I’m getting married next October and the honeymoon planning is now in full swing! As a recap, we’ll be spending time in Japan, Singapore, and the Maldives.
Choosing A Property
In my initial post, I talked about how I was torn between the Park Hyatt Maldives and Conrad Maldives. I ultimately chose the Conrad Maldives for three reasons.
- I had almost 300,000 Hilton points to burn (more than enough for a three-night stay)
- I have Hilton Gold Status which gets you a lot of perks at the Conrad Maldives (free tea, happy hour, breakfast, welcome gift…)
- We’re only staying for three nights and Conrad is more easily accessible than the Park Hyatt (Conrad requires a quick flight while Park Hyatt requires a flight and boat ride.)
Park Hyatt was more of a dream option since I don’t currently have any Hyatt points and also don’t have status with Hyatt. I would have been able to earn the Hyatt points by next March, but Conrad is just a better choice for our needs.
Booking Our Stay
The Conrad Maldives is a category 10 property worth 95,000 points per night. I needed 285,000 Hilton points to book our three-night stay. Three nights isn’t long, but we only have so much time off from work. Also, since I have Gold status, we could have stayed for five nights at a rate of 76,000 points per night. Oh well…
First I needed to transfer my fiancé’s 58,000 Hilton points to my account. I initiated the transfer at 8:45am on a Wednesday and the points finally posted Thursday just before 5:00pm. The website states the transfer will take 24 hours, but the rep I spoke with said it actually can take up to 48 hours.
I was eager to book our stay early since I noticed that Hilton started offering Water Villas for the same points value as Beach Villas. Beach Villas may be slightly larger, but they have less privacy and don’t have direct water access (meaning you have to walk on a beach instead of jumping right off your deck…first world problems, amirite?)
Still, staying in a Water Villa is part of the Maldives dream and now we don’t have to pay for an upgrade!
Final Thoughts
At the time of booking, our three nights in a Water Villa at the Conrad Maldives was worth $3,276, earning a redemption value of 0.77 cents per point. That’s pretty good for Hilton points which are generally worth less than 0.5 cents apiece. Of course, we will have to pay $1,120 for the roundtrip seaplane transfer to the island.
This is the very first thing I booked for our honeymoon so there’s still a lot to do. I need to book flights to Japan, Singapore, the Maldives, and back to Boston, along with all of our hotels in Japan and Singapore. Stay tuned for more booking details!
Honeymoon Stats
Points spent: 285,000
Out-of-pocket cost: $1,120
Total value: $4,396
