How We Booked Our Maldives Trip With Miles And Points

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Ryan and I just got back from an incredible trip to the Maldives! This was our biggest redemption splurge to date, but it’s also the most valuable trip we’ve taken. It was worth every point and I’m going to explain how we booked it. The exact ways we booked it may not necessarily be the best way for you to book it but I’ll have another post with other flight options. I’ll also have another post with some other hotel options. Our hotel was great and it deserves its own blog post with a full review, so I’m working on that as well.

In case you haven’t followed me on Tiktok or Instagram, this was not the trip we originally planned for our 10th anniversary. In fact, it wasn’t even our backup plan. Or the backup, backup plan. What happened was, we had a trip to Thailand booked, but some parts of Thailand wouldn’t be opening until October. We decided to postpone Thailand so that we could go to all the places we want when we do make it there.

Our next ideas were Italy and/or Southern France. Shortly after planning was underway for that trip, the EU recommended removing the US from its safe list. We weren’t sure what would happen, and we didn’t want to risk having to cancel last minute. We also looked at Calala Island, a private island off of Nicaragua that you can book with Hyatt points, but getting there wasn’t much less of a trek than the Maldives due to limited flight options (most likely due to Covid). So in early September I started looking into the possibility of booking the Maldives. I planned this in about 3 weeks!!

I knew Marriott had just opened a Le Meridien property and I was kind of excited about the possibility of being some of the first ever guests. Then somehow I managed to book two amazing business class flights last minute. We got really lucky that everything worked out, but in order to get the best deals on points, I recommend booking out as far as possible. It is important to start the award search process early.

This trip was beyond anything I expected and I am so grateful that we had this opportunity.

The Maldives is a very popular destination in general, but even more so among points and miles enthusiasts. This means that award space on flights, especially in business class, can be a challenge.

There are 4 things that will increase your success of finding availability if you’re trying to book flights like these:

1. Lead time. The more advance notice you have, the more time you have to search for flights that work for you. Obviously, we did not have much time. but we did have a few other things on this list.
2. Having a variety of miles and points, or at the very least, having a type of transferable currency such as Amex Membership Rewards points. If the ideal flights you want aren’t available, you’ll still have options.
3. Having flexible dates. No need to explain this one.
4. Being flexible on routing, including the possibility of booking a positioning flight so that you can fly out of a city that is not your home airport. We booked a positioning flight to fly out JFK. But not because of availability; it was because I wanted to fly in the 380! More on that in a moment. We would have been willing to fly out of any US airport to make this trip happen.

Before we get started, I want to be clear that the Maldives isn’t cheap by any means

While we were able to get most of our flights and hotel stay covered with points, food and activities are expensive and this trip was nowhere near free once you factor all of that in. There are definitely other destinations where your out of pocket expenses can be minimized. This isn’t one of them. That said, redeeming miles for fantastic business class flights to and from, plus redeeming points to cover most of our hotel stay definitely helps make a trip like this feasible.

Now this is just our flights, including seaplane, and hotel stay, but the total value of what we booked is $23,567. We redeemed a total of 553,000 miles and points and paid a total of $2,394 in fees/taxes/surcharges.

Outbound flights

We flew out of JFK because I really wanted to fly on an Emirates Airbus 380. We could have flown out of DFW, but it would have been on a 777. Also, we would have had a long layover in Dubai, whereas the JFK itinerary only gave us a 2 hour layover in Dubai. So we flew to JFK the night before and booked a hotel close to the airport.

This is what I’m talking about when I refer to positioning flights. It’s just a separate ticket to get you to a city where you found award availability/a good deal.

Positioning flights DFW-JFK on AA

• Our total: $0
• Value: $96

We got really lucky with this flight. I was only booking about 3 weeks out but we found a nonstop AA flight from DFW-JFK for just $48 each ($96 total). The airline incidental credits that you get with Amex Platinum cards aren’t supposed to cover airfare. They’re meant for baggage fees and other incidentals. But sometimes when the fare is low like this, it triggers the incidental fee credit. In this case, both of our $48 airfares were reimbursed with this credit!

Hotel stay- Hyatt Regency JFK at Resorts World New York

• Our Total: 12,000 Hyatt points and $0
• Value: $406

We wanted to stay close to JFK, so we decided to try the new Hyatt Regency JFK at Resorts World. As a category 3 property, a standard room requires only 12,000 World of Hyatt points per night.

This is a great value considering the paid rate was over $400 after taxes and fees.

They have a restaurant called Sugar Factory where we had a burger and one of their amazing dessert martinis.

And of course there was the casino. We arrived at night so we didn’t spend much time there, but we sat up at the bar and watched a live band and some college football while waiting for a table at Sugar Factory.

Note: The other way to redeem Chase Ultimate Rewards points, the redemption portal, would not have been as valuable for this Hyatt stay. With Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Ink Business Preferred, a $406 room would require 32,480 points. If you have Chase Sapphire Reserve, a $406 room would be 27,067. In this case, transferring the Chase Ultimate Rewards to Hyatt then using the Hyatt points to book results in a much lower redemption price of just 12,000 points transferred to Hyatt.

• Click here for more info about redeeming Chase Ultimate Rewards points for Hyatt hotels.
• Click here for more info about the Chase Ultimate Rewards redemption portal.

How to earn World of Hyatt points

• World of Hyatt credit card welcome bonus
• WOH credit card spend
• Paid stays at Hyatt properties
• Transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points at a 1:1 ratio*
• Don’t forget about the Chase Ultimate Rewards shopping portal since UR transfer to Hyatt!

*Transferable Chase Ultimate Rewards points are the currency earned from certain Chase cards:

• card_name
• card_name
• card_name

You do not need to accumulate World of Hyatt points to book free Hyatt stays

The quickest way to earn lots of points or miles for any given award travel goal is to earn a welcome bonus on a new credit card

While the World of Hyatt credit card from Chase may seem like the obvious choice, a transferable Ultimate Rewards earning card allows you to earn World of Hyatt points AND other hotel points and airline miles.

If you do not already have a transferable Chase Ultimate Rewards earning card, I highly suggest opening one of those first. Chase Ultimate Rewards points earned from these cards can be transferred to 11 different airlines or 3 hotel programs, including Hyatt.

If you only use a World of Hyatt card, you’re only going to earn World of Hyatt points. World of Hyatt points cannot be transferred to other hotel programs. They can be transferred to some airlines, but the ratio is so bad that it is not even worth discussing. By earning Ultimate Rewards, you have the ability to use the points for Hyatt stays, or you can transfer them to other hotels and airlines at a 1:1 ratio.

If you’re a beginner, it is very important to plan your strategy around Chase’s 5/24 rule.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this post before applying for any cards.

Emirates flights in business class

JFK to Dubai on an A380 then Dubai to MLE on a 777

Emirates miles are easy to earn and I’ll discuss that in a moment. Also, I’ll explain how it’s possible to book for less than we did.

• Our total: 235,000 miles plus $470 in taxes and fees (117,500 miles each)
• Total Value: $9172 for both of us

We woke up the next morning and arrived at JFK about 3 hours early because they said to arrive early so that they could make sure we had all necessary documents to travel. Since Le Meridien Maldives is so new, it wasn’t on their list of approved accommodations for Maldives travel. After almost half an hour of the employees-who were very nice about it-trying to figure it out, I pulled up the Maldives government website. It had an updated list, and the Emirates check in supervisor accepted that. There was no line, so we still had plenty of time to spare, but getting there early is advised in case something needs to be sorted out like our hotel situation.

After getting through security, we headed to the lounge and had a light breakfast and some mimosas.

It was totally worth flying to JFK to fly on the 380. Business class was maybe 30% full and I’m pretty sure there was more staff than passengers. The service was outstanding.

This bar area was such a nice surprise for Ryan. We were flying on a Sunday and after showing the Ryder cup, they streamed an afternoon NFL game and then the night game.

It is possible to redeem less Emirates miles than we did

Booking Emirates business class is best when booked roundtrip and when you can find saver tickets

Flights between east coast cities served by Emirates and the Maldives are 170,000 Emirates miles roundtrip in business class if you can find saver tickets. That makes each way 85,000 miles.

Saver tickets are limited and subject to availability. Also, it is only possible to book saver tickets if you’re booking roundtrip.

There are fuel surcharges but they aren’t necessarily a deal breaker. In economy they’ll be around $200 roundtrip. In business class they’ll be around $500 roundtrip.

Once saver tickets are gone, you can book at the higher redemption price. Emirates calls these tickets “Flex Plus” tickets. The Flex Plus redemption price is 117,500 each way for east coast to the Maldives.

Since we were booking last minute, our options were limited. There were no Emirates saver tickets for roundtrip dates that we could work with so we decided we would book one way with Emirates, and then we would try to book the other way on Qatar. It’s not ideal to have to redeem more for the Flex Plus tickets, but we kind of had to take what we could get, given that it was last minute. We’ve traveled significantly less than normal for the past 18 months, therefore, we had a nice stockpile of points we could transfer to Emirates! It was worth every point.

UPDATE May 2022: Flex Plus prices have increased. They now start at around 135k each way for business class US-MLE. Also, this is very unfortunate, but fuel surcharges on several Emirates routes have increased significantly. Fuel surcharges could potentially be a deal breaker, but it depends on what your alternative options are for booking your trip, and it depends on how important business class seats are to you.

Our 2 business class seats for JFK-MLE on an A380

• Our total: 235,000 miles plus $470 in taxes and fees (117,500 miles each)
• Total Value (for 2): $9172

Earning Emirates miles is easier than you probably think

There are 4 types of bank rewards currencies that transfer to Emirates 1:1.

• Chase Ultimate Rewards
• Amex Membership Rewards
• Capital One Venture miles
• Citi Thank You points

The quickest way to earn lots of Emirates miles is to earn a welcome bonus on a new credit card

Cards that earn these types of currencies often have welcome bonuses of 60k or more. We use these types of cards for everyday spending because accumulating these types of points means we aren’t limited to just one airline program like we would be with an airline co-branded card.

We usually recommend starting with Chase cards due to the 5/24 rule. Transferable Chase Ultimate Rewards points are the currency earned from these Chase cards mentioned above in the Hyatt section:

• card_name
• card_name
• card_name

See also: Intro to Chase Ultimate Rewards

Once you have a transferable Chase Ultimate Rewards earning card (and any other Chase cards you want while you’re under 5/24), you can move on to cards that earn other transferable currencies.

Our favorite American Express Membership Rewards offers:

Information about The Platinum Card from American Express and the American Express Gold card, as well as any other American Express product on this post has been independently collected by The Miles Genie.

Unlike typical credit cards, the Gold Card, Platinum Card, and Business Platinum Card allow you to carry a balance for certain charges, but not all.

Hotel Stay- 6 nights at Le Meridien Maldives

• Our totals for the 6 night stay: 140,000 Marriott points, 1 free night certificate, and $1460 (includes seaplane transfer)
• 6 night value: $5040

Le Meridien Maldives is a brand new resort that opened in September. It is currently designated as a Marriott category 5 property. This means free nights are 30k/35k/40k (off peak/standard/peak).

Of course, this is subject to availability, but a 5 night stay in a standard room would be 120k-160k Marriott Bonvoy points per night (depending on peak/standard/off peak dates).

This is certainly not the only property in the Maldives for which you can redeem points, but what makes this one interesting is that the standard room for an award stay is an overwater bungalow. Many properties in the Maldives or Bora Bora do not have overwater bungalows as their standard room that is available to book on points. They would require you to upgrade (with more points or sometimes with cash) if you want your award stay in an overwater bungalow. 

Update: That didn’t last long. As of October, overwater villas are an upgrade. You can either redeem an extra 10k points/night or you can pay $50 per night to upgrade to a sunrise overwater villa. The beach bungalow is currently the only standard room that you can book with points for the 30k/35k/40k pricing.

Points advance

The nice thing about Marriott is that if you don’t have all of the points right now, you can still book with their points advance feature. As long as you’re booking more than 30 days prior to your check in date, you can go ahead and reserve the room. You must have the points and your account and then redeem them to complete the booking 60 days after you use the points advance feature to reserve, or within 14 days of check in, whichever comes first.

Note that this only holds the room, though, and redemption pricing could change as far as off-peak/standard/peak. Marriott’s designated dates for peak, standard, and off peak pricing vary from property to property and they change monthly. For example, you could book with points advance today at off peak pricing for a stay next March. Let’s say you have all of the points in your account by November. By November, when you go to redeem, the March dates could change from off peak to peak or standard. 

We actually paid extra for an upgraded room

We originally booked a sunrise overwater villa (remember, at the time we booked this was considered a standard room) but a few days later we decided to upgrade for $100/night to a sunset view overwater villa. I’ll discuss the difference between the two in my review post, but I think we would have been happy with either!

If you have the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless credit card from Chase, you’ll receive a free night certificate every year starting at your first cardmember anniversary. This certificate is valid for a 1 night stay with a redemption price of up to 35k points. So if you’re booking on off peak or standard dates (30k or 35k), you could use this certificate for a 6th night. Considering the annual fee of this card is $95, this benefit can be super valuable. In fact, we keep ours open almost solely for this benefit. This is what’s known as a sock drawer card because it sits in a drawer and we hardly ever use it for spending. 

We booked the 6th night with a free night certificate. That was booked as a sunrise overwater villa but they combined our reservations and let us stay in the sunset room for the last night (and didn’t charge us the nightly upgrade fee of $100).

Note: to book upgraded rooms with the cash and points feature, you have to book from a browser. The cash and points options will not show up on the Marriott app.

Another note: the sunset overwater villa upgrade is now $150/night

Transportation fees in the Maldives

Here’s the catch: there’s a mandatory transportation fee of about $420 per person because you have to take a seaplane from MLE to the resort. This is typical in the Maldives no matter which hotel you book. Other fees on this award stay are only ~$60, whereas the paid stay has significantly higher extra fees on top of the transportation fee (see below).

Our 6 night stay at Le Meridien Maldives

• Our totals for the 6 night stay: 140,000 Marriott points, 1 free night certificate, and $1460 (includes seaplane transfer)
• 6 night value: $5040

5 nights was 4200 so to get the 6 night value I just figured out the average nightly total on 5 nights.

• 4200/5=840
• 840+ 4200=$5040

How to earn Marriott Bonvoy points:

• credit card welcome bonuses from Marriott co-branded cards such as the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless credit card
• Marriott credit card spend
• Paid stays at Marriott properties
• Transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points or Amex Membership Rewards points at a 1:1 ratio*
• Don’t forget about the Chase Ultimate Rewards shopping portal since UR transfer to Marriott!
• Rakuten since Amex MR transfer to Marriott

You do not have to accumulate Marriott Bonvoy points to book free Marriott stays

If you have a Chase Sapphire card that earns transferable Chase Ultimate Rewards points or an Amex Membership Rewards earning card, you can use those points to book free stays at Marriott properties.

Amex Membership Rewards points and Chase Ultimate Rewards both transfer to Marriott at a 1:1 ratio. I’ve found that most of the time, transferring Chase or Amex points to Marriott is not going to be a great value due to Marriott’s inflated redemption chart. You can read more about that here. This property is an exception, though.

Given the paid rates (over $700-$800 per night after taxes and fees), plus the fact that your 5th night is free when you redeem Marriott Bonvoy points for a 4 night stay, this would definitely be a time to consider transferring Chase or Amex points to Marriott!

The quickest way to earn lots of points or miles for any given award travel goal is to earn a welcome bonus on a new credit card

Like I said earlier, I recommend opening a transferable Chase Ultimate Rewards earning card first. But since the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless credit card is also a Chase card, this would be a good second move.

Our flights home:

• Total for both of us: 166k miles/avios and $464
• Value: $8853

We redeemed British Airways Avios (miles) and American Airlines miles for our Qatar flights on the way home.

• MLE-DOH on Qatar was booked with British Airways Avios
• DOH-DFW on Qatar was booked with AAdvantage miles

When redeeming AAdvantage miles, MLE-DOH-DFW is the same redemption price as DOH-DFW because Qatar and the Maldives are considered the same region in the eyes of the AAdvantage program.

So why did we use two different programs?

The problem was, MLE-DOH had no award availability in business class.

AAdvantage should allow mixed cabin tickets (meaning MLE-DOH economy and DOH-DFW in business), and the whole itinerary would price at the business class redemption price of 70k each. But that doesn’t come up as an option online, and I’m assuming that’s because this is an itinerary solely operated by a partner (Qatar). I already had the business class DOH-DFW segment on hold (with AAdvantage) so I tried calling. The AA agent told me that in order to try to add the economy MLE-DOH segment, I would need to release the DOH-DFW seats we had on hold, then they could try to get that itinerary set up. She advised me not to though, and knowing how award travel works, I also knew that wouldn’t be a good idea. The concern is that we may not be able to get those seats again once we release them.

Instead, I decided to book our MLE-DOH segments as a separate ticket. This wasn’t a problem for us, and it’s well documented that although not an official policy, Qatar should have no problem checking your bag all the way through (DFW for us). Theres no way to link two separate tickets prior to the day of travel, but once we checked in at MLE for our MLE-DOH segment, they had no problem linking our reservations. They gave us both boarding passes (MLE-DOH and DOH-DFW) and checked our bags all the way to DFW. It is important to point out, however, that this is a risk. If that first segment (MLE-DOH) was delayed or canceled causing us to miss our DOH-DFW segment, they are not obligated to protect us on another DOH-DFW flight.

MLE-DOH was booked with British Airways Avios

These were economy flights, and we only needed 13,000 Avios each. This is a great redemption price, but British Airways does collect fuel surcharges on Qatar operated flights and the total with the fuel surcharges and other fees was $193 per ticket. We looked at paid fares, though, and realized they were close to $1000, so we decided to redeem the 13k and pay $193 each. Remember, we were booking last minute, but I looked at the MLE-DOH flight on other dates far in advance, and this flight is still $767 in economy on the cheapest dates I could find. I’ll use that number instead of $1,000 to calculate the value. The point is, no one likes fuel surcharges but 13k plus $193 is much better than $767!

Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards, and Capital One Venture Rewards transfer to British Airways at a 1:1 ratio

This post is about booking AA flights with British Airways Avios, but the same steps would apply if you want to book Qatar operated flights with British Airways Avios.

We had avios already but this is a good example of why the Chase and Amex transfer bonuses that we saw in September can be significant. With Amex’s transfer bonus of 40% we would have needed to transfer just 19,000 to get 26,000.

• Total redeemed: 26,000 plus $386
• Total Value: $1534

DOH-DFW was booked with AAdvantage miles

We used AAdvantage miles to book Qatar Qsuites. The redemption price for MLE-DOH-DFW would be 70k AAdvantage miles each way for business class. The redemption price for DOH-DFW is also 70k AAdvantage miles each way for business class.

We redeemed 70k AAdvantage miles and paid $39 in taxes and fees each for our DOH-DFW segment.

• Our total: 140k AAdvantage miles plus $78
• Total Value: $7319

Citi Thank You points transfer to Qatar. Qatar requires 85k Qmiles each way for a saver ticket between US-MLE in a Qsuite. The problem is, there are fuel surcharges of over $500 each way. It’s better to book these seats with AAdvantage miles. Redemption price is lower (70k miles each way) and there are no fuel surcharges when booking with AAdvantage miles.

Unfortunately, none of the 1:1 transferable bank points transfer to AAdvantage. There is one exception, as there is a temporary partnership in which you can transfer Citi Thank You points to AAdvantage, but that ends on November 13. If you do not already have a Citi Thank You points earning card, it’s probably too late to open it and earn the bonus to transfer to AAdvantage before the transfer offer expires.

The good news is, there are a few AAdvantage co-branded credit cards that have welcome bonuses of 50k or more AAdvantage miles. You can have multiple AAdvantage cards at the same time, but always read the fine print for eligibility criteria.

Final thoughts

This trip was a dream and it would not have been possible without miles and points.

Grand total:

• $2,394, 553,000 points/miles, and 1 free night certificate
• $23,567

Here is the final breakdown:

DFW-JFK

• Our total: $0 (Amex airline incidental credit was applied to cover the tickets)
• Value: $96

JFK hotel stay

• Our Total: 12,000 Hyatt points and $0
• Value: $406

JFK-MLE Emirates business class (via Dubai)

• Our total: 235,000 miles plus $470 in taxes and fees (117,500 miles each)
• Total Value: $9172

6 nights at Le Meridien Maldives

• Our total for the 6 night stay: 140,000 Marriott points, 1 free night certificate, and $1460 (includes seaplane transfer)
• 6 night value: $5040

MLE-DOH on Qatar in economy

• Our total: 26,000 British Airways Avios plus $386
• Value:$1534

DOH-DFW in Qatar Qsuites (business class)

• Our Total: 140,000 American Airlines AAdvantage miles plus $78
• Value: $7319

Amex Rates and Fees:

• American Express Gold Card [See rates and fees]
• American Express Platinum Card [See rates and fees]
• Business Platinum Card from American Express [see rates and fees]

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