Finally my Free Hawaii Trip!

Flight heading into Hawaii

I remember when I was in Middle School, I asked my mom if we could go to Hawaii for vacation. She told me to call the airline to see how much it costs. Well I actually did call and was disappointed at how much it would be and thought I could never afford to go there. Well here is how I proved myself wrong…

I first started with the points and miles hobby 2 years ago when my coworker introduced me and directed me to the Frugal Travel Guy website. My coworker talked about his upcoming trips that he was taking for free! I couldn’t believe it at first but when I started to read the blog and the way to go about doing it…I was convinced that this would work for me. While reading I came upon the post of “Hawaii in Business Class and 6 Nights Hotel $90” and I knew I wanted to take that trip to Hawaii that I had always dreamed of as a kid!

To get there I had initially applied for the Chase Checking account and Chase credit card with Continental when it was available back then which gave me a total of 50k points. When Continental merged with United, those Continental points were converted to United points. I also made sure to cancel the credit card so I could later apply for the United Card which earned me an additional 55k points when that offer was available. I used 80k United points which gave me 2 economy tickets to HNL.

Admittingly for this trip we used my parents timeshare and stayed at the Wyndham Royal Gardens at Waikiki, however, I did have enough points to stay at the Holiday Inn Waikiki Beach Comber by applying for the Chase Priority Club credit card for 80k points and to stay at the Courtyard Waikiki by applying for the Chase Marriott credit card for 70k points. So technically the hotel stay would have also been free 🙂 Here is a great post by the Points Guy of the available hotels to use on the islands with points.

For the activities there, I had posted before about using Groupon to get 50% or more off activities. This saved us a lot of money and we had a wonderful time enjoying the different things to do at Oahu. I was also able to do a timeshare presentation which was surprisingly quick and I was able to get $125 to use on activities I didn’t find on Groupon, like a waterfall hike.

My Mom was very excited to go with me…she said it was the best trip she has ever been on. With good credit and a good plan of credit card churning, you too can get that free trip to Hawaii or anywhere else you want to go 🙂

Thank you Frugal Travel Guy for featuring my post as a Sunday Success Story! I am truly grateful that I had this opportunity with my Mom 🙂

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5 Comments on "Finally my Free Hawaii Trip!"

  1. thanks for sharing...

  2. Hi Elena,
    Would you mind sharing how you did the time share thing for the extra cash? Great idea!

  3. At Wyndham resort properties, they usually have people at the front desk that will offer you hotel credit or cash to attend a timeshare presentation. I do warn everyone that these could take several hours and that they will try to sell you a timeshare. My particular experience was quick since they knew I was not going to buy a timeshare and they didn’t want to waste their time. So be warned. Hope this helps.

  4. Thanks for the tip Elena!

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