How to Get a $40,000 Vacation For $500 Ft. PaidWithPoints

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. Well, this is a video about how to book an amazing five star overwater villa in the Maldives and fly their business class. And I have none other than Angelo Manella here with me today, who runs the YouTube channel and Instagram Paid With Points. Thanks for coming on the show, Angelo. Thanks for having me, Shifu. So you went on this amazing trip to the Maldives and stayed in a five star overwater villa. Why don't you just give a little rundown? Just tell us all about it and then we'll go into how to book it with credit card points. Yeah, so I stayed at the Conrad Maldives. It is one of the top tier Hilton hotels. There's the Waldorf and the Conrad. I used ninety five thousand points was the actual per night stay, booked everything with points. It was eight nights and we booked a standard room and got upgraded to a deluxe beach villa for six nights. And then the last two nights we had the overwater superior water villa. Wow. So before we go into talking about how to book it, just describe it a little bit about the villa. Like what do you get at this hotel? Exactly. Yeah. So each villa kind of comes with its own living room area and the bathroom was really cool as it had double vanity sinks and everything was glass so you could look straight from the bathroom right into the bedroom. Everything was window so you could just be laying in bed or on the couch and you're looking at this beautiful crystal clear water. You had a little outdoor area where you can kind of sit and have lunch. We had a bunch of dinners out there and we also had a jacuzzi. But you can get either a jacuzzi or a private pool, like a plunge pool, and we had the jacuzzi. Nice, man. And there's stairs straight down into the water, which is pretty cool. Wow. So you can swim. Do they have like a net thing? Did that one have that? Like you can kind of lie on a net or is that? Oh, no. So they did have that. But the room that we had did not have that. OK, OK, cool. Because I've seen that, too. That also looks pretty cool. But yeah, that sounds like an awesome room, man. Amazing. And what about the food? Is the food good? Food was very good. Everything is imported. So it had a price. That was the only thing that really wasn't hackable. OK. Yeah. Because the price doesn't include it's not an all inclusive, is it? Unfortunately, not an all inclusive. I had a couple hundred bucks in credits from one of the credit cards, the Hilton Aspire, but that didn't get me too far. OK. And I understand you you flew there by Q Suites business class, right? Yes. We flew Q Suites from JFK to Doha and then Doha to Mali. And then from Mali, you get to go into your own lounge that the Conrad has. If you're staying at the Conrad. So we were able to kind of hang out there, get some food. And then whenever the plane was ready, they just walked us straight to the seaplane and we took a 40 minute flight to our Rangali Island. Wow. And all right. So, yeah, let's let's get in how to actually book it. How how much did this cost you in cash? So in cash, it cost five hundred and fifty dollars and I used one point two million points. And if this whole thing were to be booked cash, it's about forty thousand dollars. Whoa, that's insane. Yeah, that's probably one of the best highest value redemptions I've heard of, actually, in my time. I have had by far. That's amazing. All right. So let's let's actually get into the nitty gritty, because I'm sure some people who are watching this are watching us because they want to book it themselves. Maybe some people in the audience have one point two million points stashed away. But yeah, let's actually get into how to book it. Maybe we start with the flight and then we go into the hotel and also the strategy, because I know there's a certain thing you've got to be to get upgraded to that over water villa. And you can talk all about that. I think I know the strategy already. But, you know, but yeah, let's start with the flight. All right. So the the flights, my home base is Pittsburgh. So we flew Pittsburgh to JFK and then JFK to Doha, Doha to Mali. Mali was a seaplane to the island. And then on the return, it was the island to Mali, Mali to Dubai, Dubai back to JFK and JFK home. OK, so the first booking was I booked a round trip ticket from Pittsburgh to JFK and I used my Delta Platinum, which I had a companion certificate with that. So I used twenty eight thousand miles to book mine. And I think it was like eleven dollars with the taxes and fees. And then the companion certificate got my fiance to come. OK, nice. Yeah. So now we're in JFK and we were flying Qatar Airways for Q Suites. So once we checked in, then we were able to go into the flagship lounge in JFK, which was in Terminal eight. I did want to go into the Centurion lounge, but you can't bounce between terminals. Yeah, I found that out. Yeah. But flagship was awesome. And the flight was a one way itinerary. It was JFK, Doha to Mali. And that was I will cheat sheet here. One hundred and forty thousand points and thirty eight dollars. So what I did, I transferred one hundred and forty thousand membership rewards points to Marriott at the 40 percent promotion rate, and then I transferred those Marriott points directly to American Airlines to do the award booking. Is it what's the transfer ratio from Marriott to American Airlines? Is it one to one or? I can't remember what it exactly is, but regardless of like it's not the best way to redeem points usually. But whenever you're flying Q Suites, the cost of what a Q Suite would be in cash versus the devaluation of the transfer, you still win by a ton. I see. And you had a 40 percent bonus on there. And was that 140? Was that one person or is that for two people? That was I got really lucky. That was two people. Wow. Yeah, that's crazy. This has been a bucket list trip for years, so I always am looking at like piecing this together. And that's how that flight was. So business class all the way through and on Qatar Airways, you can get your seats can either be like the couple cubicle or or a couple suite where the seats are next to each other. And you can also book the business class class where like it's a seat, the middle area and then another seat. So I made sure that we got the couple suite and we did that. And now we're in Doha. So we ended up going to the business class lounge there and took business class to Mali, went to the lounge, hung out. And then they told us when the flight, the seaplane was ready. And 40 minutes later, we're in paradise. And the seaplane was that part of what booking was that part of? So that was actually a charge that goes on your Hilton bill. OK, I see. And that one, it was about five hundred and fifty dollars per person. So unless you have like Chase Sapphire Reserve with a three hundred travel credit or you have the Capital One Venture, something like that, it's going to be a little bit more difficult to look at. So that wasn't that wasn't something you were able to do. That was, yeah, that was the five hundred and fifty bucks that paid out, right? OK, OK. And so then for the flight back, was it a similar thing, booking about one hundred and forty thousand points or? Yeah, so the Mali, Dubai, the JFK, that was one hundred and thirty six thousand Chase points that I transferred to Emirates at a one to one. And I actually booked that in economy. I got notified a couple weeks before the flight that if I wanted to upgrade to business class, I could. So I chose to only upgrade business class from Dubai to JFK because that's a 15 hour flight, 14 hour flight versus the four and a half hour flight from Mali to Dubai. And was that on Emirates? Emirates 8380. Yeah, we did that. So we had the bar in the back. Sweet. It was pretty cool. And the upgrade was fifty thousand Emirates miles per person. So one hundred K for that. Wow. So it was one hundred thirty six for both of you together. And then both of us in economy. OK. And then I upgraded the Dubai, the JFK leg at fifty thousand per person. Wow. OK, cool. All right. So now so we've gone through the flights now. What about the hotels? How do we book those points? Yeah. So the Hilton Aspire was the main card I used and it was three hundred and eighty thousand points for five nights because you get the fifth night free and the standard room rate was ninety five thousand points per night. You can get lucky sometimes and find water villas at standard rates. Whenever I was booking, it was a beach villa for the standard room. And the next two nights I transferred seventy six seventy six thousand membership rewards points. And this was at another 40 percent promotion. So for total ninety five thousand points per night times two is one hundred ninety thousand. And if you multiply that with the promotion of 40 percent, that's seventy six thousand membership rewards points transferred to Hilton. So there's nights six and seven. OK, night eight was the weekend gift certificate that you get with holding the Amex Aspire. And what's really nice is due to kind of covid times, these weekend gift certificates can be used any night. Usually it's just Friday, Saturday or Sunday weekend gift certificate. But they're allowing any night. Yeah. All the way until the end of twenty twenty three, I think it is right. Yep. Yeah. And then so but you booked a beach villa, right? Booked a beach villa. So booked a standard beach villa. Whenever we got there, the entire stay was upgraded to a deluxe beach villa. OK. And the deluxe beach villa. So it's I think it's like three thousand or four thousand square feet. You basically walk in and then to your left you have like the sand pathway that leads you to outdoor couch with an outdoor shower. And then you go straight into the double vanity bathroom with a really nice waterfall shower right into the bedroom and you walk out your door into this kind of pool. It's like plunge pool almost. And then from there you're totally secluded in all these trees, palm trees, everything like that. And then you have a pathway out to your own private kind of beach area. Wow. So that was the deluxe beach villa with the pool. And we had that for six nights. And then the last two nights I tried to sweet talk my way into it. This is for my fiance. We wanted to come here for our honeymoon. But the prime time to go to the Maldives is December to March. What can we do? Like, well, what we can do is kind of give you a 40 percent off of the cost that a water villa would be because your diamond and it ended up being, I think, like a additional eight hundred and fifty dollars per night to upgrade. We're like, I don't know if we're going to come back to a water villa in the Maldives. Let's just do it. So we did last two nights there. So, yeah, because I've heard that you can actually get if you're a diamond, you can sometimes get upgraded to the water villa, right? Yes. Yeah. I was hoping. Yeah. You still got an upgrade, but it was to the deluxe beach villa, which is still incredible. It was. Yeah. Yeah. But very nice. That's awesome. But yeah, I think if I was there in that situation, I probably would have done the same thing because Maldives is kind of like a once in a lifetime thing. It's kind of so out of the way over there. Yeah. So that's. I mean, we we spent twenty four hours in the air and then because we piece this flight together so specifically, like we worked around business class flights, we worked around using companion certificates. So our like shortest layover was like six hours and our longest layover was in Doha. It was 15 hours. But we got to stay in all the business lounges, which kind of made it a little more reasonable. But yeah, it's a trek. Yeah, it's a trek. I like transferring in Dubai because they've got that hotel that's like in the terminal by the gates. And you can literally just book by the hour just to sleep in the hotel. I didn't. Oh, yeah, I did. They were booked whenever we got there. I tried. OK. Yeah, I use that when I came I come back from Taiwan and I changed in Dubai and the hotel was literally by my gate. So I just got out of bed and got onto the flight. Yeah. But yeah, man, it sounds like an incredible trip as I'm jealous, you know. Yeah, it was awesome. Cool, man. Like, thank you so much. And guys, you know, in the audience, like listen to his tips, rewind the video, look at all the little hacks, how he booked that and you could potentially book it, too. Any last words? Any final thoughts? I mean, I know Hilton kind of has its own bad taste with Hilton pesos and the point valuation isn't great. But if you find the right booking and you get a good redemption, there's a lot of value to be found in Hilton, especially kind of Asia, overseas, Europe. There's a lot of good reward bookings there. That's true. Yeah, that's a great hack. You can get some like five star hotels in China for ten thousand Hilton points a night. It's pretty amazing if you happen to be going there. But all right, man, thank you so much for coming on the show. And you guys go and check out his channel on YouTube. Follow me on Instagram as well. I'll put all the links on screen or in the description. Thanks very much for coming on and we'll see you next time. Thanks for having me, Ben. I appreciate it.