It’s no secret Hawaii is expensive. In this post I am going to be sharing how my boyfriend and I travel hacked our 2 different trips to Hawaii this past year and the cost of each!
May Trip: 5 days, 4 nights on The Big Island
Hotel: Fairmont Orchid $1259 pp
Photo Credit: https://aaae.org/HAI/HAI/Hotel_and_Transportation/Hotel.aspx https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/north-america/united-states/hawaii/hawaii-island/hotels/fairmont-orchid-hawaii-hotel/
My boyfriend and I chose the Fairmont Orchid because it is part of the AMEX Fine Hotels and Resort hotels, which I have access to because of my AMEX Platinum credit card. I talked more in depth about this credit card here:
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRcjy1Kc/
While the fee is hefty on the card, it does come with amazing perks like $200 off an AMEX Fine Hotels and Resorts booking. Here are a list of the perks that come with booking a hotel through the AMEX Fine Hotels and Resorts portal:
- Free room upgrade if available
- Early check in (12 pm) and late check out (4 pm)
- Free daily breakfast for 2
- $100 resort credit
Upon arrival, we were upgraded to a partial ocean room hotel from our original booking of the garden hotel room. Our favorite amenity was the daily breakfast for two. The breakfast buffet was incredible with so many fresh fruit options, made to order omelet bar, and delicious pastries. If we actually had to pay for breakfast, it would cost $50 pp (per person) per day. This is something that had we not had this amenity, we would not have spent that much money on, so I will say we saved about $35pp because normally I’d estimate we would spent $15 pp on breakfast.
An under-rated amenity was the 4 pm late checkout. Our flight didn’t leave Kona until 9 pm, so it was great to spend all day at the pool/beach, take a shower, pack up the car, get dinner, and then head to the airport all fresh and clean!
The reason we stayed at the Fairmont, which is a luxury brand hotel, is because through AMEX Platinum Fine Hotels and Resorts, they have certain specials on hotels each year. The Fairmont Orchid was one of the hotels on the special and it was “buy 3 nights get the 4th night free.” This brought our hotel average daily price down to $483 total per night!
This hotel normally runs for around $650-$700 per night.
Breakdown:
Original Hotel Price: $3559 total ($1779 pp)
Travel Hacked Price: $2518 total ($1259 pp) PLUS free daily breakfast, and $100 resort credit to use at the resort restaurants!!
Hacked Savings: $1000!! ($500pp). I loved how this credit card helped us experience a luxury hotel in Hawaii with an amazing room view, that we otherwise would choose not to pay for since the original price did not align with our budget.
Airfare: RDU-KOA roundtrip + MSP-KOA roundtrip. ($718pp).
My boyfriend and I do long distance! He lives in Raleigh, NC while I live in Minnesota. We fly quite often to see each other and we split airfare 50/50 no matter who is flying to see who! This way feels fair to us, since airfare tickets fluctuate. That way one person doesn’t end up paying more than the other. We split a ticket from RDU-MSP roundtrip and from MSP-KOA for both of us. We used my Alaska Airlines credit card BOGO perk to buy one ticket and get the other for just the taxes and fees!
Original Price: $1100 pp
Hacked Price: $718 pp
Hacked Savings: $382. I love the Alaska Airlines credit card solely for the BOGO ticket that you get annually when you renew your card! The $382 in savings definitely outweigh the $95 I pay annually for this card!
Food: $283 pp. We didn’t restrict ourselves on this category! We enjoyed some cocktails, shaved ice, and nice dinners! Tyler and I used our $100 resort credit to pay for part of poolside drinks and our very expensive dinner, which helped lower the cost!
Rental Car: $272.5 pp
I was very impressed with the cost of our rental car! Through my AMEX Platinum I have Hertz Presidential Gold Status, so I receive 20% off all rental cars, as well as complimentary car upgrades. We were upgraded to a Jeep Grand Cherokee. The extra room wasn’t necessary, but was very nice.
Original Price: $330 pp
Hacked Price: $272.5 pp
Hacked Savings: $57.5 pp
Activities: $147.5. This includes our Manta Ray Snorkel as well as our entrance fee for Volcanoes NP.
Gas: $62.5 pp
MISC: $74.5. This was for a swim shirt because I got very sunburnt on day 1.
Car Parking: $54 pp
Total for the trip in May:
Here is the exact breakdown of my trip cost! This is for our trip in May. In my next post I will be sharing how much it cost for my trip in October using the Marriott Bonvoy credit card.
How we got the time off:
With me being a nurse, I did not take any PTO for this trip. The hospital I work at does the workweek from a Wed-Tues so it’s a bit different from the typical Monday-Sunday. We left for Hawaii on Saturday May 6th and flew home on Wednesday night at 9 pm! We had a layover in Seattle that arrived on Thursday morning, spent the day in Washington (my family lives here so we got to see them) and then left for the airport to arrive in MSP Thursday at 11 pm. I worked Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday day shift before Hawaii and came home to work the next week Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night. This was ideal because I worked my 3 shifts in each week. Tyler works a more stereotypical 9-5 so he requested the week of May 7-12 off and used 5 days of PTO.
I hope you enjoyed learning about one way to hack your Hawaii trip! Stay tuned for my next post where I explain how I hacked my second trip to Hawaii to significantly reduce the cost!
I love it! So glad you mentioned my favorite car as well!