Trip Plan

We made a last-minute decision to get out of town for Thanksgiving. At LD’s request, we wanted to spend a few days by the beach. We had already been to Cancun once before and really liked the all-inclusive experience at Hyatt Ziva, so this time we decided to do another all-inclusive stay.

Jamaica is visa-free for Chinese passport holders, which makes things much easier.

Hotel Booking

Earlier, we received a promotion for Hyatt Ziva and Hyatt Zilara: spend 500, get 250 back. With one card from me and one from LD, that became 1000 back 500. Combined with double points on the second stay, it felt like a waste not to take advantage of it. (A classic case of spending more just because of a promo!)

At first I thought there was also a double elite night promotion. If that had worked, booking 5 nights would count as 10 nights, which would get me to Explorist and also earn an extra FN. The more I thought about it, the better the deal looked—but then I realized that promo ended on November 23.

If we wanted to stay 5 nights, the cost would normally be well over $1,000. So my plan was to book 2 nights with points first, which would unlock the double points on the second stay, and then book 3 nights with cash, splitting the hotel charges across two cards. To make that count as a second stay, we needed to switch between Ziva and Zilara.

The next step was choosing the location. There are three places where Ziva and Zilara are next to each other: Cancun (already been there), Cap Cana, and Rose Hall. Cap Cana had just opened on November 1 this year, so there were still very few reviews online. I wasn’t sure about the quality, and it also had fewer restaurants. Flights were more expensive too, so I passed on that option. In the end, we chose Rose Hall. And again, Jamaica is visa-free for Chinese tourists.

Hyatt Ziva Rose Hall and Hyatt Zilara Rose Hall are both Cat 6 properties and cost 25,000 points per night. Thanksgiving is obviously peak season, so one-night bookings are usually very expensive and often don’t have standard award availability. But if you book 2 or 3 nights, prices can come down a bit and award nights may become available. So in the end, I booked 2 nights at Ziva with points first (cash price was around $500), then booked 3 nights at Zilara with cash. I also called ahead to confirm that I could split payment between two cards at the front desk.

There’s actually also a Hilton Rose Hall resort nearby. You could use the $250 resort credit from the AMEX Hilton Aspire to cover one night, and stacking that with quarterly offers would make for a very solid deal. One thing to note: this property cannot be booked with a Weekend FN, and award nights cost 70,000 points. In the end, though, we didn’t have much time and didn’t want to complicate things too much. I also wasn’t sure what the easiest transportation option between hotels would be. Hyatt does offer airport transfers for $33 per person.

Flight Booking

Cash vs. Miles

We needed to depart from New York this time. After searching, I found that Thanksgiving airfare was really expensive—more than $500 round trip. Paying cash felt hard to justify, but fortunately award tickets were still an option, so it kind of felt like we weren’t spending much out of pocket.

I checked Award Hacker to see the mileage costs across different airlines. Of course, it only shows the lowest possible mileage rates, so you still have to verify actual availability on each airline’s website. It also doesn’t show taxes and fees, which can be a meaningful part of the total for short-haul international flights like this. Also, AA actually had nonstop flights, but this site didn’t surface them.

From an award-ticket perspective, using 30,000-35,000 miles for a $500+ flight would already be pretty decent.

A Closer Look at Each Airline

  • American Airline (AA): The minimum round-trip price was 30,000, or 15,000 one way. But taxes were close to $140 per person, plus a close in booking fee $75. Also, for my travel dates there was no eco saver availability—only biz saver + eco saver.
  • United Airline: The lowest one-way price was 17,500, and taxes were reasonable too. But for my dates, I couldn’t find two 17,500 segments that worked together.
  • Delta: Delta doesn’t really have a fixed award chart, so prices fluctuate with the cash fare. I found seats for 41,000 + $136 per person.
  • JetBlue: The points required are tied to the cash fare at the time, and taxes were also close to $50.
  • British airways: It would cost 11,000 one way (for that AA flight) + $91 in tax. That was the best mileage deal among all the options. The downside was that taxes were still pretty high. Overall, if there were seats available, BA would be the no-brainer choice. But since AA didn’t have saver space, BA couldn’t book it either.

The Final Choice

Because our schedule was very fixed and we didn’t want to connect—many itineraries even required overnight layovers—we didn’t have many options. The nonstop airlines were UA, AA, Delta, and JetBlue. Based on the points balances I had, I looked at booking through UA, AA, BA, and Delta. After comparing them all, BA had no availability, and UA and AA were either too expensive or required connections. Delta ended up being the best option, at 41,000 miles plus $136 in taxes per person.

Delta miles are often considered less valuable anyway, especially for redeeming flights back to China, so I value them much less than UA, AA, or BA miles. As long as I could use them, I was happy. And $136 * 2 worked out perfectly for using up AMEX airline credits on various cards, especially with year-end coming up.

I also checked the cash price for the same Delta ticket at the time. At 41,000 + $136, the redemption value was close to 1c/p. Using Delta’s cash+miles option would actually have been similar too, since the points value there is fixed at 1c/p, and you would still earn some miles.

When I finally booked, I upgraded from Economy to Comfort+, spending a few more miles and conveniently zeroing out my Delta balance. I also wanted to see whether those few extra inches of seat width would make a noticeable difference.

Quick Summary

Searching for award tickets is honestly pretty time-consuming, and there are a lot of factors to consider. If you’re also trying to book flights from your city to Jamaica, here’s a simple process you can follow:

  • Use Google Flights first to get a rough sense of cash prices
  • Use Award Hacker to identify which mileage currencies may offer the best value
  • Check each airline individually for actual award space and taxes/fees
  • Based on your schedule and points balances, decide which booking method makes the most sense

Also, if you can find AA Saver space, booking through BA is usually the best deal and should be your first option to consider.

Activities

Hyatt Ziva allows children and has a dedicated kids club, while Hyatt Zilara is adults-only. The two resorts are connected, though, and the restaurants are shared. Dining options include French, Italian, Chinese, Brazilian barbecue, Jamaican bbq, and more.

Since we chose an all-inclusive resort, I also plan to check what activities the hotel offers and try them all at once. There’s diving, water sports, and more—we’ll see when we get there.

Final Thoughts

This trip will cost 50,000 Hyatt points, 92,000 Delta miles, a $250 airline credit, and about $700 in cash, and I expect to earn another 15,000 Hyatt points back. Since Thanksgiving is peak season, nothing is cheap and even award bookings are hard to find, so I’m still pretty happy with how this plan turned out. I’ll come back with a full review after the trip!

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