mgiles92

I hope this thread finds everyone well. I have recently gotten engaged and my fiance and I are looking for a round the world trip to the following destinations for our honeymoon. Ideally the trip would occur around this time next year (May or June of 2019). We are Dallas based so starting point is DFW. We would like our stops to be in Santorini, Maldives, and Bali with a total trip timeline expanding 2-3 weeks.

These are my balances and statutes for reward programs to use for us to travel. These will increase over the coming months as I do not plan on using any until then:

AA 125k miles (Platinum Pro)
Marriott 115k points (Platinum)
SPG 110k points (Platinum Preferred)
Hilton 75k points (Diamond, likely wont renew for 2019)
Chase UR 100k points
AMEX 200k points

Any recommendations on how to tackle a trip like this would be greatly appreciated. I am naturally more concerned about the flights and coordinating them than the hotels (traveling in premium cabins would be ideal given the occasion). Should we get a travel agent? Which should be our first destination and in what order? All of the assistance and guidance we could get would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Yoshi212

Firstly, Welcome to FT & Congrats.

There are award booking services that know how to "manipulate" the programs to piece together what you want (based on availability) Award booking services - a list and some reviews

I would caution against visiting 3 beach centric locations for the trip. Sounds relaxing but after awhile you're repeating yourself. The Maldives, while beautiful, are very expensive, difficult to get to via award tickets, will be very hot, require additional boat rides or flights to get to & from the resorts eating into time. I'd suggest maybe something more adventurous between Greece & Bali. But that's just me you two may be different.

Twickenham

My first reaction, looking at your desired destinations, is that they are all easy to get to via Star Alliance airlines. Now, I don't have experience with United's mileage program and stop rules, but I am familiar with Aeroplan (Air Canada's FF program, at least until 2020 ). Doing some playing around with the AE website, this itinerary should be doable IF you fly to and from Athens, and buy a separate flight to Santorini. The points required for Business class would be 150,000 each, and both your AMEX and SPG points can be transferred to AE, so you have plenty to make this happen. For more info and to ask for help putting together an itinerary, check out the Aeroplan board, and specifically this thread: The Complete Newbie Guide/FAQ to the Air Canada Aeroplan Mini-RTW

mgiles92

Thank you for the warm welcome and I'm glad to join the group!

I certainly will take all of those recommendations into consideration. We really didn’t think about how all 3 are beach destinations, so thank you for pointing that out. We are indifferent on, so potentially that location can be changed out for another on the trek home. Have already seen Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Macau. Do you have any recommendations there? I’ve heard Singapore is a good one.

United we certainly could do as well. Houston is a short 3 hour drive from us where they have a hub. Thanks for the note regarding Athens and Aeroplan, I must look into that as business class sounds amazing. That’s definitely the way we wish to go.

javabytes

rbAA

Some good suggestions, don't try to do 3 or more solely beach vacation spots. Thailand is, of course, my favorite, though Phuket can be very rainy in May and June. Not all day long, but you might not be into doing massages while you wait for the rain to pass. OK, so that was a little sarcasm. Bali would be better if you can push it to late June or July, the best season there. This past May was great in Vietnam and the beaches are great, as well as a very well priced location with plenty of other things to do. My friends just did Vietnam in May and they loved the city scene in Saigon and Hanoi, the beaches of Nha Trang and Da Nang, and they did the 3 day/2 nt boat cruise in Ha Long Bay which they felt was the high point. If you are set on a RTW, try first heading to Europe (I'm springing for my younger son's honeymoon in Aug to Italy for 13 days, and it was easy on SPG points, though the 2 Business class awards on AA came to 540k total. Ouch.) The beaches are also nice in certain places in the south of France, Antibes especially, which also has one of my favorite Picasso "museums," his previous residence of course.. And, plenty of other activites-museums in Nice, perfume factories in Grasse/Mougin, casinos in Monte Carlo, and if it's late May, try for tickets to the F1 race. Of course, outdoor restaurants everywhere. The whole area from Cannes to Monte Carlo can get expensive and difficult to use points during the later part on May between the Cannes Film Festival and F1 race, but I've done it a number of times. Just takes a little planning.

I've pieced together RTW trips, usually 3 tickets, sometimes including awards. Usually the RT is much cheaper than one way to DFW-NCE, and I've thrown away the return, though with some good planning, can set the table to a repeat trip some time later, doing te reverse RTW using the returns. Then NCE-BKK/HKT/SGN/HAN and then back to DFW. If the miles aren't going far enough, the fares from Europe to Asia can usually have some premium fare deals, even one way. I recently did OSL-LHR-HKG on CX PEone way for about $621 and the fares to BKK, HKT, SGN, HAN OR DPS aren't too much more. It's not as nice as CX J but then check some other carriers that you have miles on for one ways.

Enjoy

Duke787

Few thoughts:

1) I love Santorini -- we went last year and while we aren't going back for our honeymoon, it's definitely on the short-list. There will be a short window when it seems that SPG hotels like Mystique will be available temporarily at Marriott as Category 8 hotels which means it **might** be available for 40k/night plus 5th night free. That being said the other good option is if you have the Citi Prestige, go the 4th night free night at one of the boutiques (we did that and stayed at the Astra Suites and loved it) and utilize the Marriott/SPG to transfer over to airlines (see bullet 3)

2) Use AA miles for Maldives ---> Bali. Will only cost 40k/person in J and believe you have a choice of either MLE - DOH - DPS or MLE - HKG - DPS

3) Use AS miles for Bali ---> US. Ideally pay out of pocket for DPS - SIN or CGK and then grab Japan Airlines for SIN/CGK - NRT - DFW which should come in at 65k/person for business class and gets you straight back into Dallas. You can also add a stopover in Tokyo if you want to spend a couple of days there on the way home

4) Use Chase UR for PH Maldives

5) Use AMEX ---> Aeroplan for US ---> Europe. Should be 57.5k/person in J. You can fly any *A but they do pass on surcharges so ideally look for UA / SAS / LX. You could also splurge for LH F (if available within T-14) which would be 80k/person but that carries some hefty surcharges. You could also look at AMEX ---> FlyingBlue to grab Delta Saver awards (anything that shows up as 70k on Delta.com) or AF awards. In all likelihood you'll need to fly to ATH and separately purchase ATH - JTR - ATH tickets. Shouldn't be a big deal because those are cheap but do be aware that the flights are frequently delayed because of winds on the island (if/when we go back, we will be taking the ferry, we are still fighting with Vueling over a year later for EU261 over a canceled JTR - FCO flight).

6) Santorini ---> Maldives looks like the difficult one in all of this. AA is doable at 42.5k/person in J (would need to transfer some SPG/Marriott to cover) and you could use QR again (ATH - DOH - MLE)

mgiles92

Thank you so much for the breakout, I certainly will be looking into all of these items. I also figured Santorini to Maldvies would be the toughest part in all of this (remote to remoter as I see it). The biggest items for us to cover is flights as we plan on using a mixture of free nights or cash for all hotels. I looked into SFO to MLE in business and it looks to be ~95,000 miles one way per person plus $28 in fees. Luckily we have come to the conclusion that we will remove one of these location from the list, although that one will either be Santorini or Bali. To me Maldives and Bali seem similar in regards to type of vacation (not service related), but I could be wrong.

mgiles92

So we actually just did Phuket last Feb as well as Bangkok, Macau, and Hong Kong. It was a wonderful trip but thanks for the recommendation! I too recommend it to most people. With the wedding time in May it appears our travel will need to take place sometime around the middle of the month, starting on that Monday the 13th in 2019. Ideally we get to where we want to go on miles and points in style. Have you flown Singapore in Business from SFO or JFK? We are highly interested in that flight.

dogloverjb

Bali and the Maldives are completely different. You could easily spend 10 days in Bali at 2-3 different locations and not get bored. There is plenty to see there and lots of things to do. Depending on where you stay you can have beach experience or culture. Maldives is beach and very expensive. But absolutely beautiful. Since you don't have a lot of time you may want to think about staying somewhere in the Maldives that is a boat ride from the airport vs another flight. Santorini is also nice. You could do 4 nights there, 5 nights in Maldives and the rest in Bali.

If you can't get hotels on points get the Cite Prestige MC and you can get 4 nights for price of 3.

You could always do one of them next year.