Natalya and Svetlana’s Labor Day Trip to Vancouver: The Plan With Miles, Points and Promotions

Natalya and Svetlana are going to Vancouver for Labor Day weekend. While they haven’t laid out every part of their plan yet, they’ve done quite well booking their tickets with points and miles. They also got a free hotel for two nights in Vancouver with the Marriott Rewards Megabonus Promotion.

To earn points and nights for their flights, they divided and conquered with Svetlana collecting points for flights and Natalya collecting nights for hotels. A great team effort for a great trip plan! They’ve booked everything except one hotel night on their upcoming trip and they’re still working on their plan to visit Whistler. They would like to ask the Miles Professor readers for suggestions on visiting the Pacific Northwest prior to deciding where they’ll spend their third night.

What they’ve spent so far on their trip:

Activity	What It Costs	What They Paid
Svetlana's ticket from Los Angeles to Vancouver	$183	Added as a free one-way onto trip to Rio de Janeiro with US Airways miles + $50 in departure taxes and fees
Svetlana's ticket from Los Angeles to Vancouver	$180	$23.70 in Vanilla Reload fees with Citi ThankYou Card
Natalya's round trip ticket from San Francisco to Vancouver	$334	$39.50 in Vanilla Reload fees with Citi Thank You Card
2 Nights at Residence Inn Vancouver Downtown	$259 a night for a Studio Room with 2 Queen beds	Two free Category 1-5 Marriott Rewards certificates from Megabonus Promotion
Car rental two days	$60	$60
TOTAL COST	$1275	$173.20

Planning Overview

What I like most about this plan is that neither Svetlana nor Natalya needed to sign up for any new credit cards or particularly go out of her way to earn the miles or points. Even though the retail cost of what they booked so far is $1275 and they’ve only spent $175, they saved that $1000 by going about their daily lives as they otherwise would. Proof that having nice weekend trips, even pricy ones, can be done with relatively little work! You just need to know how to stretch your miles, find the right promotions and have the right credit cards that lets you earn the right points quickly.

For her portion of the trip plan, Svetlana was able to leverage the miles and credit cards she already had for a bit of incremental spending. She added the flight from Vancouver to a trip she was already taking to Rio de Janeiro without paying any extra miles; that’s the beauty of free one-ways. She was also able to buy Vanilla Reloads at the CVS next door to her grocery store, where she goes anyway, to earn the Citi ThankYou points to pay for the rest of the flights. And Natalya earned two free nights in Vancouver for travel she was already doing for work and by just signing up for an extra promotion. 

The Flights: US Airways Miles and Citi ThankYou Points

Had they paid for the flights themselves, the flights to Vancouver would have cost over $700 in total! However, other than about $50 departure taxes from Vancouver and Vanilla Reload fees of $63, Natalya and Svetlana were able to cover their flights completely using miles and points. Or, rather, I should say Svetlana was able to as Natalya was working on hotels!

Svetlana’s flight from Vancouver was added on as a free one-way to her round-trip flight to Rio de Janeiro for Carnival next February. She used 60,000 US Airways miles in total for her trip to Rio and her trip from Vancouver didn’t cost any extra miles. Since US Airways allows us to add a free stopover or an open-jaw to an international round-trip award, free one-ways are possible before the trip. This is all explained in more detail in the post on how we booked her award.

Svetlana still had to pay the $50 in departure taxes for Vancouver as miles don’t cover those. If it were me, I could use the Barclaycard Arrival to cover these departure taxes since it’s categorized as travel and Barclaycard lets you redeem miles for any travel expense, but she doesn’t have the Barclaycard yet.

To pay for her own flight to Vancouver and Natalya’s round trip flight, Svetlana took the strategy of buying Vanilla Reloads with the Citi ThankYou card at drugstores to pay their bills. The Citi ThankYou card earns 5 points per dollar at drugstores, grocery stores and gas stations for the first 12 months. Each point is worth 1.33 cents towards airfare for those that also hold the Citi ThankYou Premier card. Natalya’s round trip flight on United Airlines cost a total of $334 and Svetlana’s flight there cost $180. That’s $514 total the ThankYou points needed to cover.

• To pay for both tickets, Svetlana needed to collect 39,000 Citi ThankYou points  ($514/1.33 cents per point = 39,000 points). 
• She needed to spend $8,000 on Vanilla Reloads (39,000/5 points per dollar = $7,800 spending)
• This took 8 stops at CVS and $63.20 in Vanilla Reload fees (16 Vanilla Reloads* 3.95 = $63.20).

After all the fees of $63, Svetlana earned a profit of $451 towards airfare. She was able to buy $1,000 in Vanilla Reloads at the next door CVS every time she would go grocery shopping. Pretty good deal… earning over $450 in airfare for just 8 stops at CVS. That works out to $56 per CVS stop! As an additional benefit, they will both be earning miles for their flights they bought with the ThankYou points.

The Hotel: Marriott Rewards Megabonus Promotion For Two Nights in Vancouver

While Svetlana was busy driving around buying Vanilla Reloads to collect the Citi ThankYou points, Natalya was busy completing her four stays with Marriott to earn the two free nights in Vancouver. She participated in the Marriott Rewards Unexpected Bonus Promotion. The bonus awards her a free night at any Category 1-5 hotel for every two Marriott property stays completed between May 15 and September 2. This is on top of the Marriott Rewards points she already earns for her stays so it really is a nice bonus. Natalya does a little bit of travel for work and she spent one night each at Residence Inn Roseville, South Lake Tahoe Marriott Timber Lodge, Fairfield Inn & Suites Sebastopol and Courtyard Fresno over the month of June. After completing her stays, she earned the two free night certificates and she and Svetlana will be using them at Residence Inn Vancouver Downtown saving over $500 on the hotel. 

Before her stays, Natalya called and signed up for the Marriott Rewards Platinum status challenge at the beginning of June. They gave her Platinum status until the end of September. If she completes 9 stays during that time, she gets to keep the Platinum status until January 2015. In the meantime, her Platinum status gives her free breakfast, free internet, possible room upgrades and a 50% bonus on the Marriott Rewards points she earns for her stays. She’ll even still have the Marriott Platinum status during the trip to Vancouver, which will make her and Svetlana’s stay that much better!

They still have one more night left to book the hotel and they’re still deciding whether to spend it in Vancouver or Whistler and are asking for reader suggestions…

Help Make Natalya’s and Svetlana’s Trip Better With Your Suggestions!

They plan to arrive late Friday night and their flights back to California leave at 5 pm on Monday. That gives them 2.5 days to tour Vancouver and make a trip up to Whistler.

Saturday will be spent in Vancouver and they want to drive up the Sea to Sky Highway on Sunday and visit the Scandinave Spa in Whistler.

Should they go and come back the same day or stay in Whistler overnight, returning Monday in time for their flights? If staying overnight, what are some nice suggestions for either low priced hotels or hotel points deals in Whistler? They haven’t started looking into overnight options. Finally, what are some of your favorite places and things to do in Vancouver? 

Thank you in advance for your help!