Today Marco, decided to tell us his success stories, "Thanks to TFC I saved 15 thousand euros."
Using membership rewards accumulated by using American Express cards made possible two 1,000-and-one-night vacations
When I wrote the piece to celebrate TFC's 3rd birthday. I dedicated a chapter to the community that has been created, both on the site and on social media, and Marco is one reader who, thanks to the help of many other travelers, was able to Treat yourself to two 5-star vacations, saving thousands and thousands, simply by following the advice.
In this article:
Today I am publishing his double success story he emailed me. If you don't believe it or think it's a "click-catching hoax" come to the FB group And ask him directly.
Here is his story
Hi Matteo, this is Marco, I am telling you about my experience certainly unthinkable for me until a few years ago and made possible by your advice and the TFC community.
The first one I put into practice is to have an objective, figure out what to do with my little treasure Of about 700,000MR accumulated diligently over the previous 3 years And how to maximize without scattering to the four winds.
Let us come in order, I premise that I am an Amex Platinum holder with all the benefits and advantages that come with it, and I have never earned miles through a loyalty program of airlines, flying relatively little and preferring fare and duration over loyalty to a carrier.
For some time with my wife we had been planning to go back to New York, we are just another couple, who like to travel but always dealing with vacations and bank account.
New York, especially in these years of crazy prices., was already something to be weighed well within the family budget.
So the goal was set especially for the hotel considering that the type of journey lent itself well to the "fifth night free".
It was September 2022, and we stayed at the Hilton Motto (before you even reviewed it!) committing 240,000 HH (60,000 per night x 4 nights + 5th free) enjoying, thanks to Gold status, of 36€ per day credit (invested in truly excellent "a la carte" breakfasts) and of the room upgrade to the upper floors for a breathtaking view.
Average price per night 500€ + various jumps (resort fee, local taxes etc...) and without breakfast. All free (made except for a few dollars to supplement the daily credit). Only "flaw," for which back in the day you already pointed out the levity to me, using MR even to book the flight in Economy with Emirates, where paying cash would have been a very quiet amount (around 600€ pax) instead of several thousand Skywards.
The "beauty" of saving so much money was being able to afford to Do not skimp on other travel-related activities such as restaurants and excursions, which otherwise should have been weighed more carefully. The €150 Amex cashback on restaurants was also a good reason To spend a special evening at Benoit's.
On the way back there was really a lot of satisfaction, and especially still several MRs "to be taken out."
The electrocution came with your piece on the Maldivian resort of Amingiri., did 2 maths we had the about 450,000MR, of which 160,000MR invested in the flight (in Economy...I know you don't do that...) and 290,000 for the facility, which however required 380,000. We decided to buy the missing points (spent about 800€, I think) and then booked within 2 hours for mid-February.
Then we had fun doing the simulation on any Expedia to see, for the same accommodation and flights, how much we would spend. I'll leave you the picture because otherwise one wouldn't believe it.
Minus the €800 for points purchase And taxes on flights, It would be like saying 10,000€ saved, but that would only be a fair consideration in part because we simply could not have had a vacation like that.
But even the 4-5000€ we would have spent in New York only a few months earlier would have been a big brick. Instead, we had spent only a few euros in flight taxes (from memory 150€ + 150€)!
In closing I will tell you that it is even difficult for me to explain how with relatively little effort one can access such experiences, even my wife at one point gave up understanding my ranting about points and miles
