My mom and I have both spent much of our adult lives taking care of other people, so when my Australian cousin invited us to his Sydney wedding, we decided to take a trip all on our own. No one to look after but ourselves. And I wanted to make sure it was spectacular.
I’ve been collecting and using points for economy flights for years, often to shuttle the family from our home in California to my parents in Wisconsin. But I wasn’t willing to put my mother in coach on the long flight to Australia.
We both yearned to experience premium-class travel for the first time. We wanted lie-flat seats, lounges, and lodging that lived up to the specialness of this first-ever mother-daughter trip.
I leveled up my miles and points game to make sure we got it all.
Earning points: a family affair
First, I drew up an itinerary to get us from San Francisco to Sydney and Brisbane (and back). Then, I calculated the number of miles we’d need to get it done. At first, I thought we’d fly round trip on American Airlines, where I already had some miles. However, I learned that premium cabin seats between the U.Ss and Australia are in high demand and cost a lot of miles on the dates we wanted to travel. I wasn’t going to be able to book the whole trip using just one airline or program.
Back to the drawing board. I crafted a new plan, stitching together an itinerary with positioning flights and different airlines. Both my mom and I already had points in a few programs — Hilton, Chase Ultimate Rewards, SPG (now part of Bonvoy), American Express, Hawaiian Airlines, and American Airlines. To finish the job, we applied for cards with signup bonuses with American Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska Airlines, British Airlines, American Express and Citi ThankYou Rewards.
As I began applying for new cards, I used a Google sheet to keep it all organized. I sent my husband a referral link for each new card, so he could chip into our effort by applying for those cards in his own name. I had my mom and dad do the same.
Each card we signed up for required us to spend a certain amount of money — often several thousand dollars — before we received the signup bonus. We were able to meet these minimums with regular spending, especially since my husband and I were paying for a home improvement project at the time. Using our regular income plus money we had saved for the remodel, we paid off all the spending at the end of each month. We didn’t want interest charges to add to our trip cost.
I also went beyond just using credit card spending to acquire points, switching my cell phone service to Sprint for 25,000 American AAdvantage miles, shopping in the American Airlines shopping portal, and adding authorized users to my Hilton AmEx card. (Note: This happened a few years ago, and the specific offers I used are no longer available.)
How we got $10,000 in value for nearly free
While points in different programs have different values, I added them all up and figured out that our flights cost 230,000 points each. If we had paid cash, the same flights would have cost $5,145 per person. Of course, we each had to pay a few hundred dollars in annual fees for the cards we got for the trip, but that was nothing compared to what we received. And between credit card fees, airline fees, excursions, food, and incidentals, we only spent about $1,000 per person for this two-week trip of a lifetime.
For the first segment of our trip, we traveled from my home in Northern California (flying from Oakland) to Sydney, staying overnight in Honolulu on the way. Since we’d be awake for the first flight, we saved on miles by booking that one in coach. These flights from Oakland to Honolulu, which would have cost us around $200 each, were 17,500 points per person on Hawaiian Airlines.
From there, we flew Hawaiian from Honolulu to Sydney in business class — a flight that would have cost $2,783 per person — for 130,000 miles per person. After staying in Sydney for a week, we flew north to Cairns to check out the Great Barrier Reef and the rainforest, flying Qantas and using 10,000 British Airways Avios per person (saving the cash cost of $130 per person).
After nearly a week in Queensland, we took a train to Brisbane, where we had one fun day before starting our journey home. To get back to Honolulu, we flew Hawaiian Airlines again for 60,000 AAdvantage miles per person in business class (a seat with a cash cost of $1,766 per person). Finally, we flew from Honolulu back to Oakland on Alaska Airlines in economy class for 12,500 British Airways Avios per person (this would have cost $265 per person)
If you’ve stopped doing the math, that’s five flights, which would have cost a total of $10,290 for two people, that we snagged for 230,000 points all in.
But we didn’t stop there. We also paid for all our lodging with points, including one night at Waikiki Hilton Garden Inn (12,000 Hilton points + $158), five nights at West Hotel Sydney: (208,000 Hilton points), and five nights at Peninsula Boutique, Port Douglas (75,000 Citi ThankYou Rewards + $200 cash).
Enjoying the perks of points
During our layover in Honolulu, as Mom and I spent the afternoon lounging on Waikiki, we watched a man help his elderly father wade into the surf.
“Will you do that for me when I’m that old?” Mom asked.
I swore I would, and we both agreed that breaking up the trans-Pacific flight with a short stop in Hawaii, which I had done to save American AAdvantage miles, had worked out perfectly. This memory box moment on the beach set the tone for two weeks of relaxation and fun together.
Our flight from Honolulu to Sydney, in A1 and A2, felt festive. We checked out our capacious space and sipped Mai Tais while the rest of the flight boarded. With our proximity to the front galley, we felt like best friends with the charming flight crew by the end of the dinner service. We snuggled under cozy comforters and fell asleep while watching movies on large iPad-like screens.
In all the airports, we had a great time checking out the lounges, thanks to the portfolio of credit cards we’d taken on. We started our outbound journey with a hearty breakfast and mimosas at the Escape Lounge in Oakland and the homeward one at Brisbane’s Plaza Premium Lounge. Most fun of all was Sydney Airport, where Priority Pass has partnerships with several restaurants. With our multiple Priority Pass cards, we were able to eat lunch at one restaurant and then hit another for cocktails and dessert. We felt rich!
Bookended with such lovely experiences, the trip itself surpassed our hopes. In Sydney, we took a ferry to Royal National Park for a bushwalk and swim. In Queensland, we snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef hand in hand and rode a glass-bottomed cable car over the rainforest. Mom and I went home pledging to make mother/daughter trips a regular event — although I don’t know that we could ever top the enjoyment of this one.
A few lessons learned
My top takeaway from this trip was that you can never start planning too early. I drew up my first draft itinerary about seven months before departure. If I had started a full year in advance, we would have had more and better options, and it wouldn’t have taken so much work to cobble things together.
Things that worked well on this trip, which I’ve continued to do since:
- Look beyond travel and credit cards to earn miles. Airline shopping portals and other partnerships helped make this voyage happen.
- If you’re married, ask your spouse to leverage their credit, even if they’re not going on the trip. While it’s not always easy or free to transfer points or miles from one person to another, I was able to use my husband’s points to book a flight for myself with his permission.
- Don’t forget airline partnerships! On this trip, we wanted to fly Hawaiian Airlines there and back, but we didn’t have enough Hawaiian miles to do that. Hawaiian’s partnership with American Airlines got us there.
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