My husband and I had an amazing vacation in Kauai, Hawaii this past summer! We had planned to do something like this a couple of years ago for our 10th anniversary and to celebrate both of us turning 40. But, we were in a pandemic, so we held off. We honestly weren’t sure we would visit Hawaii, because prices were so high, and we weren’t sure we could justify the expense.
Then, credit card points came into the picture! Once I started digging in and learning a little more, I realized we could save so much money on a Hawaiian vacation if we were able to use points. Not only did I start learning about using points, but I learned about obtaining a Southwest Companion Pass, and earning Southwest LUV vouchers. Keep reading to find out how we flew to Hawaii and stayed for 5 nights for less than $75!
Hotel Stay
After some research of Hyatt hotels on the islands of Hawaii, my husband and I decided we wanted to stay at the Grand Hyatt Kauai. We had visited Maui on our Honeymoon in 2011, so we wanted to change it up a little bit. This 5-star hotel always has amazing reviews, so we decided this was the one for us!
At the time of booking, each night was 25,000 Hyatt points (now most nights are around 30-35,000 points because the hotel has moved up from a category 6 to a category 7 hotel.) We paid 125,000 points for our 5 nights at the resort and $0 for our stay. Resort fees are covered with Hyatt when you pay with points and this hotel even has free parking! We were upgraded to a partial ocean view/resort room and even had wine, sparkling cider, and snacks waiting for us. We will teach out about room upgrades later.
Flights
Our flights were booked on Southwest. We could have solely used points, but we were actually able to only end up using around 30,000 points due to throwing in some other travel tricks. We easily could have used around 100-120,000 points! For our flights out, I originally found it cheaper to book 2 separate 1-way flights. We planned to fly into LAX on one flight, and then from LAX to Kauai on two flight reservations. But, 5 days before our flight, I noticed it would be the same price to fly to Kauai with one stop in Las Vegas. It had us leaving 40 minutes later and arriving 1 ½ hours earlier.
I called Southwest and they got everything changed for me. To pay for our flight out, we actually used some Southwest LUV vouchers and with the difference, we ended up paying just under $50 for taxes, fees, and the difference. Lauren or I will explain how we earned LUV vouchers from a delayed flight another day.
For our flight home, we booked our 1 way flight back with a little over 59,000 points. This was a lot, but it was the only thing available at the time of booking and we were worried there wouldn’t be anything left. I was planning on getting a Southwest companion pass soon, so my husband would be traveling for free with me, so I was okay spending a little more points than anticipated on the flight back.
Well, we lucked out! A couple months after booking, I was looking at flights on Southwest, and saw our flight back was on sale for just under 30,000 points! So, I canceled my reservation and re-booked. Southwest gave me my other 30,000 points back, so now we have them for a future flight! We will post more about why we love Southwest later, but being able to book and re-book easily if rates are lower is one thing we love!
Money Saved
Now for the exciting part- how much money we saved using points and money tips! Our stay at the Grand Hyatt Kauai would have cost us over $5550 with taxes, fees, resort fees, etc., but our price was $0! Our flights at booking (when they were practically the highest I saw them) would have cost us around $2,700, but we paid under $75 total for taxes, fees, and the small amount we owed from our vouchers. Remember, I also saved so many points to use for future trips by using a couple other travel tricks. Our total money saved on flights and hotel was $8,250!!!
Of course we spent money on food, a rental car, a luau, and tubing adventure, etc. But, we were able to enjoy these experiences even more because we weren’t shelling out so much money for our flights and hotel! With a little digging, we were even able to save a couple hundred dollars or so on our rental car, and we even earned points on our experiences by using the right travel credit cards!
