Hawaii at End of Month!

Remember I mentioned going to Honolulu, HI at the end of this month? Yup, we are going for $100 in "taxes", that includes flight for 2 and two night hotel in Waikiki.

We received the trip info on New Year's eve. It is confirmed and we flying with NorthWest Airlines. Yay! That means we can collect WorldPerks points! (NWA's frequent flyer program).

Honestly speaking, WoldPerks points are quite useless to us. Before our marriage, DH and I had a long distance relationship for 6 years. During those 6 years, I have mostly flown across the continent with NWA because they were the cheapest, but also because they had and evening flight landing in SJC. Until now, I have collected roughly 43000 points. Unlike for Star Alliance airlines partners, I have never been able to redeem a flight with WorldPerks. They claim flights within Canada-USA start at 25000 points, but in real life, all I have seen cost more than my 43000 points! I tried to redeem them for hotel nights, but there's no such option... Then how to get rid of them or use them?

DH really wants to go see volcano in Big Island, HI. I wasn't too enthusiastic about it: we are going to be in Hawaii for only 2.5 days, I don't want to be rushing or spend too much on a "free" trip. He tried to convinced me to book for flight to Hilo. It would cost us $220 (that's $49/way + tax).

Finally, we found a solution that saves money and helps get rid of points! We went to Honolulu, HI for our honeymoon by Hawaiian Airlines. We joined their frequent flyer program to get $10 off the price of the flight and collected 4000+ points in 2006. Then, we participated in some surveys and joined their mailing list for some bonus points, which brought us to above 5000 points, enough for 1-way inter-island flight! I have one account and DH have another one, that makes it enough for 1 round trip from Honolulu to Hilo! Then, I remember my mom has 11000 points in WorldPerks, which is not going to take her anywhere... She has only flown once with NWA and collected 5000+ points in 2002. To keep her membership active, I have helped her find bonus points and in 5 years, I pumped her up to 11000 points! NWA and Hawaiian Airlines are partners, that means another round trip inter-island flight!! Which her permission, I redeemed 10000 points for a second inter-island flight and it is only costing us $5 in taxes.

Here is a summary of our trip so far:

$100 + 2($5) = $110 in total taxes
includes: 2 flights from SFO to HNL, 2-night hotel, 2 flights from HNL to ITO.

Did you know...

That you don't need to take taxi or shuttle from HNL airport to Waikiki beach? There are several public buses you can take. For instance, bus 20 would take you directly from HNL to Waikiki and would cost you only $2. The average tourists wouldn't know and would pay $15 for shuttle or even $30 for taxi! That's what we did last time and it didn't even saved us time due to multiple drop offs at different hotels. So, public bus that is!

Since we are going to the airport twice in this trip, it would cost us a total of $16 in public transportation. We also booked a car at Hilo airport (ITO)'s Dollar Rent A Car for our day trip, the estimate total is $30.15. Therefore our new subtotal would be: $156.15 for the trip.

Let's see if we can keep this entire trip under $400. :)


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