The only advice i can offer...

1. Figure out exactly where you want to go, with specific dates
2. Book as far out in advance as you can

I booked my honeymoon for Oct of this year, in Nov of last year. We're doing Amsterdam, Paris, Zurich, Milan and Rome. I was actually pretty pleased at the availability and points required, as we're staying at the best Marriott hotels possible.

Good luck!

One quick idea that may or may not have relevance for you. BA (British Air) Visa has a deal where when you charge over $30,000 in one year, you get an award that entitles you to get two BA Executive Club (frequent flyer) tickets in any class (1st, Business, or Coach) for the price (in miles) of one. The award is valid for two years after issue. Most BA round trip business class tix to Europe are 100,000 miles, so once you qualified for the BA Visa award, you would get 2 business class tix for 100,000 miles, and the miles you are thinking about transfering from Marriott, if transfered to BA would, thus, qualify for two business class tickets. Or, if you transfered 120,000 into BA miles and had already charged the $30,000 to the BA Visa (to qualify for the BOGO), you would then have 150,000 BA miles, which would qualify you for two 1st class tickets. The downside is that the fuel and tax surcharge on BA award tickets is higher than most domestic airlines. But BA business class (and 1st class) is quite nice.

Or you could pick an alliance, get a CC with one of their US based airlines (avoid the pesky EU taxes on airfare as best as possible) and book a Round The World ticket which affords more diversity than just Europe. Not that Europe's a bad thing and actually it might be more your style to stay in one continent based upon your proclivity for the generic beach vaca :)

Our RTW honeymoon this april - May - June hits up Ethiopia, India, Nepal, Tibet, China, Japan, hawaii, Argentina, and Uruguay. Grand total - 180k miles in coach or 320k in business and less than $700 each in taxes. you get FAR more mileage out of your travels. But we travel for cultural experiences, not to sit on a beach or get a massage. ^

If you only have one week or two weeks and just want mini-america in EU, pick a handful of major cities, stay at US based hotels, and you're golden! If you're willing to hop around you can use miles to get across the pond (fly into one city and out of another for no additional charges). Then you can use the cheap internal flights to get around to many different cities.

Thank you so much for the replies!

The 30k spending with BA sounds very interesting. My only concern about it is how long we'd have to wait to book the airline tickets. We could do the 30k spend, but I'm concerned about award availability if we wait too long to book the tickets.

MemphisQueen, we would absolutely love to plan a trip like your upcoming honeymoon, unfortunately we really can't take that much time off of work. We probably have at most 2.5 weeks, but probably more realistically 2 weeks. That is my other concern about the travel packages. Having to stay at one hotel for half of the time, doesn't sound like it will fit the bill. I do understand this is our honeymoon and we don't want to pack too much into it, since we'd like to relax and enjoy ourselves also.... but I do think we want to hit at least 3 countries. Is that asking too much out of a 2 week vacation? I honestly don't know. I've got a lot of research to do... that's how I am and it is very annoying at times like this....

I think first thing we need to do, is sit our behinds down and map out WHERE we want to go! It is going to be based on what we want but also on Marriott locations and where our miles can take us. This is going to take some work!

Any other ideas/suggestions are greatly appreciated!!

Thanks! :D

Honeymoon - Upgrades?
 

Hi everyone. I am a platinum Marriott rewards member and in a few months I am getting married and going to Europe for our honeymoon (on points). In the past, I have never directly asked for an upgrade, gotten one from time to time, but never actually requested it.

Some coworkers of mine have said tell every hotel since they are likely to cater to you. I was wondering if its appropriate to request one in advance, or to wait until checkin. And if so, would this be done by directly contacting the hotel general manager or the platinum customer service line to make a note. If we are lucky enough to be able to given great rooms, it would make the trip even better.

Has anyone had luck with this? Any suggestions? Thanks

Congrats on your upcoming marriage!

Absolutely, if you can get the GM's (or concierge's if GM is not available) email ahead of time it is appropriate to email him/her imo. We've done this for Birthday's and special occasions and have had nearly 100% success with HUGE upgrades! We did this in Aruba and Hawaii and were given amazing suites and ocean front rooms!

We don't have experience in Europe so I can't give you any first hand knowledge over there, but in my opinion, it is absolutely 100% acceptable to email the GM regarding your honeymoon!

If you don't mind me asking, where are you staying in Europe? I am in the beginning stages of planning our Honeymoon in Europe as well and I'm looking for any/all ideas!

Thanks, I'll try to get my hands on emails. Does anyone have any tips on how to get this information?

We are staying at
The Grosvenor House in London (JW Property)
Vienna Marriott
Marriott Grand Flora in Rome
and the Hilton Arc de Triomphe in Paris

So far they all look really nice.

I don't know how availability would apply to you city of departure or destination, but I've used BA awards several times from Chicago and Detroit to London, Dublin, and Paris, and have not had a problem with award availability. Indeed, trying to secure a BA award as opposed to, say, Delta (or formerly Northwest) is like night and day. You might try some dummy award bookings on the BA site to get an idea of availability.

Ahhhh, very good to know!! :D Anyone have any experience with flying out of any New York airports?

I've never booked an award flight with BA. My experience has been with USAirways, United, and Southwest, with the only positive experiences with Southwest. However... Southwest has declined drastically imo with the introduction of Freedom Awards and now the upcoming Points vs Credits switch. Still head and shoulders above USAir and United... Wow those airlines are terrible on so many levels imo and unfortunately the most traveled on by yours truly!

I just finalized our plans for our honeymoon in June/July of this year. We had to go to Europe because friends of ours are getting married in Spain towards the end of our honeymoon. First we looked where in our case where we could get a reward flight (saver) on UA (we have the UA CC 50K miles I believe after first purchase). We found a flight to AMS, and then we planned our honeymoon from there. We focused on the low cost Euro airlines (EasyJet in our case) to find where we could go from there, we needed to end in Marbella Spain, so we decided we could get from AMS to FCO, and then from FCO to VCE, from VCE to AGP. With our flights booked we then focused on hotels, we're platinum at SPG (SPG Amex). Since our wedding is a destination wedding and we've been living together now for years, we have most of the things that go on a registry, so we set up a Honeyfund (www.honeyfund.com) and said if you wanted to give us gifts cash is good because we'll use that for our honeymoon. We researched hotels in AMS,FCO,VCE and went ok a hotel in AMS will cost X number of points per night and then compared that to FCO and VCE and vice versa, then we compared the cost $$ of each hotel, whatever hotel cost more $$ we would use points, and we would split paying for the next expensive $$ wise and then pay fully for the most inexpensive hotel. Now we would love to get Business or First class to AMS, but we're happy with a saver award 25k miles + taxes * 2 came out to something like 15 bucks. We get United Economy plus regardless, so it's not that bad, if we get bumped up the better, but I am there more for the journey. Sorry for the long post but I hope all that helped...and congrats

Definitely not a long post (see my OP) and very helpful and informative!

We've been living together for years now also and have 1 more to go before we are married. That honeyfund may be something for us to look at!


I think what it comes down to is, 1st things 1st, we need to figure out where we can go! I think the way you laid it out makes perfect sense. We need to figure out the 1st and last place we can utilize miles to fly and than we can figure out everything in between... Hotels will be last... I want to utilize my points as best as I can, because I won't be travelling in the foreseeable future so the free luxurious vacations are OVER (for now)! My Fiance has been to Europe a couple of times, which is why she got to pick the last 3 vacations but definitely wants to go back for our Honeymoon, for vacation/work related reasons. My 1st main concern is the travel package. We've used them for every big vacation we've gone on so far, but those were always to 1 (or 2 in Hawaii) destinations. We may have to consider staying 7 days in one place to utilize the package, we just need to decide where... Beach, cities, country, etc... We are definitely beach AND city people so this isn't going to be easy!

Thanks for the reply! Much Appreciated and congrats on YOUR wedding!!! :D

Yeah no problem, I was ripping my hair out trying to plan and figure all of this out, beach and city people, look at Barcelona, we figured since we are young and have never been to any of those places that we are going, we'll probably end up passing out at 9pm every night from exhaustion, we're packing it all in. We'll relax later in life you know...people keep asking us if when we're in Italy if we're going to Tuscany and Almafi etc and relaxing...I always respond with the above, we'll get back there eventually. I say look for reward flights to wherever in the EU you can get and then find a cheap flight to where ever like we did.

Spain is almost a 100% certainty. We were thinking about Madrid or Barcelona but no Marriotts in Madrid. Now we're looking at Barcelona or one of the beach resorts Marriott offers... I think, what you did makes perfect sense and I will follow your lead. Let's figure out travel (where/how) first and worry about hotels last. This at least gives me a gameplan to follow, which atm, I desperately need. It takes me weeks to plan a normal vacation let alone a complex, European, Honeymoon! I'm certainly not opposed to paying for a hotel in a location where there is no Marriott if that's where we CAN and WANT to travel too. For example, someone mentioned Capri to us and that sounds very interesting....

We loved Madrid when we were there a few years ago, we used it as a base to travel to Toldeo and then from there to Sevilla, and then rented a car and drove around the Spanish coast, hitting all the major cities, and sites. This time we are going to Marbella (AGP) for a wedding and then from there flying Spanair to Barcelona for a couple of days before taking a Swiss Air flight back to the states. I'm not sure but in April the beaches might be still somewhat cold to just lay out and hit the Med.

Good Point! Obviously in the very beginning stages of planning.. :D We are going at the end of April and beginning of May, but probably still too cold to lay out! I'll have to check. I'd be very content in the city doing a little sight seeing, eating good meals, and drinking plenty!