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Family Trip to Europe with Miles Tutorial: Booking a $2000 Hotel Stay with Points in St. Martin

ByThe Miles Professor

My parents and sister are planning a two week trip to Europe this summer. The vacation will be for three people and cover three different cities in Europe. As an added bonus, they decided to include a trip to Saint Martin in the Caribbean taking advantage of a “better than free” one way trick to save on American Airlines miles. Just about everything (flights, hotels, fuel surcharges) will be paid for with points. This post is part of a tutorial series to follow along step-by-step how I planned their trip!

Series Index:

As they were booking their trip to Europe, my parents and sister realized they could add a free one-way back from Saint Martin. This is due to American Airlines generous stopover rules. For more detail, you can read the posts:

In summary, their award flights on American Airlines from New York to Rome in summer would have cost 30,000 miles for one-way. However, by adding a flight from Saint Martin in April, the price lowered to 20,000 miles TOTAL for both. They did have to spend more miles to get to Saint Martin, but the 10,000 miles per person savings offset it to the point where the round-trip was essentially free. They jumped at the opportunity to visit the Caribbean with such a good deal on award airplane tickets. But their next task was to book hotels for 5 nights…

Where will my parents stay in Saint Martin?
Where will my parents stay in Saint Martin?

Saint Martin, the name of the French side of the island, actually has two sides: a French and a Dutch. The Dutch side is named Sint Maarten. Nice hotels are not cheap on either side, however. Fortunately, points can always come to the rescue and the island offers the opportunity to use:

They had a hard time with their decision, but ultimately did make a choice. Either hotel would have cost them on the order of $2000 for the five nights. Definitely pricey… but expected for a beautiful island like St. Martin!

Westin Dawn Beach

Westin Dawn Beach Resort & Spa in St. Maarten
Westin Dawn Beach Resort & Spa in St. Maarten

The Westin Dawn Beach costs $350 a night plus tax in April when my parents are visiting. For five nights, that would be a bill of almost $2000… yikes! On the other hand, it can also be booked for 16,000 Starwood points a night during the hotel’s high season. Starwood also offers a fifth night free with award bookings so the five night stay can be booked for 64,000 Starwood Preferred Guest points.

Starwood Preferred Guest points are offered with the

and each of these cards offers 25,000 Starwood points as a sign-up bonus after spending $5,000 within 6 months of account opening. My parents each have a Starwood personal card and can transfer their points into one account. So 64,000 points for them is certainly within reach…. after each of them meets the spending requirement, they already have 60,000 points between the two of them.

They certainly considered the Westin Dawn Beach. At 3.125 cents a point, it’s a pretty good deal!

Radisson Blu St. Martin

Radisson Blu St. Martin
Radisson Blu St. Martin

The second option, the Radisson Blu St. Martin, costs $416 a night plus tax during their dates. The bill would be well over $2000 for this one… even a bigger yikes! With Club Carlson, this hotel costs 50,000 points a night. My mom had signed up for the Club Carlson credit card a while ago looking for the perfect opportunity to use it. It came with an 85,000 point sign-up bonus after spending $2,500 and earns 5 points per dollar on all spending so points are very easy to earn. The best part, however, is the ability for the cardholder to get the last night free on any award stay of over two nights.

With the fifth night being free, the stay costs 200,000 points for the five nights.

Which hotel did they choose?

My family ultimately decided to go with the Radisson Blu… mainly because they are partial to the French side of the island. It’s a further drive from the airport than the Westin, but with five nights, they’re in no rush to get there. They’ve also had the Club Carlson points for a while at this point and this was absolutely the perfect opportunity to use them. They are certainly happy to have their hotel booking out of the way and are looking forward to spending a few days in the sun!

10 Comments

  1. Might it have been worth it to use points for the first night, get the 2nd free. “Checkout” then pay for the 3rd night by some other means, then use points again for the 4th night getting the 5th free? That would only cost them 100,000 points + whatever instrument they used for night 3. That might have been a better deal.

    1. They thought about that! We don’t think that would work, unfortunately. If you have the same guest staying in the same hotel for multiple nights, it’s all considered one stay. It may slip through, but the potential hassled of trying to resolve that on the spot wasn’t worth the hassle between 3 people to them.

  2. If they each had their own cc they could alternate stays, getting the second night free. Of course you need an even number of nights planned to do this.

  3. Recently booked 3 nights at the Sonesta Maho Beach, no points available, and am still shell shocked at the $268/night rate – 20% off at Priceline, but that means no meals included at an all-inclusive hotel! No more Priceline for me; Travelzoo later came up with a $60/night-less-rate WITH meals. Good to learn from you that hotels are expensive there, though. Also, I only had enough AA miles for half the trip (LGA-cnx in MIA-SXM), but the cost of MIA-SXM alone was more expensive than my husband’s all-cash ticket. Over $100 more. I used all my miles and points on other travels on this big trip, so I was stuck. Sorry, this was a bit off-topic but had to vent.

    1. That’s unfortunate. My parents had no issue getting it for their dates and many other dates I searched this spring also had wide open space, including President’s Day. Perhaps you’re trying to select a really busy weekend :)

  5. What are their food plans? The place is quite isolated and hotel meals (and breakfast) can be quite expensive.

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