back and I'll actually pull up.
00:23:42.080 | So this is what the chart looked like.
00:23:43.640 | If you're watching the video, you'll see it.
00:23:44.920 | But when I was booking the chart for March, the first, third, fourth,
00:23:49.360 | fifth, sixth, 10th, 12th, 15th, all the way to the 22nd were all available.
00:23:54.520 | And then the next day, the 13th and the 14th opened up,
00:23:57.440 | which is when we ended up actually coming down here.
00:23:59.680 | So already I was looking at 70 to 85,000 points a night thinking
00:24:04.240 | this is probably going to be the way we're going to do this trip.
00:24:06.840 | But we stayed at the Conrad a few years ago and it was fantastic.
00:24:11.200 | And while I don't have a lot of Hilton points,
00:24:13.600 | they often have transfer bonuses from Amex.
00:24:16.040 | So I thought it'd be worth looking.
00:24:17.920 | So I looked at the Conrad.
00:24:19.320 | You check use points. You can hit view available dates.
00:24:22.120 | And sometimes it's crazy.
00:24:24.520 | So I'm looking right now.
00:24:26.080 | And if you want to make a last minute trip for the next four days,
00:24:28.920 | it's 120,000 points per night, which is a pretty good deal.
00:24:32.400 | If you want to go beyond that, it's one point three million points per night,
00:24:36.480 | which is a terrible, terrible use of Hilton points.
00:24:39.160 | So you might find some great deals with Hilton if you're looking.
00:24:42.560 | But like I said, those rooms sometimes can be as low as 700,
00:24:47.280 | 800 dollars a night, which look, that is a really expensive hotel room.
00:24:50.960 | But this is also a really, really expensive place to be
00:24:53.960 | that can cost two or three thousand dollars a night.
00:24:56.680 | So if you find a deal with dollars, it might be worth doing that for us.
00:25:00.600 | We were ended up able to take advantage of the Marriott deal
00:25:03.600 | where you book four nights, get the fifth free.
00:25:05.720 | And it was about eighty five thousand a night.
00:25:08.400 | So we paid about actually I know exactly.
00:25:11.680 | We paid three hundred and forty thousand points.
00:25:13.600 | And I'll pull up my confirmation right here, which shows
00:25:16.520 | there's three hundred forty thousand points for the whole stay.
00:25:19.640 | And it was two thousand French Polynesian dollars, which is about 20 bucks.
00:25:25.280 | So all in now, our flights were about one hundred eighty eight dollars of taxes.
00:25:29.640 | And our hotel was about twenty dollars in fees.
00:25:32.160 | We're at about two hundred dollars.
00:25:33.920 | And our rooms otherwise were over two thousand a night.
00:25:37.240 | So ten grand flights were over eleven thousand.
00:25:39.280 | So this is a twenty thousand dollar vacation that we just booked
00:25:43.200 | last minute for less than two hundred dollars
00:25:46.240 | and about three hundred and forty thousand merit points
00:25:49.520 | and about two hundred twenty thousand chase point.
00:25:51.760 | I think we use chase points or you could use Capital One or Amex.
00:25:54.440 | One thing to share, if you're going to book, whether it's with points or dollars,
00:25:58.920 | one of the things a lot of people want to know, you know,
00:26:01.280 | if you're coming to a place like Bora Bora, is how do you get that upgrade?
00:26:05.040 | And the way I recommend thinking about that is
00:26:08.520 | there's a website called Flyer Talk.
00:26:10.800 | And for almost every hotel you can book with miles, there's a thread.
00:26:14.560 | And you can go way down the rabbit hole.
00:26:16.280 | And I wouldn't recommend that.
00:26:17.400 | But I would find the thread on the hotel you're trying to book at
00:26:20.520 | and just read a little bit, jump all the way to the end.
00:26:23.160 | See the recent reports of what people have found.
00:26:25.400 | A lot of these hotels, you can book a basic room, email them
00:26:29.480 | and upgrade it with dollars.
00:26:31.080 | You might even get a better deal than sometimes the online price
00:26:34.480 | to upgrade your hotel.
00:26:35.800 | And then you can also just take your chances if you have status
00:26:38.440 | or if you book it through a program or a travel agent or something like that.
00:26:41.680 | You might be able to be waitlisted for an upgrade if it's available.
00:26:44.840 | I'm actually working on an experiment right now with a travel company
00:26:49.240 | that would allow all listeners of this show to be able to book
00:26:53.160 | luxury properties around the world and get those kind of amenities.
00:26:56.840 | So if you're listening right now and you're looking at booking with dollars
00:27:00.960 | at a higher end property anywhere in the world and you want things
00:27:04.120 | like free breakfast or upgrade or late checkout and stuff like that,
00:27:07.520 | shoot me an email.
00:27:08.840 | We could do a little beta test here and see if we can get you hooked up
00:27:11.320 | on your next trip.
00:27:12.320 | Wouldn't cost you anything extra.
00:27:13.840 | So that's what I would recommend.
00:27:14.960 | Definitely do some research to see if there's a way you can get that upgrade.
00:27:18.040 | I know in a place like Bora Bora, some hotels, the cheap room
00:27:21.920 | that you book with points and in our case was not an overwater bungalow,
00:27:25.680 | but it was a villa on the beach.
00:27:27.680 | It's funny if you talk to people who've been here a lot.
00:27:30.160 | Some people say, you know what?
00:27:31.120 | Once the allure of the overwater bungalow wears off, the beach villa
00:27:34.640 | where you kind of have your own hammock and your own plunge pool
00:27:36.960 | and all that stuff, it's actually nicer.
00:27:39.240 | Hasn't worn off for me yet.
00:27:40.440 | I'm really enjoying jumping in the water from the balcony.
00:27:43.120 | So one day maybe I'll get there, but certainly not there today.
00:27:47.080 | So that covers flights to French Polynesia.
00:27:49.480 | That covers your hotel in Bora Bora.
00:27:51.240 | But there's one important thing I forgot to mention, and that's that Bora Bora
00:27:55.760 | is not located on the same island as Papiete, where all the international
00:28:00.000 | flights come in.
00:28:01.080 | So you need to get there.
00:28:02.960 | And the only way to really get there is to fly on Air Tahiti.
00:28:06.720 | And the fares are relatively the same.
00:28:09.520 | You book on their website.
00:28:11.280 | They're not the cheapest, but they're not crazy expensive.
00:28:13.960 | I think if you book really last minute, it might be about $400 round trip.
00:28:18.200 | But that's really your only option.
00:28:20.200 | So there's no hacks.
00:28:21.480 | There's no tricks.
00:28:22.680 | But what is interesting to know is a lot of the flights
00:28:25.960 | that come down here during the day and leave as a red eye going back home
00:28:29.480 | or vice versa mean that you're either going to land late at night
00:28:33.160 | or you're going to take off really early in the morning.
00:28:35.560 | And one hack, if you're able to swing it, is to book on an airline
00:28:39.520 | or even split and book on two airlines.
00:28:41.920 | So you have an overnight flight each way.
00:28:44.400 | Otherwise, if you have a super early morning flight
00:28:47.120 | going out or you land really late at night,
00:28:50.240 | there are no flights to get to an island that leave after
00:28:53.520 | or leave early enough to make your connection.
00:28:55.600 | So for us, we ended up getting in around 8 p.m.
00:28:59.040 | And we spent one night at the Intercontinental in Tahiti.
00:29:02.320 | It was actually fantastic.
00:29:04.200 | We actually spent almost the whole next day and took an afternoon flight out.
00:29:08.120 | The pool was amazing.
00:29:09.680 | The snorkeling was great.
00:29:11.320 | Overall, I had a great experience.
00:29:12.880 | There's also a Hilton near the airport.
00:29:14.680 | Both looked great.
00:29:15.760 | So if you don't get in early enough to make a connection
00:29:19.120 | or if you're flying out early in the morning and you need to stay a night
00:29:22.120 | before, I could recommend both those places.
00:29:24.680 | I won't go into it in this podcast, but there's also a ton of great hotels
00:29:28.600 | on the island of Maria, which is really close to the main island of Tahiti.
00:29:32.680 | So if you want to split your trip up, check that out.
00:29:35.360 | There's a lot of other islands here worth checking out.
00:29:37.840 | But I just figured I'd focus on the trip we just planned and walk you through it all.
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00:32:55.080 | OK, I wanted to share two things.
00:32:57.440 | One, I have a bunch of hacks that I've learned from two trips here.
00:33:00.560 | And two, I just want to kind of compare and contrast the two places
00:33:04.720 | I've stayed in case you happen to be listening to this and thinking,
00:33:07.560 | should I stay at the St. Regis?
00:33:09.000 | Should I stay at the Conrad?
00:33:10.720 | First off, it doesn't matter which one you pick.
00:33:12.600 | They're both going to be absolutely amazing.
00:33:14.480 | But I figure, should you have the question, it might be worth sharing.
00:33:18.080 | So first off, if you're thinking of booking this, one hack that I've heard,
00:33:22.080 | a lot of people we've met at the resort have told us is that
00:33:25.360 | they actually booked their trip at Costco.
00:33:27.880 | Now, I've never used Costco's travel program.
00:33:30.400 | And when I tried to look online before recording this,
00:33:33.000 | it looks like you have to call for availability.
00:33:35.240 | But we talked to at least three couples that said they looked around
00:33:39.040 | and the best possible deal they found was booking through Costco.
00:33:42.200 | And it included their flight from L.A.
00:33:44.080 | And all they had to do was get to L.A.
00:33:45.960 | So I'll definitely say try that out if you're looking at coming here
00:33:50.520 | and taking an amazing vacation.
00:33:52.520 | Some people actually booked packages that included their dinner.
00:33:55.160 | In a lot of places in the world, I would never want to make
00:33:58.160 | that kind of a commitment in advance to eat at the hotel every single night.
00:34:02.560 | But if you're coming somewhere like Bora Bora, like the Maldives,
00:34:06.680 | where the options outside of your resort are almost nothing.
00:34:10.560 | In fact, I don't think we will eat outside of the resort the entire time
00:34:13.840 | we're here because there's nowhere to walk to.
00:34:16.560 | Yes, you could take a boat, but then you'd need to charter a boat to come back.
00:34:20.200 | It just seems like a lot of work.
00:34:21.880 | So we've been eating at the resort and it's been fantastic.
00:34:24.880 | So if that's the circumstance and there's a deal to book your dinner
00:34:28.200 | and that dinner is reasonably priced.
00:34:30.960 | And let me remind you that all food here is expensive.
00:34:34.080 | So I will say that while we've saved a ton of money
00:34:37.000 | booking the flights with points and a ton of money booking the hotel with points,
00:34:40.000 | there is no deal to get affordable food.
00:34:42.200 | There are some hacks to save a little bit of money.
00:34:44.400 | But at the end of the day, if you're coming to a place like this,
00:34:47.680 | you're just going to have to bite the bullet and spend money on food
00:34:50.720 | because it's the only way to do it and really enjoy yourself.
00:34:53.400 | So I want to share a few of the differences between the two hotels
00:34:56.480 | I've stayed at here.
00:34:57.800 | I'll go through it quickly,
00:34:58.840 | because most of you are probably not looking to plan a trip to Bora Bora
00:35:02.280 | in the near future and pick between these exact two hotels.
00:35:05.080 | But maybe comparing them will help you guys
00:35:07.680 | think about ways to compare other hotels in the future.
00:35:10.480 | So when I think about the two, what was obvious in advance
00:35:14.880 | was that the Conrad was newer.
00:35:16.680 | It had only been open for a few years when we went in 2018.
00:35:20.520 | And the St. Regis has been open a lot longer.
00:35:23.120 | That doesn't mean a lot in terms of quality, because the St.
00:35:26.040 | Regis is absolutely incredible.
00:35:28.160 | But it does mean that you have a little bit of a different vibe.
00:35:30.680 | The Conrad vibe was a little bit more modern and perfectly manicured.
00:35:34.200 | And there's Bluetooth speakers in the room that you can pair your phone with.
00:35:37.200 | And the St.
00:35:38.000 | Regis was just as luxurious, but maybe a little less modern.
00:35:41.040 | A couple other fun quick hits.
00:35:43.120 | The St. Regis has this beautiful lagoon with fish that you can snorkel in.
00:35:48.000 | But around all the villas, the water is just beautiful, clear water.
00:35:52.320 | You can see it behind me if you're watching the video.
00:35:54.160 | Whereas the Conrad didn't have any special place to snorkel,
00:35:57.080 | but the entire villas were surrounded by coral reefs.
00:35:59.960 | So the snorkeling right off of your balcony or your patio was incredible.
00:36:03.840 | When it comes to upgrades, the Conrad has all about 30,
00:36:07.560 | I think, rooms that aren't over water.
00:36:09.880 | And I think the St.
00:36:10.800 | Regis has closer to 10.
00:36:12.320 | So the likelihood that there will be an extra room
00:36:16.160 | because there's just more of the St.
00:36:17.920 | Regis rooms are over water bungalows.
00:36:20.200 | I think you might have a higher likelihood of getting that upgrade.
00:36:22.720 | The Conrad did have this amazingly hard mini golf course,
00:36:27.640 | like maybe the hardest mini golf course you could ever imagine.
00:36:31.000 | But it was a lot of fun.
00:36:32.000 | And at the St.
00:36:33.200 | Regis and the Conrad, they both had what I wish every hotel had,
00:36:37.360 | which was all the activities at the beach were free.
00:36:40.000 | You want to borrow a stand up paddle board.
00:36:42.080 | You want to borrow a Hobie Cat and go sailing.
00:36:44.200 | You want to borrow one of those weird bikes
00:36:46.640 | that has like six foot tall inflatable wheels free.
00:36:50.080 | You want snorkel equipment free.
00:36:51.680 | You even want sunscreen. It's free.
00:36:53.440 | So one of the nicest things about some of these higher end resorts is that
00:36:56.960 | you do, after paying for the expensive room,
00:37:00.880 | get a lot of the amenities on the property without having to pay extra.
00:37:04.400 | Even at the St.
00:37:05.280 | Regis, you can use all of the amenities of the spa, the steam room,
00:37:09.040 | the sauna, everything for free just by calling and reserving it.
00:37:13.520 | Other than that, I think they both have amazing food.
00:37:16.360 | It is expensive.
00:37:17.280 | I'll just flag that for anyone listening.
00:37:19.640 | Just be prepared.
00:37:20.920 | But yeah, it's hard to go wrong.
00:37:23.400 | I think the last point that I think a lot of people come to Bora Bora
00:37:26.760 | for this beautiful view of the mountain and the kind of volcanic
00:37:30.800 | looking structure in the middle of the island that isn't visible from the Conrad.
00:37:35.040 | So if your dream is that like classic Bora Bora picture
00:37:38.760 | looking out your balcony to that view, you won't get that at the Conrad.
00:37:42.360 | What you will get is a view of this beautiful, endless ocean.
00:37:45.760 | Yeah, it's unbelievable.
00:37:47.600 | I mean, I can't you can pick any resort here, and I'm sure it'd be totally fine.
00:37:51.560 | So those were a few of the differences.
00:37:54.760 | I hope that was helpful.
00:37:56.800 | Finally, some quick hacks and tips for a trip to Bora Bora.
00:38:00.440 | Some of these are applicable anywhere you go.
00:38:02.560 | So one, definitely do an excursion to go out and swim
00:38:06.880 | with the sharks and the stingrays.
00:38:08.320 | It's one of the coolest things you can ever do.
00:38:10.480 | I thought it was amazing.
00:38:11.920 | Also, don't pack as much sunscreen as you think you need.
00:38:14.840 | Almost every resort, at least the two we've stayed at, have unlimited free
00:38:18.200 | sunscreen. Bring floats.
00:38:20.240 | If you want to just sit out in the ocean off your patio.
00:38:22.480 | There's some really cool, cheap, small packable floats.
00:38:25.720 | I'll put a link in the show notes.
00:38:27.360 | We bought two of them or just make friends
00:38:30.400 | because a lot of people bring floats and don't want to carry them back.
00:38:33.280 | So shout out to Sam and Gabe, who travel around the States in a van
00:38:38.320 | and bought an amazing pink flamingo and left it for us.
00:38:41.760 | My wife got a ton of great use out of it.
00:38:44.040 | So I really appreciate that.
00:38:45.600 | If you can for a place like this, do your overnight flights
00:38:48.600 | so that you don't have to spend an extra day on lodging.
00:38:51.200 | Finally, if you're staying at a place where there's not a lot of stuff
00:38:54.480 | walkable or accessible, I always like to stop at the store somewhere,
00:38:59.000 | whether it's on your layover or on the cab ride over,
00:39:01.800 | even sometimes at the airport, and just pick up a handful of snacks,
00:39:05.480 | maybe some drinks, especially if it's a place like this and you want some alcohol.
00:39:09.520 | I could be really expensive at a resort.
00:39:11.800 | Pick up a few things.
00:39:13.240 | I don't expect it to be all the food you'll need, all the drink you'll need,
00:39:16.240 | et cetera, but it does feel good sometimes to be like, oh, finally,
00:39:20.080 | I got a three dollar beer instead of the eight dollar resort beer.
00:39:23.440 | And maybe that's just a small
00:39:24.920 | like part of me that feels like I want a couple of wins on a trip
00:39:27.840 | because I know it's really expensive.
00:39:29.840 | But that's a tip I have, because a lot of times also
00:39:32.480 | there aren't some great snacks, you know, room service.
00:39:35.200 | You might be able to get French fries as a side dish, but there aren't always
00:39:38.680 | just like a bag of chips or some granola or something small like that.
00:39:42.840 | OK, that's all the hacks I have from this recent trip.
00:39:45.760 | And hopefully this episode gives you some ideas to help you book your next trip.
00:39:49.640 | But if you have any follow up questions or feedback,
00:39:52.520 | please don't hesitate to shoot me an email.
00:39:54.480 | Chris at all the hacks dot com.
00:39:56.520 | I will try to reply to every single one.
00:39:58.680 | And I hope you got a chance to check out some of the photos
00:40:01.920 | and videos from this trip on Instagram or YouTube.
00:40:04.440 | I'll link to both of those in the show notes.
00:40:07.040 | Finally, I'm doing an episode with Julia from Geo Breeze Travel,
00:40:10.880 | who's an expert in all things, credit cards, points and miles.
00:40:14.280 | We're recording soon.
00:40:15.640 | So if you have any questions you want us to tackle on that topic,
00:40:18.640 | please send them my way as soon as you can.
00:40:20.840 | Thank you so much for joining me this week.
00:40:23.520 | See you next week.
00:40:24.360 | I really hope you enjoyed this episode.
00:40:28.880 | Thank you so much for listening.
00:40:30.640 | If you haven't already left a rating and a review for the show
00:40:33.520 | in Apple podcasts or Spotify, I would really appreciate it.
00:40:36.960 | And if you have any feedback on the show, questions for me
00:40:39.680 | or just want to say hi, I'm Chris at all the hacks dot com
00:40:43.240 | or at Hutchins on Twitter.
00:40:45.400 | That's it for this week.
00:40:46.440 | I'll see you next week.
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