Here’s my favorite game to play. Let’s see where I can go with the points I currently have. It’s a great way to see where you can actually go, plan what credit card I’d need to get next and how many points it’ll cost. In the last email we went to Europe. Let’s take it to the other side of the world and go to Bali.
The first thing I do before I start looking at flights are
See what hotel I can stay at
See how many points it’s going to cost me
I’m trying to spend the least amount of money possible on this trip so booking the hotel is always the first thing I want to lock down. Unlike airlines, room availability doesn’t usually open up nights before the stay so its better to book those days in advance.
Since I’m running the show and Hyatt if my favorite hotel brand we’re going to start off by pulling up the Hyatt World Map
After zooming into Indonesia we end up picking Andaz Bali. But why out of all the hotels? Well, I picked it because of two main reasons. Its a category 4 hotel so I can use one of my free category 1-4 night certificates I got from my World of Hyatt Chase card here along with the one my s/o has so we’re already in for two free nights. The second reason is that it was rated #3 in the 2023 travel + leisure 100 favorite hotels. While it being a category 4 peaked my interest, it being ranked #3 on the list got my attention.
Trying to avoid monsoon season in Bali (October – April) we settle on looking at availability in September. Prices per night are going to range from 12k to 18K points per night. So if we were trying to stay for 7 nights we would need points for 5 nights since the other two are covered by certificates. On the high end we’d be looking at 90K Hyatt Points.
So we could either book our hotel nights right now or take a quick look at flights to see award availability.
If you want to avoid clicking through award availability you can always use Awayz. They’ll show you what hotels have award availability for the current dates you’re looking for or set up alerts when a hot hotel has availability that opens up.
Love this tool and could not recommend it more. If you’re interested use code BETTERTHANPOINTS for $10 off.
Now moving onto flights. The main airport to get to Bali is Singapore (SIN) so we’re going to look at what airports have flights coming into SIN.
After pulling this information up on FlightConnections we can see there are a bunch of flights but these 6 Airports have nonstop flight to SIN.
JFK, EWR, LAX, SFO,SEA,YVR, DOH
5 of these flights are flown by Singapore Airlines – JFK, EWR, LAX,SFO,SEA
1 is flown by Air Canada – Vancouver (YVR)
1 is flown by United – San Francisco (SFO)
While we are bound to find award availability through these we also have one other options that I want to mention, Doha (DOH) in Qatar
Flying from the US to Qatar and then Qatar to SIN
Looking at FlightConnections this is what we get
SEA, SFO, LAX, ORD, DFW, IAH, ATL, MIA, YUL, BOS, JFK, PHL, IAD
Now that we know exactly what airlines to look at depending on where you are we head over to Seat.aero to see what availability we can find for the airlines.
Award availability will be hard to come by and you many need to set up alerts. The best way to book Singapore airlines will be through Air Canada since they are both in Star Alliance for 87.5K Points for business class or 60K points in economy.
Chase, American Express, Capital One and Bilt all transfer 1:1 to Air Canada Aeroplan miles
You could also fly Qatar for business class from anywhere from 95K – 190K one way. Although you’ll have more airports to depart from finding availability might be harder given the connection in DOH and Qatar not being supported on seats.aearo. You can try and book each leg separately US Airport to DOH and DOH to SIN or just log into the Qatar website and click through every day trying to find the availability 🫠
If you’re lucky enough to find a flight on your initial search maybe book your hotel and set an alert for the flight back if you have a couple of months to wait and see if availability pops up.
If not then maybe book economy and hope that business class opens up. Last thing I wanted to mention on the flights was that if you didn’t have an American Express or Citi card to transfer points over to Qatar you can always transfer them over from British Airways since both programs use Avios Points.
So theoretically on the high end if you were able to score two round trip business class tickets on Singapore airline ($10k for both if paid) and 2 certificate nights (Received after one year of having the World Of Hyatt Card) while paying for the other 5 ($2.5K for 7 nights) this trip would cost you 90K Hyatt Points and 350K Air Canada Aeroplan miles.
While it might seem like a lot, if you and your s/o both got the World of Hyatt card with the 60K intro bonus you’d have enough for the hotel. If both of you got the Chase Sapphire Preferred with an intro bonus between 80k – 100k each along with the American Express Gold Card or Capital One Venture X that’d be enough to cover the points needed not counting the $120 round trip ticket from Sin to Bali.
If you’re able to plan this enough in advance you’re able to have a really cool trip just from your everyday spend.
Hope this one was helpful!
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