Bali Package Deal Questions
 

Delta, through Asian Affair Holidays has a good deal on a package to Bali, through end of October. $880 (+ taxes), 5 nights at either the Nusa Dua Beach Hotel or the Meridien Nirwana, coach on Singapore from LAX.

Can anyone recommend one hotel over the other? BTW - the package provides 10,000 Skymiles per person but there are no earned "qualifying miles" towards status. Would it make more sense to just pull together the package independently? I really don't need status miles this year.

Thanks in advance for the help.

I too looked into that and weighed it against gaining status and miles. And I opting to build my own trip. I looked on Travelocity and found nice rates since I'm flexible for travel. Hotels are cheap and I also have platinum status with Starwoods. From Denver, I figured I would accumulate around 45,000 miles as a Premier Exec member.

Frankly, the East Coast to Bali is an awfully long way to travel without getting status miles! I woudn't even consider it unless it was virtually free... http://www.flyertalk.com/travel/fttravel_forum/wink.gif

Not sure about those specific hotels. Nusa Dua is a more quiet, "exclusive" stretch of beach on the SE part of the island.

I went ahead and booked anyway - I have to be in LA on the 21-23 of October, so I just tagged on the trip to Bali from there. I had a DL cert for a free domestic flight for my wife so there were no add-on costs. The dates worked and the loss of miles is really not that big since the heavily discounted fares earn either no miles or 1/2 the usual rate. By the end of August I'll have over 100m MQM's on DL so no problem there either. The trip cost is really pretty good, when you add all the small stuff included in the package.



[This message has been edited by runningshoes (edited 08-09-2003).]

We took the Asian Affair package to Bali in 1999. We elected to stop in SIN for 2 nites on the way over and purchased the add-on from Asian Affair. We stayed at the Nusa Dua Beach Hotel and liked it very much. The Meridien is quite far out and is built in a controversial area, the local Balinese absolutely did not want the hotel built so near their sacred Tanah Lot temple but they didn't have the political clout to get the project stopped.

We were very pleased with the Asian Affair package, although the promised airport to hotel transport never showed up and we had to take a taxi. Everything else with the package was good.

The next two trips to Bali we bought Economy Deluxe seats on EVA, LAX-DPS roundtrip for about $900 from Borneo International, a consolidator in SFO. We stayed at hotels we found on that first trip, very local places in the Ubud area for about $65/nite. The EVA tickets accrued about 18,000 miles on CO One Pass per trip. I don't know if EVA's miles count for CO status.

Warning: I found SQ's Economy seats to be very confining. You might want to try to get two aisles.