A bit of background before I start. There are a lot of blog out there about the best way to use points and sales to get the maximum value out of your credit cards and spending. This is meant to be a real world example of how I make things work. There are better ways to do things than I do, but this is what works for me as far as ease of use and where I am at at the moment.
So, back to this cruise. I keep a list of cruises I really want to do, and a price point I’ll consider them at. This one through the Panama Canal has been one I’ve wanted to do for a while but Royal Caribbean is usually pretty pricey. When I saw a good sale in April I started my one hour call to try to get this at the price I wanted.
I travel solo, but have enough Royal Caribbean points to just have to pay 150% instead of double in most cases. You always just have to pay the taxes and port fees per person in the room.
Here is what I saw online:
– Inside stateroom: $959 per person plus $310 in taxes and port fees.
– Best case would be $1748.50 traveling solo if everything lined up
– My cap for this cruise was $2000 so this was in the range I was looking for
Still working on paying off the mortgage so that was also a limiter. This was in the price range but I was not sure I wanted to spend that much. Because of that, I decided to use my Marriott points to pay for a chunk of the cruise. Where it makes sense I use Marriott for work travel and had just passed 250,000 points which is $1000 at .4 cents per point redemtion value.
Next up, the long call and how I’m planning to maximize paying for the cruise.
Cruising, Travel, and Money Tips 