peek of this week's episode.
stories. No matter where you fall along that journey, get ready to hear about our first-hand experiences as we visit some of the most interesting and amazing places on earth. In this week's episode, we'd like to share some travel hacks that we have learned while planning our upcoming trips. If you're unfamiliar with the term travel hack, it refers to the strategies and techniques used to maximize travel while minimizing expenses. These typically involve loyalty programs, credit card rewards, sign-on bonuses, and other opportunities to earn frequent flyer miles, hotel points, and other travel-related benefits. The goal is to utilize these hacks to get discounted or free flights, accommodations, upgrades, or other travel experiences. It's not easy, but the benefits can be huge. We want to share with you some of the travel hacks to help you travel more and better. So grab a pen and paper because you're going to want to use some of these for your next travel adventures. Let's
this is going to be a lot of information to absorb all at once, but the good news is that you can listen to this podcast over and over and over again. We just ask that you download it
you can do that. Or you
go to sunshinetravelers.com and we will have a blog post that covers much of the information as well. One of our goals on this podcast is to help you travel more and better. And in my opinion, if you can take some epic trips that are mostly paid for with reward points, that is more and better.
reward points, that is more and better. We're going to talk about a couple of trips that we have booked for this year and some of the hacks that we have used to get the most out of our travel. We're going to talk about a couple of trips that we have booked for this year and some of the hacks that we use to get the most out of our travel. I'm actually super excited about talking about this in this episode because this is something I just I think I really just love to help people you know whether it's like you know Disney tips because we're super familiar with that or of course just just travel but that's just a lot of fun for me and if you've listened to some of the things like where we talked about going to the Bahamas or we talked about going on the cruise in the fall because we got those through. Yeah, well, it's travel hopping, but like status matching. Right. And then that status match got us like a discounted stay. And then the other one got us the cruise. Like I just I enjoy doing stuff like that. And like Scott said, it's not necessarily easy because you do have to put in some effort, but it can be especially rewarding to get these things for super cheap or free.
it's travel
why don't we start by talking about a few trips that we've booked recently and then talk about how we've applied travel hacks to that.
Okay, that sounds good. So we are going on a trip with our daughter and her family in Europe in a few weeks. And so we needed to find flights that would get everyone to London and then we're to go to Germany, and then we're going to go to Greece and back home. And so we booked this as a multi-city flight. So now I will say, our daughter and her husband, they actually found this first and booked the flights way back at the Black Friday travel day or right around there and found those because they were also looking to use, you know, their points and miles to redeem that. So the best way to do this is, or the best way for us to do this was to do a multi-city flight.
And let's just say though, it was the best for this particular trip because we've looked at multi-city flights before that were not the best use of our points or rewards and things like that. Right.
So but I don't want you to think that multi-city is going to be more or that round trip is always going to be better. point out this, for example, when we moved from Atlanta to Jacksonville, we thought, oh man, because we travel a lot, this is going to be so much more difficult, expensive, more miles for us to fly from Jacksonville because there's a stop. It's actually the opposite. Believe it or not, you can fly from Jacksonville places with the stop through Atlanta or New York for actually less miles. Now, I'm not saying this is going to work for everything, but Scott has actually had to go change flights before and leave from Atlanta because we were going to be back up there with family and had to pay more for that ticket. So just be aware that don't always think that nonstop is going to be the cheapest or not doing a multi-city is going to be the cheapest. You can look at it lots of different ways. So let's get back to this, though. So we ended up booking this 75,000 miles round trip in economy for that multi-city. And this was on Delta. And this was on Delta, just as an example, right? So a lot of times people
this was on Delta.
Delta has, you know, higher redemptions or whatever, but that's not bad for Europe, for a round trip. And so it is Jacksonville, Florida, stop through New York on the way to London Heathrow, and then a return from
which Delta is just now starting that. Well, for the season. Actually, it's, yeah, for the season. But it's the, it's, oh, I say, I say nonstop. It's actually to Atlanta on the way back and then Jacksonville. You're never going to have a nonstop to Jacksonville. Hardly, I guess
the season. Actually,
I should say. So, or it was about $950 round trip. So not too bad. Now you may be asking, okay, well, how are you going to get from London Heathrow to Athens, Greece? We're going to talk about that in a second.
Yeah. So one of the things that we wanted to do was try to find a few different means of transportation during this trip. So we're actually going to do planes, trains, and automobiles.
We are.
Yeah. So we bought train tickets to go from London to C planes, trains and automobiles. We are. Yeah. So we bought train tickets to go from London to Cologne, Germany. And Melissa, you learned a little bit about getting to Germany from London.
So I knew that you could take a train to Paris. But for some reason, it just never dawned on me that you could go other places. And I don't know why. So I'm almost embarrassed to say that. But yes, you can take a train from London to Germany. We'll be going through Brussels. I don't know why I didn't know
say that.
going to be doing that. And it was an economical way to travel in Europe. Trains typically are. And so you just really have to weigh how far it is, how long it's going to take you. But in this case, if you're going to go back to London Heathrow to fly somewhere, so just weighing that, like how long is it going to take you? And then how much is that going to cost? And then also just having the experience of doing the train. It's really fun to leave London through one of those train stations. And this particular one is through St. Pancras, I do believe. So that's just a great experience if you ever get
do that. And there's some beautiful sites along the way. You pass through some gorgeous countrysides.
Yes. We also learned and realized, though, that we are going to be experiencing daylight savings time on this particular day for a second time in 2024. So basically, we're going to be losing another hour of 2024 in this process on Easter Sunday in Europe. So we didn't...
That's okay. You got an extra day this year.
true. You got an extra day this year. That's true. So, but just being aware, I think I had known this in the past, but we just experienced daylight savings time. And then they will experience this in Europe on Easter Sunday. And that's the day that we take the train. So if you didn't know that, here is your public service announcement.
Yeah. And so we're going to, once we go to Germany, we're going to get an opportunity to visit some nearly lifelong friends of our family. And we're so excited about that. taking the grandkids to visit with them. We took our kids when they were younger to visit with our friends in Germany. And so now we'll be taking the grandkids over there. And we're just really excited to see them and have that experience. And I
to point this out. Our daughter pointed out this past weekend that this will actually be five generations of your family that will have met this exchange family. I think that is like...
that is like... Yeah, starting with my grandparents, then my parents, and then me and my brother, and then our kids, and now our kids' kids.
have to wonder if there's any other exchange family in the whole world that would have met five generations of the other family.
said my grandparents, but I actually met the parents of the people that were visiting. So it's five generations of their family as well.
Yeah. And what's so interesting about that is I knew I knew your grandmother, but not your grandfather. But yet here, you know, here's a family that knew even knew your grandfather, which I think is just really cool. And
it's really cool because sometimes they'll break out the old VHS tapes that they have from when he was alive and when he visited and when they visited us in the U.S. So we're just really looking forward to this trip. But once we get to Germany, we spend a couple of days there and we're leaving from there and going to Crete, Greece. And in order to get from Germany to Greece, we're actually taking a G in air. And this was something that Melissa had found.
Yeah. So we just found that that was the best way to go from Frankfurt to Athens and then to get to Crete. So that's Aegean air. And so what was actually really cool about Aegean is once I started booking that, because we've got some, you know, children's tickets with that, they, it pops up and it, and it has like an Aegean for families price. And so basically you get heavily discounted fares for kids. And then also you get to add bags for like half off, which I thought was a really great benefit, right? So, cause it's difficult with kids to then try to do the carry ons and all that. But then also like, I think the the, tickets, depending on the But age. then also, I like, think the tickets, depending on the age of the children, are something like 40 to 90% off. And then they have some other benefits and stuff like that. So definitely check out a GN Air if you're flying in Europe and then in Europe to, like, the Middle Eastern countries as well because it really seemed to be some, you know, great deals. And you wouldn't just immediately say, oh, I'm going to take a GN from Germany to Greece. But that could be a really great option.
Yeah. And I just want to point out that during this trip, we're actually booked almost all of our stays using Booking.com. dot com. So we have have it right in one place where I can look and see everything that we have booked from the time that we get there to the time that we leave contacts of who to who to talk to, who to ask questions. And then, you know, we even use the host of our location in Crete to help us find a rental car. And so, you know, they helped us with that. And so, you know, booking.com, we don't just talk about it in the show or in the show and say, you should use it. We use it ourselves. It's part of what we do.
You know, and what we actually found on this trip is that to have four adults and two children using booking and booking some like apartment type accommodations ended up being way cheaper. Because if you don't know anything about accommodations in Europe, usually if you book a hotel room, it's for two people, right? And so that's very difficult if you have small children. And so like Scott said, everything, we've even got an overnight stay near the Athens airport that we have to do. And we, you know, booked that through them as well. And so that was super helpful, especially in London. So we have never done that in London. We've always stayed at a hotel in London. But finding a little apartment ended up being way cheaper. So it has saved us some, you know, it saved us some money. And then like Scott mentioned, just having that host say, oh, you know, we can, we can help you out with the rental car and stuff as well, because we found that that was very expensive. We were picking up at one airport on Crete, dropping somewhere else, and it ended up being way cheaper. So just having that host to help us organize some of those
things. Yeah. And wait till you see the pictures of this penthouse apartment with a pool that I've got us booked in Crete. Can't wait. Can't wait for that. Can't wait to share those stories with you. Now, not a whole lot of travel hacking in this first part. I think the Aegean Airways is a good program to look into. It will help you save some money. a good program to look It will help you save some And you using booking.com, into. money. then, know, like we said, and finding great deals on places to stay, you know, those would be the travel hacks that we talk about in the first part. But now let's get into Melissa and we've I, talked about this a lot on our episodes. We have a trip coming up this fall where we're going to do an African safari. And as many of you know, are one of the places the very top of my bucket list that I wanted to visit is Morocco. And we thought, what a great opportunity to visit Morocco at the beginning of this trip. Well, if you've been following along, that's not working out so well.
Yeah. So if you listen to the Morocco episode and you listen to the end, that was one of our motivations for interviewing Ashlyn was to get some information and try to get that part planned out. Now, obviously, we knew we were going to do like the whole country or lots of cities. We were going to talk to her and try to pick one place to fly over, get acclimated a little bit, spend a few days. And it's just not going to work out because of the flight situation. You can get there easily. But then getting from Morocco to Kenya, which is where we will be for the safari, proved to be a lot of stops and very expensive and something that we just weren't expecting after flying a good bit in Europe where it's inexpensive.
Yeah. No direct flight from Morocco to Nairobi. And it was weird because like you would have to fly to Turkey first and then to Kenya. And so it just wasn't working out. It's going to be really expensive. And Ashlyn told us you really need more time. So we're just going to put that back on the list of places that we still want to visit, but it's not going to happen this time. So as we go to the safari, this is going to be in Nairobi. That's where we're going to start. And actually, two of my aunts are going to travel with us on this trip. So I'm really excited about that. But they didn't want to do a lot of the other travel that Melissa and I are doing as well. They wanted to go straight to Nairobi, get settled in, get adjusted to the time change and, you know, recover from the travel, have a few days before we start the safari. Not us. We got to run, come flying in on two wheels, right, right there at the end. We're giving ourselves a little more time just in case, you know, travel disruptions. But we want to make the most out of our travel. And so we have ended up getting a trip to Cairo on the front end of the trip instead of Morocco.
that you just spoiled the surprise. But OK,
my aunts, they wanted to make sure that they were going to be able to fly in business class on those long haul flights. Right. That's important to them, you know, to have that extra room and to not be cramped up for a long haul flight. And so they they really wanted to look for business class flights.
Yeah. And they don't have they don't travel a lot. They don't have airline points. And so it wasn't something where we really had time to do that. And when you first started looking at the flights, you were like, oh, wow.
I started looking at flights from Atlanta in business class, we were looking at like $15,000 for them per person round trip. So we said,
got to be a better way. They were, you know, a little bit of panicking. And so we said, okay, just give, you know, get us some time, let us look. So talk about what we ended up finding. Yeah.
able to find a couple of seats on Qatar in the Q suites and we thought it was a really good price. I mean, we had looked for a couple of days. We had been monitoring flight prices. And when we saw these fares come across, we got them on the phone immediately and said, hey, look, because I think it was like 1030 at night when we found this. I got him on the phone and said, hey, look, we think you guys probably should jump on this because these are the lowest fares we've seen by far.
what was interesting about Qatar, and I'm not ever seen this on another airline, is that you can actually hold that fare for free for 24 hours. So you just have to have it booked. You know, within 24 hours, it gives you like a booking reference number and then you can go back on there and book that. So I have not seen that anywhere else that didn't charge you a fee. I've seen other places where you can do it for a fee. So we did that. And like Scott said, contacted them, said, okay, let's, you know, let's look at it again in the morning and then we'll go from there.
since their travel was much simpler, we didn't have to find all of these different legs that we needed to book for them. So we're going to finish off there and just say, we got them a really good deal and you just got to put the legwork in to find those good deals. So they're going to fly through Doha. You can do a stopover in Doha. And matter of fact, the airline kind of compensates you to stay in Doha and spend a few days there. They chose to just travel on directly to Nairobi, get checked in and start their process of getting acclimated. Now, for us, we wanted to use points to book our travel, and we wanted to fly business class. So this is where the travel hacking is really going to get started.
And I wanted to point out one thing is that Scott and I do not typically fly first class, business class, stuff like that for our trips. Now, if we get upgraded, for example, you know, then of course, you know, we'll take it. But we really haven't done a lot of points and miles in order to book business class. We have used points a lot to do flights, but in economy. But this was something that was important to us. We had actually planned ahead and done some getting new cards and meeting that minimum spend so that we could do this. So this was kind of a goal for us is to figure out how we could do for this particular trip, because as we've talked about that, it's a big trip for us. It's a special trip for us for anniversary for Scott's big birthday trip. And so that was just something that was important to us.
down and we started looking at all these different flight options of how can we get to Nairobi, Kenya. And there's a lot of ways that you can get there. You can go through Doha. You can go through Abu Dhabi. You can go through Istanbul. You can go through Abu Dhabi. You can go through Istanbul. You can go. I mean, there's no shortage of places that you can fly through to get there. There just weren't very many direct nonstop flights to get there.
want to point out, too, is that the best way to travel hack is that if you see a deal, jump on it. Right. But unfortunately, with this trip, like many of our trips, we already had to have the safari part of this arranged. Right. Because we had been working with a safari company for a while. We knew these particular dates because they had to be able to book those accommodations that we were looking at. So we can't just go whenever. Okay. So the best way to absolutely do the travel hacking is to say, oh, hey, do you want to go here? And this many points, let's do it. That's the absolute best way to do it. So we did have some constraints on that. And as Scott was looking at these other places that he's mentioned, it just, for this timeframe, they just weren't like in the range where, you know, we had enough points, right? It was in the several hundred thousand range, right? For one way tickets. And so I think that, and you were getting anxious, right? Not like, well, I think we have some time, but I think it would be nice, like Safari part is booked, partially paid for. We've got to get there. And so then if you wait too long and there's not flights, you're going to end up spending a lot of money or a lot of points to try to do that. Or if other
that. Or if other people are purchasing these fares, the option of using rewards to purchase these tickets goes away. And so you kind of got to weigh that balance of, do I just continue to wait and hope that that price goes lower and I find a lower price? Or when I find a really good one, like you said, do you just jump on it? And so we were sitting down, we were using, you know, Google flights, trying to figure out all the different alternatives. And I mean to tell you, this looked like, if you've ever seen the movie, A Beautiful Mind, and he had all those pictures and stuff like that on the wall, and he was connecting all the things together with the, you know, the strings and stuff like that. That's kind of what I felt like we were doing here, trying to figure out the points. Wasn't quite that complicated, but it is a lot of research going into it. And we even used a couple of sites like PointsMe, but none of those things were helping. We still weren't finding the really good fares. And they're the fares that you see people post all the time. Like, I got on this business class flight from, you know, New York to London for 5,000 points or whatever, you know. That
might be a little extreme, but yeah. We just
We just weren't seeing it, right? And so it was getting a little bit nerve wracking.
Yeah. And I think that night before we went to bed, I said to Scott, wouldn't it be great if there was a site where you could look to see, okay, how do I get from here to here in, you know, this number of stops or whatever? How do you fly from this place to this other place? And so literally the next day, so the next day, my plan was to spend some time on this because Scott kept saying, hey, we need to do this. We need to do this. I've racked my brain. You need to sit down and kind of help me. Like, let's see if we can figure this out. And almost simultaneously to people that I follow that talk about points and miles and different travel hacking stuff, I found a website called Flight Connections. You may know about this. And if you do, why didn't you tell me? I don't know. Flightconnections.com. Now, I will say it is a little annoying if you don't do the premium version. There were just too many ads and too many whatever. I don't think it was very expensive. It may have been like $30 or $40 for an entire year. I just said, you know what? I'm going to go ahead once I did it. And all these ads were popping up. I was like, let me just do this. And immediately, so what you can do, which is really cool, is I could leave the from blank and I could put in to Nairobi and it would show me, okay, what cities can I fly nonstop to Nairobi, Kenya? And so of course, like I said, or like Scott mentioned, we knew that we wanted to do some kind of European or some kind of stopover, right? And not do it in one track. That's kind of what we had our mindset on, even if it wasn't Morocco. And so immediately on a map, which is great, I can see all the cities that you can fly from and to. And then I'm started, you know, so I look at that and then I'm starting to peek at, OK, what are the prices? And then how can I can I look at that and then i'm starting to peek at okay what are the prices and then how can i can i look at this and i'd already looked
you the air so not only the cities where you can fly there but also the airlines that fly right
airlines you can you can put in like your time frame too you can look at that your the alliances the prices the airlines you know stop over you can look at lots of different stuff. I mainly was just looking at, yeah, the dates and the prices and where you could go. And I had also seen on the points guy blog, I had done some ready reading about, okay, who has good point redemptions if you're going, you know, from certain places in the Middle East or even, you know, even Cape Town, which we'll get to in a second. And one of their top ones was they said, look at Air Canada, look at Air Canada for redemptions. And so.
sitting there, she's she's, you know, working on this. I was in a different room where we do all of our podcast recording and I, you know, have everything set up for editing. And I think I was editing a podcast and I hear her from the other room yell out, hey, do you want to go to Cairo? Yeah, it's on our bucket list. That's somewhere we want to go.
So, I mean, who would have thought, okay, hey, let's add Egypt to this instead. Basically, what I had found, and before I said that to him, I had found that Air Canada flight where you could book it. The flight is actually on Egypt Air, but you book it through the partner airline, Air Canada. And basically, I had found one-way business class tickets for 70,000 points. Now, this is from JFK to Cairo in business class. And so I was like, we haven't seen anything remotely close to that. And so he was immediately like, book it. Book it before it goes away. Transfer the point. Whatever you have to do, let's get this booked. And
to know when you're travel hacking, sometimes you need to do what they call positioning. So you got to get yourself to a location where the best deals are from. In this case, it was out of JFK. Well, great, because there's a lot of direct flights from Jacksonville to JFK. So that worked out wonderful for us. And they're not very high point redemptions to get there. Melissa, you just recently took a trip to New York and what it was like, eighteen thousand dollars or eighteen thousand points each way on Delta.
Yeah, eighteen thousand points each way on Delta, which I mean, if you if you're used to this and you're like looking at it and you're like, why do you spend so many? But for Delta, that's not bad. 18,000,
18,000, that's one of the lowest redemptions on Delta.
Yeah, I think so for sure. And so we knew that that was a possibility. We have some Delta points that are unrelated to the other points that we use so that we knew we could make that work. And there's several flights a day. So that's an easy one.
for sure.
those positioning cities like JFK, Washington, D.C., Orlando's actually even one. So we looked at some of the flights out of Orlando, right? You just have to, Atlanta definitely is one because there's so many direct flights out of Atlanta to places. Yeah.
if you're not on the East Coast, also, like, I think like Dallas, Fort Worth would be one, LA would be one, lots of places in California or the Northeast. Like, you could look at lots of places like that to where you could fly. So, from there, it might be that you're going to Asia, for example. But
that's correct. So you Yeah. we we, found that know, flight to to We got that Cairo. booked. And so now we've got the first part of our travel taken care of. So a little bit of load off of our shoulders to get that done. And we had gotten business class tickets for really good point redemptions. Now, we did go on online and we just kind of because Melissa's like, is Egypt Air like that? You know, a legit airline, right? You know, what is this business class going to be like? Are we going to be flying with a bunch of chickens and stuff like that over our heads? Those types of things. So we did go online and Google it. where the guy showed his for this particular trip that we were taking from JFK to Cairo on Egypt Air in business class and on the plane setup that we're we're flying. You know, he had videoed it. Well, he's a little bit more posh than we are. We'll we'll say it nicely. And, you know, I don't think that he appreciated that flight very much. But I looked at it and said, those seats look great, you know, and this is going to work out wonderful for us. And I will take those over sitting in economy any
Yeah, for sure. And so one other thing that I think that we should point out too, is that when you book on these partner airlines, so you get a booking reference number, but then you have to go on the website of the actual airline that is flying the plane. Is that what you would call it? And enter your booking reference number and create your itinerary there and choose your seats from that. So I will say that that Egypt Air website was not the easiest thing to navigate and find out like, where do you actually book the seats and how do you create an account? We got it done. But just, but just knowing that don't just like get that booking reference number and be done, right? Because you need to go in and, and put in your, you need to put in your passport. Cause Scott was a little nervous because he was like, when we book this, it's like, but they didn't even ask for the passport and, you know, any of that information. And you go in, you add that later. But just knowing that you have to do that when you book with these partner sites. But yeah.
And if we have anybody from Egypt here listening from a cybersecurity guy, you guys need to work on your cybersecurity a little bit. Boy, I just sidetracked us, didn't I? Okay. So let's talk about then we booked the flight to Cairo. So now we're going to Cairo. So the next step. So now we're going to Cairo.
going to Cairo. Can you believe that? What in the world? But the other thing, but before you say that, I want to point out one more piece is that when you book a flight, doesn't matter how you book it, you have 24 hours to figure out if that's going to work out or not. And that's one thing is that when you see like if you do some of the other cheap flights alerts and stuff like that, that's why they always say jump on it. Like if you think that you want to do that, jump on it. You have 24 hours to say, okay, can I find a hotel? Like is everything booked or is everything like a zillion dollars and I can't afford this? And you can cancel the 24 hours. Works the same for points. Now, unfortunately, once you've transferred your points to that particular partner, it's not like you can transfer them back to your credit card. But just knowing that if there was some reason that we couldn't make Cairo work, that we could figure it out. I mean, we were pretty sure that we could, but just know that that is a rule that is true. Okay.
So we booked Cairo. Now we're going to Cairo. We're going to get to see the pyramids. I mean, this is something that's been really high on our bucket list. I think we want to go back and do like a Nile cruise because we're just going to go to Cairo. We're not going to go down to Luxor, to where King Tutankhamen's tomb is and stuff like that. And some of those sites in Egypt. But we're going to be in Cairo near Giza and the Giza pyramids. So the Sphinx is there, those Giza pyramids. And we started looking for places to stay. Once again, we want to use points. And you guys know that we're part of the Marriott Vacation Club. And this year, because we've got all these different trips planned, we're not going to use our options to stay at the Marriott Club. Or at least we're not going to use all of them. And so what we decided to do was take a good chunk of those and convert them into Marriott points. So now we have this large chunk of Marriott points that we can use to book some really amazing Marriott properties.
And my sister had actually, because we just go back and forth with like travel stuff, go in here, go in there, book this, book that. And so she immediately sent me like a couple of places in Cairo. And we had already looked at the Marriott site. This one didn't stand out to me. But then when she sent that to me and it had the picture, I was like, hey, Scott, I think we need to look at this particular property.
And then one of my coworkers, Tanya, actually sent the same property to us. And she's going to talk to us more about Cairo and you'll hear from her on Cairo. But she sent this property and said, if you go to Cairo, you need to look at this place. So we're staying at the Marriott Mena House, and we use points for this. We did do an upgraded room there. Now, we're titanium elite with Marriott, so we would be eligible for an upgrade, but it's never guaranteed. And for this trip, we wanted that guaranteed view. And so out our balcony, we're going to have views of the pyramids. And we've seen some pictures that just have us so excited because those pyramids are just like right there.
Very excited for that. And so one other thing I wanted to point out about using points miles, any of this is that I also discovered that on points guy, they have a points calculator. So if you just like literally Google points guy points calculator, it will come up and it will show you it has two tabs. You can pick flights. You can pick hotels. You can pick where, you can pick hotels, you can pick where your transfer points from who you're using them with. And it will tell you basically, is this a good redemption? Are you saving money? So because obviously, those Marriott points cost us a little bit of something in in maintenance fees and stuff like that. So we wanted to make sure that we were getting a really good value of that, You know, that we aren't booking hotels that were like a hundred and something dollars a night that you could just pay for, right? It had to be like, it's gonna cost, it would cost a lot to stay there. We wouldn't do that. And, but the points redemption. So that's a great tool to look at for all of this. And so of course, using that to help us decide. So on
the Marriott app, I looked to just book this room paying cash for it, right? And this room would have been around $850 a night.
Yeah, that's more than I would have ever paid for a hotel room.
So, you know, great redemption of points. And this one definitely passed the test on the points guy calculator. I wanted
to point out one other thing is if you listen to the episode where we talked to the Trippiamo founder, John Cortese, he mentioned Egypt being one of the places that he had been that he really loved and had said, and I don't know if we talked about this on the podcast or just in conversation, but he said, if you ever go, I've got some names for you of guides that I know, et cetera. And so, I mean, what were the chances? Like, okay, yeah. But then immediately after we booked this, I'm emailing John and saying, hey, guess what? We're actually going to go to Egypt. Can you hook me up with these guys? So, I mean, you just never know sometimes how these connections and having all these resources, you know, available, just make it so, you know, make it so nice for you to just like have them.
All right. So now we've got to go from Cairo to Nairobi. We transferred credit card points to Air Canada and bought business class seats from Cairo to Nairobi on Egypt Air again.
basically that was the same process, taking what we already learned and just saying, OK, this is the best redemption. So that one was pretty quick. Yeah.
And so once again, we got a really good redemption of points there. really good redemption of points there. And we just can't say enough. If you're redeeming points from rewards credit card, take a look at Air Canada and see if that works out for you because they just seem to have really good redemption values. Right. To
partners, for sure.
also been working on scheduling the back end of our trip and we're going to go to Cape Town for several days. So after the safari is over, we will leave Nairobi and go down to Cape Town. On this one, we transferred points into Virgin because Virgin had the best redemption of points to get a ticket from Nairobi to Cape Town. Yeah. So let me
basically what I did. I went to that same website, flightconnections.com, and I put in how do I get... So that one was easy, right? Because I knew I was going from Nairobi to Cape Town and basically who flies there. So then that showed me the flights. So in this particular one is Kenya Airways or Kenya Air. And so I looked on their site, okay, how much, how much does this cost, right? Because I don't have any airline partners that are, I'm sorry, I don't have any points that transfer to Kenya Air. But who is Kenya Air a partner with? Now, I just had to Google like who, what airline code share partnership is Kenya Air in? And it is in actually the SkyTeam, which is Delta and Virgin and some other ones. And so then I started going on those and saying, okay, does this flight on this? So then of course, I knew when what day we needed to leave and what flight it was. Where can I book this flight? I know how much it is on Kenya Air. That might be the best thing to do. But let me go just check these other ones. And lo and behold, on the Virgin website, which I have that app on my phone already, I have a I've signed up for their rewards program. And that's one of the thing about checking these points redemptions is that unfortunately, you do have to sign up for every's one of the things about checking these points redemptions is that, unfortunately, you do have to sign up for every single one of the ones you want to check. They'll let you, obviously, you can check the flight in price. But if you want to check it with miles, they make you sign up for that. Now, they're free, but you just have to save in all the passwords and sign up for that stuff, which is fine. So what was so interesting, though, is that I could not buy that ticket on Virgin, but I could do a reward mile on Virgin. And so that was just super interesting. And it was very inexpensive, too. I think it was like $12,000 or $15,000. Actually, it was $15,500 per ticket to get from Nairobi to Cape Town.
Yeah, that's a really good deal.
And so one good thing to know. Let's
add that we decided because this was not as long of a flight and we were going to be flying during the day, we decided to do economy on this leg.
Well, I would also like to add that the business class tickets from Nairobi to Cape Town were upwards of $1,200 to $1,800. They were very expensive. So it was going to be economy no matter what. And when I looked at Virgin, that was the only thing. There were no business class redemptions. It was only that economy redemption.
you have to be flexible. I think that's the big thing. And then know where you absolutely, what's your absolute requirements around if you want to fly business class or not. In this case, because it was a, I think it's around a four hourhour flight, and it's during the day. We said, well, shoot, that's like traveling from Atlanta to Las Vegas or whatever. We would do that in economy anyway.
thing about Virgin that is nice is that you can transfer. I don't know about all of them, but from American Express points, from Chase points, transfer both to Virgin. That is not always the case. It's not like you can use these points on any airline. Delta is not a transfer partner with any of them, I don't believe. So you would have to book that Delta flight through one of the partners. So that's the nice thing about Virgin as well.
Well, Delta is partner with American Express.
about Virgin as well. Well, Delta is partner with American Express. Oh, partner with American Express. Okay. But can you transfer just regular American Express to Delta? Yes. Okay.
Okay. But Delta is not a, that is not an economical way to trend to travel here. That's
That's true. That typically Delta has the highest value. So if you just have them on Delta, that's one thing.
that's one thing. I think domestically, they've really upped their game, and it's a lot fewer points to travel domestically. We're finding really good fares on Delta domestically. But outside of domestic U.S., Delta, you might can find some fares out there, but they're not going to be the cheapest.
Yeah. So Virgin is typically a good one if you can find that flight. So we just looked up. We found that as well.
So what this proved to us is that you really have to turn over all leaves when, you know, travel hacking using points. And, you know, don't take anything for granted. Like Melissa said, she started, you know, because we didn't have a way to transfer to, to Kenyan airways. Um, she started looking and saying, well, who are they partner with? And that's who, when she found Virgin and we were able to book those tickets through Virgin, when she found Virgin and we were able to book those tickets through Virgin, even though we will fly on Kenyon Airways. The back end of our once we get trip, to Cape Town, we looked at using points for hotels in Cape Town. And this is a situation where that reward calculator, that redemption calculator would have told us bad deal. Because the hotels in Cape Town are really inexpensive. So like, you know, a Marriott hotel or a Marriott partner hotel in Cape Town in a nice place in a nice location, like $150 a night.
Yeah. And once you get used to doing this, you kind of know if it's a good value or not a good value. And so we already kind of knew. So we didn't need to check the calculator because it's like Scott saying, if it's like, oh, $100 something a night. I mean, that's just not worth, you know, the points.
Yeah. And so we're going to get there. We've booked some hotels. We've paid or, you know, we've reserved those to pay in cash when we're there. And then this is going to give me an opportunity in Cape Town to meet up with a couple of my co-workers for the first time in person. So never had the opportunity to meet them face to face. And now with us being in Cape Town, one of them lives in Cape Town, one of them in Durban. We're just going to all meet up there together in Cape Town and have a few days together.
that's going to be really cool.
know, of course, we'll go and do some sightseeing and stuff like that as well. We're really looking forward to to the National Park there in Cape Town. We're going to spend a couple of days up in the wine region over the weekend when we first get there. But that's going to be the end of our trip is there in Cape Town.
Yeah, and I guess we should mention that we're actually going to split that stay a few nights in the wine region and then a few nights in the city. And
did decide that in Cape Town, we're going to rent a car. And so I've done some research there. I looked on Tripiamo. They don't have a Cape Town yet. So John, let us know if you want to sponsor this leg of the trip and I'll have Melissa Holder camera up while I drive. We'll get you some good video footage there. But so on the way back from Cape Town to the U.S., once again, we used a different airline to book that last leg. We wanted to find a nonstop flight from Cape Town back to the U.S. and somewhere on the East Coast. And so we found one Cape Town to New York, and that was through United.
I basically did the same process, looked at flight connections again to see, okay, where can you fly to? Like how, like what are the cities that you can fly nonstop back to the U.S.? Because if you're not careful and you're looking at just whatever, especially price-wise, you could spend 24 to 48 hours trying to get back home. And it might look like a good deal from the get-go, but I don't want to spend two whole days just getting back to the U.S. after this trip. So you have to be careful with that. So I went and put in non-stops. We looked at a few different options, New York, D.C. I think there's a flight to Atlanta, but it was on Delta and it was very expensive. No good options for that. So we didn't find finding that flight on United. Again, we wanted to look at business class to see if that was a possibility, because, again, this is a very long overnight flight.
And we found a really good fare is about half of what we've seen from anywhere else or anybody else. And so we wanted to make sure that we could lock that fare in. But unfortunately, we're now low on points because we've, you know, we've redeemed a lot of points for these other legs of the trip that we're using. And in just a couple of weeks, Melissa will have some more points that will become available. So what we were able to do is to, we booked a flight for, for myself and just paid cash for it. So we have that one ticket booked, but we held the fair on Melissa's ticket, um, for long enough for those points to hit. And if we can redeem points for her ticket, you know, and get her a free ticket on the way back using those points, then we'll do that. Otherwise, she has that low fare reserved and will be able to purchase the tickets at that lower fare if for some reason that points option is no longer available.
or if it goes way, way up or something like that, because we want to still make sure that it makes sense. Now, I will say that this was not a freehold. United does it to where you could pick, I think, like seven days, 14 days, 21 days or something like that. But it was it did cost I mean, it wasn't it wasn't exorbitant, but knowing that that fair could could go up. Now, the other thing I want to say is that you we had to be flexible to because I looked at we had kind of said, Okay, do we want to start home on this day or this day or this day. And of those that was the only one that was that was remotely reasonable. The two days after that were double that price, like even from the starting point. So in this case, we do have more flexibility in the travel schedule. And so looking at that and just saying, okay, this is the one. If we want to do business class, this is the one that's going to work. So hopefully I can get those points in my account. And then that points redemption will still
So overall, we paid a fraction in dollars of what we would pay for the trip that we're making. And so we feel like we got a great redemption of points that we did really good on our travel hacking. We're relatively new to the travel hacking thing, right? And so we're not trying to, you know, say that we're experts on it. We're getting better, I would say, and learning a lot of information. And what we wanted to do is just share that with you guys. So let's summarize real quick a few of the lessons that we learned along the way. The first thing is you've got to be willing to put in the legwork.
this took me. So we booked that first flight one night. And basically, it took pretty much what the whole next day, I'm checking, checking things. And so I'm really dedicating some time to like looking at these different sites. I'm looking at my paper right now that where I did this, I've filled out this little chart thing because I really wanted to, you know, as we were doing this, Scott was like, well, we could buy this leg and this leg. And honestly, it's almost more rewarding. It's almost more fun if you can use as many points as you can. Right. rewarding. It's almost more fun if you can use as many points as you right? can, So one other thing that we learned kind of along the way is that you could, you can also, you can also buy extra points on some of these to kind of fill in the gap. Now, again, you want to make sure that buying those extra points is, is not, doesn't end up costing you more than the flight would for example one of the ones in particular that we needed we were a few thousand points short on that virgin flight we wanted to book so we could basically buy what we needed there for a couple of hundred dollars versus spending almost a thousand dollars on those flights now here's a little thing that we learned we don't fly on virgin a lot well we've on Virgin, but it's been like through a Delta. So that was one where you booked it through Delta, but it ended up being a Virgin flight. Well, that doesn't really count as a Virgin, right? So we had this Virgin account with the points and stuff set up, but we didn't have any points in our account. We never bought a flight. Well, they won't let you buy Virgin miles if you know, purchased a flight on Virgin or had activity on your account. But what I figured out is that you can gift Virgin miles to somebody. So I went in my account and bought Scott as a gift. Well, he really bought, but as a gift and just had them, okay, what's your account number, Scott, and sent them to him. That was fine. That topped up his account. He transferred the points. We booked that for a fraction of the cost. So that is an option too. If you don't have enough miles, and it could be that you don't have enough miles at all, or any miles at all. And that was one thing that we will say that we looked for for his aunts, but it didn't make sense, right? If it's going to be the same or more, just buy it outright. But sometimes it could be less. So just wanted to point that out.
need to plan ahead for this. So travel hacking is not something you can just say, hey, I want to do this and go out tomorrow and start, you know, using points. You got to have the points first, right? So figuring out which, you know, rewards cards are the best fit for you and your needs, which ones transfer to the airlines that you're going to want to fly, which ones give you the best bonuses and all of those things. So you do have to do a little bit of planning. And then often they come with a minimum spend requirement. And you can do this by, you know, paying for your mortgage or your rent or paying for gas and restaurants and everything that you would normally do, just putting on that card and you can pay it off, but meet your spend requirements that way.
Yeah. And making sure you do that for the sign-on bonuses. So I will say, knowing that we wanted to do this in the future is that really last summer we started, we opened a couple. Now, yes, we've used some points. We also have a trip to Aruba planned. So we actually had used some of these points for that trip too. But last summer started that. And then I did another personal card and another business card at the beginning of this year, because we knew that we had a lot of beginning of the year expenses, you know, tax preparation to do and just some different things that would very easily make up that spend and get those points. So, and again, that last piece of it that I'm waiting for. So you can't, like Scott said, just open them up and boom, there they are. Because even if you do make that spend, you do have to wait for it to- Clear. Well, clear. And then also like the next statement has to, you know, the next statement has to come through for it to go into your account.
know, Melissa said that it's almost more fun to figure out all the puzzle pieces, how to make this work. It feels a lot more rewarding to use points and miles to book your travel than paying cash for it. And who doesn't like good, cheap airfare?
Yeah. Or free hotel nights.
And free hotel Yeah. Yeah. nights. And amazing places.
to have these trips booked so that now we can just look forward to the awesome experiences we're going to have along the way. How many of you love to find a good travel hack? Send me an email, scott at sunshinetravelers.com, and let me know what great travel hacks you have used or discovered recently. We are always inspired and learn through your experiences.
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You as I was know, saying for earlier, the European trip that we're going on, booked a lot of those through booking.com. So it's not just something that we talk about. It's something that we use. We hope you enjoyed this episode and we'll find some inspiration to help you with your travel journeys. Please consider going on your favorite podcast platform and leave us a review. The more five-star reviews we have, the more likely we are to be featured and discovered by others. Make sure to follow or subscribe to our podcast to be notified of new episodes as they are released. You can find us on Instagram as Sunshine Travelers Podcast. Remember, that is Travelers with one L. Most importantly, share it with your friends to help them catch the travel bug. You never know, they may become your greatest travel companion.
