Kara and Nate
As we mentioned, we’ve booked a lot of flights and vacations using miles and points and if you’ve ever booked with miles and points, then you can probably relate to having a dozen tabs open on your computer quickly trying to find what flights or hotels are available and when. This is because not every flight or hotel is redeemable with points at any given moment.
Kara and Nate
Daily Drop Pro, which we will release later this year, eliminates the need to open all those tabs. This tool helps you search for hotels and flights that can be booked using miles and points, all in one place. Simply input the dates and destinations you want to book for and BOOM, a whole list of available options will appear. Think of it like Google but for miles and points.
Using this tool, we were easily able to find and book our flights and an all-inclusive resort in Mexico. Did someone say margaritas?
The total out-of-pocket price for all this? $0. We’ll break the numbers down for you in a second, but first, let’s talk about vacation.
Resort Life in Mexico
Kara and Nate
We stayed at Secrets Akumal Riviera Maya, a stunning resort with over 10,000 five-star reviews, for 4 nights. We arrived at the resort already well rested and happy thanks to our breakfast in the Capital One airport lounge (which we got free with our favorite travel credit card) and free champagne on our United flight (thanks to a very sweet flight attendant). But back to the resort-
This resort was an absolute paradise. Here are some of the highlights:
White sand beaches and a beach bar with swings for seats.
A poolside stone-fired pizza restaurant.
An amazing sushi restaurant that we visited multiple times.
A 24-hour cafe with endless coffee.
Breakfast in bed thanks to free room service
Spas, a fitness center, multiple pools, and even a nightclub!
The Numbers Breakdown
Aslan Alphan via Getty Images
So, how many points did this entire vacation cost? Exactly 283,436 points.
Flights: 68,000 miles
Our flights from Denver to Cancun cost 20,000 United miles each for a total of 40,000 United miles and our flights from Cancun to Denver cost a total of 28,000 Southwest points..
Hotel: 120,000 points
Our 4-night all-inclusive stay cost a total of 120,000 Hyatt points. When I first logged into my Hyatt account, I only had about 8,000 points, which was not enough to book our entire stay. Thankfully, Hyatt has a partnership with Chase where you can transfer Chase to Hyatt points at a 1 to 1 ratio. So I took 112,000 of my Chase points and quickly transferred them into Hyatt points to book our hotel.
Taxes & Fees:
Although we booked our flights with miles, the airlines charged us $244.16 total in fees. Thankfully, Capital One allows you to use points to erase any travel-related purchases from your credit card, so I used 24, 416 points to bring those fees down to $0.
Transportation & Upgrades: 78,700 points
Throughout the trip, we racked up a few other small costs. On our flight to Cancun, I used 800 United miles to purchase WiFi on our flight. We paid $120 for our transfer from the airport to the resort, which we later covered with 12,000 of our Capital One points and we spent $660 to upgrade our room to a preferred room after we arrived at the resort, costing us another 66,000 points. In the interest of full disclosure, we don’t recommend upgrading because the standard resort service is already so good. We found there’s really no need to upgrade.
In total, this 4-day, all-inclusive vacation in Mexico, cost us 40,800 United points, 112,000 Chase points, 28,220 Southwest points, and 102,416 Capital One points.
(Though, in full disclosure, we did take out $100 in cash tips for the amazing staff at the resort, but I still think $100 for a vacation like this is a pretty insane deal!)
You may be thinking to yourself, how could I possibly earn enough points to go on a vacation like this? We recommend heading over to Daily Drop, where we have tips, tricks, and tutorials for how you can both earn and spend your miles and points. We also suggest signing up for Daily Drop’s free daily newsletter to stay up to date on the best deals in travel. Plus we’ll be able to notify you as soon as the Daily Drop Pro tool is available to be used!
To see the full breakdown of our Mexico vacation, check out the video below!
Hi! We’re Kara and Nate. High school sweethearts from Nashville, TN whose shared love of travel has led us on the adventure of a lifetime. In 2016 we quit our jobs to spend one year traveling around the world. Seven years later, we still haven’t stopped! We quickly fell in love with life on the road and capturing our travels on video. We’ve visited over 100 countries, and have been fortunate enough to build an awesome community of subscribers on our YouTube channel and newsletter Daily Drop.
We’re so grateful to do what we love everyday and we hope our story and our content might inspire you to travel somewhere new!
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Publish date : 2024-09-27 08:24:00
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