I wanted to run it back and show you how opening just one credit card might help cover your hotel stay at a resort. Since so many people ask about the Maldives or getting there I thought it’d be cool to try and see if we could book a “pretend trip”. Hopefully after reading this email you’re more confident in trying it out yourself.
There’s been an offer circulating around the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card that has a $95 annual fee that seemed interesting. In looking at it I wondered if there was a way to get most of a hotel stay in the Maldives covered by it. It offers 5 free night awards valued at 50,000 points each after meeting the 5k minimum spend within the first 3 months.
First thing I want to do is head over to Awayz and check out what specific Marriott properties there are. Since the best time to go to the Maldives is between November and April I’ll look at November/December availability
After narrowing the search down to Marriott properties during November/December around that 50K points a night we end up looking at Le Meridien Maldives Resort & Spa with prices in November and December ranging from 56K – 70K.
While these rates are above the 50K certificates you’d get from the card, you are able to top them off up to 15,000 points. So in theory you could be looking at nights up to 65K points. On top of that you can also take advantage of the fifth night free when redeeming five consecutive nights letting you potentially stay there six nights.
Given that there are no direct flights to the Maldives airport Male (MLE) from the United States we’re going to have to see what are the major airports that fly into MLE so that we only have one stopover from the United States
Qatar
Starting off with probably the best best way to get there but arguably the hardest to find availability is Qatar. You’ll essentially fly out of the USA to DOH and from there DOH to MLE. Heading over to FlightConnections I’m able to pull a list of the airports that fly to DOH are SEA, SFO, LAX, ORD, DFW, IAH, ATL, MIA, YUL, BOS, JFK, PHL and IAD.
Knowing this we are going to log into Qatars website and manually search, that’s right I said it, no tool. You’re going to manually search for availability and constantly check back to find those 85K one way flights. It might take a while and you might need some flexibility if you want to fly Qatar to the Maldives.
If for some reason you can’t transfer your points over to Qatar Avios, remember that British Airways also uses Avios so transfer your credit card points over to British Airways Avios and then move those Avios points from your British Airways account to your Qatar account to book.
Singapore
Singapore airlines is another good option with only one stop in SIN. The best way to find availability is to create a KrisFlyer account and look through Singapore airlines availability. Once you put in the specific US airports you’ll once again just have to manually go through the website and find availability.
The airports that you’re going to want to search from are EWR, JFK, LAX, SFO and SEA
Although it is a little easier to move from week to week and see what is available at a quick glance, rates are higher and a lot of the flights have waitlist. It’ll take constantly checking it and some persistence to find the dates that you want.
They do have flights out of the east coast at 123,000 miles one way but a lot of them are waitlisted. The ones that I found that weren’t usually had a stopover in NRT.
Singapore airlines has special promotions opportunities usually around the 15th of every month. It’s called the spontaneous escapes and is a 30% discount on flights within a 1 – 2 months window so if you time it right a business class seat will cost you around 105K miles.
Emirates
If you’ve ever seen a video of someone taking a shower in a plane or hanging out by a bar in a plane this is it. Depending on what route you take you might be able to snag a seat on the Airbus380 or Boeing777. You’ll just have to know out of what cities in the US Emirates flies out of to get to Dubai (DXB) and from their head over to the Maldives.
Those airports are SEA, SFO, LAX, DFW, IAH, ORD, MIA, MCO, IAD, YYZ, IAD, JFK, YUL and BOS
Once you have the airport you want to fly out of head over to the Emirates website and start searching for that availability. I was able to find both business and first class on a couple of dates so you’ll just have to put in the legwork to find them. Business at 157,500 miles and first at 186,000 one way.
Etihad
Etihad is the third major Middle East carrier along with Emirate and Qatar. Seats in the A380 are some of the best seats with first class seats known as the apartment and would be an awesome way to get to the Maldives.
Knowing what US airports fly to Abu Dhabi (AUH) is the first step. Those are ORD, YYZ, BOS, JFK, IAD
Since the flight we are looking for will have a layover in AUH we’ll have to star our search on the Etihad website and try and find availability. You’ll be looking at some pretty high prices at 306,250 with the lowest at around 175,000 with mixed airlines but still with one stop.
If you want to try your luck, since Air Canada has a partnership with Etihad you’re able to see some of their flights on Air Canada’s booking portal. Its an easy portal to navigate and luckily Aeroplan miles can be transferred from Chase, American Express, Capital One and Bilt.
I was only able to find economy IAD-AUH-MLE for 70K economy but looking around consistently you’ll probably stumble across Business and First.
Turkish Airline
The last one I wanted to go over was Turkish Airlines. They have a lot of airports that Fly into Istanbul (IST) and then from there you can fly nonstop to the Maldives
The airports flying to Istanbul are YVR, SEA, SFO, LAX, ORD, DFW, IAH, YYZ, ATL, YUL, BOS, JFK, EWR, IAD, ATL, MIA, HAV, CUN, MEX, CUN, and PTY
Once you know what airport you want to fly out of head back over to the Air Canada portal and start your search. I was able to find economy flights for 70K points but with a little work you’re probably able to find business class.
Air Canada
Honorable mention goes to the Air Canada portal. If don’t really care what airline you fly its worth looking through the portal every day and seeing what flights they have.
I stumble across this flight from Washington to Zurich to Male with just one stop.
With 5 solid airline options, a card bonus and some determination you can get to the Maldives.
Hope this was helpful and reply to this email if you want to see more breakdowns like this.
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