My parents are planning a trip to Australia and New Zealand in January, so of course the first choice is to use the miles and points I’ve accumulated to book the itinerary. This post records the trip-planning process, and I hope it’s helpful.

Trip Planning and Mileage Strategy

My parents will depart from Sanya, travel around Australia and New Zealand, and then return to Sanya. In Australia, they plan to visit cities such as Sydney, Melbourne, and Cairns. Gold Coast and Brisbane didn’t seem very suitable for them, and since time was limited, I ruled them out. Also, because of the language barrier, we decided not to do a self-drive trip in New Zealand and instead chose a 6-8 day guided tour of the South Island. The overall timing is relatively flexible, roughly between December and February, for an itinerary of about 15 days.

Each international segment is about 10 hours, so the cabin definitely needs to be business or first class. Since I’m booking for my parents, I want to keep the trip as easy as possible. If a nonstop is available, I will absolutely not choose a connection. The possible major gateways are MEL/SYD/BNE/CHC. Based on the award chart, business class options on ANA, AV, and AA are all 80,000 round-trip, while first class on AV and AA is 100 k round-trip. If I can get first class, the value is excellent!

For Star Alliance, I first checked with UA. The only itineraries I could find required connecting in Beijing or Chengdu, which makes the trip too long and exhausting for my parents. The upside is that Air China operates the international sector, so there’s no language concern.

For oneworld, I first checked AA. Many of the available tickets required a connection in Hong Kong, usually operated by CX or QF. A lot of them also required an overnight connection, which I definitely wanted to avoid, and I was also worried about the language issue.

When I was having trouble deciding, a friend reminded me that in this situation I could use AA miles to book China Southern business and first class, connecting through Guangzhou to Sydney. It wouldn’t be too exhausting, and there’d be no language concern, which would be perfect for this trip with my parents! But China Southern award space doesn’t show up on AA, so I could only search on China Southern’s website (I had just registered a China Southern account because IHG and China Southern match). I was pleasantly surprised to find that first-class space was quite generous. And since it’s A380 first class, it would be a great experience if we can try it.

So I settled on China Southern for the international segments, and then needed to piece together the rest of the trip. SYX-CAN would also be on China Southern, while the flights within Australia and the flight to New Zealand would be on QF. Those can be searched through AA or BA. Sometimes AA’s website doesn’t show them, but BA does, and phone agents can usually confirm the space as well, so that’s something to watch out for when booking.

Finally, after combining the hotel redemptions and the New Zealand tour departure date, I finalized the itinerary: SYX-CAN-SYD-CNS and CHC-SYD-CAN-SYX. The outbound international sector is business class, and the return is first class. I’ll share the flight reviews later! Since China Southern couldn’t be ticketed on AA’s website, the whole itinerary had to be issued by phone, but that waived the ticketing fee. In total, the two tickets cost 180,000 AA miles, with taxes of less than $200. A paid round-trip business fare for just the international segments would have been around $3,000, so this redemption was pretty good value overall!

Hotel Redemptions

A previous post covered hotel booking strategies for family members. Given the Hilton Diamond status I got for my parents and the large stash of Hilton points I had, Hilton was clearly the first choice. Diamond benefits in Australia are also pretty decent overall, with free breakfast and room upgrades.

Sydney

Although many people in Sydney would choose to use 30,000 points for Park Hyatt Sydney, my parents don’t have Hyatt status, so there’s a good chance they’d only get a standard room, and the view isn’t great either. Even though the redemption value can be very high, I still passed on that hotel. For Hilton, there are two options.

The two hotels are not far apart, and both are in convenient locations. Hilton Sydney is more expensive at around 55,000 points, and it has a lounge, but it’s a bit dated. The second hotel costs around 40,000 points, has no lounge, but it’s new and very design-forward, so it’s worth trying.

Melbourne

Melbourne has only one Hilton, and the location is excellent. It doesn’t have a lounge, and awards are around 25,000 points, but it gets very expensive during the Australian Open.

In Melbourne, you could also choose the Cat4 Grand Hyatt Melbourne. FN is very good value here, but the main drawback is that breakfast is not included.

Cairns

Two days in Cairns is usually enough for the Great Barrier Reef and the Kuranda Rainforest. The hotel choices are basically all Hilton.

The DoubleTree might be slightly cheaper, but the second hotel has a lounge and seems pretty good. The points cost is about the same for both at around 30,000.

Conclusion

In the end, I booked the trip using 180k AA miles and 180,000 Hilton points, and I feel like I got solid value out of both. After the trip, I’ll come back and add a few flight and hotel review posts!