Help with Maldives trip
 

After trying and failing to put together an itinerary/award strategy, I thought I might draw on the wisdom of this esteemed crowd to see if anyone out there could help me.

I am trying to plan a Maldives trip for two sometime late next year/early 2014 and would like to book as much as possible through miles/points. My trip options (timing, airline choice, etc.) are pretty open at this point, but I am shooting for premium cabin tickets and some kind of over-water accommodations. Willing to pay an upcharge for the latter if needed.

For hotels, I've been thinking Conrad Maldives Rangali Island, Park Hyatt Maldives, or W Retreat & Spa Maldives, but only because I have mid-tier status in those programs (SPG Gold; HHonors Gold; Hyatt Platinum). I'm certainly open to other options.

Credit is good, with very few inquiries and only one card right now (Chase Sapphire Preferred). Other than ~150,000 Chase UR points, my points balances are not very high and are spread across a few programs (40,000 HHonors points; 50,000 US miles; 10,000 SPG points). Not much anticipated paid travel between now and the contemplated trip.

Anyone see a path to doing this? I'm struggling to figure out a way to do both air and lodging without needing ~400,000 points, or alternatively how to earn that many points over the next 18 months or so.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

What are your monthly spending habits?

It should be easy for you to collect enough hotel points. How many nights do you want to stay? Don't do the W. Award nights are ridiculously expensive.

Hilton points are very easy to come by. On the same day, you can apply for 2 Citi HHonors Visas, 1 Bank of Hawaii Hawaiian Airlines card (miles transfer to HHonors), 1 Bank of America Hawaiian Airlines card (ditto), and 1 of the AMEX HHonors products. If Virgin has a good bonus, you can do one of those cards, too (those miles transfer to HHonors, as well). This should net you enough for 5-7 nights at the Conrad in the beach villa, and you can upgrade to a water villa for a couple hundred dollars a night, depending on the season. The Citi cards are churnable, so you can collect 100,000 points every 65 days if you keep doing those.

If you have elite status or a Hilton Amex, you can book awards at the Conrad at a discount. For example, I just booked 6 nights for 37,500pts/night, instead of the usual 50,000pts/night.

For airfare, you have enough time to earn the points, too. Look into which alliance you want to fly and then focus on credit card signups. You may want to go with Star Alliance, since your UR points will transfer to United. You could look into British, but I have a feeling it will take many more miles on British than it would on United.

I recently booked flights on CX using AA miles, but only as far as Colombo. From Colombo, though, flights are cheap to MLE.

In sum: (1) start churning the various HHonors cards, and (2) choose an airline alliance and sign up for the relevant credit cards.

I'm curious, how do you churn the citi ones? Do you close them off within the year and apply again every say 90 days?

I ask because I did get 2 of the identical citi hilon 50K free cards, 1.5K spend each within 6mo.

So after I get the bonus, do I just close them and apply again?

Let me know. Thanks!

You also can get four free nights at the Park Hyatt if both you and your travel partner get approved for the Chase Hyatt card. The minimum spend just went up or will be going up soon, but it's not terribly high. The free award nights expire within a year, however, so you should plan your application accordingly. Good luck and enjoy!

You can get two of these cards every 65 days or so. You don't need to cancel the earlier ones to get new ones, but I wouldn't keep more than 2-4 open at a time. So basically, yes, you just apply again and close the other cards (before or after you apply for the next round).

This is true, but the Maldives is a long way to go for only 4 nights, and it isn't as easy to earn Hyatt points otherwise. The UR points could be transferred to Hyatt, but they might be better used as airline miles. Still, the Park Hyatt Maldives is supposed to be a great property, so it wouldn't be a crazy use!

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Well 210,000 Hyatt points gets you 7 nights there with 5 dinners for two..but rumor is that option is going away soon for new bookings.

Heading out tomorrow on this exact option

My blog has an extensive Destination Guide covering how to Get There and Stay There using miles and points.

Welcome to Flyertalk. In addition to replies based on your personal circumstances it may be helpful to read these threads:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...-maldives.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...-maldives.html

To get to the Maldives, I'm using 67,500 AAdvantage miles for CX F (USA-HKG-SIN) & regional J (SIN-CMB). There is no fuel surcharge. The current sign up bonus for the AA Citi card is 30,000 AAdvantage miles, which you could double with the two browser trick. And AA is currently offering a 25% bonus on purchased miles, which is handy for topping off. I'll be paying out of pocket for CMB-MLE RT, but fares are reasonable.

For the PH Maldives, I'm using the two free nights that come with the Chase Hyatt card, plus additional nights using my GP balance. With Hyatt's Q3 promotion, it is possible to rack up GP points fairly quickly, as you get a bonus for having the Chase Hyatt card. You could transfer your UR points to Hyatt GP.

For the return, there are good F and J fares out of CMB, so I'm paying for CMB-DXB-LHR (A380 from DXB to LHR) on EK, LHR-DFW-USA on AA (AA's new 77W LHR-DFW). Somewhere around USD1900 for F, so I'll be earning miles on the way back, with stopovers in DXB and LHR.

in addition to the hilton CC's, could also do a united MP explorer (I assume the 55k is still on the table), plus some inking if your spending habits are high enough and/or you can be bothered to do so.

So, 55k for MP Explorer, 50k for a premium ink card (min 60k after spend). With your current points balance, you could have 265k. Business class would be 240k miles for 2 tix. 320k would get you first class. And you could easily build up to that with the ink card with your time frame.

If whomever is traveling with you can sign up for some cards (psst, MP exp), you could either do 2 separate itens round trip (can do a stopover and an openjaw) or 2 one ways for first class, or save some UR points for hotels or future travel if you fly biz.

Trick will be getting to MLE for 2 in premium with a UA award. CMB is definitely doable...

There are better AA offers out there, such as 45k or 50k with varying spends

This guide was great. I hope you do more like it! Thanks!

Recommend the HHonors Amex to get you access to AXON awards for Maldives Conrad - 145K HH per 4 night stay.

Flights, there are options out there on UA, might want to take advantage of their Open Jaw and Stop Over options on RT awards.

My trip looks like this:

NYC-MLE (indirect via IST) UA/TK J Award
4 Nights Conrad Maldives AXON7
MLE-CMB Paid Flight (150USD ish)
4 nights Sri Lanka, non award, using Hotels.com credits though.
CMB-NRT TG J/Y Mixed Award
4 Nights Conrad Tokyo AXON7
NRT-JFK NH J Award

Total pts
- 120K per person for flights
- 290K HHonors

You can also consider DL SkyMiles to get to the Maldives: LAX-CAN-MLE on China Southern where business class is pretty wide open most dates. And, the LAX-CAN legs are on the A380 which offer what appears to be a very nice business class product. You will, however, pay surcharges on these flights in the neighborhood of $325 round trip. Still, a great use of SkyMiles if you have them.