As you probably know by now, Hilton recently decided to drastically devalue their Award program, so in preparation for this I had shifted around all my transfer partner points in a final mad dash to get 225,000 for a 6 Night Stay in NYC for my Mother at the Waldorf Astoria. This was an upgrade from the Sheraton Tribeca and hopefully will be a great experience for her, and also cashed out our Hilton points, and on top of that returned our SPG points that we had used for the Sheraton. So Win/Win/Win. I knew that we would have to make the bookings during our recent trip to the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Tokyo and was glad that 6 night awards with the old Hilton program were bookable online, whereas the 4 night AXON awards were only over the phone.
So, we booked the room from the Conrad Maldives, and headed off to Sri Lanka with a spring in our step. Then… disaster struck! The disaster being that we suddenly found ourselves in a position where we could book another vacation, but had to do so fast before the points expired!
I had signed up for a couple of recent Hilton Q1 Campaigns (I guess.. I actually forgot all about it) offering 50% bonus on spend, and another one that Doubled our Base spend! Plus we are Golds through owning the Citi Reserve Card, and earned a whopping 10 Base points for just being part of the program. Long story short – we picked up (just on my account) 70,000 more Hilton points than I was expecting (especially as we paid for the trip on Mrs Saverocity’s credit card). So here we are staring at a balance of 145,000 points again, as I had some 75,000 left over that I was going to use for a night or two. The magic number of 145,000 (pre devaluation) means a 4 night stay in ANY Hilton Property, so we fussed and fought on where it would be and when it could be since we are running out of vacation time.
The answer- The Rome Cavalieri Hotel by Waldolf Astoria, for 4 Nights from June 7th.
This is a beautiful looking property, and we are very excited to get to stay here, we actually called in this one at 11:45pm Central time, 15 minutes before devaluation occurred. The current price would be 80,000 points per night (320,000 for 4 nights, though under the new program you’d get a 5th night for free for that) or a stately 400 Euro per night! We’re very excited to visit Rome for the first time, and glad that we sneaked in this final redemption before the points effectively were devalued by 50%.
The problem we face now though, is how the heck do we get there? Here is our current points hoard, not huge, because frankly I wasn’t expecting to be needing any more International Trips for the next 12 months as we have already booked everything… but we still have enough that we should be able to get to Rome (and back hopefully).
One big gaping hole in my points plan is Delta – I’ve never liked Delta since finding awardspace has been notoriously difficult, however, they are Partners with Alitalia which is one of the most frequent flights to Rome FCO from New York. So after I get over kicking myself I need to find other routes. We have a couple of things in our favor: British Airways Companion Certificate – this means we would only have to pay for one set of miles for a routing on BA metal – so we would get there for half price in miles… the bad thing is that BA has horrendous Award fees and they all route through London which incurs an additional luxury Departure Tax – bottom line… if I could find space and get us there on BA it would cost about $2,000 in Fees…
Transferable Points from Chase, Amex and Starwoods
A much better thing in our favor are my balances with Chase, Amex and Starwoods – these all have transfer Partners that I can push points into – and Starwoods offers a bonus for every 20K you transfer I would get 5K additional miles. This might come in handy if I am running low for an award.
Chase Ultimate Rewards Partner List
American Express Membership Rewards Airline Partners
Starwoods SPG Airline Partner List
Requirements for the Routing from JFK – FCO
- I want to avoid fees – that means avoiding London (and therefore avoiding flying on British Airways)
- It needs to be fast – we are going into Rome for 4 nights, have minimal time from work and do not want to waste our trip with extensive Layovers- if we cannot go Non-Stop, then transfers must be close.
- Ideally it will be in Business Class
- Ideally if we use AA or UA for carriers I want to use them for both outbound and return legs of the journey- doing so will allow us to game the system and add a free bonus leg after the trip to somewhere like Hawaii or Cancun (the latter is very attractive since I just saw a whopping advert for Whalesharks there, which we didn’t get to see in the Maldives.
I’m really excited to visit the Rome Cavalieri Hotel and enjoy the marvels of the city, but frankly, I have already searched hard and there are no Saver awards available- so right now it is looking like paying for a standard award (oh the horror-these mean you fly Coach for more than the price of Business Class) or get creative. I’ll be putting my thinking cap on and getting to work on this over the next couple of days, if you have any ideas to share with me for this please leave a comment, I’d be glad to hear from you.
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