Late last year we took a weekend away in Toronto; I have never been before and was very excited about checking out a new city. Our plans changed last minute for very much the better and instead of two nights in Toronto Downtown we decided to spend one night in Niagara Falls. I think it was 2 nights before we were scheduled to depart that we decided that a night on the Falls would be a good idea, so we cancelled our hotel in Downtown and started rebooking. Hotels generally are very good about cancelling (much better than airlines are) and there was no fee to reimburse our room (it was an award, but it would have been as easy for a cash booking also).
Without a doubt the highlight of the trip was Niagara on the Lake, a wonderfully developing Wine Region that is like having Napa on the East Coast.
Getting there:
Flights – We flew on American Airlines using British Airways Avios, there is a BA Creditcard with Chase that offers 100,000 points signup. I applied for one for each of us, so we had 200K points and a need to use them. I will talk more about BA points in the future, but the secret to using them is never flying on BA, because they have horrible Fee’s attached to them that trigger as soon as you fly into the UK (all BA flights fly into the UK…) so you use them on Partners instead like AA and LAN and avoid those fees!
Also, BA is one of the few Frequent Flyer programs that is distance based in its awards system – so you can find some real gems over shorter distances. From NYC they tend to be those in Eastern Canada, Bermuda and as far south as Miami.
We flew AA to Toronto Nonstop for a mere 4500 Avios (per person each way) which when you compare with a paid ticket which can average $280 for a round trip that gives a whopping 3 Cents per mile for those Avios (makes that 100K card worth $3,000!).
We used SPG point for our hotel – they provide excellent value and are my favorites point to earn, plus because I have the American Express Platinum I am SPG Gold that confers the following benefits:
Gold status is reached after completing 10 stays or 25 nights in a calendar year. Both paid stays and Award redemption stays and nights count toward elite status earning. As a Gold member, you’ll receive all the benefits of Preferred, plus much more:
- Three Starpoints for every eligible U.S. dollar spent – a 50% bonus over base-level membership.
- 4 p.m. late checkout,1 so you can sleep in, relax by the pool or see more of the local area you’re visiting.
- An enhanced room at check-in, when available.2
- Special elite customer service telephone line (available in most countries).
- New! Your choice of a welcome gift with each stay. Choose from bonus Starpoints, complimentary in-room Internet access and a complimentary beverage.
We decided upon the Sheraton on the Falls and were upgraded to a Deluxe Falls View room which had a balcony a stones throw from the Falls, and were offered 500pts as an amenity and free wifi (no offer of a complimentary beverage but since they gave us 2 of the 3 Welcome Gifts rather than picking just 1 of them I was not going to complain).
The room was fantastic, you can check out a picture taken from the room of the Fireworks that show how close we were in the Trip Report (link below). The room cost 10K Starpoints instead of the rack rate of $190 so not the best value for our SPG points (which can often get 3x that return) but I had a lot left over and was happy to not pay for anything with cash yet.
For our second night we drove back and stayed in the downtown area of Toronto. We had originally booked the Westin Harbor View but they wouldn’t let us redeem for just one night on the Saturday, citing some 2 night minimum nonsense, so after looking around at our options I decided to book us into a boutique hotel for the evening, it was a cash booking, but we still did it the Saverocity way to save a lot on the price.
Firstly, I used Tripadvisor.com to search for recommendations for Toronto, once I selected my Hotel, the Le Germain Mapleleaf I compared prices on 3 of the major hotel discount sites – Hotels.com, Travelocity and Orbitz. They were all quite close, but I had a credit with Hotels.com (stay 10 nights get 1 free) for a free night worth $120. That applied as a credit against the price of the room meaning it was about $120 out of pocket expense.
However… it didn’t end there, by first going through the Chase Ultimate Rewards Portal and then using my Chase Sapphire Preferred card I got 6x points for the booking! 4x from the Shopping Portal and clicking Hotels.com, and 2x more for Travel Category spend on the Sapphire. Not too shabby!
Total cost for the trip (excluding car) was $160 ($120 plus $40 in fees for the flights) plus I received 800 Chase points back which are worth another $10-$15 for our next trip.
Check out the trip report for Toronto here
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