The Best Giveaway I’ve Ever Done, Comment Here for Chance to Win 2 Nights at Al Maha!

by Gary Leff

I’m going to visit Al Maha Desert Resort next month. Lucky called it his favorite Starwood Starpoints redemption ever. It’s an all-inclusive with standalone villas and infinity pools in the desert outside Dubai where rates can exceed $1700 per night and is consistently deemed one of the world’s best properties on TripAdvisor.

For bookings made by March 8 Starwood is offering awards there for ‘only’ 39,000 points a night instead of the usual 60,000. And I’m going to use some of my points there.

And I’m going to give away a couple of nights there, too! And it’s thanks to Luxury Travel Diary.

Luxury Travel Diary is a high-end travel blog with great reviews based in the UK that has a bunch of travel auctions with real bargains.

I suppose that folks who already know about these auctions don’t like this added attention, because frankly there aren’t enough bidders relative to the value of the offerings and some of these items go too cheap.

Luxury Travel Diary wanted to highlight some of their deals, and offered to help organize a giveaway of a 2 night hotel stay at Al Maha Desert Resort. As I said, it’s an inclusive resort. So you get breakfast, lunch and dinner. That even includes room service. And you even get two desert activities per night stay at the property. This is a giveaway worth ~ $3000 or 78,000 – 120,000 Starwood points.

To enter: leave a comment on this post with your favorite item up for auction at Luxury Travel Diary, or why you would choose to stay at Al Maha Desert Resort. You may enter two times if you wish and answer those two questions one time each in separate comments.

Contest deadline and drawing winner: Entries close Friday, January 29 at Noon eastern. I will draw winner with the assistance of random.org.

The fine print: The winner will be able to pick when to redeem the nights within 6 months. It’s not available on public holidays, Eid, Christmas and New Years (both of which are beyond 6 months anyway, but in the terms I was given). Advance booking is required and it’s subject to availability.

For avoidance of doubt, my own stay next month is paid for with my points. I have no affiliation with Luxury Travel Diary or Al Maha Desert Resort. I am not getting anything in exchange for running this giveaway other than an opportunity to share the place with readers.

I will put the winner in touch with the hotel for booking. They are solely responsible for providing prize to winner. All decisions made in the course of running this giveaway are final and unappealable and your entry signifies your acceptance. The goal here is to make readers aware of a pretty cool auction opportunity, and to give away a stay. So please don’t make it hard on me for doing so!

You probably won’t fly to Dubai and back for a 2 night stay, though you might add onto it and do other things in the region (great opportunity to spend American AAdvantage miles and fly Etihad first class at 90,000 miles each way before the March 22 devaluation, and Etihad even provides a car service anywhere in the UAE… or to spend Alaska miles and fly Emirates).

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. I choose “7 Nights At Aquila Porto Rethymno Hotel In Crete, Greece” because I’ve always wanted to go to Greece! Thanks so much for doing this giveaway 🙂

  4. I would love to stay at Al Maha Desert Resort and go for a desert safari!! Never been to a desert and never been on a safari so it would be extremely interesting for me to say the least! Just thinking about this makes me excited!

  5. Favorite item from Luxury Travel Diary would definitely be 7 LUXURY NIGHTS FOR 4 ON COTE D’AZUR NEAR MONACO. Love monaco, love the south of france. A good location to launch a visit to nice, Provence, lake como etc!

  7. Definitely Al Maha Desert Resort as it would be the perfect start of our already booked UAE family holiday!

  8. Our dream is to visit the Al Maha Desert Resort since we have direct flights to Dubai from Birmingham. It looks like something out of a movie set.

  14. Up for auction,.the 2 night stay at The Bay House in Cornwall, UK, would be a fantastic getaway. Wow, currently going for only £4 GBP?!

  15. As for staying at the Al Maha, the photo (between the paragraph about luxury travel diary) does it for me. To relax by that pool, loosing myself somewhere in that view looking across the desert, ah……

  16. Al Maha because if lucky and you say it is awesome it must be a once in a lifetime holiday….keeping fingers crossed

  19. I would stay at Al Maha for a lot of the reasons the others gave, especially the desert (and dessert?) activities.

  23. I’d choose that property so I can experience the finer things travel hacking would allow me to experience. And I would have amazing pictures to brag about on Facebook.

  45. Thanks Gary! The Al Maha looks amazing. I’d like to cool off in the private pool after enjoying the desert sun.

  46. Thank you Gary. A ton of great auction items on their site, I think I would go with the 2 Nights In A Park Suite At Park Hyatt Buenos Aires. Been on my list for a long time!

  49. My favorite item up for auction is easily the 7 Nights At Aquila Porto Rethymno Hotel In Crete, Greece. I’ve always wanted to go to Greece!

  50. The Al Maha seems like a dream trip. I’d love to enjoy their beautiful pool after a day in the sun.

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