AA Vacations - Surprisingly Good Deal
 

I'm planning a trip and they have a promotional code for $50 off a Vegas trip, so I thought I'd call.

I got a quote for the flights I wanted, which were $1236 on the website (flying F both ways). I needed the hotel for two nights but they said the vacation package is a minimum of 3. I'm guessing the hotel is about $60 a night, although the third night was a weekend which is more expensive. They gave me a price of $1174, without the $50 discount. So even not counting that, I get two useful nights in a hotel plus a possibly useless one (although maybe not), for $60 less than the flights alone. Plus, if I understand how they calculate EQD's, I'll get 1575 EQD's, which is far more than I'd get if I bought the tickets. (I used 30% of the actual miles flown with a minimum of 500 per segment.)

Sounds like a darned good deal, especially if I get the extra $50 off. I might think about doing this more often, since I usually stay 3 nights.

Which hotel?

You might even be better to book online and forego the Vegas promo and only do the two nights you want, especially if the 3rd night is more than the promo discount. Often for domestic itins you can book online and it doesnt force the three night minimum that is required when calling.

If you have a Citi AA card, you can save 10% off of the hotel portion by going to https://www.aavacations.com/citiaadvantage.

Thanks for the link that is extremely helpful

These deals have been going on for years, especially with Vegas. Not sure if they still do, but HP then US vacations used to handle the Vegas packages for Costco. So if you have a Costco card you might be able to get an additional discount. I was able to stack discounts in the past, not sure if that is still possible.
I remember booking a PHX-LAS + Bellagio for 3 nights for two that was about the same as just booking 2 PHX-LAS flights.

This calculation is wholly dependent on the way the fare was displayed on your package. If it doesn't have an asterisk next to the fare code then it will not be treated as a special fare and will not earn distance based EQD/EQM.

1) The fare code is I*. I think that earns .3 EQD per mile flown. The tickets alone would be $618 each way, so around 1100 EQD's. The routing I'm taking is 2350 miles out and 2901 back (PHL-DFW-LAS and LAS-LAX-DFW). So I think it's 1575 EQD's. I don't actually need the EQD's but they always help. I'm taking the ugly routing on the way back because I do need the EQM's (this trip will put me over for Plat Pro), and on the way down I got lie-flats on both segments, although the PHL-DWF is a 763 which is a poor imitation of an airplane.
2) I wound up booking 4 nights hotel It was a complicated thing because I'm going Wed-Wed. I have a convention for Sun-Tue and have to use their hotel and their booking code. I had a weekend promo from another hotel for Fri-Mon but I couldn't use the Sunday night part anyway. So I decided to just stay the whole four nights at one hotel.
3) The hotel is Orleans, which is where I usually stay in Vegas.
4) I don't have a Citi AA card, I have the Barclay's Silver Aviator to maximize EQM/EQD. I do manufactured spending so I can easily max out the credit card benefits. In fact, I had to pay for only part of this trip on my AA card because I don't want the second batch of EQD's to post too soon.

I regularly go to Vegas for about 3 days at a time, so I am going to pay attention to this for every trip. I had looked at it for another trip but it didn't seem to save much money.