2025 and 2026: Points, Miles & Future Adventures | Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast
Welcome to the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast with Justin Vacula, where we share practical ways to make and save money on travel using credit card points, airline miles, hotel points, casino comps, and loyalty program strategies.
In this episode, co-host Darren joins Justin for a year-in-review conversation covering wins from travel hacking in 2025, plus a forward-looking game plan for 2026 travel.
We break down how we used points and miles for flights and hotels, how status and credits can reduce trip costs, and what’s coming next, including Atlantis (Bahamas), Las Vegas, Southeast Asia, and Australia.
You’ll hear real-world examples of using hotel programs like Hilton (plus other major loyalty programs), how we think about earning vs. redeeming, and how we stack perks like travel credits, status benefits, and comps to keep trips affordable without sacrificing comfort.
If you enjoy content about miles and points, credit card strategy, award travel, status matches, Vegas travel savings, and planning bigger adventures on a budget, you’re in the right place.
🎧 Topics in this episode include:
2025 travel highlights and best redemptions
Points & miles strategy for trips (solo, friends, and family)
Cruises, events, and travel wins from the year 2026 travel planning: Atlantis, Vegas, Southeast Asia, Australia
Status perks and how we think about status matches
Booking flights/hotels with points, credits, and rewards
Listener questions and practical travel hacking advice
Upcoming meetups, events, and what we’re working on next
⏱️ Chapters / Timestamps
00:00 Introduction to Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast
00:35 Meet the Hosts and Episode Overview
02:27 Favorite Trips of 2025
03:33 Using Points and Miles for Family Trips
05:04 Memorable Events and Cruises in 2025
08:23 Upcoming Trips and Plans for 2026
11:48 Vegas Trips and Status Matches
16:08 Future Meetups and Events
23:31 Southeast Asia Family Trip
24:08 Maximizing Membership Rewards
24:27 Booking Flights and Hotels
25:20 Planning the Itinerary
26:28 Using Credits and Rewards
27:43 Travel Tips and Recommendations
30:49 Credit Card Strategies
33:06 Beach Trips and Scuba Diving
37:46 Listener Questions and Advice
43:27 Upcoming Plans and New Cards
45:25 Conclusion
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Rough Transcript:
Travel in 2025 and 2026
[00:00:00] Travel at low cost with points and miles. Credit card rewards bring the smiles. Many adventures tales to be told, make and save money, the world will unfold.
Fight the war on happiness. Pick up the gold. Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast breaks the mold.
You’re listening to the Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast. I’m your host, Justin Vacula, here to help you make money, save money, and travel the world at next to no cost with credit card points, miles, benefits, and loyalty programs. Returning co-host Darren joins me to talk today about the best of points in miles in 2025.
What we’re looking forward to in 2026. You’ll learn about how we used points to travel at low cost in 2025. And how we’re planning to use and leverage Miles [00:01:00] points and Casino statuses in 2026. Visit meetup.com/philly miles and points to RSVP for monthly Greater Philadelphia Travel Credit Miles and Points meetups I host in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania.
The next meetups, 2026, are January 11th, February 22nd, and March 22nd. Find a link in the show notes. For more content between episodes, follow Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast on Facebook and x. Follow Justin Vacula on Instagram. Subscribe to Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast on YouTube for daily content, including travel videos, podcast clips and posts.
Find more information including select episode transcripts at HurdyGurdyTravel.com. On with today’s episode recorded, January 3rd. 2025. Welcome back to the show, Darren. Happy New Year. Thank you, Justin. Always great to be back and welcome [00:02:00] everyone to the best audio quality Points and Miles podcast in the world.
I think we can see that, Justin. Yeah, we are aiming to do that. I hear some others and I shudder at times and there’s random background noises, people hitting the mic. We’re aiming and striving for quality with all of my Dell credits put into this audio setup. If not here, then where Justin? Where can we use all these Dell credits?
So happy New Year to you. Happy New Year to listeners. Lots to look forward to in 2026. But before we get into that, what were some of your favorite trips of 2025 and how did Miles Points and credit cards figure in? Yeah, you bet. I think there’s a couple things that stick out. Ones. Maybe not as exciting.
It wasn’t a international trip, but my family and I went with my sister’s family down to a football game. I’m a Virginia Tech graduate and so went down for a football game, one of only three that they won, Justin. So we picked a good one and we were able to take advantage of the points in miles for the classic event, hotel [00:03:00] price, right where the Hilton Garden Inn, which is not exciting, but was like $450 a night.
But was only 50,000 Hilton points per night. You and I both have a big stash from all the surpass spend we do every year to get our six x right at grocery stores and get our free night certificates. So it was able to use that for a couple nights for myself and my sister. It made it really easy.
Really subsidizes that cost, right? Makes it affordable. Made it for a great weekend and something I really enjoyed doing with my family, both immediate family and extended family. And you probably had Hilton credits to use as well to save on food and maybe other considerations. I did Justin, but I actually saved those for a weekend in where my daughter goes to school up in New York.
There was a family weekend. The only way we were able to get a room was to, is actually to use our diamond benefits from the. Hilton Aspire card, right? So to book, basically to guarantee ourselves a room for [00:04:00] the weekend, but at a cash rate that was very expensive. And so I showed up the second, the first morning and just said, Hey, how could you split this bill a bunch of different ways?
Could I pay down on this a little bit? And she says, oh, sure. How many would you like to split it? And I just reached in and brought out the word chest. Justin, right on. Boom. Right on top of the counter. Yeah, $50. The Hilton cards, the business platinums. Yes. Yes. The Hilton gift cards that may be. And oh, yes.
Oh yes. And she went to a swipe in and I thanked her immensely and profusely and all the things. That was a great use of those credits. I know a reader, listener had asked about that. So ideally folks probably want to use them at a Hilton property and try to split tender, like you say, one of your favorite things to do.
But we got some other ideas on how we’ve been using them as well. Great. So not enough Hilton credits. I imagine many listeners are striving to use ’em at restaurants, wondering what to do with them, trying to buy Starbucks gift cards, all these other [00:05:00] fun things. But what about me? There is a lot that happened in 2025.
It’s hard to pick just one favorite, but I really appreciated the miles and points events I was invited to speak at. Nice to meet with listeners of the show. Many people in the miles and points spaces. There was Points Quest in New York that was early in the year, both Chicago Seminars, events, Zor Fest in Las Vegas, and eight cruises in 2025.
Virgin Voyages, balcony Cruise, Holland America, Norwegian, Fjord. Cruise out of Rotterdam. Princess, European Explorer. Cruise out of Italy. And then of course, don’t forget about Polandra Off or Krakow and Warsaw in Poland was a really nice trip. Lots of highlights in 2025. And I’m sure that more will come in 2026.
And you were in Europe as well? You went to Greece, that was one of your memorable moments? Yeah, that was our big family trip this year. Justin, had a great time. We, mid the kids would [00:06:00] say mid value or the value is mid. Actually, I have no idea what the kids were KSA, ’cause I’m old now, but.
We flew Air France in business both ways. So JFK to Charles Dega and then onto Athens. It was 85,000 points one way plus about $200. So yeah, not a great value, but we love flying in fir in first or business class and sometimes it’s challenging to find five seats. And so Air France pretty routinely has those I had and my wife had.
Earned a bunch of Amex points, membership reward points the previous year through no lifetime language signups and some upgraded offers. So we were sitting on a pot of points and decided to go ahead and use those. I think on top of that was, which is now I, you don’t get the same value, but we both are.
US Bank altitude reserve holders, recent devaluation there. Of course, the world on ha, world on happiness continues. We were able to [00:07:00] use their travel center and rewards through that to book some hotels that were a little off the beaten path, so to speak. I find a lot of these big cities, the points, hotels aren’t always where you want to be.
Hyatt is a great example. I love staying at Hyatts Park Hyatts, but the problem is it’s not always close to the thing you wanna be doing or where you wanna be going. So we ended up. Using the reward center and booked a bunch of hotels. The one I really enjoyed was on an island, a Greek island called Edra or Hydra.
It was perfectly situated on the harbor. It had a rooftop bar and breakfast, and the rooms were perfect. So one of those things that I probably wouldn’t have found that hotel and wouldn’t have paid for it, maybe out of pocket because I was able to redeem those points at one and a half percent uplift and had earned at 3% to start with.
It made a great discount for that property and so really enjoyed that and sad that we’re not gonna have that opportunity, but maybe we’ll have other [00:08:00] transfer opportunities with US Bank. Question mark. They have promised transfer partners, but I haven’t seen anything just yet. And you mentioned about what the kids would say today.
You booked for 85,000 points. If you booked for 67,000 points, they might say six seven. How did I miss that one? Justin? How did I miss that one? But I’m looking forward to 2026. I have many trips planned. My most recent trip I booked was January 12th through the 17th in Atlantis. We’re recording here January 3rd, so about a week and a half away from when this episode will come out.
Looking forward to meeting some listeners in Atlantis. So if you have the Caesars Rewards, Atlantis offer at least diamond status. With Caesars come out January 12th through the 17th. I booked this last year and there were about a dozen, maybe 15 people, 20 people even in the points of mile spaces who use their benefits after I posted.
So maybe I’ll see you [00:09:00] listener there, and if you’d like to comment below if you’re ever in Atlantis, what your experience was, and of course your trips in 2025 that you liked. I received Diamond Elite status for the year. Some war on happiness there. In late November, early December, I reached 150,000 tier credits with Caesars, and my status was pending seven stars with Caesars.
It’s by invitation or by approval for seven stars, and they did not approve me in December. So I went over the tier credits, but there were a lot of opportunities now that aren’t in play that I earned a lot of those tier credits with. So it’s not like I really overplayed. To earn the tier, but I’m excited for Atlantis.
It’s gonna be an upgraded room compared to last year that I booked it, and it’s no resort fee, no taxes with the Diamond Elite status. I believe they did say something about gratuities for housekeeping, [00:10:00] and that’s about it. So that’s better than the $60 a night in the past. So I’ll go there the 12th through the 17th.
I have my new camera equipment, so many videos, lots of photos. To take throughout Atlantis. Outstanding. I love these little meetups you do, Justin. You’re traveling, you advertise that you are traveling and folks that are traveling at the same time or thinking about traveling at the same time come out and join you.
And it’s like you say, it’s a great way to have these little mini meetups, but such a valuable and rewarding part of the of this little hobby and game we play. Make it more social. There is the four hour gambling requirement. Last year sat at video poker, played extremely slowly. It was a grind, but with many people sitting there talking while we were playing slowly, it was more tolerable.
I used American Miles. There’s direct flight from Philadelphia to The Bahamas and back as well. So American Airlines won this round. Is Delta [00:11:00] United JetBlue were not good options or they required. A layover and a lot of time in between. So instead of going to Florida, getting outta the airport, staying a hotel, or having a long layover in Florida or another place, I chose the American direct flight, and I do have the platinum status with American Airlines, so I will have complimentary bags for this international trip.
Last year I went, I didn’t, because Citi doesn’t like me, but I moved credit limit to my Barclays AA card. Now I get the complimentary bags because the credit card doesn’t work for international trips, for complimentary bags. So I’ll save even more money there. Looking forward to Atlan. Sounds war on happiness there, Justin.
We will persevere, right? We will overcome. Yes. And perhaps to no one’s surprise, I’ll be back in Las Vegas January 25th through the 30th at Rio. There were many times. Throughout the year where the rates were around [00:12:00] $30 per night, no resort fee with the Hyatt globalist status. So this will be one of the first things to requalify for my Hyatt globalist status.
And then I’ll have many benefits to use in Las Vegas as well with Chase dining credits, Amex Hilton credits, and much more. So January 25th through 30th at Rio Las Vegas and. Hash house. A Gogo Is hash house a no-no. Or hash house? A Gogo is gone and it’s now, I believe, called the kitchen. So a different breakfast option in the same place.
Well, it’s breaking news there, Justin. I hadn’t heard that. A hash No, no, no, no. Or go, go. Hash, hash a nono. I’m not sure what you said, but Yeah, I’m with you. The kitchen, huh? That’s very original. The kitchen? Yes. All caps. You think we’ll find it out. So I will take photos. Of the sign, I’m sure when I get there, and a bit of a different breakfast experience.
So looking forward to that. This may or may not be the sixth or seventh version of the [00:13:00] Hyatt globalist benefit at Rio for the breakfast. They changed the menu several times at Hash House. Go, go. And now it’s the kitchen. That’s January 25th through the 30th, February 25th through the 27th, back at Rio Las Vegas.
I’m trying to put about a month in between these Vegas trips to take advantage of the My Vegas benefits, since a lot of those are once per 30 days. So I get all the food credits, the match play, and potentially more in March. I’m going to be going to Brisbane, Australia. This one was unexpected. There was a Delta one deal, so I’ll turn left when I get into the plane.
Have a live flat seat, and it was approximately 180,000 miles round trip. With Delta, usually it would be a lot more. So I’m going to go to Vegas, stay there for a little bit, fly to LAX and then LAX to Brisbane, Australia. [00:14:00] Then I’m using Hyatt free night certificates and Hyatt points to stay at Hyatt Regency in Brisbane or Brisbane.
That should be a great trip, Justin. I know you’re excited about it. Let’s see. Fellow miles and points, podcasters. Trevor Mount Castle and Thomas Kim often talk about Australia and Brisbane, I think is the pronunciation that they, often talk about. So should be a great trip. Looking forward to hear more about it.
And the Delta One experience, you’ve flown them before, right? Flown Delta once before. Yes. I flew them to Italy. It was a really nice trip and it makes sense when they run these flash deals. You’re not using as many Sky Miles podcast listener Michael Traeger. From Travel Zork and Zork Fest asked talk about the flight award redemptions for Australia and your approach to traveling to Australia from the East coast.
How long in Australia is it really as short as it looks? So, yes, it is a short trip. It’s a long flight over, but the [00:15:00] Delta deal only gave a limited amount of time for the round trip. So I’m just gonna make the most of it while I’m there. Should have three full days or close to it a little bit more on the departing day.
I aim to see a lot while I’m there and have the Australia experience at very low cost. The idea is to get to Vegas before that trip, fly outta Vegas early, get to LAX, and then the late flight to Australia. So instead of flying so much at a time, I’ll take a pit stop in Vegas and then go to Australia.
Like you say, the nice thing about applying in business class right, is you sleep on the way there so you can get three full days and you don’t feel like you’re really dragging. There’s probably a little bit of jet lag to, despite what Taylor Swift says about it being a choice,, take it through and get some sleep on the plane and hit the ground running, have a great three days, and then you get to relax and lay back too.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think I’ll have a Nintendo Switch two at that point using some of my Dell credits [00:16:00] toward Nintendo Switch two bundle. I’m planning on doing that. That’s in March. It’s now January, so lots of time to figure that out. After March one through four, gonna be back in Vegas April 26th to May 1st.
This was a really low rate for Rio, approximately $15 a night on a non-refundable stay. Then that’s going to lead up to FTU Dallas May 1st through the third. I’ll be speaking there, working with Hunter and Brooke podcast listeners and fellow board members with Frequent Traveler Educational Foundation.
We’re working at putting that together, so we hope to see many listeners at FTU Dallas. You could comment below if you’re going to be in there, and I hope to see you there September 23rd through the 24th. It’s going to be Loyalty Summit in Chicago. This is a more business focused event. As many people from airline hotel programs, cruise programs and more will be [00:17:00] speaking part of panels and many social gatherings there.
And Darren, you might be at FTU Dallas as well, right? I would love to get there. I think you and I chatted. It’s the weekend between my wife’s birthday and my birthday see how excited she is to spend her, our joint weekend birthday in the Dallas area, burning up our Hilton credits. But it would be a lot of fun and I keep saying I need to make it to one of these out of Philadelphia meetups and haven’t been able to make happen the last couple years.
But would love to get to one FTU Dallas would be a good one. Hilton credits, resi credits, chase dining credits, and much more. So you can have some expensive dining for no cost or rebated from the annual fees. However, you’d like to think very little cost, let’s say after the rebate. Some of these credits even including tips, so that’s a nice thing.
May 1st through the third, it’s near the DFW airport at the Nylo Las Colins Hotel by Hilton. Ticket sales are live. It’s [00:18:00] $200 for FTU members, $249 for non-members. Grab an FTU annual membership for online courses, seminars, member perks, event discounts, and more. I have an affiliate link in the show notes for membership and conference tickets.
We go later in the year. That was May, September, October. October 16th through the 18th is the Chicago Points Travel Festival sold out. It was the IHG Chicago seminars in the past, now under a different name, so looking forward to that event as well. Probably more cruises. I have two cruises to book with MGM Gold status and MGM Platinum status.
I also rematched two ocean Prime status Ocean, not to be confused with ocean’s apostrophe or no apostrophe. It’s just ocean in Atlantic City, ocean Casino. I Rematched, it’s probably the fourth time I’ve had Ocean Prime status, maybe the fifth time. [00:19:00] Now. The rule is two years of inactivity and you can match back.
I had to play some video poker. It took less than an hour to accumulate the required tier or points, and I’m now eligible to book a Virgin voyages cruise after the 15th of the next month from which you earn the tier, or which I earn the tier. So I’ll wait until mid-February to book that. A Virgin Voyages, I believe.
Ocean View or Seaview Cruise, two complimentary nights at Ocean and complimentary nights at Win Las Vegas. A nice status match for sure. So more cruises to book in 2026. I’ll likely be back to Lancaster at some point. I went there for a Christmas train ride. I uploaded many videos on the Hurdy Gurdy Travel podcast, YouTube channel.
That was a really nice trip. I used my Hilton Aspire $200 resort credits as the Hilton DoubleTree Resort in Lancaster [00:20:00] qualifies as a resort. The room was about $150, so I booked it with a cash rate and used $50 worth of dining, so each night was $200. Using those aspire credits, I plan to use the credits early in the year again, and then downgrade the aspire.
Card that I have to surpass and ramp up that six x grocery spend for more free night certificates with Hilton. A good reminder that there’s a number of different Hilton credits out there on American Express cards, right? Aspire has the $200 per six months. How do we say that? Justin Biannual, I dunno, biannual credits that you can use, but only at resorts.
And I’m using resorts in quotation marks here, but you can’t see it. They have a list. That you can check against and if you’re already planning to stay or like you do Justin, make a twice a year journey to somewhere like Lancaster and enjoy a nice night out. Then [00:21:00] there’s also the $50 credits for the American Express Business Platinum Card.
Right? So those are what we talked about earlier. Do we used to do at Walgreens? Justin, just swipe away. No. What was the, what did we swipe for? Dollars. Anyway, that’s, anyway. That’s alright. It doesn’t matter. There’s a lot of different credits out there, listeners, and if you’re not sure which one you have, you can look at your card and look at some benefits and it should outline it for you.
Or, you know, reach out to Justin. He’s a great resource for which credits are aligned with which cards and how to best utilize ’em. It was a very first world problem when I went to Lancaster in December because I had the $200 Aspire credit. They gave me a free starter with an entree purchase. I don’t like the word appetizer because I’m already hungry when I’m going there.
I’m just not a fan of the word appetizer. A free starter with an entree. Then I had the Hilton breakfast credit, or they said you could have used it for dinner, and I had Hilton gift cards that I could have used, and I had $50 on [00:22:00] the business Platinum card. So I asked on the way out, was it possible to get a gift card or a gift certificate?
They said they didn’t have any gift cards, but I was able to buy a $50 gift certificate for use only at the Hilton DoubleTree in Lancaster. That extends the quarterly credits for me as I got a new business platinum card late in the year with a no lifetime language offer. So there was limited time to use that, so it was use it or lose it, and now I have an extra $50 gift certificate that I’ll likely use for food in the future when I return to Lancaster.
That’s great. That’s a great choice there. Made it easy. I’ll likely return to Vegas for more trips in 2026. We’ll be looking at that, perhaps using Vegas as a pit stop. Once again, should I be going out to the West Coast as Tommy Danielson of frequent traveling University calls the Best Coast? Some contention there, but we’ll give him that and [00:23:00] likely Zork Fest 2026.
Chicago Seminars, Hyatt, and maybe other events. We’ll have our Greater Philadelphia travel credit Miles and Points meetups monthly in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. So stay tuned for future dates on that. But we are booked through March meetup.com/philly miles and points, and hopefully we’ll see you there as well.
Darren. Yeah, I try to get to a lot of those as you well know. Justin, this would, this would be a good one. What about you for 2026? You have a Southeast Asia trip? Yeah, we talked about that a little bit. Yeah. For us, Southeast Asia is the sort of the big family trip This year we’re trying things a little bit differently.
We don’t have a set itinerary. I am flying into Singapore or the family’s flying into Singapore on Singapore medal booked with Chris flyer miles or points. Those again that were transferred from American Express membership rewards. And those are 115,001 way. It’s [00:24:00] the direct flight Newark to Singapore in business.
I think it’s still the longest flight in the world without a stopover. What do you think, Justin? Ooh, it’s a technicality there. But you did move membership rewards. You got about 115,000 per seat. I should be clear on that. So five of us at one 15 each. America loves that. Yeah. 600 K. So shopping at the Bank of American Express World’s funnest bank.
Still, I think, again, we’re trying something a little bit different this year. We don’t have anything booked on the return. We are flying Concord booked with Atmos, miles, Alaska miles, or what used to be Alaska miles. So for 85,001 way in business class or flying Bangkok to Frankfurt to Toronto. That’s what we could, I could find five seats in and then good old United Airlines Travel Bank.
Justin to the rescue will fly Toronto to Philly. So on the outbound, I [00:25:00] didn’t say what we’re gonna do to get to Newark. It probably will be some Amtrak. Justin, we love the train. Cool, cool. So we’ll probably go up the night before on Amtrak and then, and then fly back to Philly at the end.
The itinerary. In Southeast Asia is still to be determined. Maybe by the time you’re listening to this listeners, you’ll we’ll have figured it out. Tonight actually Justin, we’re doing PowerPoint night. All my family and me included, so the five of us are each picking our top three things we wanna do, we’re see on this trip, and then we’re presenting it in PowerPoint style and then at the end we’ll discuss it and put together an itinerary that gets us from Singapore to Bangkok.
I have done a little bit of hotel booking because of all the fine hotel and resort credits that were expiring at the end of last year. So I booked some at Singapore to start with and some at Bangkok at the end figuring, at least I knew that. We’ll look at booking some more here in the next six or eight months.
So should go over the half year mark. So I have another [00:26:00] 600 in theory credits to use to book more. Excited to see what that looks like. Staying at the Ritz Carlton in Singapore, so right across the bay from the Marina Sands. So that should be a nice view. And then the Park Hyatt in Bangkok. So I’m looking forward to that.
We are doubling up on nights, so we should maybe get one, one of the a hundred dollars credits for our stay of two or three nights, but we’re gonna give up the other ones. But, we’re still getting $300 per night credit. Again, you said earlier, I’m just getting my money back from American Express at this point, right?
It’s free kind of. I paid the 6 95 or in, in couple cases, 8 95 annual fee. And so this is a nice way to recoup some of those costs or the signup bonus or upgrade offers or whatever it was that we took advantage of or signed up for, maybe took advantage of. Sounds pejorative and not tended to be that way.
Amex, if you’re listening , it should be a great script. The rat out there. It’s not the rat team because the T [00:27:00] stands for teams. Yeah, just be careful with that. But you might have a holiday in Cambodia if I’m getting the geography. Yeah. Sam Reap is not officially on the list yet, but I anticipate my oldest daughter is gonna pick Anger Watt for one of her top three things in Easy Trip from Singapore or from Bangkok I suppose, but probably Singapore to CM, re and see.
Move to Bangkok and we’ll see what else we. Squeeze in between. I did book a couple nights at a hotel and Siam Reap as well at the Hyatt. So I’m looking forward to taking advantage of some of those credits and really having a great time right at a cost that maybe otherwise we wouldn’t be interested in or at a much reduced scale than what we’re gonna be able to do this year.
Fan of the show, Maggie, who was on the Netflix show, Love on the Spectrum, her Instagram is A_frog_abroad. S frog abroad. She’s in Cambodia as well, or was in Thailand. Lots of travel. A frog [00:28:00] abroad. We chatted with Purple Princess Pari on a past episode, so maybe Maggie on the show in the future. Looks to be a cool place there.
Lots of temples, lots of interesting architecture. You have a dilemma with FHR, you might be sacrificing dining credits in order to stay at the same hotel. Yeah, I think it’s, for us, it’s worth it. A family of five hotel hopping every night to capture those dining or stay credits at some point, I’d rather just stay at the same hotel and not have to worry about checking out at 11 and checking back in somewhere else and what you do with your luggage and all that sort of stuff.
So at some point I’m gonna make the sacrifice of the credit and take advantage of the $300 night credits. Yeah. So I anticipate we probably aren’t gonna be eating at the hotel very much anyway. I guess we’ll see. My family’s not listening. I don’t think. So one of my things is a food tour.
I hate you all. No, no, no. I was just gonna, I was gonna reveal one of my top three things that I wanted to do. We’ve been keeping [00:29:00] ’em secret, so, oh, uh, one of my friends, Levi recommended the CM Reap Food Tour. That’s on my list of things to do. There’s no sense in having food credits if you’re not gonna use it.
And I’d rather have the comfort of not having to hotel hop every night instead of dinner credits or spot credits that we may or may not use anyway. And for listeners who might not know, I think Amex changed those terms. Maybe a year or two ago where if you have consecutive nights, two consecutive nights or more that you don’t get the extra dining credits.
But I wonder if you have your reservation night one, your wife’s reservation night, two maybe that would preserve the credits. We’ll see how that goes, but it would be unfortunate if you go for it, use the food credits or go to eat and then get charged when, otherwise you were just gonna go outside the hotel and have something there.
So we’ll see how that goes. Hopefully you can make it work or they give a little bit of leeway about that. Stay tuned, listeners, just a few months, so I’ll give you the report and let you know how it [00:30:00] went. No, my wife and I, we’ll have two rooms, so my wife and I will alternate to some extent, but yeah, I don’t know how complicated it’ll be and how many credits we’ll get.
We’ll probably talk to ’em. I find most of the fairly nice upscale hotels are upfront about what they can do and what credits they’re gonna honor and so forth. So you have a pretty good idea of what you’re gonna get when you get there. The nice thing is you could use all your Acme reward points and bring a lot of grocery items with you as we’re recording on Saturday and they’re running the four times points on gift cards.
So a $250 gift card will usually get you a thousand points, which is worth about $20 in groceries. So lots of opportunity with Acme. Funny you mentioned that Justin, I stopped by the Acme on, uh, on the way from dropping off my daughter today. Did a little Acme shopping, stopped by a restaurant. That’s a resi restaurant.
I have a couple personal platinum cards that I’m planning on closing because their annual fees have hit. I, one’s a Schwab and one’s a Morgan Stanley. Don’t really see the value in [00:31:00] keeping those anymore, so we’ll be canceling those since there’s no down a downgrade path for those cards. But, wanted to squeeze out the resi credits, so picked up a gift card at a resi restaurant.
In person, you can get that gift card and it should code. And I believe if that restaurant is on the Toast platform, it should code, should you purchase the gift card online with those resi credits. That’s what I’ve heard as well. The restaurant’s fairly close to us, so I just stopped in and got it in person.
So figured that was a pretty much a sure thing. I’ve done that in the past and it’s credited. No problem. So hopefully, we don’t run into any speed bumps this time either. Good. And perhaps back to Delaware, you’ve been there many times for these, we’re in southeast Pennsylvania, Justin, so about an hour or hour and a half south of you maybe.
We’ve been going down to the Delaware beaches instead of the Atlantic City Beach. Although one could argue with all the free nights that have in Atlantic City, I should spend more time there than I’m currently planning. Yeah, yeah. We have three daughters. My wife and I have three [00:32:00] daughters, and so they have, friends that are from a good friend, good family friend of ours that have daughters of the same age. The last three or four years we’ve gone down to the beach and spent a long weekend. So it’s always the question though, Justin, how do we do that Airbnb? And so then how do you pay for it at a discount?
I was planning on hitting up this year for some wyn points to, to use on Picasa, but of course that is definitely a no go. Maybe, Airbnb gift cards. I’ve, purchased those at Giant in the past at a discount. That was helpful. Ooh, you can get some zillions cards if they like to convert them.
Yeah, yeah. There we go. I think I saw Airbnb on Capital One Shopping rewards most recently. So of course that’s a rotating Rolodex as well. But if they’re on there, we would have a fairly substantial amount of Capital One reward shopping rewards that I could redeem. Maybe I’ll do a little bit of that and see if we can’t get something figured out.
If anyone has another suggestion on how to do that, let me know. We’ll probably be looking know in the [00:33:00] comments. In the comments. And of course, Rove miles or Rove might be a good option too. Yeah, check checking that out for sure. The other sort of beach oriented trip my wife and I think we talked about it, Justin, we’re in Bon Air last summer for our 20th anniversary.
We refreshed our scuba certifications and spent the week diving and enjoying a kind of a kid free week. We love our kids, but it was a nice break. They’re not listening. That’s true. That’s okay. So this year we’re talking about what we wanna do this year, and so one of the options is Roatan in Honduras, I think there’s only one points hotel on the island.
It’s a Kimpton. The, of course, scuba diving would be our main goal. Trying to find a hotel that caters to that. So as I’m looking through that we talked about how do we book these things? Well points hotels are first if we can find the right spot, right hotel in the right spot. If that’s not a good choice, then maybe FHRI did look at that, that Kempton is the only FHR property on the island as well.
So that’s strike two. Sadly. Maybe it’s gonna be the old Venture X [00:34:00] travel eraser card. I’m not sure yet. What do you think Justin? What should I be doing there? Selmore Gold Past podcast guest, Mandy, on or around December 14th, 2025, posted that she was in Cocoa View Resort in Roatan, Honduras. I don’t believe there were any points, angles there though, but it was Coco CO Co View Resort, cocoa View Resort in Roatan, Honduras.
So maybe that’s an option, a viable option, I suppose. It’s an option, but as far as the cost will. See about that for your trip. But yes, gold, more credit cards, more online gambling. That, that definitely helps everything answer to everything. Justin. It’s more credit cards as we know. I reached out to Mandy on Messenger and after she’d posted and said, oh my gosh, we’re planning on going there, would you think of the place?
And she had great things to say. And then, another person that’s been there, she said over 15 times, so Coco view. Yeah, Coco View has a lot of views. They [00:35:00] have a tiered system on based on how many times you go, I can’t remember what the number is, but over six or seven, Justin, six, seven, you get to Cocoa Nut status.
Cocoa nuts. Yep. So I like it. I don’t think that comes with any free play or comp credit. Sadly, we’d like to see in the casino world, but you also don’t have. Dive discount? I don’t think so. No flight discounts? No. No. Coco Nut. There is an Alestorm album. The Pirate Metal Group. Alestorm Curse of the Crystal Coconut.
That, that would be awesome. I, this is just gonna be us for it should, this is only gonna be the first stay for us, obviously. So I’ll have to ask her other friend about what she won when she achieved Cocoa Nut status at Coco View. Maybe you can fire up the card pointers app as well and that can be helpful for using some credits near there at there in that area.
This episode of course, is supported by card pointers. If you have multiple credit cards like me, card pointers automatically activates [00:36:00] bank offers and knows which card to use for maximum rewards card pointers, saves me time and money. Use my link card pointers.com/her gardy travel for a discount on annual and lifetime plans, and I was quite happy in December.
Because I was using my Amex Gold card, GrubHub credits for a pickup. There was Chinese food around $11, which worked really well. And I got an additional rebate on the GrubHub purchase, which I probably wouldn’t have clicked and activated. But thanks to card pointers, it automatically activated the offer, and there’ve been some bigger winds with rebates for Southwest in the past.
Different airlines. Lows, a lot of spending at lows. Card pointers coming through. I signed up for the discounted Black Friday and it’s been fantastic. Yeah, there’s a couple, couple same situations for me. I forget what I was shopping for recently, and, it said, oh, there’s a Amex offer for this, use this card.
I was like, ah, I totally would’ve missed that. I think it’s already paid for itself. And, for those that [00:37:00] don’t use card pointers it does a lot more than I thought it did, but hear a lot about, it just adds all your offers on your cards automatically once you log in. It also then highlights those back to you when you’re shopping in other locations or on other sites.
That’s been fantastic and I think it does the same thing. The app will do the same thing when you’re in store, right. Justin? Yes, there’s a mode you can use, especially on Apple, where you can click a button and find out where you are and it will tell you. Or you could use the pointers feature, I believe.
Search the name of the place and it will show you which cards have some heightened offers or what. The best earning is pretty good. Lots in store for 2026, and that’s just the start of it. Surely, a lot more I can announce and you’ll announce later. We also have a listener question, listener Mario Paid subscriber.
If you do subscribe on my subscribe star page, we will take your questions on episodes and give you advanced notice of them. [00:38:00] Mario asked about Hilton credits. We discussed that earlier. And another question here, how to best utilize the carnival fun match offer I received in 2026. It’s up to a balcony room.
That’s a nice thing to hear about. So once you take the carnival cruise, you could then potentially match that to other cruise companies. You’ll have the PDF, the itinerary, the reservation, and you could send that over to other programs. We did cover that in a past episode on comped cruises, so definitely taking a cruise earlier in the year is probably the way to go.
That way, you’ll have more time to take the other cruises. Match those offers to other programs. Good opportunity there. The other thing, I don’t know, Justin, if you mentioned on the Hilton side, I think we talked about, swiping for dollars. If you have more than one card, you can certainly do that.
Gift cards not through Hilton, but at certain hotels may [00:39:00] offer gift cards at that hotel that you can then use in person. Then, there’s been a few instances of restaurants including Starbucks that you can buy either a meal, go out to dinner and it charges as Hilton or Starbucks gift card, which you can then use yourself or gifts.
So yeah, I think a good, a number of good options there to use that $50 credit. I also like using them for parking. As I was able to do that last year, I booked a park and go, or park and fly rate. I was able to pay for the room, add the parking to the room as a bundle or a package, and use the Hilton credits against the parking.
I really, really like that. And with FTU Dallas May 1st through the third, I’ll use Hilton Credits there as it will be at Hilton Property. I imagine many people will be happy about that to use the Hilton credits at a restaurant there, so nobody has. An excuse. All the [00:40:00] Hilton credits will surely be used in May.
I can’t wait to see the line at checkout with people just with their war chest in hand. It’s gonna be the longest checkout procedure of all time that this poor Hilton doesn’t know what’s gonna, what’s gonna hit them. I believe after the first transaction, they’ll figure it out. And then a lot of other people wanna split tender.
So hopefully they’re adequately prepared. But that’d be a funny thing. That can be something for. AI to create an image of all the points and miles people standing in line with their Hilton cards, their business platinum cards and more. It would be a fun site. I remember a past Chicago Seminars Hyatt, there would be so many people in line.
They created a separate line for globalists and there were multiple globalists lines and they said it was the most globalist they’ve ever had on property. So maybe we’ll get the most Hilton Diamond members on property in 2026. Yeah, I. It reminds me, I think there was a email that went out to folks at one of the [00:41:00] Chicago seminars saying, we know you’re diamond, or excuse me, we know you’re globalist.
It’s been a long time since I was Diamond. We know you’re globalist, but there’s so many globalists here. We don’t, we can’t upgrade you to the rooms that we would normally upgrade you to. So he are your options, which ones you like. So when you get all the points and miles folks in one spot, it does make it challenging to secure the bag as they say.
Lots of credits. There’ll be the $50 Hilton credits, the daily credits, the dining credits, the breakfast credits, whatever the My Way credits. We’ll see what happens. We’ll see what the soup of the day might be. Maybe lots of soup, chicken noodle soup, min drone, and otherwise people looking to use the credits.
Probably lots of alcohol in the later hours. Yeah, I almost would guarantee that Justin, you’re gonna like the way you look. I guarantee it. Is the, my way credit. Does that involve, Frank Sinatra coming out and singing for you somehow? Or, or no? Ooh, maybe we’ll have some special guest music. May or may not [00:42:00] be a dy Gurdy on property too.
I think you should start traveling with a dy gurdy, Justin, and late night. Yeah, late night. You should just break it out at your, in your suite right. And bite folks up and you can play the Hardy Garrity and be a great time. Perhaps, and I know that Dave Ramsey will not be a speaker at the FTU Dallas, so I was seeing some could make it up Facebook memories recently he couldn’t make it.
No bummer. I was seeing some funny Facebook memories where he was advertising a live like no one else, cruise rates starting at $1,698 and will vary based off of selected accommodations. So I, I posted recently. Last year, Dave Ramsey wanted you to pay $1,698 plus to take one cruise. I teach you how to take multiple comp cruises.
Paying taxes and fees we’re not the same. That’s a good reminder, Justin, that there’s a lot of Ben benefits to this game if you’re [00:43:00] disciplined and play the game, right? Yes. And I anticipate many cruises. I keep getting emails from celebrity. They want me to take more Caribbean cruises. I’m looking for places I haven’t been yet or something that’s a little bit more interesting than taking the same cruise again and again.
So the cruises will continue in 2026. Probably not eight cruises, but maybe around five. So I’m looking forward to that. New promotions, new benefits, new credit cards coming out. Built credit cards perhaps coming out in February. Looking forward to hearing about that. Yeah, I’ve been a Bilt card holder from the beginning, so yeah, I’m excited to see what version three or version three, four and five, depending on how you look at it, and where that might fit for me.
So I’ve been able to maintain gold status the last couple years. I’m sitting on a pile of points and waiting for the right thing. And I’ve transferred a few out to Hyatt, a few out to Alaska. [00:44:00] Those have been great transfer partners. We’ll see what happens next. Maybe have Ed Pizza or Richard Kerr on here talking about the new cards.
They’ve been lamenting what they call coupon books from Amex and Chase, so hopefully the built cards don’t turn out to be that way, although there are rumors that there will be a monthly $10 goPuff credit on at least one of the cards. We’ll see if that actually happens. Yeah, I’d like to. Tell them to go puff if they put that on there as well.
Sorry, it’s a pg, pg show. Justin. Sorry about that. We got Yeah, exactly. Puff yourself. So instead of a $400 annual fee and $10 monthly credits, could we just have a $300 annual fee, please, Richard, maybe we’ll see. And that’s the interesting thing, right? Richard Kerr has been in the points and miles game for a long time, understands all sides of it.
I generally respect what he has to say and the way he goes about things. So we’ll see what [00:45:00] happens here. I think by and large, he’s gonna try to bring good value to the cards and, uh, that by and large the opportunities there will be something that folks will find worthwhile. At least that’s been the case so far and I hope it’s the case again for this new suite of cards.
See what I did there? An opportunity or an opportunity for them to stand out from the competition and have good value. With a new card. You gotta give us a shot. Richard, you gotta give us a shot. Thank you so much for the opportunity to chat about our favorite parts of 2025 and what we’re looking forward to in 2026.
I’m sure we’ll have even more things along the way and look forward to chat about those again soon. The situation of what happened and everything else. It’s a classic Justin. It really is. All right. Thanks for joining me today. Thanks everyone for listening and stay tuned for future episodes. For more content between shows, follow Hurdy Gurdy Travel Podcast on Facebook and x.
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