Nine Nights, Six Hotels and Four Countries

I think it's finally done....we might finally have a complete itinerary for moving to Seattle via Australia and Asia! We have changed the flights over and over and coming along with that is many changes in hotels. The great thing about the miles and points community is that many of them have been to the places you are going and can give you great hotel and attraction suggestions so we were influenced by some great suggestions from great people like Keri over at Heels First who has some amazing suggestions for Singapore and Bangkok.

Now that our itinerary is finel I wanted to map out our hotels and actually see how much this trip will end up costing us on the hotel front. So here's the list and how we are paying for the nights:

Park Hyatt Sydney - 2 Nights = Hyatt Visa 2 Free Award Nights + $96 per night for an upgrade to an Opera King = $192

Hilton Cairns (Great Barrier Reef) - 2 Nights = Hilton free weekend nights from Hilton Reserve Card

Radisson Blu Sydney - 2 Nights = 50,000 points from sign up bonus for the Club Carlson Visa card and taking advantage of their book at least one award night, get the last night free benefit!

Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok - 1 Night = $144 thanks to the recent 40 percent off sale in Asia/Pacific

Intercontinental Hong Kong - 1 Night = 45,000 points from Kelsey's Priority Club Visa sign up bonus

Conrad Singapore - 1 Night = Originally booked for 40,000 before devaluation and then date change pushed it up to 60,000. So an additional $25 was needed to transfer points from Kelsey's account to mine.

Total for 9 nights =

-2 Hyatt Free Nights
-2 Hilton Free Weekend Night Certificates
-50,000 Radisson points
-45,000 Priority Club Points
-60,000 Hilton Points
-$361 in cash

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Saving 50,000 Club Carlson Points and Getting A Free Night!

Kelsey and I are still "massaging" our Australia itinerary that includes stop overs in Singapore and Bangkok for 23 hours each and now that we have our flights mostly routed the way we want them we have moved onto our hotels.

Right now we have:

Two nights at the Park Hyatt Sydney using our two Hyatt nights from the Hyatt visa
Two nights at the Hilton Cairns using one free weekend night from the Hilton Reserve card and 35,000 points (Great Barrier Reef Trip)
One night at the Hilton Sydney using our second free weekend night from the Hilton Reserve Card
One night at the Radisson Blu Sydney using 15,000 Club Carlson points and $115
One night at the Conrad in Singapore for 40,000 Hilton points
One night at the Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit, Bangkok for 10,000 SPG points

As I was looking at our itinerary and not really feeling good about paying for the cash and points option at the Radisson Blu Sydney I went to read Angelina's post at Just Another Points Traveler about her trip with her father to Australia. They were also staying at the Radisson Blu in Sydney but they had used the power of the Club Carlson Visa card to the fullest. If you are redeeming Club Carlson points for a reward night and need at least two (2) nights the last night on your reservation is free. So you can redeem just one night of Club Carlson points and get a second night for free! Why mess around using more points than needed and I could pull back a Hilton free weekend night certificate for another time!

So I quickly went to the Club Carlson site and put in a search for two nights and found pleanty of availability at the Radisson Blu in Sydney for 50,000 points per night. I went to book and saw a note that as long as the Club Carlson visa cardholder was on the reservation the last night would be automatically free. After booking it was confirmed that for two nights I was only deducted 50,000 points and after canceling my old reservation I even got 15,000 points back into my account for another booking later!

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Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints! Have a question for us? E-mail us at chris@doitforthepoints.com or jd@doitforthepoints.com