Our Free Trip to Japan (Part 1)
Tl;dr: Taking a free trip to Japan is not as hard as it may seem.
We’re back! As I mentioned a few posts ago, we took a trip to Japan! We have returned, and it’s time to talk about the joys of free trips to the Land of the Rising Sun.
Flying for free with points
Despite living near San Francisco, one of the major gateways to Japan, cash tickets are exorbitantly expensive. They are almost never available for under $1,000, except on Zipair, but then only if you’re willing to forego carry-on baggage, seat selection, and food.
Rather than dropping $1,200 dollars or so on a non-stop flight to Tokyo, we opted to use 70k American Airlines AAdvantage miles (if we had booked a bit further in advance, there were tickets available for as little as 64k). We each earned 60k of those by opening an Aviator card account and making a single purchase at any price.
Although the current offer doesn’t waive the $99 annual fee like Barclays did for us, it does offer an extra 15k miles for adding an authorized user, enough to book a flight without scrounging for the rest of the miles. But it was not too difficult to get the extra 10k miles. I already had some from previous AA flights I had taken. We both took advantage of AA’s dining program when it was offering 1500 bonus miles, and earned some more miles by dining out and using our Aviator cards. The rest were transferred over from Bilt. Our Bilt cards let us earn points on rent, and those Bilt points can be converted into AAdvantage miles at a 1:1 ratio.
Since our annual fee was waived, the total cost to fly to Tokyo was only $53 in taxes and fees.
Staying for free with points
Our hotels, on the other hand, were completely free. We both opened Capital One Venture X cards, so we had a combined 150,000 points (“miles,” technically) at our disposal. While we could have transferred those points to Choice Privileges to take advantage of their great rates (many Choice hotels in Japan can be booked for just 8,000 points/night), instead we just paid for our hotels with the Venture X (earning double points when booking directly or 10x points through the Capital One portal) and used our points to erase the purchases from our statements. Those two bonuses added up to as much as $1,500 in hotel stays, and gave us the freedom to book local hotel brands like the Onyado Yui no sho in Shirakawa-go or the beautiful Mistui Garden in Kyoto.
Doing it again (and again!)
Despite the oppressive humidity, we were overwhelmed by the friendly people, good food, and beautiful sights we encountered across Japan, and we can’t wait to go back–we were only barely able to scratch the surface of our bucket list.
Thankfully, going to Japan on points doesn’t have to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
With the Bilt’s ability to earn points on rent, great earning rates on travel and dining, and many ways to earn extra points, it could be our path to another award booking. And the Aviator isn’t the only card with a big welcome bonus, as Citi also offers AA cards like the Executive Club card and Platinum Select that sometimes offer big points hauls. Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan can be redeemed for trips to Japan for 70k miles or less as well, and the Alaska Airlines Visa card also offers big bonuses; I have a 75k mile bonus offer in my inbox right now. I have my eye on some of these cards for the future, and we’ll be hoping AA doesn’t devalue those Japan flights in the meantime.
As for hotels, we used most of our Capital One miles, but we still have points left over from our IHG Premier welcome bonuses. With affordable hotels in Japan running around 20k points per night, the 140k point welcome offer translates to at least a week in Japan if you take advantage of the card’s 4th-night-free benefit. As I mentioned above, Choice Hotels in Japan can be a great points value, and their credit card’s 90k bonus would equal at least 11 nights in one of their low-cost hotels. You could probably get close to a week’s worth of free nights with many hotel credit cards, or by transferring points to Marriott from an Amex card or to Hyatt from a Chase Sapphire card.
If you’ve always dreamed of eating Sushi in Tokyo or Okonomiyaki in Osaka, a good credit card strategy could help you get there!
Summary
You can get enough frequent flier miles to fly to Japan with cards like American Airlines co-branded cards from Barclays or Citi or the Alaska Airlines card from BOA.
It’s possible to earn a week worth’s of hotel stays (or more) with cards like the Capital One Venture X, IHG Premier, or Choice Select.
Next up, we’ll talk about some travel hacks including ways to use a good credit card collection to make your trip even more comfortable and rewarding!