Using Points and Miles for 2 Weeks in New Zealand for $9 in Lodging Cost

How we spent 12 nights half-way around the world for $9 in lodging costs

We continued our trend of taking amazing family trips over Christmas and New Year’s time for much less than a 1-week family vacation to Disneyland.

Our first big one was Australia, then Costa Rica, Thailand, and then across Southeast Asia (including the Maldives). For our 2023-2024 trip, we decided on a 2-week trip to New Zealand, which included roundtrip travel in business class, and 12 hotel nights spanning the north and south islands of New Zealand.

To avoid confusion, there was nothing comped by any airline, hotel chain, or excursion company. While that is an aspiration for future trips, we aren’t there yet. 

How did you only spend $9 on hotels over 12 days? I’ll spell this out for you, but it was primarily a combination of Chase Ultimate Rewards and Hilton Points.

Where are all of your points coming from?

Everyone wants to know how we accumulate all of the points needed to take a family of 5 on these types of trips. I have been obsessed with travel hacking, and the ability to get points on activities I am doing anyway. It just takes organization across our family’s spending, education, and discipline to maximize points and miles to your accounts.

To be fully transparent, I do travel for work (not a ton, but enough to accumulate some miles – roughly 2 business trips per month) which accounts for approximately 80% of my American Airlines miles, 40% of my Hilton points, and approximately 20% of my Chase Ultimate Rewards points.

Also, keep in mind that we  only used 200,000 American Airlines miles the year before and didn’t use any  Chase Ultimate Rewards points for 2 years (Southeast Asia trip), so I built up a couple of my point stashes.

We generally accumulate points and miles from 4 activities:

• Credit card usage – strategic spends by type on various cards

• Credit card sign up bonuses

• Credit Card usage offers (Amex Offers for example) and travel shopping portals (like AAdvantage eShopping)

• Travel

Below is what we did to accumulate points and miles in the prior year:

New credit cards I signed up for in the past year:

• I didn’t sign up for any new cards in the prior year – which is unusual for me

  
  

Credit card usage across the ways we used points for this trip

• Hilton Amex – We use this exclusively for gas and groceries, earning 6x points per dollar, and for staying at Hilton properties earning 7x points per dollar.

• Chase Sapphire Reserve – This is generally our go-to default card because the Chase Ultimate Rewards are flexible / versatile and give you 50% more when using the Chase travel portal to book flights and hotels. Also, it is always used for dining out because of the 3x points per dollar.

• Chase Ink Business – There are a few categories (like mobile phone) where you earn multiple points per dollar. Any Chase Ultimate Rewards points can be combined with the ones from the Chase Sapphire Reserve and still give you 50% more with the travel portal.

• American Express Platinum – We use this one more and more, but the big areas here that rack up the points are:

  • 5x points per dollar when booking flights directly with the airline or through the American Express travel portal. In the year leading up to this trip, I was doing a fair amount of international work travel for my previous company, so this added up quickly.

  • Amex Offers – tons here with a variety of stores, restaurants, and services, that will give you either bonus points or multiples on your store spend (like 5x points for Amazon spend up to a certain amount).

  • They had an offer to add 3 authorized users, earning an additional 75,000 points.

How were the points and miles used?

For this trip to New Zealand, we used points / miles from the following sources to cover transportation / lodging:

• American Airlines miles

• Chase Ultimate Rewards points

• American Express points

• Uber credits

Below is exactly how we redeemed points and miles:

• American Airlines miles – On the flight to Auckland, we originally booked in Premium Economy as a 1-way flight. I kept checking the flights, and 4 days before the flight the redemption for Business Class through Dallas instead of LAX (originating at ORD) dropped significantly so I surprised everyone with Business Class (totally worth it!). We used a total of 460k miles (92k each) for the 5 of us plus $210 in taxes. Total savings = $29,000 ($5,800 x 5 for 1-way flight at time of original booking).

• Chase Ultimate Rewards Points – I used 354,367 points + $9.51 for 9 of our 12 nights. Total savings = $5,576

  • Through the Chase Travel portal

    • 2 nights in a 2 bedroom Garden Apartment at the Trinity Wharf Tauranga. 62,241 points, savings $972

    • 2 nights in a 3 bedroom family suite at the Silver Fern Rotorua Suites and Spa. 74,222 points, savings $1,134

    • 1 night with 2 hotel rooms at the InterContinental Wellington, an IHG Hotel. 38,320 points, savings $642

    • 3 nights with 2 hotel rooms at the Sudima Kaikoura. 116, 584 points + $9.51, savings $1,877

    • 1 night  with 3 hotel rooms at The George (was Hyatt when stayed – now Hilton) in Christchurch – 63,000 points transferred to Hyatt and booked through Hyatt. Savings $951

• American Express points – I used 920,000 points + $1,200 in cash for our 1-way business class flights from Christchurch New Zealand to ORD, with the following routing:  Flight #1: Christchurch to Sydney on Qantas, Flight #2: Sydney to LAX upstairs on the Qantas A380 (amazing!), and Flight #3: LAX to Chicago on American Airlines. Total savings = $9,200

• Hilton points = I used 514,000 points for 3 rooms for 3 nights each at the Hilton Lake Taupo. Total savings = $2,208.

• Uber credits – I used $42 in credits ($30 from the December Platinum Amex credit and $12 from usage credits) + $20 for our ride to the airport to start our trip.

Total Savings = $46,026

Out of Pocket Expenses for Transportation and Lodging

• Flight Taxes = $210

• Flight Difference between Amex Points and Cost = $1200

• Hotels = $9.51

• Uber = $20

• Rental Car (Van) for 12 days = $1724

Total spent = $3,143.51

So, if we are keeping score:

• Total transportation and lodging related out of pocket costs = $3143

• Total transportation and lodging related savings with points and miles = $46,026

• Total value of lodging and transportation if the whole things was out of pocket = $49,169

• Our cost % compared with value = 6.4%

The reason I shared the difference between the value and what we actually paid is to show that if we had to pay nearly $50,000 for lodging and transportation, this trip would have been way out of our budget and wouldn’t have happened. As the pictures scratch the surface, this trip was unbelievable: