Don't even bother considering the W if you're wanting to book with points. I think they charge something like 140,000 points per night.

Thank you! Yes more in the works, Seychelles next

Yay! Can't wait!

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8530/5.0.0.1030 Profile/MIDP-2.1 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/417)

dr58, from which city will you be starting your trip? And will your travel companion be able/willing to apply for credit cards and meet minimum spend requirements?

But if you're staying at the Conrad or the PH, once you get to MLE, you still have to get to the properties! What the best and/or most cost effective way of doing that?

The resorts will provide transfer by seaplane. It's not cheap, but I think it's really the only option.

Any idea how much "not cheap" is? And how long does the transfer take?

Read this:

I think the Conrad's transfer is around $470 per person roundtrip. I don't know about the Park Hyatt.

First off, thank you to everyone for the replies. This thread has been tremendously helpful and encouraging. I went offline for a few days expecting this thread to be dormant, but instead I now have the beginnings of a roadmap for the trip.

To answer a few questions:

They vary, but the run rate on my Sapphire Preferred is about $5,000 per month on average, spread pretty evenly across categories (dining, entertainment, travel, etc.). So I'm thinking that I would not have a hard time hitting the minimum spend on another card or two. Beyond that it might get a little trickier.

Most likely IAD or JFK; it depends on the time of year, but generally fly out of IAD more.

These guides are great. Thanks!

As for the questions about having my travel partner sign up for cards, I might give that a shot. Her credit is also very good, but she's pretty skeptical about adding cards. And I can't spend too much energy trying to convince her because I am trying to plan the trip as a surprise -- at least for as long as I can keep it that way!

For airline miles, it seems like United may be the easiest to accumulate in my situation, so I'm leaning that route. Any suggestions on scoping out redemption options through them, perhaps on SQ?

Thanks!

Hi dr58,

Like yourself, I am an IAD based flyer looking to go to the Maldives. I just skimmed ma91pmh's "getting there" guide, and wow, it's pretty thorough. The interesting thing with his approach is that focusing on specific airlines' route networks and hardware leaves out some of the nuances that might be addressed if he were taking a *program* based approach.

So, I'm going to ramble:

1. You said that UA (Star) miles might be easier to accrue than AA (1 World) miles. As an active participant in both airlines' credit card programs, I'm not entirely sure how true that statement is. If it is true, I'd only give UA just a slight edge. You can pick up something like 90,000 AA miles in one go (well, two cc applications with Citi) whereas with UA you'll have to work a little harder. OTOH, if you're willing to play the Chase Ink Bold small business game, you can accrue 5 miles per dollar spent on all purchases, which really would make UA miles easier to accrue in your case.

2. Somebody already brought this up before, but the Maldives are a long haul from the USA -- going there for just a week seems like a bit of a waste, as you'll spend *a lot* of time in transit. Once you get to MLE, you'll have to take a seaplane to your final destination, and they typically fly only during daylight hours. If you can't time an arriving or departing flight well, you'll force an overnight in MLE.

UA permits a stop-over on a roundtrip ticket. One thing I am considering is a stopover in Japan, or alternatively, Istanbul, at the beginning of the trip. This serves three purposes -- extends my vacation abroad, breaking up the journey a little bit, and help me adjust to the jet lag so I can enjoy the Maldives a bit more. AA doesn't allow this option; its only stopover is at the NA gateway.

3. AA has somewhat rigid routing rules, but there is a small gem in the haystack. AA is quite picky about what regions you are allowed to transit enroute to your final destination. MLE is in the India/Middle East region, and AA won't allow to route via Asia 1/2 to get there. You can only route through Europe or somewhere else in the Middle East. Etihad's connections from JFK and IAD require an overnight layover in AUH in both directions. The good news is that they are timed well enough so that you won't have to overnight in MLE at all to make your sea plane transfer.

The small gem in the AA haystack is that CMB (Columbo, Sri Lanka) is actually in Asia 2, allowing you to route via the Pacific. (You're on your own for you final connection to MLE.) The upshot here is that Asia 2 is a much cheaper redemption than an I/ME redemption -- for example, first class is 180,000 miles rt to the I/ME region, but only 135,000 miles to Asia 2. This is a 45,000 mile difference per person, or 90k for the two of you, which is far from trivial. 360k miles is a lot to accrue from credit cards. OTOH, J can be had for 110k/pax, or 220k for the two of you. That's in the ballpark of what you would get from a pair of AA/Citi card for each of you.

4. As a practical matter, while the guide suggests SQ availability is non existent for partners on the SIN-MLE segment, I think a more accurate statement is that J availability is non-existent, but Y availability is wide-open. So, if you want to use UA miles, expect to fly Y from SIN-MLE.

5. Random musings about alliance developments: Qatar, Malaysian, and Sri Lankan are all joining the one world alliance in the next year or two. This has implications if you want to piece together a more complicated itinerary using the one-world distance based award chart. Routing over the pacific, it's more expensive than a straight round trip.

To close this out, I don't think there's a clear-cut best option for someone with "limited" amounts of miles. AA offers the most straightforward routings, but the most expensive. AA also offers the cheapest routings (terminating in Asia 2) at the expense of a cash ticket (or other mileage option) from CMB-MLE. UA offers a stopover, which is very appealing, but highly likely going to dump you in coach from the 4 hour SIN-MLE segment.

dr58,

On the hotel side (totally skipped reading the guide on this one), HHonors is likely your best option.

But let's talk about Hyatt first. Yes, if the two of you get the Chase Hyatt card, you'll get a combined 4 nights. But then what? You'll want to stay longer than that, but your best chance at more points would come from Chase Ultimate Rewards, which you are also trying to use to cover your flights if you go the UA route. Each night is going to set you back 22,000 points, which is going to put a big dent in your airline accumulation strategy.

Over to Hilton. Hilton points grow on trees, literally. I'm sure the guide talks about this in more detail, so I'll skip it, but with the amount of points you can get, you'll get bored at the resort before you run out of points. These points also won't really be competing for other uses (like flights) so you don't have to worry about an opportunity cost.

Thanks, this is incredibly helpful. I'm starting to see that launching my trip from IAD may be difficult to do on *A, at least if I want to avoid flying Y and spend fewer than 40 hours traveling each way! And it doesn't look as if other East Coast locations are much easier. Other than CMB, has anyone recently used creative routings on *A to fly J or F to MLE from the East Coast? I'd certainly be open to finding award tickets to some point before MLE and then paying for tickets for the rest, but CMB didn't seem to have a ton of premium award redemption options either.

I booked on Star Alliance: JFK-CAI-IST-MLE-MXP-EWR.
120,000 miles each for my wife and I, All biz class.

Flying Egyptair to Cairo, using the free *A stopover for 5 nights in Cairo, then off to Male via Istanbul on Turkish Air. 6 nights in the Maldives, then back to US on Turkish + United. 23 hour layover in Milan - just enough time for dinner :-)
I booked Star Alliance because Turkish just started flying IST to MLE. I saw a ton of availability open up in August and that inspired me to put the trip together.
For hotels - My wife and I opened up 3 Chase cards between us to gather the Hyatt points we needed. Now have six nights booked at the Park Hyatt. Was pretty straightforward, though waiting for the points to post seemed like an eternity! Hope this helps!

Nice flights, I'm doing something different, but similar, for my trip there..

For the Hyatt did you look up the Passport Escape thingy with Hyatt? Might be value for you..