We finally booked our trip to Europe! I’ll go into greater detail about how we booked this in a different post, but Jenn booked 2 tickets from Chicago to Zurich from her personal account and 2 from her business account. All were 33,000 points and around $26 each. I also transferred 50,000 Citi points to Avianca Lifemiles to book 4 flights from Rome to Stockholm for 12,500 points each and around $55. The return trip used 22,500 points and $62 each for 4 flights from Stockholm to Chicago. We used 2 50,000 point certificates and 16,000 points to book 2 nights in Zurich, Switzerland at the Marriott Zurich. We also used my 3 35,000 point certificates and 3 of Jenn’s 50,000 point certificates to book 2 rooms for 3 nights at the AC Hotel by Marriott Stockholm Ulriksdal.
Booking all of those hotels, vacation rentals and flights was a bit of an exhausting marathon session and we were thrilled to have it all booked and ready to go. It was hard to believe that we had really accomplished what we had set out to do and make a trip to Europe affordable. At the same time, when we were done, I looked at Jenn and said “Wow, I can’t believe we just did that. You know, the sad thing is, we could’ve done so much better.” She looked back at me and said “I know, that’s crazy right?”
We had just pulled off booking all of the airfare and accommodations for 2 weeks to Zurich, Munich, Venice, Rome and Stockholm for 4 people for less than $2,000 and we knew that we could’ve done better.
Anyway, on to the point check!
I spent almost $2,400 on my Citi premier card and earned around 4,600 points. I spent $1,600 on my Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card and received 3,300 points and 3 35,000 point certificates. I spent around $800 on my Chase United Explorer card and earned 2,600 United miles. Jenn spend $1,900 on her Marriott card and received 4,500 points. Jenn spent about $100 on her Chase United business card and earned a little less than 200 points.
This utterly decimated our points total and we finished the month with around 15,000 Citi points, 25,000 United miles 41,000 Marriott points and 1,000 Hyatt points
What we did right
We did what we had set out to do, we dramatically reduced the price of a European vacation by taking advantage of points and miles. In addition, we actually made the trip more interesting, because the original idea was just to visit Munich and then maybe take a day trip to Innsbruck, but because of the way points and miles work, we expanded our thoughts a little and instead we now plan to see Brussels, Zurich, Munich, Bolzano, Venice, Rome and Stockholm in one trip. The economics of points and miles actually in many cases makes your trips better than trying to be frugal with cash, again something to be discussed in a future post.
What we did wrong
You definitely need to be cognizant of European rules on occupancy in hotels. Because most hotels have a 3 person limit, you might need to get 2 hotel rooms for a family of 4 in most European hotels. Luckily, the Zurich Marriott had rooms that accommodated 4 people, but the hotel in Stockholm did not. That meant we had to burn through more certificates than we wanted to. Also, we weren’t taking full advantage of the certificates. I think the rooms in Stockholm were only around 21,000 points per night each, but they did have free breakfast which is what Jenn was looking for. This is probably making a lot of people’s eyes twitch since we didn’t take full advantage of the certificates, but it was what we needed at the time, and those certificates do have a one year expiration.
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