Japan on Points (Part 5): Booking Luxury Travel to Japan
We’re returning to Japan after 3 years! For those that have been following the Japan on Points series you know that I’ve been saving our points, for the most part, since we went to Japan back in 2023. The time finally came to book our flights and our hotels for our return to the Land of the Rising Sun! My original goal was to try and go First Class, but because we had to wait for my daughter’s passport, I had to settle for Business Class. I know, complete first world problems haha!
Flying Business Class for Free….Almost
I’ll be completely honest; I had a real hard time pulling the trigger and spending the points that my wife and I have worked so hard to accumulate over the past 3 years. For the both of us it cost us 669,000 Singapore Airlines Kris Flyer points. I know, I probably could have found a way to save some points, but in all honesty with the whirlwind this year has been welcoming our daughter, I was happy with the 2.3 cent per point value because the points were doing what they were meant to do, be used and not just sit in my account! And since we ended up booking business class instead of first, we didn’t deplete our points balances meaning we don’t have to start saving again from zero!
Now before I go on, let me explain that our flights weren’t completely free. Mine and my wife’s seats I could book almost solely on points (only had to pay $125 in taxes/fees). Which isn’t bad given that the tickets, had we paid out of pocket, would have cost us over $15,000 just for the two of us. But for my daughter, I wasn’t allowed to book her ticket on points. So, I called up Singapore Airlines and had a great conversation with one of their representatives. They explained to me that for an international flight an infant ticket is 10% of whatever the adult fare is. Once I had transferred points from mine and my wife’s Chase and American Express account and booked our tickets, I called Singapore Airlines back to buy our daughters. Again, the agent I got was really helpful and after all was said and done my daughter’s ticket came out to just over $1000 after taxes and fees.
I know you’re probably thinking “Wait didn’t you say that the fee is 10% of the adult fare? That means 10% of $7,500 should be $750.” I thought the same thing. And after a little conversation with the agent it made a little more sense, but I’ll be honest it’s still a little confusing. The way I understood it is that they have set prices for the route that they base the infant ticket off of, not the dynamic price that I was seeing on the website. All in all, $1125 for a family of 3 to fly business class to Japan and back is a steal so I’ll take the win. As stoked as I was to know that we locked in our flights to Japan, I was a bit sad when I looked back at my Chase and Amex accounts and saw that my points balances had almost been completely wiped. But hey that’s what points are for, to be used, and like I said earlier in the post, we didn’t use all of them since we aren’t flying First Class like I had originally planned.
Free 5-Star Hotel Stay in Tokyo
Now that our flights were booked, we started looking into hotels. I was sitting on 2 Hilton Free Night Awards and roughly 670,000 Hilton Honors points and one of the hotels I had my eye on was the Conrad in Tokyo. After some research we decided to give this hotel a shot! So, I called up Hilton because that is the only way you can use your Free Night Awards and I booked us our first 5 nights in Tokyo. Now a little disclaimer on something that I learned. Because technically the Free Night Award booking is separate from the points booking, I couldn’t the 5th Night Free, which is a separate benefit that comes with being a Gold Member. This meant I had to use a little bit more points than I was originally anticipating. For 5 nights at the Conrad in Tokyo it came out to 390,000 points. Seeing as the Conrad is easily a $900 per night hotel I’d say that’s a pretty good use of not only my Free Night Awards, but my points as well. This left me with about 280,000 points in my Hilton Honors account. Because there aren’t really any Hiltons in the other areas of Japan that we’re visiting I think I’m just going to save the points for the next big trip we take.
Our trip to Japan is going to be far from free, BUT we’ve put our points to work for us and have set ourselves up nicely already for our next trip. The reason I say that is since we’ve booked all we can with points for this trip and will have to pay out of pocket for the rest of it, any expenses for this trip and just our regular everyday spending is no longer accruing for Japan but for the next big adventure. And I don’t know, for me there’s something encouraging about that! After all the time saving points for Japan, it’s cool to know that all the pending points that I see in my account now are no longer reserved for it anymore. I also used Rove to book one of our hotels! The points are pending so we’ll see what happens when those post. If you missed the write-up where I talked about joining Rove you can read that HERE, but now that I’ve started using it, I’ll have to do an update post to let you all know how that’s going.
Conclusion
Sadly, I think that’s the end of the Japan on points series! Japan is booked and I guess the only write up there would be to do is a recap of the experiences in Singapore Business Class and the Conrad Tokyo. As I sit here typing this, it’s hard to believe that the points journey has come to this. I’m flooded with memories of when I was still using only cashback cards or when I got my first card that earned miles and I booked a one-way ticket to fly to Seattle. That felt like a win! Fast forward over a decade from that flight to Seattle and now I’m booking travel for me and my family to go to Japan. The 20 something year old me a decade ago probably would have laughed at me now if I told him what was possible with miles and points. You just have to put your mind to it and find what works for you and your family!
