Bora Bora (Almost) for Free with Miles and Points
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Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am excited to do something different today. In fact, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll already know why, because I'm recording this from an overwater bungalow at the St. Regis in Bora Bora.

These views are amazing. Now, so many of the listener questions I get are about how to maximize your points and miles for amazing redemptions. And I wanted to take this episode to share how we ended up taking a trip that would have otherwise cost me and Amy over $20,000 for less than $1,500 in points. And I'm actually going to walk through all the steps to search for flights, transfer points, and book hotels so you can use those tips to get the best deal possible on your next trip.

Two quick things before we get started. One, if you're new to the show and you want to get a good foundation for travel hacking, points, and miles, I'd recommend going back and listening to episode one with Lee Rowan on travel hacking, episode three with Brad Barrett on credit card points and miles, or episode 27 with the points guy himself, Brian Kelly. And two, if you're already thinking that a trip like this is out of reach for you, hold on. I want to read you this amazing email I just got a few weeks ago.

Chris, my name's Zach. I'm a medical student currently finishing up my second year and have been a fan of your podcast since the first episode came out. I really like what you're doing and have been putting a lot of the hacks you and your guests talk about to work.

As you can imagine, money is incredibly tight for a medical student. However, my girlfriend and I put some of your credit card signup bonus and flight hotel point hacks to work. And we were able to use almost exclusively points and miles to cover round trip flights and four to five star hotels for a 10 day trip to Europe to celebrate our four year anniversary in a few months.

We ended up turning 350,000 points and miles from credit card signup bonuses and other necessary purchases into flights and hotels that we calculated equals about $7,200 of value. I think this is proof that what you're talking about works for literally anyone, even a medical student who has basically no money. Thanks again for what you're doing. And I look forward to listening to more episodes of All the Hacks in the future.

So, Zach, thank you so much for writing that in. I am so excited for your trip. And I just hope that helps anyone listening know that these hacks are really accessible. And I hope they help you take an amazing trip. And while I'm going to walk you through everything I did for this trip on the podcast...

On YouTube, I'm actually going to share some footage from the trip. And I'll also share my screen as I walk through some of the booking steps. So if you want to watch that, head on over to allthehacks.com slash 49, because this is episode 49 and check it out. And if you have any follow-up questions or want some clarification, don't hesitate to shoot me an email, chris at allthehacks.com.

So first off, how did this trip even come to be? Well, if you've been listening, you might know that my wife and I are expecting our second child in June this year. So we were trying to think what kind of a vacation we could take before the craziness of having two children come. And my parents kindly volunteered to watch our daughter for one week and told us this week would work best. So we started thinking about what we could possibly do with one week off. And we

We had all these points and we wanted to burn them on something amazing. And so we started looking and we kind of identified we didn't want to go too crazy far just for the fact that we only had a week. So it was where can we go on flights for less than 10 hours? And the options, unfortunately, from the West Coast, a lot of the Caribbean is really hard to get to. So we looked at places like Turks and Caicos. So we even looked at Costa Rica. And it just seemed like it was going to be a really tough trip to take multiple layovers to get to where you wanted to. And it just wasn't that convenient.

and we'd come to Bora Bora back in 2018, and we stayed at the Conrad, and I'll talk about the differences between that and the St. Regis in a bit, but it was so amazing that we thought, well, we might as well just look to see if that's possible. So we kind of had an idea from the beginning of, let's just take the most amazing, relaxing vacation we can. We know Bora Bora is one nonstop flight. It's about 10,000 miles.

eight hours from San Francisco. And then you take a small plane from Papeete to here, which you could probably hear flying above me right now. And that is exactly what we thought we would do. So that was the idea, was from the beginning, can we make Bora Bora possible with points, with miles? Actually, before we get into everything, I just want to paint a picture of how amazing this place is. My wife and I have been on a lot of trips, and we always say next time we're going to go somewhere new, but Bora Bora and Japan are...

are two places that we always say, you know what? Let's just go back there again because it's so incredible. The water is the clearest thing you could possibly imagine. Resorts have hammocks that just sit out in the ocean so you can just lie, relax, and enjoy life

just the most beautiful views. There's something super special about having a bungalow that sits over the water where you can jump off your balcony straight into the water. You get bikes and you can ride them all around. It's like the most relaxing manicured place to just, everyone is so friendly. I just, it's hard to,

be more excited about a place you can go on vacation than here. And one of the things I really love is that I've been to a few resorts, sometimes in Mexico or in the Caribbean, where it just feels like you took a bunch of American culture and you just plopped it down in the middle of a nice beach. And this is totally different than that. French Polynesia has a very distinct culture, and most of the resorts here try to infuse that culture into the resort so you really get a feel for it, whether it's extracurricular

activities, excursions, doing a Polynesian night, different types of food that you can try. The staff at most of these resorts is like the most friendly people ever. And you can spend time talking to them about their culture and understand it. And so I think that's another part of travel that's really important to us that you get to do here. I think that's it. I just wanted to paint a picture of what an amazing, magical experience a trip like this can be. I know a lot of people say it's once in a lifetime, but the reason I love points, the reason I love miles, the reason I love all the hacks is

is because there's a way to make it possible way more frequently than once in a lifetime without having to spend the money it would otherwise cost. If you're watching this on video, I have overlaid a bunch of pictures and videos so you could really get a sense of how cool this place is. If you want to go check out the video, you can see all that. Or if you head on over to my Instagram, just Chris Hutchins, I'll try to post some photos and videos so you can get a sense of how really magical this place is. So now that we know where we're going, I want to start looking at how we can get there, and then I'll look at where to stay.

So we want to go to Papeete, which is the main international airport in French Polynesia. So I like to start all of these searches by going to flightconnections.com. And I do that because they show you all the routes that you can get to a certain airport from.

So for Papeete, you can see that in the U.S., the only routes are from San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Honolulu. Now, for us trying to take a week trip, which is going to be a short trip, flying from San Francisco to Honolulu and then down to Papeete, it's just not in the cards. So we're really looking at SFO and LAX flights.

So now that I know what the routes are, I first like to go see how much are the flights. And the way I typically do that is not looking from my home destination, but just looking at the specific nonstop flights because you get a sense of what the international prices are going to be. So I'm going to go to Google Flights.

And I'm going to search for San Francisco or LAX. And so you can search multiple froms and multiple twos at Google Flights. And so you type SFO. And then the easiest way to do it is once you hit comma, Google Flights saves that. And so you can type SFO comma, LAX comma, and then you search PPT. Now, unfortunately, Google Flights will not let you search for

for nonstop flights from the get go. So you have to click into a search and then filter to nonstop. So now that I've filtered to nonstop, I'm going to look at round trip flights from SFO or LAX to PPT. I'm going to go in and search by clicking on the date field, you can actually in the bottom left, say show me five day trips. And you can actually look at how much these tickets are going to cost.

And what I'm seeing is that on most days for the rest of March and a lot of days in April, the round trip tickets are $550 to $600, $700, which is pretty reasonable for a long distance international flight. So out the gate, I'm thinking, wow, I don't even know if I want to use miles. But, you know, it's a short trip. A lot of the flights are overnight. I've got a lot of miles planned.

what about business? Every now and then I look at business internationally and it's really not that much more. In this case, I'm going to look and I already know what I'm going to see. It's going to be almost five grand or more, which for me just makes it completely off the table. So at this point, I've kind of said, all right,

all right, I'm going to fly economy or I'm going to see if there's miles available for business. Obviously, if the miles are available for business and it's a good deal, that's what I would prefer to do. So now that I know the flight routes there are, right, you can click through Google Flights and you can see, okay, well, United has a flight, Air Tahiti, Nui has a flight, Air France has a flight. Keep in mind that for a lot of international destinations,

the day you fly on might actually change what airlines have flights. They might not all have flights the same day. So if you're clicking through days, you'll actually see that on some days, an airline called French B actually flies from San Francisco. It's the airline we flew down to French Polynesia the last time we came. And I thought it was a great experience. So definitely click around to make sure you know what

airlines are looking for. Now, I can tell you in advance that French Bee doesn't have a mileage program that lets you book award tickets. So I'm going to start looking first on United. Now, if you search SFO to PPT and you search a date, you click Award Travel,

you're going to get a list of flights for that day, but you're also going to get an award calendar at the top. And if you click under that, you'll see view 30-day calendar, and you can actually see all the different award prices. So you'll see that on every Sunday and really Tuesday, almost all the flights United flies for the rest of March and into April. Almost every week, you can find a flight for 35,000 or 37,000 miles. But knowing that the flights are only 600 round trip flights,

And if you dig into the one-way prices, you'll learn they're about 380 going down, maybe 280 or 300 coming back. I'm not sure I'd rather use 35,000 miles for the ticket. But if I look in business, you'll see that 70,000 points going down, United has availability on the next four Sundays.

And you can go search round trip, see when it's available on the way coming back. So now all of a sudden I've said, okay, that's low inventory. I know that that's one of the lowest prices you'll see. United even highlights it in green if it's the lowest price in the month.

So now we're like, okay, so United has some tickets coming down. You can also check the other airlines. So I said French B doesn't have anything, but there's also Air France and there's Air Tahiti Nui. So you can go through the Air France website and do it for Air Tahiti Nui. While I'm sure you don't have Air Tahiti Nui in miles, you probably maybe have or have access from a transfer partner to American who are partners. So you could book from American. So you can actually search those flights on their websites online.

I have a subscription to a website called Expert Flyer, and that site lets you search award inventory for a lot of flights. So I can actually go there and just say I'm looking for LAX to PPT and I'm

do a search. One of the great features they have is that you can search three days before and three days after. So you can search seven days at a time. And I can go in and search Air Tahiti Nui. And I can say, I'm looking for a business award. And it'll come back and show you, here's what we found. Now, I can tell you that

It's hard to find award availability far out in advance. A lot of airlines don't release all the inventory. But when you're trying to book something somewhat last minute, sometimes you get really, really lucky. So in the case of United, you saw that, you know, we got award availability on business class seats four days in a row on Air Tahiti, Niue. It looks like I'm currently looking and there's nothing to get down. But coming back, if you want to leave on...

on the 30th of March. There's five seats back to LA. So maybe that's an option. And the availability changes all the time. ExpertFlyer actually lets you set alerts to say, hey, if something pops up, let me know. I'll save you the looking. Air France had no availability, so I'll just skip over it. But if you really wanted to book that Air Tahiti and away flight, you can actually go on American Airlines' website and you can just search...

to LAX, you can say book with miles and it'll show up. I happen to know that it's going to be 80,000 miles to book that flight. And so from my perspective, I'd rather just use the 72,000 United miles. However, one of the things

One of the things to know is that when there's availability on an airline, that means that you can book it from any of their partners. So that's where a search like point.me really comes in to benefit you. So I'm going to go do this search on point.me and I already did it, but I have it pulled up in front of me. And what happens is they say, yep,

We found the availability on United. This was for March 20th. And when you look at the options to book it, they say, yeah, you can book it with United with 72,800 miles, but you can also book it with Air Canada for 55,000 miles.

And Air Canada happens to be a transfer partner of Amex, Capital One and Chase. And let me tell you, like, I love Air Canada as a mileage program. The Aeroplan program has some really great spots of redemption just like this. So now I'm thinking, OK, whether you have Amex points, Cap One points, Chase points, or you happen to be someone with Air Canada points, that's 55,000 miles down.

You can find the return, $55,000 back. That's 110,000 miles for your trip. So what is 110,000 miles worth? Well, if you know that the business class flight would have been about $5,700, then that's $0.05 a mile. To put that in perspective, if you were using a card that earns you three points per dollar on travel expenses, and you can get $0.05 per mile, that's like getting 15% cash back.

So I think that's an amazing deal. And in fact, that is exactly what we did to come down here. We got Air Canada miles and we used them to book United business class seats for 110,000 miles each. And the taxes, as you could see, were $36. And it's really easy. You can create an account on Air Canada's website. You can go search for the flights. And once you find the availability, you can go to Chase or Cap One and do the transfer. Usually you just log out, log back in and boom, done.

They show up right there, make it really easy to book. So that's how we got here. We booked it through on United, in business with Air Canada Miles. It ended up being $36 each way per person, whereas the two business class tickets would have been over $11,000.

So that's flights. That is how I typically do all of this searching. Point.me is a great place. You could even start there if you want. It's pretty great at searching across lots of different travel sites. The challenge is they don't have any flexible date search. So when you go to United's website, you can look at a 30-day calendar and get a sense of whether there's something great one day. With Point.me, you've got to go search a day, and then the next day...

and then the next day. So when there's only a few options of flights and you're flexible on dates, I like to start searching on the airline's websites. But if you're pretty strict on dates and you're going somewhere with lots of options, like the US to Europe, it could definitely be easier to search on point.me. But keep in mind...

Sometimes there's strange things that happen where it might be availability from San Francisco to Paris, but not from Paris to, let's say, Nice, France. And it might be a really cheap flight. So definitely make sure that when you're looking for award flights, you're not just looking at the whole trip. You might be looking at the major leg that you really want. And you could maybe buy a cheap $50, $100 ticket on either end to make

make it all the way to your destination.

Hey, everybody. I just want to interrupt because I've partnered with Point.me, my favorite award search tool, to give you a special offer of only $1 for your first month of their standard plan if you go to allthehacks.com slash pointme and use the promo code HACKS. Again, allthehacks.com slash p-o-i-n-t-m-e or find the link in the show notes. So definitely take advantage of that if you're planning a trip with Points.

I love helping you answer all the toughest questions about life, money, and so much more. But sometimes it's helpful to talk to other people in your situation, which actually gets harder as you build your wealth. So I want to introduce you to today's sponsor, Long Angle. Long Angle is a community of high net worth individuals with backgrounds in everything from technology, finance, medicine, to real estate, law, manufacturing, and more.

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Once I figured out we could get flights and I knew that there were a lot of different days and actually, you know, I'm speaking in Bora Bora right now. So when I was looking at this, United had a business class three different days in a single week. So I kind of knew I had a little bit of flexibility. We probably had 12 days and we wanted to go for six. So I kind of had a little bit of wiggle room. So I said, great. Now I know that the flights are there. Let's pause and let's look at hotels.

And I think one of the first things to do when you're looking at hotels is just to get a sense of what are the rates. Because sometimes miles and points for hotels don't make a lot of sense. Sometimes I like Google for hotels. Their hotel search is pretty good.

Lots of websites to look for hotels. Whichever one has the right filters you like, go for it. You could use TripAdvisor. You could use Kayak. It really just matters what you like. Right now, we're not trying to book a hotel. We're just trying to search. So if I go on and search Bora Bora on...

Google hotels, you'll see that there are a lot of hotels that come up. Fortunately for Bora Bora, there aren't an unlimited number. There's like eight or nine hotels that are kind of high-end, go take a luxury vacation. And so I can look at them and say, okay, well, look, the Conrad, $722 a night, St. Regis, $1,200 a night. And I'm here looking March 21st to 26th.

Once you find a hotel, one of the nice things that Google will let you do, and it doesn't work until you pick the hotel. But in this example, if you go and click View Prices on a Google Hotels listing, now you can actually go to the dates and they'll say, Best prices for one night stay, and they'll show you all the prices.

And so you can actually look out and say, wow, you know, there are some days that are ridiculously expensive. Like I'm looking right now, April 4th, the average rate for a night at the St. Regis in Bora Bora is $3,500 to $3,000 a night, which means a five night stay is going to cost you almost 20 grand. When I actually booked this trip, the rate per night was about $2,100.

For me, I was like, wow, there's no world where I could get comfortable spending $10,000 on a vacation. So it's time to look at points. And fortunately, in Bora Bora, there's two intercontinental hotels. There's a Conrad. There's a St. Regis. All different Hilton, Marriott, or IHG points, all which have transfer partners. So when I'm trying to find the award hotels where I might get the best deal, I love this site, awardmapper.com.

If you're watching the video, you'll see that I actually have it pulled up in Paris because there's a bit of a bug on the site right now when it comes to Bora Bora. But I just want to show a little bit how it works. So you can go to anywhere in the world and you can click different filters for hotel programs, whether it's Hilton or Marriott or Intercon and see all the hotels in that region that participate in that program. So unfortunately, if you go to Bora Bora on a word mapper, you will only see three hotels. You won't see all of them. Fortunately, I had done enough research to know what they were.

So I looked at Intercon. I looked at St. Regis. I looked at the Conrad. And basically, the way I do those searches is on their websites. So if you go to the Marriott website, and you say, I want to look at the St. Regis Bora Bora, you can say flexible dates, which I love doing. And I like to search for just one night. So you get a sense of all the availability. Click Use Points and click View Rates. And what you'll get is a calendar of

30 days of availability. And you can see which nights have availability. Right now, you can see that there are six nights for the rest of March, which, you know, it's the 18th. So 50% of the days left in March still have availability. And in April, there's 13 nights. So

little bit less than half of April. It's not perfect. It's not like you could stay for 10 days in a row. But I will say when you search this availability, it changes a lot. I remember right before we booked it, one of the days we wanted to stay was gone. I waited six hours, it came back, and I'll actually pull up. So this is what the chart looked like. If you're watching the video, you'll see it. But when I was booking the chart for March, the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 10th, 12th, 15th,

all the way to the 22nd were all available. And then the next day, the 13th and the 14th opened up, which is when we ended up actually coming down here. So already I was looking at 70 to 85,000 points a night thinking this is probably going to be the way we're going to do this trip. But we stayed at the Conrad a few years ago and it was fantastic. And while I don't have a lot of Hilton points, they often have transfer bonuses from Amex. So I thought it'd be worth looking. So I looked at the Conrad.

You check use points. You can hit view available dates. And sometimes it's crazy. So I'm looking right now. And if you want to make a last minute trip for the next four days, it's 120,000 points per night, which is a pretty good deal. If you want to go beyond that,

It's 1.3 million points per night, which is a terrible, terrible use of Hilton points. So you might find some great deals with Hilton if you're looking. But like I said, those rooms sometimes can be as low as $700, $800 a night.

which look, that is a really expensive hotel room. But this is also a really, really expensive place to be that can cost $2,000 or $3,000 a night. So if you find a deal with dollars, it might be worth doing that. For us, we ended up able to take advantage of the Marriott deal where you book four nights, get the fifth free. And it was about $85,000 a night. So we paid about... Actually, I know exactly. We paid 340,000 points. And I'll pull up my confirmation right here.

which shows there's 340,000 points for the whole stay. And it was 2,000 French Polynesian dollars, which is about 20 bucks. So all in now, our flights were about $188 of taxes. And our hotel was about $20 in fees. We're at about $200. And our rooms otherwise were over 2,000 a night. So 10 grand. Flights were over 11,000. So this is a $20,000 vacation that...

We just booked last minute for less than $200 and about 340,000 merit points and about 220,000 chase points. I think we use chase points or you could use Capital One or Amex. One thing to share, if you're going to book, whether it's with points or dollars, one of the things a lot of people want to know, you know, if you're coming to a place like Bora Bora, is how do you get that upgrade? And the way I recommend thinking about that is...

There's a website called Flyer Talk. And for almost every hotel you can book with miles, there's a thread. And you can go way down the rabbit hole, and I wouldn't recommend that. But I would find the thread on the hotel you're trying to book at and just read a little bit, jump all the way to the end, see the recent reports of what people have found. A lot of these hotels, you can book a basic room, email them, and upgrade it with dollars. You might even get a better deal than sometimes the online hotel.

price to upgrade your hotel. And then you can also just take your chances. If you have status or if you book it through a program or a travel agent or something like that, you might be able to be waitlisted for an upgrade if it's available. I'm actually working on an experiment right now with a travel company that would allow all listeners of this show to be able to book luxury properties around the world and get those kind of amenities. So if you're listening right now and you're looking at booking with

dollars at a higher end property anywhere in the world, and you want things like free breakfast or upgrade or late checkout and stuff like that, shoot me an email. We could do a little beta test here and see if we can get you hooked up on your next trip. Wouldn't cost you anything extra. So that's what I would recommend. Definitely do some research to see if there's a way you can get that upgrade. I know in a place like Bora Bora, some hotels, the cheap room that you book with points, and in our case, was not an overwater bungalow, but it was a

a villa on the beach. It's funny, if you talk to people who've been here a lot, some people say, you know what, once the allure of the overwater bungalow wears off, the beach villa where you kind of have your own hammock and your own plunge pool and all that stuff, it's actually nicer. Hasn't worn off for me yet. I'm really enjoying jumping in the water from the balcony. So one day maybe I'll get there, but certainly not there today. So that covers flights to French Polynesia. That covers your hotel in Bora Bora. But there's one important thing I forgot to mention, and that's that

Bora Bora is not located on the same island as Papeete, where all the international flights come in. So you need to get there. And the only way to really get there is to fly on Air Tahiti. And the fares are relatively the same. You book on their website. They're not the cheapest, but they're not crazy expensive. I think if you book really last minute, it might be about $400 round trip. But that's really your only option. So there's no hacks. There's no tricks.

But what is interesting to know is a lot of the flights that come down here during the day and leave as a red-eye going back home or vice versa mean that you're either going to land late at night or you're going to take off really early in the morning. And one hack, if you're able to swing it, is to book on an airline or even split and book on two airlines so you have an overnight flight each way. Otherwise, if you have a super early morning flight,

going out or you land really late at night, there are no flights to get to an island that leave after or leave early enough to make your connection. So for us, we ended up getting in around 8 p.m. and we spent one night at the Intercontinental in Tahiti. It was actually fantastic. We actually spent almost the whole next day and took an afternoon flight out

The pool was amazing. The snorkeling was great. Overall, I had a great experience. There's also a Hilton near the airport. Both looked great. So if you don't get in early enough to make a connection or if you're flying out early in the morning and you need to stay a night before, I could recommend both those places.

I won't go into it in this podcast, but there's also a ton of great hotels on the island of Morea, which is really close to the main island of Tahiti. So if you want to split your trip up, check that out. There's a lot of other islands here worth checking out, but I just figured I'd focus on the trip we just planned and walk you through it all.

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Okay. I wanted to share two things. One, I have a bunch of hacks that I've learned from two trips here. And two, I just want to kind of compare and contrast the two places I've stayed in case you happen to be listening to this and thinking, should I stay at the St. Regis? Should I stay at the Conrad?

First off, it doesn't matter which one you pick. They're both going to be absolutely amazing. But I figure should you have the question, it might be worth sharing. So first off, if you're thinking of booking this, one hack that I've heard a lot of people we've met at the resort have told us is that they actually booked their trip on Costco.

Now, I've never used Costco's travel program, and when I tried to look online before recording this, it looks like you have to call for availability. But we talked to at least three couples that said they looked around, and the best possible deal they found was booking through Costco, and it included their flight from L.A., and all they had to do was get to L.A. So I'll definitely say...

Try that out if you're looking at coming here and taking an amazing vacation. Some people actually booked packages that included their dinner. In a lot of places in the world, I would never want to make that kind of a commitment in advance to eat at the hotel every single night. But if you're coming somewhere like Bora Bora, like the Maldives, where the options outside of your resort are almost nothing. In fact, I don't think we will eat outside of the resort the entire time we're here because...

there's nowhere to walk to. Yes, you could take a boat, but then you'd need to charter a boat to come back. It just seems like a lot of work. So we've been eating at the resort and it's been fantastic. So if that's the circumstance and there's a deal to book your dinner and that dinner is reasonably priced. And let me remind you that

All food here is expensive. So I will say that while we've saved a ton of money booking the flights with points and a ton of money booking the hotel with points, there is no deal to get affordable food. There are some hacks to save a little bit of money. But at the end of the day, if you're coming to a place like this, you're just going to have to bite the bullet and spend money on food because it's the only way to do it and really enjoy yourself.

So I want to share a few of the differences between the two hotels I've stayed at here. I'll go through it quickly because most of you are probably not looking to plan a trip to Bora Bora in the near future and pick between these exact two hotels. But maybe comparing them will help you guys think about ways to compare other hotels in the future. So when I think about the two...

What was obvious in advance was that the Conrad was newer. It had only been open for a few years when we went in 2018, and the St. Regis has been open a lot longer. That doesn't mean a lot in terms of quality because the St. Regis is absolutely incredible, but it does mean that you have a little bit of a different vibe. The Conrad vibe was a little bit more modern and perfectly manicured, and there's Bluetooth speakers in the room that you can pair your phone with.

and the St. Regis was just as luxurious, but maybe a little less modern. A couple other fun quick hits.

The St. Regis has this beautiful lagoon with fish that you can snorkel in, but around all the villas, the water is just beautiful, clear water. You can see it behind me if you're watching the video. Whereas the Conrad didn't have any special place to snorkel, but the entire villas were surrounded by coral reefs. So the snorkeling right off of your balcony or your patio was incredible. When it comes to upgrades, the Conrad has...

about 30, I think, rooms that aren't over water. And I think the St. Regis has closer to 10. So the likelihood that there will be an extra room because there's just more of the St. Regis rooms are over water bungalows. I think you might have a higher likelihood of getting that upgrade. The Conrad did have this amazingly hard mini golf course, like maybe the hardest mini golf course you could ever imagine, but it was a lot of fun. And

at the St. Regis and the Conrad, they both had what I wish every hotel had, which was all the activities at the beach were free. You want to borrow a stand-up paddleboard. You want to borrow a Hobie cat and go sailing. You want to borrow one of those weird bikes that has like six foot tall inflatable wheels, free. You want snorkel equipment, free. You even want sunscreen, it's free. So one of the nicest things about some of these higher end resorts is that

You do, after paying for the expensive room, get a lot of the amenities on the property without having to pay extra. Even at the St. Regis, you can use all of the amenities of the spa, the steam room, the sauna, everything for free just by calling and reserving it.

Other than that, I think they both have amazing food. It is expensive. I'll just flag that for anyone listening. Just be prepared. But yeah, it's hard to go wrong. I think the last point that I think a lot of people come to Bora Bora for this beautiful view of the mountain and the kind of volcanic-looking structure in the middle of the island...

That is invisible from the Conrad. So if your dream is that like classic Bora Bora picture, looking out your balcony to that view, you won't get that at the Conrad. What you will get is a view of this beautiful endless ocean. Yeah, it's unbelievable. I mean, I can't, you could king pick any resort here and I'm sure it'd be totally fine. So those were a few of the differences between

I hope that was helpful. Finally, some quick hacks and tips for a trip to Bora Bora. Some of these are applicable anywhere you go. So one, definitely do an excursion to go out and swim with the sharks and the stingrays. It's one of the coolest things you can ever do. I thought it was amazing. Also, don't pack as much sunscreen as you think you need. Almost every resort, at least the two we've stayed at, have unlimited free sunscreen. Bring floats.

If you want to just sit out in the ocean off your patio, there's some really cool, cheap, small packable floats. I'll put a link in the show notes. We bought two of them. Or just make friends because a lot of people bring floats and don't want to carry them back.

So shout out to Sam and Gabe who travel around the states in a van and bought an amazing pink flamingo and left it for us. My wife got a ton of great use out of it. So I really appreciate that. If you can, for a place like this, do your overnight flights so that you don't have to spend an extra day on lodging. Finally, if you're staying at a place where there's not a lot of stuff walkable or accessible, I

I always like to stop at the store somewhere, whether it's on your layover or on the cab ride over, even sometimes at the airport, and just pick up a handful of snacks, maybe some drinks, especially if it's a place like this and you want some alcohol. It could be really expensive at a resort. Pick up a few things. I don't expect it to be all the food you'll need, all the drink you'll need, etc., but it does...

feel good sometimes to be like, ah, finally, I got a $3 beer instead of the $8 resort beer. And maybe that's just a small part of me that feels like I want a couple wins on a trip because I know it's really expensive. But that's a tip I have because a lot of times also there aren't some great snacks. Room service, you might be able to get

french fries as a side dish, but there aren't always just like a bag of chips or some granola or something small like that. Okay, that's all the hacks I have from this recent trip. And hopefully this episode gives you some ideas to help you book your next trip. But if you have any follow up questions or feedback, please don't hesitate to shoot me an email chris at all the hacks.com. I will try to reply to every single one.

And I hope you got a chance to check out some of the photos and videos from this trip on Instagram or YouTube. I'll link to both of those in the show notes. Finally, I'm doing an episode with Julia from GeoBreeze Travel, who's an expert in all things credit cards, points, and miles. We're recording soon, so if you have any questions you want us to tackle on that topic, please send them my way as soon as you can. Thank you so much for joining me this week. See you next week.

I really hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you haven't already left a rating and a review for the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I would really appreciate it. And if you have any feedback on the show, questions for me, or just want to say hi, I'm Chris at allthehacks.com or at Hutchins on Twitter. That's it for this week. I'll see you next week.