A Luxury Trip Around The World in 17 Days, 330,000 Airline Points, 436,000 Hotel Points, and $800

Around-The-World in 17 Days on Points?!

This past July and August, I had the amazing and unique opportunity to go on a trip circumnavigating the globe. Los Angeles to Washington DC to Paris, France to Taipei, Taiwan, to Tokyo, Japan and back to Los Angeles.  It was my first time accomplishing such an unique trip; but to make all of it that much sweeter, almost all of the flights and hotels were paid for on points.

There are already several very popular blogs out there that tell you about how to maximize your points to take these epic trips. I started along my path with traveling on points by consulting with dedicated followers of those blogs and diving into some of them myself. A trend that I found within those blogs however, was that for many of these individuals, these Points were their hobby. They enjoyed maximizing and plotting out CPP (Cents Per Point); they got highs off researching deals, locating stores where they could bend rules to maximize deals, etc.

It was a lot of concerted effort; much like any hobby if you wanted to master it, you had to invest the time into it. For about a month I dived into that world myself, but like many other hobbies I have tried, I found it was all too time consuming. I was not getting the same 'highs' and started to realize that I was losing out on opportunity costs i.e. participating in the hobbies where I would get my highs. Pretty quickly, I fell out of the hobbyist status; at the same time the credit card companies started to clamp down on the loopholes that allowed for some of the more ridiculous CPP (or in some cases getting paid for points).

Despite my loss of dedication and increasingly restrictive deals, I was still able to pull off this once in a life time trip mostly on points, and I believe with some careful planning anybody can too; without having to go into crazy points acquisition mode.

The table below breaks down each leg of my trip, showing the points cost, out of pocket dollar costs, and any special notes regarding that trip leg.

Flights:

Leg	Airline	Class	Points	$$$	Notes
LAX to DC (2)	Southwest	Economy	+882	$180.60	Companion Pass
DC to Paris (2)	United	Economy	-60k	$11.20
Paris to Taipei (2)	EVA Airlines	Royal Laurel	-150k	$228.80	Hello Kitty Plane
Taipei to Tokyo (2)	EVA Airlines	Economy	-30k	$18.80	Hello Kitty Plane
Tokyo to LAX (2)	Delta	Economy*	-90k	$80 + $240^	*Upgraded at the gate ^Fee for xferring points

Hotel/City	# of Nights	Points
Hilton Paris Opera	2	160k
Hilton Paris CDG	1	40k
Grand Hyatt Taipei	3	36k
Hilton Tokyo (Shinjuku)	4	200k

In the posts to come, I will delve more into how with a little bit of planning an patience you will still be able to maximize your points, key factors to consider, and also some more about my trip!