So on to the actual booking…

Like I mentioned I wanted to use Marriott points to play for $1000 of the cruise. I know 0.4 cents per mile is not a great value, but I just don’t need that many hotel rooms and I am more likely to pay for a cheap Marriott at $80 or $90 a night instead of using 50,000 points for a super expensive night where I am getting a “good” value for my points.

Anyway, that meant I needed to book through the Marriott cruise program so it was time for a call. I know that that traveling solo makes things complicated. Thankfully I settled in for a long call. If you remember, I was planning on a cost of around $1750 (plus the $25 fee for booking through Marriott). I called in and gave the helpful agent my information and she got to work. A brief hold while she priced the cruise before coming back to me with a price of around $2300.

I restated my status discount, confirmed the per person price, did the math with her and asked her to recheck (as well as asked her to check the military/law enforcement discount as well). It was a 25 minute hold this time, but she came back to tell me that they had gotten it down to $1900 (she was on a conference call in with a Royal Caribbean rep) and could I stay on hold a bit longer. Another 15 minutes or so and she came back on with a price right at $1700 plus the $25 fee. It was well worth the wait to save $600.

It is important when pushing like this to be polite. I am a firm believer in using please and thank you and being understanding. I did talk to the Marriott representative some and learned what had happened. There was a promotion for $100 on board credit that was blocking the status discount for a solo traveler and the military/law enforcement discount. Giving up the $100 and taking $50 instead saved me $600 or a net savings of $550.

Counting up the dollars:
– Cruise and fee: $1725
– Paid with points: $1000
– Paid with Chase Card $25 (will earn $1.13 in points)
– Will pay with BofA $700 (should earn $36.75 cash back)
– $700 will credit through Marriott cruise portal for 2100 points ($8.40 toward next cruise)
– Depending on how you look at it*, the cruise costs me:$678.72
– If I really want to push the cost justification… those 32 nights of elite credit represent $109.71 of the cruise credit I will get for reaching 700 nights
*I am basically counting the $1000 of points as free to me as they are from work travel mainly

Next up, some non-cruise budget stuff.

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.