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In our newest travel savings report, we share how our family saved $12,441.12 on a weeklong luxury vacation in Mexico for Christmas break. We stayed at one of the best resorts on the Riviera Maya for 7 nights in a suite and saved over $10,000 by using Hyatt points plus a suite upgrade. We flew Southwest Airlines with points and took advantage of our Companion Passes to save even more. Here’s the breakdown of how we paid just $269.80 for over $12K worth of travel to the Mexican Riviera Maya thanks to traveling with points, miles and reward programs.
Flying Southwest to Cancun with points + Southwest Companion Pass
We flew Southwest Airlines from Baltimore to Cancun using our Southwest Rapid Rewards points. We booked roundtrip flights for 16,224 Southwest points plus $83.96 in taxes and fees per ticket. Taxes and fees on international award flights vary by the destination and are somewhat high for Mexico. We brought my mom on this trip so we purchased 5 tickets.
Thanks to our Southwest Companion Passes, our kids flew for just $83.96 and zero points. Bertaut and I both earned the Southwest Companion Passes through opening Southwest credit cards- both a personal card and a business card. We’ve written a post explaining how to earn the Southwest Companion Pass, so check that out if you’d like to fly a companion with you for up to 2 years for just the price of taxes and fees. Apply for your own Southwest credit card here. You might be able to snag the companion pass for one year by opening just one credit card while the offer is still available. On domestic flights, taxes and fees are only $5.60 per flight, even all the way to Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The great thing about the Companion Pass is that you can change your companion 3 times per calendar year, allowing you to treat different people to free flights. This has allowed us to treat our parents, children, and each other to free flights depending on our travel plans.
We saved $1,142 by using our Southwest points,Companion Passes, & credits on our Southwest Priority Credit Cards
We shaved an extra $150 off our airfare total thanks to our Southwest Priority credit cards, which are one of our favorite travel reward cards. Bertaut and I each have the Southwest Priority credit card, which has an annual $75 credit on Southwest purchases. So the $419.80 in taxes and fees for 5 roundtrip flights to Cancun ended up only costing us $269.80. We used a total of 48,672 Southwest points for our family of 5 to fly to Mexico for Christmas. The retail price of our flights was $282.46 each, or $1,412.30 for 5 people. We saved $1,142.50 on flights.
Southwest Airlines Baltimore to Cancun Airfare Savings
| Category | Retail Cost | What We Actually Paid | Savings |
| Airfare - 5 People | $1,412.30 | $269.80 | $1,142.50 |
Staying at Andaz Mayakoba with Hyatt Points + Hyatt Globalist status
We stayed at the Andaz Mayakoba Resort Riviera Maya for 7 nights over the Christmas and New Year holidays. Read our reviews from our first stay at Andaz Mayakoba and our recent vacation during the pandemic. We stayed from December 25 through January 1, 2021 during peak season. Cash rates were much higher than usual due to the high demand over the holidays, but the points rates remained the same. We booked a standard room for 25K Hyatt points per night. Hyatt will be moving to standard, peak ,and off-peak award pricing starting July 1, 2021, so make sure to lock in any future reservations now if you plan to do any traveling over peak season within the next year.
Standard rooms at Andaz Mayakoba were going for over $700 per night during the Christmas holidays, but suites started at $1099 per night plus taxes and fees. As Hyatt Globalists, we were able to secure a complimentary upgrade to a Lagoon View Suite. The cost for 7 nights in a Lagoon View Suite for our stay would have been $10,308.62 after taxes and fees. Taxes and fees are very high at this resort, costing over $300/night in addition to the room rate. However, Hyatt does not charge taxes and fees on award stays, maximizing our savings.
So we paid just 175,000 Hyatt points for 7 nights in a Lagoon View Suite thanks to our Hyatt Globalist Suite Upgrade. Prior to our stay, we registered for a Hyatt promotion where we got 15% of our points back for bookings made with points and an additional 10% back if we used our Hyatt credit card. We earned 43,750 Hyatt points back meaning that we only ended up using only 131,250 Hyatt points for our 7 night stay!
We didn’t have enough Hyatt points (which can be earned through the World of Hyatt Credit Card or stays at Hyatt properties) for our stay at the time of the booking. Luckily World of Hyatt is a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards. We instantly transferred Chase Ultimate Rewards points (earned from our Chase Sapphire Preferred®️ Card and Ink Business Preferred®️ Credit Card) at a 1:1 ratio to World of Hyatt. This allowed us to lock in our last minute and much-needed vacation at a tremendous savings.
We saved over $10K on a week at Andaz Mayakoba by using Hyatt points
As Hyatt Globalists, we also enjoyed the huge perk of complimentary breakfast. This benefit is supposed to cover up to 2 adults and 2 children per room, but it ended up covering breakfast for everyone. The breakfast buffet at Cocina Milagro includes the extensive buffet selections in addition to an item off the menu. So we ordered 4 breakfast buffets each morning and 4 items off the menu which was more than enough food to satisfy everyone. In fact, we had leftovers that we enjoyed for lunch on some days. We highly recommend the Eggs Benedict which was our favorite!
Breakfast at Cocina Milagro would have been quite expensive ordering this much food if we had actually paid for it. Our breakfast bill ranged from $120- $200 for our family of five every morning, but we only had to pay for the gratuity. We tallied up our savings from breakfast, which was an additional $990 thanks to having Hyatt elite status.
Mexico Airfare Hotel Savings
| Category | Retail Cost | What We Actually Paid | Savings |
| Airfare | $1,412.30 | $269.80 | $1,142.50 |
| Hotel | $10,308.62 | $0.00 | $10,308.62 |
| Breakfast | $990 | $0.00 | $990 |
| Total Expenses | $12,710.92 | $269.80 | $12,441.12 |
We saved $990 on breakfast thanks to our Hyatt Globalist status
Final Savings on our Luxury Vacation to the Mexican Riviera Maya
When adding up travel costs we spent $269.80 on a total of $12,710.92 worth of luxury travel for 5 people. We saved $12,441.12 on a weeklong vacation over the height of the Christmas and New Years holidays. I’d say that’s pretty good for a winter holiday in Mexico’s Riviera Maya on the beach. This was our first family vacation since the pandemic started, and it was so incredibly refreshing to get our toes in the sand again.
Make sure to read our post about our stay at Andaz Mayakoba during the pandemic to see how the hotel took precautions to keep its guests safe. What’s your biggest travel savings thanks to traveling with points and miles? Drop us a comment and share your proudest travel moment! Check out our other savings reports to see how we’ve saved hundreds of thousands of dollars using points and miles to travel the world for pennies on the dollar. If you want to get started or improve your points travel savvy, sign up for our email list to be on your way to traveling like a millionaire without spending a fortune!
*The editorial content is not provided or commissioned by the credit card issuers. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.
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