DESTINATION: THE MALDIVES
Sticker price: $12,213
What we paid: $2,969
Total Savings: $9,244
You want to know how we did it?
Read on.
This past October, we celebrated our 3 year wedding anniversary. We’ve always tried our best to go “Big on a budget” for our anniversary trips! This year was no exception!
We were initially planning a completely different trip to Greece to check the beautiful white cliffs of Santorini off of our bucket list. We were looking for a good points redemption (more on that later), and Santorini wasn’t quite giving it to us. So we hadn’t pulled the trigger on booking anything yet.
So while we kept our eye on Greece, I had also been looking for any other opportunities that might pop up for us.
FLIGHTS
Leaving Shanghai Pudong (PVG) on an Airbus A330 bound for Malé, Maldives!
Low and behold, one evening browsing sky scanner, I saw a notification come through on my phone for $422 round trip flights to the Maldives. I went through all the links to fact check it and make sure the price didn’t jump up on the last screen. But sure enough; there I was at the final checkout page being asked for my card information: $422 was the final price! Unfortunately, the specific dates that price was available, we already had a commitment and couldn’t go.
So I ran a quick search for the same route on sky scanner but kept the dates flexible in order to find someone that worked for us. After a little shuffling, sure enough, I found a $515 round trip fare on China Eastern Airlines for dates that we could do! Just for reference, I looked up the same flight directly on China eastern’s website (I usually prefer to book direct if I can) and the flight was a whopping $3,300 PER PERSON!
Needless to say, I ran back to sky scanner which had me booking through a 3rd party agency called explore trip.
A quick note about booking with a 3rd party OTA (Online Travel Agency) such as Explore Trip: These 3rd party OTA’s commonly found when using sites like skyscanner, essentially act as a middle-man between you and the airline. Here’s how it works:
Basically, ExploreTrip will advertise a certain price to you, and when you book with them, they will send you a confirmation. This does NOT mean you have a confirmed flight. The company will then take your money and go to the airline to try and secure the rate and your ticket on the flight. If all goes well, they will secure it, and you will get an e-ticket number that you can then go and confirm with the airline directly (which you 100% NEED to do). Where most people get hung up is that they receive their initial confirmation from the 3rd party OTA, and assume that their job is done. Afterall, if you were booking directly with the airline or a well-known OTA such as Expedia or Priceline, that would be all you have to do. Some of the horror stories you’ll read about people being “scammed” is usually (but not always) inexperienced travelers who didn’t take the time to contact the airline directly for a confirmation, then show up to the airport to find out they don’t have a ticket with the airline.
The down side to booking with these lesser-known OTA’s is that they are much less reputable, and not great at communication. If you are going to use one, you have to be on your A-game and ready to keep tabs on EVERYTHING. While it did take us a couple days to confirm our tickets with the China Eastern directly, we were after that crazy cheap fare and decided that it was worthit to go through all the hassle in order to get it. If you are able to get a good rate directly through the airline, we ALWAYS recommend doing so. However, being fully aware of the risks we went ahead and booked with explore trip and it worked out great for us.
So, after reading all the fine print and making sure everything was legit, I happily put in my card info and locked-in my total savings of $5,570 on our flights! We got the flights for $515 per-person RT from Los Angeles (LAX) -> Malé (MLE) with an overnight layover in Shanghai Pudong (PVG).
We then used our Southwest Airlines points and companion pass to book a repositioning flight round-trip from our home city of Atlanta (ATL) to (LAX) for $11.20. Yup, $22 for us both. Check out this article from our friends at 10XTravel about the southwest companion pass if you wanna learn more about it!
Now lastly, in order to get to the Sun Aqua Vilu Reef Resort, you actually need to take a seaplane from the capital city of Malé. Some resorts are closer and can be reached via a boat or ferry, but the Sun Aqua Vilu is about a 45minute seaplane ride away. Now, the resort takes care of all of the arrangements for you. They book your tickets with Maldivian airways and arrange the times for you based on your incoming flights.
The cost, however, after taxes and fees is about $515 round-trip, per person. Which ironically, is exactly what it cost us to get ALL the way from Atlanta, to the Maldives!! We were made aware of this cost when we booked and unfortunately there is no way to use points for this. But, it is QUITE the experience!
HOTELS
Next, the race was on to see what rates we could find for our dream accommodations: an overwater bungalow in the Maldives!
There’s always the usual suspects: The Four Seasons, the St. Regis, etc. But let’s be real, we’re not made of money and wanted to make sure our credit card points went as far as possible!
We had seen a few fellow travel couples stay at a resort called the “Sun Aqua Vilu Reef” and it looked absolutely beautiful! I logged into our Chase UR account and went to the travel portal to see just how many points this hotel would cost us. I was thrilled when I saw it was a very reasonable 30k points/night for an overwater bungalow WITH a full-board meal plan!
So for 120,000 Chase UR points, we booked 4 nights, full board, in the overwater bungalow of our dreams!
But of course, you didn’t think we weren’t going to fly halfway (or all the way I guess?) across the world and only stay 4 nights, did you? We wanted to stay our final 2 nights in a beach bungalow. Because if we’re there already, why not experience it all?!
The beach bungalow was actually a touch more expensive at 33k chase UR points per night, full board. So for another 66K Chase UR points, we booked that as well.
This brought us to a grand total of 186k Chase UR points for 6 nights, full board in our dream location in the Maldives! Not bad if you ask me!
Our only other hotel costs were the various hotels that we stayed in on our way to the Maldives.
Embassy Suites LAX South — $139
Ramada Plaza Shanghai Pudong Airport — $129
H78 Maldives (Malé) — $119
All of which Included breakfast and transfers to and from the respective airports. I definitely recommend all of them for any passing travelers, and I would definitely stay in each of these spots again.
Other Notes
When we finally arrived at our resort, we quickly decided that we wanted to upgrade from a full-board plan to an all-inclusive plan. I’ll go into more detail on that in our full review of the Sun Aqua Vilu.
The all-inclusive package was an additional $50 USD per day/per person from the rate we had booked using points. So we paid the $500 to have the inclusive package starting on our 2nd day for the remainder of our trip. And long story short, it was completely worth it.