Prologue: The decision-making and booking process

I’m just back from South Asia, where my wife and I had a nice pretty par for the course first class redemption. But there were some high points, and some lessons in award redemption that I hope to be able to share. Some things I’d do again, some things I’d do differently, so it seemed worth writing up a trip report and hopefully it’ll be worth reading and even helpful to a few folks.

I started out looking for first class transpacific award seats on Star Alliance, planning for a trip that was a little bit less than two weeks. The plan was a getaway towards the end of the cold winter season, maybe miss the final snow (we lucked out and did!) and to come back as DC was warming up (worked out perfectly).

I scanned first class award space on All Nippon and on Asiana, looking for dates that would match up. And I found two first class seats Chicago – Tokyo on ANA, and two first class seats for the return Tokyo – Washington Dulles. Now that’s something to plan the rest of an itinerary around!

I played around and found that Thai was offering just onefirst class award seat most days on Bangkok – Tokyo, both flights with first class, the Jet Airways 777 in the morning and the redeye 747. I decided to grab one for my wife, put myself in business on the assumption that I’d upgrade later. It seemed like additional first class inventory was opening up 17-18 days in advance, and I had several months to watch, I couldn’t imagine I wouldn’t wind up up front. I wound up sweating it out a lot more than I’d expected, which is a whole ‘nother story for later in the report.

Hadn’t really decided what else to do at this point, but I gave a call to US Airways. I’ve got way too many Dividend Miles from various promos like the 2009 holiday shopping Big Bonus and Track-it-back, might as well burn some of those. I put on hold IAD-ORD-NRT/BKK-NRT-IAD and they held it at 120,000 miles apiece, the US – North Asia price rather than the ‘correct’ 160,000 price for South Asia given that the return was from Bangkok.

I chose the Washington Dulles – Chicago flight on United because it was scheduled as an international 767, that seemed worth the trek out to Dulles for even though I live near National. One seat was available in first class, gave that to my wife, and one in coach which I took just like the Bangkok – Tokyo Thai flight.

Since the thing priced at 120,000 miles I decided not to press my luck and add anything from Tokyo to South Asia. I just ticketed it as-is, and went about piecing together the rest of the itinerary. Using Singapore miles I grabbed two first class one-way award seats Tokyo – Singapore on Singapore, to line up with our Tokyo arrival. Sweet, now I had ANA first and Singapore first. I didn’t have that many Singapore miles in my account, this was a great opportunity to burn them. Booking online I got the 15% discount, which I needed. I didn’t have enough for the two tickets without the online discount, which meant that I couldn’t book Singapore as a stopover and Bangkok as the destination, I would have needed to call to do that. So I closed out the award with a one-way cash and points award with bmi miles, Singapore – Bangkok in business class on Thai. That was just 7500 bmi miles apiece.

Then I went about picking hotels. I had booked DC – Chicago with an overnight in Chicago rather than taking a 6am flight out of DC to connect to our international flight because I figured that the middle of February could present real weather challenges, I wanted to position myself early especially flying on a US Airways award. I held off booking a hotel for the Chicago overnight hoping to see a Hyatt promo. After all, I neededa one-night stay, probably an airport stay, which would have made Hyatt just perfect if they brought back Faster Free Nights. They didn’t, and I wound up booking an $87 rate at the Intercontinental O’Hare and I’m glad I did, the best airport hotel I’ve ever stayed in.

For Singapore I contacted the hotel to ask about their Royal Ambassador treatment and decided to book a Shophouse Suite which they promised would be upgraded to an Ambassador Suite.

And for Thailand we decided against flying anywhere, and booked the Sheraton Hua Hin since it’s drivable from Bangkok. Shortly after booking, though, the hotel let me know that they’d be hosting a wedding that would take up almost the entire hotel during the bulk of our stay and that we might not enjoy ourselves. I actually appreciated knowing that, I wouldn’t have wanted to travel all that way and find the place noisy and overrun. So I posted on Flyertalk asking for advice about what other property to consider. On the whole reaction there was really strong, feeling that the hotel was out of line in saying they couldn’t meet their own minimum standards and that they probably just wanted my room back to give to the wedding party. I hadn’t asked for anything, but the hotel proactively reached out to me (having seen the discussion thread) and offered to make sure that I had a stay somewhere that met my goals and expectations for the trip. The Intercontinental Hua Hin was sold out of their better room categories during my planned dates, and the Hyatt is an older property, I ultimately agreed to fly to Phuket and they arranged to confirm in advance a Sala Pool Villa at the new Westin Siray Bay. Sounded great, I’d check out a new property and the room was a standalone structure with its own pool overlooking the bay, I figured how could I go wrong?

Now that we were flying to Phuket I rang up bmi to change the one-way Singapore – Bangkok award to Singapore – Bangkok – Phuket. And then I’d just need to buy the Phuket – Bangkok segment.

Shortly after ticketing the US Airways award, a seat opened in business class for Dulles – Chicago and I rang Dividend Miles and had them upgrade me. So now I was just looking for a first class award seat on that segment and on Bangkok – Tokyo.

But the trip was basically all set…