Hilton Diamond Status Match

As you LCD readers know, my father is a huge SPG loyalist, though he's been known to cheat with Hyatt from time to time.

But when Hyatt started matching to their top tier Diamond status last month, Hilton also jumped into the fray as well. For convenience, you can request the Hilton HHonors Diamond status match online here until January 11, 2016.

So my father signed up and submitted a jpg file of his SPG Platinum Account page. This morning, he received this email.

We've had some nice Hilton stays in the past few years where we definitely enjoyed the complimentary breakfasts, including:

1. December 2015 - Hilton Garden Inn Liberia Costa Rica
2. February 2015 - Doubletree Charleston, SC
3. June 2014 - Hilton Zurich, Switzerland
4. April 2014 - Conrad Hong Kong
5. February 2013 - Conrad Koh Samui, Thailand

That being said, Hilton's Diamond status isn't that much better than the mid-tier Gold status that my parents already had through their Citi Hilton Reserve Visa credit card. Even with Gold, they receive complimentary breakfast and in-room wifi, so the top tier Diamond just earns you more HHonors points and possibly increases your chances at a complimentary room upgrade.

Regardless, we thought that we might be frequenting non-Starwood hotels in 2016 (given the pending Marriott acquisition), so we might as well try out some Hilton properties while holding Diamond status.

Hilton Garden Inn Liberia Airport

Hotel Details
Hotel: Hilton Garden Inn Liberia Airport
Dates: December 12-13 2015
Rate Paid: $118/night
Breakfast: Complimentary
Room Points Earned: 1,970 HH Points
Promo Points Earned: 4,250 HH Points
Credit Card Spend Points: 1,180 HH points

We flew into Liberia Airport around 8PM local time. While the Andaz Resort was just 40 minutes away, we didn't want to spend extra money (or Hyatt points as the case may be) when we wouldn't arrive so late in the evening.

So my father booked my family into the nearby Hilton Garden Inn, just 2 minute drive away from the airport.

After clearing immigration and retrieving our bags, we looked outside for a man holding the Hilton Garden Inn Shuttle sign. We found him, but so did the dozen other passengers on our flight staying at our hotel. We were first in line, but the United Airlines crew arrived and got priority boarding on the shuttle, so we had to wait for the bus to come back. The man with the sign aggressively prevented us from coming near the shuttle and told us to wait along the wall for the next one.



After waiting for a total of about 30 minutes, we boarded the bus while the man who pointed us to the shuttle asked my father for a tip. My father just nodded his head and didn't move. The man waited awkwardly before he realized he wasn't going to receive any gratuity guilt money from us. Now, it would be simplistic to say my father is cheap. But those of you who know my father realize he's actually quite generous with tips, but only for service that is worth thanking them for.

It was a short drive to the airport and we were checked in quickly. We were given a room with double beds. It seemed fine, except we found some toe nail clippings on the floor. Gross! Not an ideal start to the vacation, but we just threw it out and didn't let it bother us.

Given we were now on Central time, we woke up early at 7AM. We went downstairs and checked out the festive Christmas tree in the lobby before heading to the on-site restaurant for the $13/person buffet breakfast (complimentary since we had Hilton HHonors Gold status).

Since our pickup to the Andaz wasn't scheduled until 11AM, we had plenty of time to walk around the hotel and enjoy our first sample of Costa Rican weather - 85 degrees and sunny with a high of 91 later in the day.

Around 9:30AM, I convinced my parents to let me get a dip in the outdoor pool for an hour before we had to pack and catch our private shuttle to the Andaz. The pool was pretty standard, but very clean and hidden in the shadow of the Hilton.

Overall, it was a convenient one night stay when flying in/out of Liberia Airport. And for the reasonable rate that included breakfast, it was even better.

High Spend Targets

As you know, we accumulate a lot of our frequent flyer miles, hotel points and bank reward points through credit cards.

Most of the benefit, however, comes from initially signing up and reaching the minimum spend (which ranges from $1,000-5,000 within 3 months most of the time).

Some also offer perks just for having the card (priority hotel elite status, priority boarding on airlines).

Then there's the spending bonuses for using your card at certain merchant types (2-5x at groceries, office supply stores, hotels).

The fourth type of benefit is for reaching high levels of spend in a given year. These targets have rewards that are very attractive to people like my father who enjoy gaming the system. There are several cards that have these high spend targets, but we'll only discuss the ones my parents have actively. You can research the rest on your own.

Chase Select Visa - $25,000

For example, for spending $25,000 a year on our Chase United Select Visa allows United MileagePlus members to avoid the Premier Qualifying Dollar (PQD) threshold for earning elite status. Normally to hit United Silver, you'd have to fly 25,000 miles AND spend at least $3,000 in base fares.

Given we take advantage of super cheap fares (such as the $815 fare to NYC from Tel Aviv or the $266 flights to Costa Rica), we hardly ever reached the PQD minimums for United Silver or Gold status.

Citi Hilton Reserve Visa - $10,000

Another example is the $10,000 spend on the Citi Hilton Reserve Visa. For doing so, we get a free Hilton Weekend Night Certificate good for just about ANY Hilton property in the world.

Last year, we used it for my grandmother's stay at the Conrad Hong Kong). Normally, the Conrad Hong Kong would cost 80,000 Hilton HHonors points, so this certificate was a great value for my family. And since we hit $10,000 this year as well, we'll get another free weekend night certificate to use in 2016.

And if we ever hit $40,000 in a year, we'd get upgraded to top tier Hilton Diamond status. That sounds pretty amazing, but we question if the incremental benefits of being Diamond (vs. a mid-tier Gold which already gets you free breakfasts) is worth it. After all, that's an extra $30k of spend we'd have to forego on our other cards.

Starwood SPG American Express - $30,000

Our Starwood SPG American Express also offers mid-tier SPG Gold status if you spend $30,000 in a year. For late checkout and a modest room upgrade to a better view, it's a nice mid-tier status to have.

But since my father has Platinum status, we don't go out of our way to hit this SPG Amex high spend goal -- though admittedly, some years we hit it without actively trying to do so.

Citi Thank You Prestige Mastercard - $15,000

This card doesn't really fall into the same category as the others. Rather than being a recurring high spend benefit, the Citi Thank You Prestige card offer we received when we signed up was as follows: 30,000 Thank You points after spending $3,000 in 3 months PLUS another 30,000 TY points for spending $15,000 in the first 12 months.

The "regular" offer is 50,000 miles after spending $3,000 with a $450 annual fee, but my father wanted the special $350 annual fee offer which happened to be the 60k points for $15k spend in the first year offer.

Conclusion
Having been fortunate enough to hit both the United Visa and Hilton Reserve Visa targets earlier this 2015 year, now we can focus our extra spend on the $15,000 target for the Citi Thank You Prestige Mastercard over the next 11 months, having already hit the $3,000 first target in Month 1.

But as soon as January 1, 2016 comes around, we're back to the races with the United and Hilton Reserve Visa cards. Thank goodness for being able to use our 5 Nationwide Buxx cards to load/unload $5,000 each month.

Hong Kong Hotels for Grandma

Now that my grandmother's flights were booked for her 65th Birthday trip to Korea and Hong Kong, it was time to get her hotels booked.

Fortunately, we had spent 5 days in Hong Kong ourselves in 2014 so we could offer some recommendations.

Since Hong Kong (like NYC) is quite expensive for hotels, we didn't want to use cash when we had so many hotel points and awards at our disposal where we could get out-sized redemption value.

InterContinental
For the first night, we used 50,000 IHG points to book her in the InterContinental Hong Kong on the Kowloon side where she would be right on the Avenue of the Stars to enjoy the nightly laser light show.

Retail cash prices were $351 USD, so we were getting 0.7 cents/IHG point. Not a great redemption, but it's actually just a placeholder booking until September when we'll rebook it. Recall, just for having the Chase IHG Visa credit card ($49 annual fee), we get a Free Night Award certificate at every anniversary - which is September for us. So even after paying the annual fee, we'll save $302 cash for a night at one of the best hotel properties in Hong Kong.

Conrad
Then for the last two nights, we booked my grandmother at the Conrad Hong Kong which was back on the mainland side.

Just like with IHG, we had a Free Night Award with Hilton. Unlike IHG, however, this award is only good for a weekend night (Fri, Sat or Sun). So we used it for the last night of my grandmother's Hong Kong trip which was a Friday night.

However, we wanted her to enjoy another night at the Conrad since they offered an amazing (complimentary) buffet breakfast for Hilton Gold members each morning at their Garden Cafe (if you ask nicely). So we used 80,000 Hilton HHonors points to book another award night on Thursday.

The cash retail prices for the Conrad Hong Kong were $404/night after taxes, so we were saving $808 at least by using the weekend award certificate and points. While not the best redemption (approximately 0.5 cents/HH point), it was a very compelling use of Hilton HHonors points given the quality of the hotel.

Plus, they should get a late checkout so that they'll have a relaxing final day before heading to Hong Kong Airport to enjoy the Cathay Pacific business class lounge.

I hope you have a great birthday trip, Grandma!

Points and Mile Totals

Some of my classmates at pre-school have been asking me lately how many points and miles we have. I generally just say "this much" as I stretch out my hands, but in the interest of transparency, I'm willing to share our family totals to all 3 loyal readers of Lap Child Diaries.

Airlines
American AAdvantage - 600,000 miles
United MileagePlus - 400,000 miles
British Airways Avios - 215,000 miles
Aegean Airlines - 60,000 miles

Hotels
IHG Rewards Club - 113,000 points
Hilton HHonors - 104,000 points
Starwood SPG - 102,000 points
Club Carlson - 18,000 points
Hyatt Gold Passport- 600 points

Bank Rewards
Chase Ultimate Rewards - 392,000 points
Citi Thank You Points - 165,000 points

Now clearly, there are families (and even individuals) out there that have 1,000x more than we do, so we're really not trying to show off. We're just answering a question we get often, and there's no shame/pride here.

The truth is that these points and miles will only decrease in value over time. Programs "devalue" their points from time to time by increasing the prices for award redemptions, so we recommend not hoarding these rebate currencies. Cash you can save, but with loyalty points and miles, you should "earn and burn" as quickly as possible!

Any good redemption ideas for us?

Citi Hilton Reserve Challenge

About a year ago, my mother applied for the Citi Hilton Reserve Visa card. We had plans to travel to Hong Kong that following March and wanted to use the 2 free weekend night certificates that came with the card after spending $2,500 in three months. We completed the minimum spend requirement by September 2013.

We redeemed our free night certificates for a 2 night stay at the Conrad Hong Kong, which was pricing out at about $400+ per night. Because the card also comes with Gold status in their Hilton HHonors loyalty program, we also received complimentary breakfast at their lobby restaurant - an amazing spread of Western and Chinese breakfast foods.

But after we reached the $2,500 (and received our 2 free weekend nights), we pretty much put the Reserve card away and didn't spend on it any more, with the one exception of our 1 day stay at the Hilton Zurich Airport hotel ($201 USD).

The less popular benefit of the Hilton Reserve card is that you can earn another free weekend night certificate each year if you spend $10,000 on that card in a cardmember year. However, for my father, it just seemed like so much more spending for minimal benefit and he was happy with the 2 free nights after the first $2,500.

Then a few months ago, my father read a compelling post on MileValue.com explaining why it could be worth it to spend an additional $7,500 on the card to earn a third free night certificate - relative to using other cards to spend that much with. So while we were in Greece enjoying our July vacation, my father decided to go for the third free night certificate.

Unfortunately, he found out that his cardmember year would be ending with the September 4, 2014 statement. So with about 5 weeks, he crafted a plan to "spend" another $7,300 in the month of August to hit the $10,000 annual goal and earn an additional 22,500 Hilton HHonors points and a free weekend night certificate.

The real challenge was complicated by my father's OCD on "optimizing everything." He refused to use the Hilton Reserve card (and earn just a 1% rebate in Hilton points) on spending categories where we would otherwise earn 2-5x bonus points if we used a different credit card. For example, spending on restaurants earned us 3x Citi Thank You points (valued at a 4% rebate) when using our Citi Thank You Premier card and spending on groceries earned us a 5% cash back rebate when using our Amex Blue card. So what was left to use this Reserve card?

1. Daycare - $1,060
As I mentioned in an earlier post, my daycare used to allow payment using a Visa or Mastercard without any additional fees. So we made about 3 weeks worth of payments (2 regular payments and we prepaid the first week in September).

2. Charitable Donations - $200
Now, to be clear, we did not make a donation just for the purpose of meeting this minimum spend requirement nor was this related to any buckets of ice. Each month, we support a handful of organizations, including our church, the nonprofit my father sits on the board of, as well as individuals through Kiva microlending. Again, we're not spending more than we do normally.

3. Public Transportation - $72

We used to have a Chase Sapphire Preferred card that would earn us 2x Ultimate Reward points (worth about a 4% rebate), but we cancelled that when the $95 annual came due, so we were without a card that gave a bonus on transportation.

So we used our Citi Hilton Reserve for a $60 metrocard reload and a $12 taxi fare. Now we didn't need to refill our metrocard, but figured that we'd definitely use up the full value over the next few weeks. So we were just prepaying something we were certain that we were going to use.

4. TD Bank Go Card Reloads - $4,004

My friend Peyton's parents told my parents about a neat little scheme where you could get a TD Bank Go prepaid debit card and load it up using a credit card. You were allowed up to three $1,000 loads in a rolling 30 day period, for just $1 fee per load. The way the calendar rolled out, we were able to get 4 loads in (three in August and one on September 1st).

The true beauty of this scheme (no longer working as of Sept 3) was that you could load the TD Go card using a point earning credit card and then use it to pay off any Citi credit card. And our Hilton Reserve card just so happened to be issued by Citi. So we'd use our Citi Hilton Reserve to load our TD Go, then call up to use our TD Go Debit card to pay off the Citi Hilton Reserve. The only "loss" was $1 each load cycle, so $4 total.

5. Paypal Reload Cards - $2,016

Photo from Million Mile Secrets

Now, after figuring out the math, we were going to fall short, so we had to compromise on my father's "always optimize" mandate. So we took the easy route and went to a few nearby pharmacies that sold Paypal Reload cards. First, we gave up on earning 5% cash back on $2,016, which was about $100 of cash rebate. Second, we had to pay a $3.95 fee on each of the 4 cards we loaded with $500, so another $16 of fee leakage.

However, we did achieve the annual $10,000 goal earning 22,500 Hilton HHonors points (worth up to $225 of redemption value) and a free weekend night certificate at just about any Hilton property in the world, including the stunning Conrad Koh Samui we visited last year which retails for $800-1000/night.

Final Tally

• Hilton HHonors Points:  $180-225 of value (at 0.8-1.0 cents/Hilton point)
• Free Weekend Night Certificate:  $400-800 of value
• Less: Fees Incurred:   $20 loss
• TOTAL:   $560-1,005 of net value

If we had to replicate the same spending on the "optimal" cards instead of our Hilton Reserve Visa, then we'd probably have used the Amex Blue for drugstore spend, Starwood Amex for everything else - unless they only took Visa/Mastercard where we'd use our Barclays Arrival+.

Tallying those totals up using our point valuations, we'd get to about $219 of value, so it's pretty clear that we were better off going for the Free Weekend Night certificate. Now, the fun part of finding a Hilton property to redeem it at!

14 Hours in Zurich - Part 2

As I mentioned in the earlier post, we had plans to use the Hilton Zurich Airport hotel to rest a bit before heading into central Zurich for an afternoon of sightseeing. After having a complimentary breakfast in the hotel, we went up to our room and turned out the lights for a few hours of sleep. The plan was to wake up around 12:30pm and then head into the city on the train from the airport.

Unfortunately, instead of a cap nap, we all slept as if we were still on New York time and woke up after 3PM (9AM back home). Despite rushing and getting ready as quickly as we could, we didn't leave the hotel til shortly after 4PM, cutting our free time in Zurich down significantly from 5 hours to closer to 2!

So instead of waiting for the hotel airport shuttle (every 20 minutes), then catching the airport train to downtown Zurich, we hired a taxi from the hotel instead. Fortunately, they took credit cards, because we didn't stop to get any Swiss francs given our limited time on the ground.

The taxi ran about CHF52 (~$58 USD) but included the gratuity. Still a lot to pay for a ride into town, but we rationalized that it was likely our only time ever in Zurich. Plus, we used our Barclays Arrival Plus+ card to pay for the taxi, so after the charge posted on our account, we were able to use our Arrival Miles to "erase" the $50 of the charge for 5,000 miles. So net out of pocket cost was just $8.

By way of reference the train ride would have cost only CHF 6.60 ($7.35 USD per adult) each way. That was a much cheaper option, but it would have required us to lose a lot of time waiting for shuttle buses and train schedules in addition to walking from the train station to the areas we wanted to see.

Fortunately, our taxi driver didn't hit any traffic heading into the city and we arrived at Confiserie Sprüngli (one of the famous epicurean institutions in Zurich) at around 4:30PM where I was amazed at all the beautiful pastries and chocolate truffles.

I wanted everything in the shop, but my father limited me to a small box of four jewelry like macaroons. As you would imagine, they were simply delicious and apparently pretty expensive for about $1.20 USD each.

We continued meandering down Bahnhofstrasse (the Fifth Avenue of Zurich) but we soon realized that we had all the same high end luxury retailers in Manhattan. So then we decided to head towards one of the bridges over the Limmat River that cuts through the middle of the city. We passed by Fraumünster Church and head towards Grossmünster Church at the other end of the bridge.

Crossing the bridge we were able to notice two things. First, the water in the river was immaculately clean and clear. You could see the rocks along the bottom of the river. Definitely couldn't say the same thing in any city river in the United States. Second, there were swans swimming all along the river. What toddler doesn't love seeing swans?

When we crossed, we saw we were in the "Old City" where the streets were cobblestone and roads were for pedestrians instead of cars. Lots of irregular alleys and steep paths. Beautifully preserved architecture and fountains. This was much more what my mother had been seeking when she first heard we were going to be in Europe.

Since we had slept through lunch, we decided to take a break and enjoy some refreshments. My father wasn't that shocked when he saw the menu prices (this was Zurich after all), but he also didn't feel we needed to break the bank on a basic lunch just because we were "on vacation." I mean, we're kind of always on vacation, aren't we? So he just ordered himself a beer and shared an appetizer with my mother who enjoyed a beverage herself. But I did manage to convince him that I should at least get some ice cream.

Apparently our waitress loved kids, because she was super nice to me and even brought me a make-shift balloon face. I'll treasure it always (ie, til I get bored of it 3 minutes later).

Soon after our afternoon snack, we decided we'd rather get back to the hotel and comfortably pack instead of rushing frantically to make our flight to Tel Aviv. We cross another bridge back to the western bank where the business/shopping district was and found our way back to the hotel by 7:30PM. Plenty of time to get our stuff together and leisurely make our 10:45PM flight.

14 Hours in Zurich - Part 1

The way most US-European flights are scheduled, they depart in the evening so that you'll arrive in Europe in time for a full day of business meetings.

I guess you're supposed to sleep for most of the 8 hour flight, but unfortunately, that schedule doesn't always work well for families with toddlers as I'm really not prepared for either (a) going to bed at 6:30PM or (b) being woken up at 8:40AM Zurich time, which is 2:30AM New York time. Nevertheless, on the second half of the flight, I finally fell asleep (when it was around 10PM New York time).

We landed on time in Zurich just before 9AM local time. I was still pretty groggy, but was now awake after an hour of the bright cabin lighting to force people onto the local time. Now we were in Zurich, so what do we do?

Anticipating that we'd still be jet lagged when we arrived, my father booked us an airport hotel for us to catch up on some sleep and shower. We always feel pretty gross after a red-eye flight, so a shower was a must - especially for my father who was starting to get that "musky old man" smell now that he turned 35.

Since we were going to have all day in Zurich, we figured spending a early morning few hours at a nearby airport hotel to rest/refresh would still give us the majority of our afternoon/evening to spend in downtown Zurich. We also figured we could take public transportation from the Airport to get into Zurich. That was the plan...

Hotel Details
Hotel: Hilton Zurich Airport 
Dates: June 10-11, 2014
Rate Paid: $201 USD (incl. taxes)
Points Earned: 4,322 HHonors Points
Est. Points Value:  $35
Breakfast Value: $50
Executive Lounge Value: $15

He found a good AAA deal at the nearby Hilton (5 minute drive away, free airport shuttle). Plus, given my father still had Hilton Gold status, we'd get access to the Executive Lounge as well as complimentary breakfast. There were definitely cheaper hotel options (especially since we weren't even staying overnight), but given they were with other hotels where we didn't have status, we preferred to go with Hilton where we had some comfort that elite status would come in handy.

While $201 USD seems steep for a few hours of sleep and a shower, after factoring in the earned Hilton HHonors points and a fair value for the free breakfast buffet and lounge (more free food and drinks), we got about 50% of the cost back in points and perks. So would you spend $100 for a comfortable private hotel room for 14 hours?

We were supposed to spend Tuesday night at the hotel (check in at 3PM, depart the Wednesday morning), but our plan was to get into our room early Tuesday morning and check out that same evening. So my father called ahead to make sure the hotel was aware of that plan and they said it shouldn't be a problem.

So when we arrived at Tuesday 9:30AM, we were happy to hear that our room was immediately available. We then asked if we could take our complimentary breakfast that same morning (instead of Wednesday morning), and they said it was not a problem. We were given a breakfast voucher to hand to the hostess. But since it was getting late, we ran up to the room, dropped off our bags and then came back down to get some real breakfast food.

After our free breakfast, it was almost 10:30AM local time (4:30AM New York time) so we decided to go up to the room and catch up on some sleep. The room was very clean and well appointed. We had everything we needed including a shower/tub combo, a comfortable bed and most importantly, blackout curtains! Seriously, if you closed the curtains, you'd have no idea it was daytime.

So we showered up, shut the curtains and decided to nap for 60-90 minutes and planned wake up at 12:30PM at the latest...