2018 Travel Hacking Report (In Progress)

By Doctor in Denim | March 8, 2018

Reminder: please do not try travel hacking unless you are very well organized and ready to do some serious monitoring of your credit cards and pay off all of your balances in full on time every month.

You can read our 2017 Travel Hacking Report here.

Here’s what we’ve done with travel hacking so far for 2018.

The Windmill Winery, Florence AZ

We attended a gorgeous wedding at this winery early in the year. It was driving distance from our home, so no airfare.

Lodging (including breakfast): $0 (Marriott points)

Mesa Verde National Park, Cortez CO

We love the wilderness areas around Cortez, which is also driving distance from our home. This particular trip was a spur-of-the-moment weekend adventure in February to meet up with some good friends who we hadn’t seen a while.

Lodging (including breakfast): $0 (Chase UR points)

National Park fees: included in the annual pass that we buy every year for $80.

Maui, HI

Because this is one of our bigger trips this year, I kept track of more details than just what we travel-hacked. You can read our cost breakdown for our week in Maui (as well as see what it would have cost without travel hacking) here.

Airfare: $0 (on Hawaiian Air, via Capitol One Spark rewards, for all four of us)

Airport hotel (night before departure) with parking (for 7 nights) and airport shuttle: $25

Lodging: $0 (the equivalent of ~240,000 of our stockpiled Marriott points)

Rental car: $0 (Chase UR points)

Food and funtivities: $790

Total: $815 (really!)

Scheduled for July: Camano Island, WA

Airfare: $365 (roundtrip for all of us on Southwest – down from $947 using travel credit and Companion Pass)

Lodging: $0 (staying with friends)

Rental car: $0 (Chase UR points)

Scheduled for September: Las Vegas and Red Rock Canyon, NV

Airfare and rental car: n/a (driving)

Lodging for the first part of the trip (including breakfast and parking 1 mile from the strip): $0 (Marriott points)

Lodging for the second part of the trip at the Cosmopolitan: $0 (Chase UR points)

Other: TBD