Rio de Janeiro for Carnival 2014 for a Total Cost of $120
Svetlana and I finalized our plans for a 3-day trip to Rio de Janeiro for Carnival in February 2014. It’s tough for us to get away from work for long that early in the year so it will be a short 3-day trip. Regardless, we are both avid fans of samba (as you may have already guessed from the Samba for Miles name) and are super excited for the Carnival experience. We plan to make the most of every minute of our trip.
Luckily, we managed to arrange everything efficiently with miles and points with the flights and the whole trip only cost us $120. I even ended up with a business class ticket to Rio de Janeiro. If we paid for the trip ourselves, it would have cost us $5500. We may not have gone on a 3 day trip with it being so expensive, but that’s the beauty of miles and points. They allow us to have experiences that we would otherwise forgo due to high cost.
The Hotel
While the flights themselves were not tough for us to secure (we booked well ahead of time), hotel rates during Carnival at decent hotels were a different story. Most room prices coming out on the high side. As many tourists descend upon the city for Carnival, hotels have little incentive to make room rates competitive. It’s not uncommon to come across typical rates of $300-$400 a night for hotel rooms.
We faced a similar problem last December when we went to Rio de Janeiro over Christmas and New Year’s and hotel rates were $800+ a night at the better hotels. We used Starwood Preferred Guest points to stay at the Sheraton Rio Hotel & Resort, saving us a huge chunk of money.
Indeed, the same Sheraton Rio Hotel & Resort was $360 a night for our dates this coming February. But our points proved valuable again. We booked a Superior Room for 16,000 points a night (Category 5 high season rate). The same hotel will cost only 12,000 points a night in low season.
The Starwood Preferred Guest card from American Express (you can ready my full card review here to learn more about the perks and options with the card) comes with a 25,000 point sign-up bonus after spending $5,000 within 6 months. After meeting the spending requirement, that’s almost enough for two nights in Rio! I always try to have these points around as these tend to be the ones I use most for hotels. They also transfer to 30 different airline partners.
Application Link: Starwood Preferred Guest card from American Express
The Flights
I previously wrote about our flight booking experiences and how we optimized our miles to secure convenient flights.
Svetlana used 60,000 US Airways miles to book herself a round-trip flight to Rio de Janeiro from Los Angeles. She also added a free one-way trip from Vancouver last Labor Day. To read about how she booked her flight to Rio de Janeiro, check out the post:
I first had booked a great American Airlines redemption by combining a trip back from Los Angeles with a trip to Rio de Janeiro for 20,000 miles total. I later decided to change my plans for a few reasons and ended up with a free business class flight to Rio de Janeiro:
I then just had to pay 30,000 United Airlines miles to get back to New York from Rio de Janeiro. This is the cost of an economy one-way ticket.
Overview of Total Costs
Hotel:
- 32,000 Starwood Preferred Guest Points for 2 nights at the Sheraton Rio Hotel & Resort.
- Costs saved: $360 a night for each of two nights for a total of $720.
Svetlana’s Flight:
- 60,000 US Airways Dividend miles + $60 taxes and fees for Svetlana’s ticket to Rio de Janeiro.
- Costs saved: $1200 for a round-trip economy class ticket.
My Flight:
- Since I ended up with a free business class flight to Rio de Janeiro, I only needed to use miles to pay for my flight back. It cost 30,000 United miles + $60 in taxes and fees.
- Costs saved: A flat-bed ticket on US Airways will cost $3000 for one-way. Return is economy on United and would cost about $600. Total cost saved is about $3600.
Total value of trip costs: $5500.
Total money we spent: $120.
Like this post? Why not join 700+ other email subscribers and never miss another important update? You can also follow us on Facebook or Twitter.
Other posts you may like:
Wow, that sounds so exciting! Have a great trip! I look forward to the trip report as it will be completely awesome and unique!
Dear Miles Professor (I don’t know your name!):
That is wonderful and exciting. My wife and I are going to Rio in mid-February (just before the Carnaval) and got 5 nights free at JW Marriott at Copacabana. One flight costs us 60,000 United miles + $60 in taxes, and the other flight was subsidized by a $1,000 United voucher (received in addition to lost bag reimbursement) and it cost also $60. We decided to go to Salvador da Bahia for 3 days after that before returning to California.
I am having a hard time getting airline tickets to Cancun from SFO in May 2014 as Saver tickets do not seem to be available (unless they are released later this year). If you have any suggestions, please let me know.
Thank you. I always enjoy your posts!
Vishu
Copacabana is an excellent location and also one I looked at, but no points rates were available for my dates.
I can see it’s hard to get tickets SFO-CUN in Economy in May, but lots of business seats are open. My only advice would be to check occasionally and hope something opens up. Thank you for the compliments on the blog! :)
Could you highlight once again how I could get a free one-way from/to Cancun – SFO before a trip to Europe in July? That way, I would only pay for one way ticket to CUN on United? I love your optimization of these flights! Finance Professor
If you just start in CUN and fly to Europe via a stopover in SFO and then return to SFO. This uses one stopover and one open-jaw. The details are all on this post: How to Add Free One-Way Trips On United Airlines Awards. Just make sure to look for the flights one leg at a time first and call if it doesn’t price out online!