Travel Hacking Maui: How to Book a 9-Night Stay for $22.40
Disclosure: Some of the links below are referral links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn referral points if you choose to click through and sign up.
I’m so excited to share more details about my first travel hacking trip to Maui. This trip was a birthday present to myself (hello, 30!) and a very belated honeymoon (like 4 years late!) Maui was such a magical place to celebrate both of these milestones!
I always dreamed of going to Hawaii and to finally be there was such a surreal feeling. The fact that we were able to get our flights and lodging covered by points made it that much more awesome!
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, travel hacking refers to collecting and redeeming miles and points for (almost) free travel. Credit card sign up bonuses are one of the easiest ways to start collecting points. This is a great hobby for anyone who has a good handle on their spending and can pay off their balance in full every month. If you’re interested in learning more about travel hacking, I highly recommend the free Travel Miles 101 course.
Travel Hacking – The Cards
We applied for cards in May 2018. This is when we started the first of our home remodeling projects. We put pretty much every single expense on these cards in order to maximize the amount of points we received. By November 2018, we had over 200K Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) points to work with.
These are the cards we applied for:
Chase Sapphire Preferred (CSP) x2
- $95 annual fee, waived the first year
- 50K point sign up bonus, $4k minimum spend in 3 months
- 5K points for adding an authorized user
- 10K points for referring someone
Chase Business Ink Preferred (CIP) x1
Referral link:
https://www.referyourchasecard.com/21f/7VJC3X26T6
- $80 annual fee
- 80K sign up bonus, $5000 minimum spend in 3 months
Getting these cards required a minimum spend of $13K. As I mentioned, much of this was home remodeling costs + every day expenses. If you have any big purchases coming up, I recommend looking into travel hacking. It’s money you’re spending anyway so you might as well get some rewards out of it! After reaching the minimum spend on these cards, we had a total of over 230K UR points to work with.
Travel Expenses
While Chase has a travel portal, sometimes you get a better redemption value from transferring points to their travel partners. This is what we did for our flights and hotel. Below is a table of our total expenses.
| Cost (points + taxes/fees) | Regular cost (without travel hacking) | |
| Flights: 2 round trip coach flights on Alaska via Singapore Airlines | 46K points, $22.40 | $600+ |
| Hotel: Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa, 9 nights | 180K points, no resort fee* | $4,500+ |
| Total | 226K points + $22.40 | $5,100 |
*The $33 daily resort fee is waived if you are a World of Hyatt member. It’s free to sign up. Check out the pictures below to see what the resort looks like.
This was the view outside our window! 
We absolutely loved Hyatt’s personal touch. 
They made me a birthday cake and provided complimentary water bottles and a selfie stick. 
The grounds are incredibly well maintained. 
We don’t have kids but thought the kids area was cute! 
You also get access to the Hyatt Residence Club pools next door.
Trip Expenses
Travel hacking this trip saved us over $5,000! Granted, we still had to pay for our food, transportation, and activities. Below is a table of our total expenses.
| Transportation | Food | Activities | Total |
| $354.44 | $608.73 | $44 | $1007.17 |
Travel Hacking Tips
I know what some of you are thinking, how did we spend so little for over a week in Maui?!
- We saved money on transportation by taking public transportation (daily bus pass is $4), using the free resort shuttle and/or Lyft/Uber, and only renting a car for the days we planned on driving somewhere far away.
- We saved money on our food costs by taking advantage of the mini fridge in our hotel room and Hyatt’s daily food and beverage credit ($10/day for turning down housekeeping services).
- We saved money on activities by going to timeshare presentations. Since we were staying over a week, we were okay sitting in on a couple of presentations in exchange for heavily discounted activities. These presentations were surprisingly low pressure, too. When we said we weren’t interested in purchasing a timeshare, they thanked us for our time and gave us our compensation.
I hope my experience helps others who are interested in this hobby. It takes a little planning, but the payoff is worth it!
