In my last blog, I mentioned the “2 News” in reference to New York and New Orleans, which are my favorite places to visit domestically. Last year, I managed to get to New York five times, including a work trip, which just happened to begin as a personal trip and got eaten by a work trip, but regardless, I do try to get to both cities a couple times a year.
While NYC has gotten two trips so far this year (the second coming up this weekend), I haven’t really had a chance to get to New Orleans this year. I had a hotel booked for Labor Day weekend (aka Southern Decadence), but I had yet to get flights booked.
American Airlines only has three direct flights a day in Chicago to and from New Orleans, and while I was planning on paying with points, every time I have looked at flights, the point cost has been too rich for my blood. I love New Orleans, but I only used 65,000 miles for my round trip to London. I absolutely wasn’t going to use 50k+ for a weekend jaunt.
I looked at every possible configuration, even non-direct flights. I even looked at getting a status match with United to see if I could swing something better with them. No Dice.
I texted my friend there tonight basically saying that I was about to pull the plug. After all, I had already used 100,000 Hilton points for my hotel, which didn’t actually cover the whole stay, and I want to plan some more international trips in my future. I don’t really begrudge the industry trying to make money, but New Orleans shouldn’t be as expensive as a trip to NYC.
Then I thought I would look at American Airlines Vacations to see if they maybe had a package, and I did the search on my iPad via the American Airlines app. I found one with hotel and flights for an anticipated 65,000 miles + $238. American actually utilizes a slider like Hilton here, which is something I was unaware of, but I like it.
While it was more miles than what I wanted to spend, getting my 100k points back from Hilton and getting the hotel and airfare just made sense on paper, and I entered in my credit card to book it. The website chugged. The website continued to chug, and then it kicked me back into the cart with an error to call customer service, which I did.
The representative was not any help, and even said they weren’t tech support, which honestly annoyed me to no end. Instead of having them process the reservation, I decided to just try it again from my computer, and when I did the exact same search, the price for the same hotel and flights was near $100 more than what was quoted on my iPad. I redid the search on my iPad, and the cheaper price came up again. It was then that I decided to call customer service.
She was able to get me booked at the price on my iPad, but the whole thing got me thinking about how we just accept the prices we first see when we search. I don’t believe the old wives tales of prices being different on Tuesdays or using a VPN to search from the country you want to travel to, especially in this age of dynamic pricing. However, if I had waited until tomorrow to start my search on my computer and I had seen the higher price, that would have been the end of my adventure in American Airlines Vacations.
Of course, the other shoe to drop here is the value of our miles. I could have booked my flights for 50k miles and be done with it, but I ended up getting both the miles and hotel for 20k more and saved 100k Hilton points. It is all a bit mystifying, but I think I got a pretty good deal here, even if I am not staying in the hotel I wanted to stay in.
I’m not planning on doing more than one post a week here, but I thought this was too good of a story not to share.
