Hawaiian Booking Adventures

It’s been almost 20 years since I was last in Hawaii. As you might imagine, I’ve changed quite a bit in that timeframe, but the biggest difference between this trip and those previous ones was who was paying. But as we usually do, we try to stretch our travel dollars, and managed to do pretty well on this trip — despite the high prices always associated with Hawaii.

This trip was a another casualty of the Korey travel planning bug… this time courtesy of Scott’s Cheap Flights. Round trip flights still weren’t “cheap,” but just over $400 is about as low as I’ve seen so I do know it was a good deal. When we were booking, we were also able to cash in some credit card rewards which took care of two of the tickets. It also helps that the US Bank Altitude Reserve gives 1.5 times the value when you cash in reward dollars for travel. That meant that we were able to get two tickets for about $500. We booked the flights the same day that the deal became available, so we were committed.

I should have booked our hotel as soon as we made the flight reservations since there was free cancellation up to a week prior, but I was holding off to see what other arrangements we might make. I thought James had originally indicated that we might stay with him for a night or two, but that didn’t end up working out in the end. I incorrectly assumed that I’d be able to go back a few weeks later and find the same offer as I originally saw with Hilton points.

Lesson to be Learned: Book what you want when you can… especially if you can change your mind later.

I could see some of the nights we needed at the lower point amount, but I couldn’t get five consecutive days to go through. Every now and then a person can do other things to make reservations happen, so I figured that was worth a shot. So I tried calling the Hilton desk to try to get the award level I wanted at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, but I struck out there as well. However, they did offer me 500 points to listen to a special offer… aka sign up for their timeshare pitch. As I was already in a sour mood and a little dejected that I wasn’t going to be able to book points directly on the beach, I said, sure why not.

But as fate would have it, that turned out to be a good thing.

As the guy gets on the phone to pitch the sale, one of the places he says you can go is none other than the HHV. So he and I go back and forth on the details, check the availability, etc. In the end, it would be about $800 for 5 nights at the resort we wanted, and he “triple checked” to make sure the dates we needed were available.

So I said yes.

I immediately got off the phone to make the reservation only to be told that those dates aren’t available at the HHV. As you can imagine, I was pissed. Several other calls later, I finally spoke with a supervisor who agreed to try to contact the resort for the dates we needed. If we couldn’t get the dates, he was going to refund my money. The only catch was that it would take a week to find out. He sounded legit, so I took him up on the offer. Nearly a week later, I found out that we could get what was originally promised.

I looked for two additional reward points for the other two days, so we could stay there for the whole trip. Hotel problems solved.

There were a few drawbacks to the cheap flights. First, we had to fly out of Houston rather than Austin which added about 2 hours to the drive to and from the aiport. Second, the flight left early in the morning and had a relatively long layover. And third, on the way back, we had to catch three flights to make our way back.

However, good fortune struck again in that there was a schedule change on our return flights. I called up the American Platinum Pro desk and asked if there was anything they could do because of that schedule change. It sounded like it was a bit of a stretch to do, but the agent I spoke with did change our flights so that we only had two hops on the way back home. I think he may have hooked us up a bit, but I was ok with that.

So long story short, it took some work to make it all happen, but we were well positioned for a great trip. What travel adventures (good or bad) have you had? Let me know @TalkToErik.