Hilton Tru Brand

It looks like a cross between a hip tech startup and a preschool. Picture bright colors, foozball, giant connect 4, swinging chairs and saying like "We are glad you are here" and "Get in here" greeting you in big bold letters. That's Hilton's new Tru brand. Think Aloft, but more colorful.
There are 30 of these Tru hotels in the United States. We stayed at the one in Syracuse, New York mainly because it had an airport shuttle, free breakfast, and cost under $100 per night - $88 per night exactly. If we had paid with Hilton points, the number listed is 21,000 per night. 
For the budget category, it was quite nice. Definitely extra on the personality and catering to the millennial crowd.

Tru provides FREE coffee, tea, hot chocolate and hot water 24/7. There was a small gym with very nice exercise equipment, laundry facilities, and a complimentary hot breakfast. Breakfast included scrambled and hard-boiled eggs, oatmeal, bagels, donuts, juice, cereal, greek yogurt, and waffle boats.
Waffle boats, according to Tru, are meant to be filled with your favorite toppings including whipped cream, hot fudge, caramel and well, you get the idea.

This hotel smelled new and had cute sayings in the elevator and on the walls.
My 12-year-old thought it was super cool. It was a little over the top for me.

The rooms also catered to the millennial crowd - no closet, lots of USB outlets, shampoo and conditioner dispensers in the bathroom instead of small bottles and hardwood floors.

Beds were quite comfortable as well.
Exercise caution with the overnight door lock when you leave your room. This Tru opened in June 2018 and the door lock in our room was loose so when we tried to reenter our room, it had locked us out. Fortunately, the handyman was able to fix it and had us back in our room in about an hour.
The front desk person was less than gracious during this experience, however.
All that being said, Tru is a fine addition to the brand if you are looking for more hip Hilton.

Rack Up The Points When You Send Mom Flowers

Sending Mom flowers for Mother's Day this weekend? If so, you better hurry and don't miss out on thousands of miles for doing it. Shopping portals offer free money or airline miles for purchases you would make anyway. 

Here's a sample of a few popular ones:

• Southwest shopping portal is offering a bonus of 1,750 points with 1-800 flowers
• American Airlines shopping portal is offering a bonus of 15 miles per dollar with Pro Flowers 
• United Airlines shopping portal is offering 30 miles per dollar with Pro Flowers plus a mix and match 1,700 bonus
• Rakuten (formerly known as Ebates.com) is offering 15% cash back with 1-800 flowers plus an extra $10 when you use my referral link.
• Melaleuca Marketplace  is offering 15% back in product credit with 1-800 flowers and 1-800 florals (this is a benefit if you belong to the club)

You can use cashbackmonitor.com to check out multiple offers at once. These offers are great to top off an account or just build up miles 
And Happy Mother's Day! 

Don't Change Your Southwest Companion Until You Do This One Thing

One of the best freebies out there is the Southwest companion pass. To earn the pass, you must collect 110,000 miles in a calendar year OR you needed to sign up for the bonus credit card offer at the beginning of this year.
Either way, if you have the companion pass, congratulations!
You can fly Southwest BOGO for the next year or two depending on how you earned your pass.
Your companion can be anyone, a friend, a sibling, a child, a spouse, a neighbor, anyone. But they have to fly with you on the same flight. You can change your companion three times in a calendar year. 

You have to call Southwest to register your companion. Once they are registered, you can add them online to any flight with you.

Makes sense, but what if you want to change your companion at the last minute? You can do it, but you need to do something first. 

Last week, my son was supposed to fly with me to the East Coast, but last minute, he had to change his plans. I had already bought my daughter a seat on the same flight with points. So my thought was to cancel her flight, add her as my companion and then she could fly FREE. 
It took about 30 minutes to get through to a Southwest operator who was happy to make the change, cancel my daughter's ticket and rebook the companion ticket for her.
She checked first to make sure there were enough empty seats on the plane so we didn't get shut out while making the change. No worries.

What we didn't expect, however, is that the computer went bonkers over my flight booked in August now that my son was no longer my companion. In fact, the computer has cancelled his flight three times in August because it thinks he is double booked. 

I had to call Southwest back to get help fixing the error, canceling my daughter's flight and rebook my son's flight for that trip.

Lesson learned. Before changing companions, cancel any future tickets issued for that companion. It just makes things easier.

100,000 Marriott Points Could Be Yours If You Act Fast

The quickest way to almost FREE family travel is by taking advantage of credit card bonus offers. Sometimes you even get lucky and get offered an upgrade bonus. This is great because there is no additional credit inquiry or pull on your account so it won't count against you with the 5/24 rule. Chase Bank limits people to opening 5 credit cards every 24 months.  

Right now, the new brand, Marriott Bonvoy, which is a combination of Starwood, Ritz Carlton, and Marriott, is offering 100,000 point bonus if you upgrade your Starwood American Express to a Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant. 

The Brilliant credit card is the luxury card so it comes with a hefty $450 annual fee which is not waived for the first year. However, it also comes with a $300 Marriott credit that you can use to book hotels, incidentals or even to buy gift cards. Plus it comes with a $100 Global entry credit, a $100 Ritz Carlton credit and a 50,000 point bonus on your anniversary. 

If you plan to use at least the Global Entry credit and the Marriott credit, then the 100,000 points cost you just $50. Pretty awesome! 

100,000 Marriott points are valued at about $800. You can use them for hotels or transfer them at 3:1 to more than 2 dozen airlines. Marriott will also give you 5,000 airline miles for every 60,000 points you transfer. So for 60,000 Marriott points, you would have 25,000 airline miles. That's enough for a FREE domestic airline ticket. 

The offer ends April 24th so you just have a few days left to take advantage of this deal. Check your American Express account to see if you are eligible for the upgrade. If you are not, you can still apply for the card as a new customer as long as you do not have the Starwood luxury credit card. 

Using your free night on Hotels.com

The most expensive items whenever you travel are your plane tickets and your hotel. Hands down. So, whenever I plan a trip, the first thing I do is secure FREE plane tickets with points whether those are airline points or credit card points. Then I move on to the accommodations. You have so many options now with hotels, airbnb.com, vrbo.com even couch surfing if that's your thing. 

Let's assume here that you have searched awardmapper.com and you can't find any hotels that work for you either because you don't have enough points or they don't offer the right amenities like FREE breakfast or airport shuttle. Those are always my toppers! 

Other options to try include booking.com and hotels.com. I prefer Hotels.com because I also have the Capital One Venture card and through January 2020, Capital One is offering 10x points if you book a hotel on Hotels.com. That's in addition to the Hotels.com loyalty program. 

Even if you don't have the Capital One Venture credit card, with the loyalty program, for every 10 stays, you get 1 FREE for the average value of the 10 stays. 

So you can really optimize your bonus here. 

Here's how it works:

1. Use the Capital One/Hotels.com link  if you have the credit card, if not use the regular hotels.com website

2. Be sure you are signed into your Hotels.com account or create one if you don't have one yet

3. Search for your hotel with dates, guests etc. 

4. Book your hotel and pay with your Capital One Venture credit card if you are using the 10x link, pay with any credit card (hopefully the one that earns you the most points for travel) if you are using the regular hotels.com website

5. Capital One will credit you 10x miles which you can use to offset any travel including this hotel booking

6. Hotels.com will count the booking in its loyalty program

Once you book 10 stays and a stay is each night that you sleep in a hotel, you are awarded a free night with a value of the average of your past 10 stays. 

After a college trip and a few other one-night hotel stays, I received this email. You can see the value of my FREE night is $110.93. No judgments. I freely admit that I tend to stay in the budget friendly hotels that offer FREE breakfast. It works for my family. 

When you go to redeem your FREE night, you just book your hotel like you normally would and then at the end of the booking process, click use free night. It will credit the amount of your FREE night. If you cancel, your FREE night credit will return to your account. 

Pretty simple. And by combining this with the Capital One 10x promotion, (average nightly hotel $110 at 10x points = 1100 points per stay x 10 stays is more than 10,000 points which equals more than $100), I actually earned two free nights on my 10 stays. Pretty sweet! 

New Lyft Pass Savings Offer Ends April 16th

If you use Lyft frequently or plan to travel in the next month and use Lyft, you may want to get in on this new savings pass. Lyft is offering $9.99 passes good for $5 off your next 10 rides. That's a $50 savings. 

The pass is good for all types of rides except scheduled and scooters. 

The pass is good for 28 days or 10 rides whichever comes first. If you use all 10 rides and still have time left on your pass, you will get 5% off any rides until the pass is exhausted.

So if you are an avid Lyft user or planning to travel and use Lyft in the next month, this is a no brainer. This offer ends April 16th so don't wait. 

If you do not have a Lyft account yet, please use my referral link. You will get $5 in ride credit and I'll get a credit too so I can keep blogging about cool travel spots. 

What To See In Maui With Kids

Road To Hana - Amazing!

Now that Southwest flies to Hawaii, you might want to head to Maui especially if you have the companion pass. 
And Hawaii doesn't have to be expensive even in the popular summer months. 
We spent more than a week in Maui for almost FREE. That's right. Here's how we did it and what we did while we were there. We are a family of 5, but for this trip, we just took our 8-year-old.

The other two kids went on separate trips with family. 

Since Southwest didn't fly to Maui yet, we booked 3 round trip tickets on American Airlines with miles. 25,000 points each. Easy. 

Then we booked an airbnb.com for 3 nights in Kihei. If you use my link, you will get a $40 credit on your first airbnb reservation. There are tons of available rentals and since there were only 3 of us, we booked a one bedroom, one bathroom with full kitchen across from the beach. The unit had a pool too. Very convenient. Safeway Supermarket was down the street so we ate most of our meals at home. We did dine at Coconut's Fish Cafe in Kihei and had probably the best fish tacos ever. And we are from San Diego so that says a lot.

Coconut's in Kihei, Maui - Yummy fish tacos

We took a full day and drove the Road To Hana. This is something we would never do with all 3 kids, but with just 1 it was totally doable. My advice start early like 6am. It is a long drive and day. Think like 12 hours long kind of a day. Bring changes of clothes, towels, snacks, couple pairs of shoes and check out the FREE app tours on itunes or android. They will talk you through the drive and tell you exactly where to stop and where to skip. Be sure to pick up some banana bread along the way.

While in Kihei, we took a one day snorkeling trip to Molokini. We like to spend money on experiences and then use miles/points for travel and hotels. Snorkeling was a bit cloudy as it was very windy that day, but enjoyable. 

Snorkeling in Molokini

After a few nights in Kihei, we moved to Kanapali. Both my husband and I opened Chase Hyatt credit cards so we each had FREE nights at any Hyatt. We cashed them in for 4 nights at the Hyatt Kanapali (Category 5 hotel with rooms starting at 20,000 points per night). Usually you have to pay for parking, but the machine was broken so Hyatt comped our parking for all 4 nights too. Nice. 
The current deal for the World Of Hyatt credit card is 25,000 points with a $3,000 minimum spend and a $95 annual fee which is not waived. So that would get you 1 free night at the Hyatt Kaanapali and if you and your spouse opened the cards, you would get two. But Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer to Hyatt at a 1:1 ratio. So if you open the Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card, you will get 50,000 bonus points for a $4,000 minimum spend and the $95 annual fee is waived the first year. This gets you two nights at the Hyatt Kaanapali plus if you and your spouse each open the card, you get 4 nights FREE. Much better deal! 

Hotels at Kanapali

While staying at the Hyatt, we drove to Lahaina for breakfast, a bit farther north is a nice hike to the geyser and of course, Ululani's for shaved ice. 

Great breakfast place in Lahaina

Nice walk in northern Maui to see the geyser

Otherwise, we just hung at the Hyatt, enjoyed the activities and the beach. The problem with the big hotels is that you are captive to the high prices in the restaurants. We utilized the happy hour at the Hyatt for dinner one night and stocked the in room fridge with sandwich makings and breakfast items. We also attended the luau one night which included dinner. Expensive, but our daughter had never attended a luau so it was totally worth it.

Hyatt Kanapali offers bird visits, daily crafts, penguin and koi feeding

Our favorite, shaved ice at Ulelanis

Remember to ask for the coconut ice cream under the shaved ice. YUM!