Help! Newbie trying to book a honeymoon!
 

Hello,

I could really use some help. My husband and I are planning our honeymoon to Hawaii in October or November. We would love to use points to pay for this honeymoon! We currently live in Baltimore and would like to get airfare (perhaps with a day or two in San Fran), and then head to the Maui and Kauai for 12-15 days. We have a few questions regarding hotel options and flights.
Here is what we are working with:

400,000 Marriott Points
90,000 AmEx Membership Rewards Points
32,000 SPG points

Hotel: After doing some research on Marriott, I believe we can do 5 nights at the Kauai Marriott Resort for 100,000 pts, and the Ritz in Maui for 200,000 pts or the Maui Mariott for 120,000 pts. Any thoughts between the Ritz versus the Marriott in Maui?

Flights: I'm totally lost on this...how do we get the biggest bang for our points with flights?

Thank you kindly for your thoughts on this....if you have any other suggestions regarding activities or resturants, i'm all ears!

Sincerely,

Deborah

Some more info might be helpful:

Are you looking to fly business class, or is coach okay?
are you willing to open new credit cards to get signup bonuses/is your credit in good shape?

[edit] looks like in October, your options from SFO are USAir or Hawaiian if you want direct. without the SFO stop, you could do any of the legacies.

credit is great...coach isn't a problem...but a girl loves some luxury in her life so if we could get away with business...that would be so terrific! I'd be willing to open up credit cards...

can transfer amex to avios for bay area to ogg.. Usually good nonstop availability between Oakland or Sacramento and Maui on Alaska air. As far as Baltimore to bay area, no idea if avios partners do it at reasonable rate

So others might know if this article is accurate, but http://www.theflightdeal.com/2011/09...eat-to-hawaii/ seems to suggest that if you want the SFO connection, UA/CO is the way to go. I believe you can do a stopover on domestic flights? So a business class award on United would be 80k roundtrip, and you could do a direct flight to SFO, stopover, then a direct flight to HNL. Looking briefly at the united website they don't have biz award availability on the 764 flight, but maybe that would open up closer to the date. OR, you could do a coach routing for 40k roundtrip.

(I'm looking at United because I'm most familiar with them...maybe someone else can chime in on other airlines?)

Let's say you're looking at the biz class option, so 80k miles for each of you. The Chase Sapphire Preferred (for now) gives you 50k. You could then do the United MP Explorer card for 50k (if it's still good), or the Chase Freedom card for 30k if that offer returns, or the Ink Bold for 50k if you have a business and can meet the minimum spend. If you do coach class, one sapphire card per person gets you there.

You should be careful with spending so many miles for business class on the west coast to Hawaii flights. Lucky at one mile at a time had an article saying the first class/business class seats are the domestic versions, so basically glorified coach. If you fly AA through Dallas, I think you get the international product. Below is his article on the getting reward trips to Hawaii:

http://travelsort.com/blog/tips-for-...ghts-to-hawaii

You probably don't want to do Baltimore to Sf and then SF to HNL because it'll be 50k per person (25k per each leg). If you want to do business class, it'll be 75k from SF-HNL alone since AA (and Alaska too?) classify this trip as first class in the two cabin configuration, 3x the Avios. It might be better to try to do UA or AA miles since it'll be less miles (although you already have the MR points, so could use them for this, but the Avios are more valuable for other trips, esp short hauls to Canada, etc..).

Maybe do AA over via Dallas so you can get the international business class product and UA back with a stopover in SF (if UA allows stopovers on one ways).

I vote for coach. With a connection from BWI, the flights aren't so bad and she didn't indicate that they were basketball players :)

How about using Marriott points for one of the "Travel Packages". Looks like she could use 230,000 MR points and get 7 nights plus 50k miles/avios points. Does that help her any?

With so many Marriott points, you might well want to burn them on hotels, but at least consider this strategy: Convert your Marriott points to something else, and book the hotel on Priceline.

As an example (and I'm not saying this is representative), someone got the Hyatt Regency Maui last January for $120 a night, plus fees that were probably about $20-$25 a night - the current rate for that hotel is $489 (I can't go back and see what they were charging in January). The possible savings from Priceline hotels are huge.

For bidding tips and tricks, go to www.biddingfortravel.com or www.betterbidding.com. Or PM me and I'll try to help.

avios would work well from lax to hnl..but not so good in sfo to ogg...

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.601 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

Avios would work fine on the OAK-OGG and SJC-OGG nonstops on AS (assuming award-seat availability). The problem is that the OP is starting from the East Coast, and BAEC now uses a distance-based award system, and charges separately for each flight flown (i.e., connecting flights are not included).

if you are going to to west coast / HI, do yourself a favor and go coach... business/first not worth the extra miles cost really... from LAX is about 4h30, not really too bad... we do Fla->Lax->Hi every year in coach, not too bad really.