Trip Reports

Aruba & NYC Trip Report – Introduction

October 26, 2015

TravelingForMiles.com may receive commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on TravelingForMiles.com are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. TravelingForMiles.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers.

October is a good time for us to get away. The UK summer (what there is of it) is long gone and the beautiful golden globe in the sky that Californians take for granted is becoming a distant memory. The nights are drawing in and it’s getting harder to persuade yourself that you don’t need to put the central heating on. It’s time for a break.

Aruba is a place that we visit quite a bit, primarily because we have a timeshare at Marriott’s Aruba Surf Club, but also because it’s guaranteed sunshine, guaranteed trade winds (to keep you cool) and guaranteed friendly people at the resorts, restaurants, bars and shops. The place bills itself as “one happy island” and, for the most part, that’s exactly what it is.

Because the timeshare is usually booked 12-13 months ahead of time (to make sure we get the week that suits us best) I get to plan/book our flights as soon as tickets go on sale and awards flights become available – 331 days out.

The Trip:

This year we decided to get away for a bit longer than just a week so we added on a few nights in New York on the way back.

Flight-wise we’d need to book: London – Aruba – New York – London (with stopovers in Miami on the Aruba sectors)

Accommodation-wise Aruba was taken care of with the timeshare but we’d need a hotel in New York.

Flights – Cash Or Miles?

As with all our trips the first thing to decide is always whether to book our flights with cash or with miles…and that always depends on prices. Aruba isn’t the cheapest place to get to from the UK and many years of experience have taught me that you almost never see an Economy Class fare under $1,ooo (£665/€890) – at least not in October when schools are on vacation.

This year wasn’t any different and Economy Class prices for London-Aruba-New York-London were coming in at $1,075 (£715/€960) per person.

Using miles for an Economy Class redemption is rarely a good idea and this occasion was no different.

A return ticket in October would cost 40,000 AAdvantage miles + $215 in taxes (per person) and, as I value American Airlines miles at $0.018 each, that makes the effective cost of the flights $935/person or $1,870 in total.

So why is this a poor deal?

When you book flights with miles all you get is the flight. But when you book a flight with cash you not only get the flight but you also earn miles for future awards and miles towards elite status.

Here’s how the math works out:

Per Great Circle Mapper the total distance we’d be flying is 11,239 miles:

That means that both Joanna and I would earn 11,239 AAdvantage Miles if we booked the flights with cash. On top of this, as I hold AAdvantage Executive Platinum status, I’d earn a 100% bonus (Joanna doesn’t have status so no bonus for her). That would take our combined mileage earnings to 33,717 AAdvantage miles which, at my valuation of $0.018/mile comes to a value of $607.

So, if we purchased the Economy Class fares using cash, we’d pay out $2,150 for both of us (2 x $1,075) and then get an effective rebate of $607 (in the form of miles). Net cost = $1,543.

If we purchased the Economy Class tickets using AAdvantage miles we’d pay 100,000 miles (for both of us) at an effective cost of $1,870.

Paying for an Economy Class fare with cash gives us an effective saving of $327.

$327 may not sound like that big of a difference but there is one other thing to take into consideration:

With American Airlines Executive Platinum status I get 8 Systemwide upgrades each year and I can use these to upgrade any cash ticket to the next class of service (as long I pay any incremental taxes and as long as there is upgrade availability). So, if I booked an Economy Class award we’d definitely be sitting in Economy Class all the way but, if we paid with cash, there’s a chance we’d get upgraded in to Business Class.

Why not use miles for Business Class?

This was definitely a consideration when I was planning the trip. To book the full itinerary in Business Class would have cost 200,000 AAdvantage miles + taxes for the both of us (effective cost of $3,600 at $0.018/mile) – and that’s a bargain compared to what it would cost to buy those tickets with cash.

The problem was that award availability never materialised.

I set alerts (using ExpertFlyer.com) for London – Aruba Business Class awards and, between November and January American Airlines didn’t release a single seat. Yes, I could have held on for longer but, at that point, I was running the risk of the Economy Class fares shooting up. Paying substantially more for Economy Class would have been annoying if American ended up never releasing any award seats (which was very possible).

What we did:

I used ExpertFlyer.com to check for upgrade availability and it showed me that, while the London-Miami-Aruba part of our journey wasn’t available to upgrade (at that time), one of the New York – London flights (on our chosen departure day) had 2 upgrades spaces available. This was our only overnight flight and, to be honest, it was the only flight that I extra keen to fly in Business Class…all the other flights were perfectly survivable in Economy Class 🙂

So that was the decision made.

We booked the tickets using cash ($1,075 each), I wait-listed upgrade request for both of us on the London-Miami-Aruba flights and I confirmed upgrades, for both of us, on the Miami-New York-London Flights (Aruba-Miami was wait-listed too).

Cost of Flights: $1,075 per person

Taxes on Upgrades: $5.60 per person

Total cost of Flights (pending further upgrades): $1,080.60 per person or $2,161.20 in total.

Hotel – Cash or Points?

New York hotels are notoriously expensive and, in most cases, vastly overpriced. I’m not a fan.

Having said that, I do like the Andaz 5th Avenue. We stayed there on points last year and found the location to be just about perfect:

Screenshot from Google Maps

So this is where we thought we’d stay again.

Any time we eat out, have a drink out, or purchase travel I try to put the spend on my Chase Sapphire card. As well as that I occasionally use my Chase Ink Bold credit card to purchase gift cards at Staples and then liquidate them via Bluebird. All this helps me build up a healthy Chase Ultimate Rewards points balance which I then convert to Hyatt points when I want to stay somewhere nice without paying a fortune.

This was one of those times.

The Andaz branded hotels are some of the “hipper” hotels in the Hyatt portfolio and, while I’d normally rather eat my own arm than stay at a hotel that thinks it’s “hip”, Andaz do a good job. Mostly.

The Andaz 5th Avenue is, in my opinion, one of the best Andaz properties out there and, with prices usually no lower than $315 per night (often a lot higher), paying with points (25,000 points/night) gan be a good deal. As I specifically earn Chase Ultimate Rewards points just so that we can stay at the nicer Hyatt properties it was always very likely that we were going to use points for this stay.

When I was looking to book the Andaz 5th Avenue, the lowest priced room was priced at over $550 for a single night and we were never going to pay that. Using points would mean that we’d be getting at least $0.022 of value per point used and that’s ok by me. So we booked 3 nights at the Andaz 5th Avenue with 75,000 Hyatt points.

As points reservations are very flexible (you can cancel up to 48hrs before check-in) I kept a watch on the prices just to make sure that, at no point, would it make more sense to pay with cash. As I never saw the price drop below $500/night the room remained booked with points.

That’s just about it for the introduction. Stay tuned for reviews of the flights, airport lounges and our accommodations which will appear on Traveling For Miles over the next few days.