I know it’s been a little while since I posted last, so for all 3 of my readers (Hi Mom!  Hi Dad!  Hi Mrs. Guru!)….I apologize for my absence.  But I’m back with lots to share.  Stay tuned for a full report on our amazing trip to Turkey, Greece and Italy.  I posted some brief updates during the trip (one at the very beginning of the trip, after our first flight up to Chicago, one from Athens, and one from beautiful Santorini).

Last week, I was up in New York City for a few days, staying in the New York Marriott Marquis, which overlooks Times Square, making it the perfect location for walking around the city to the New York Public Library, Bryant Park, Central Park, and of course the (in)famous upscale stores on 5th Avenue.  The hotel was great, so more on that to come.

Spontaneous Trip to Chicago

For now, I want to share another update with a hotel deal, specifically in Raleigh, NC.  First, for a little back story:  Over the weekend, the Mrs. Guru and I realized that we didn’t have any plans for Labor Day weekend, and I also realized that I had a free Hyatt night that would be expiring at the end of August.  The closest Hyatt to us is the Hyatt Place in Greensboro, which I’m sure is nice, but not necessarily an optimal location for redeeming a free hotel night.  So naturally, the gears started turning in my head about where we could make good use out of the free Hyatt night.  As I’ve posted about a couple times, using British Airways points for short, nonstop flights on American Airlines and US Airways is by far one of the best deals out there right now – including flights to the Bahamas!

So I figured we could jump on a quick flight to somewhere exciting…I just had to figure out where that somewhere exciting would be.  It needed to be less than 650 miles away, in order to use the fewest amount of British Airways points, and needed to have a good Hyatt property to stay at.  After looking into a few options, we decided to take a spontaneous weekend trip to Chicago…Raleigh to Chicago is 646 miles, so it just barely squeaks in to the lowest tier of British Airways points, requiring only 4,500 points each way:

You can read more about using British Airways points via the links above, but the short story is, by using British Airways points, we booked roundtrip flights for only 9,000 points + $11 in tax per person, as opposed to 25,000 points + $86 per person by booking with American miles (the extra taxes come from a “last minute” ticketing fee of $75 that American charges when booking les than 21 days before departure).  We’ll be on the exact same American flights, but we paid a fraction of the cost:

Free Hotel Night

Now, on to the “free hotel night” part of the post.  We’ll be flying up to Chicago on Saturday morning, so it will be easiest to stay in Raleigh near the airport the night before the flight.  There are plenty of hotels around the airport in Raleigh, including a Comfort Suites.  As you may remember reading in the past, Comfort Suites is part of Choice Hotels, which has an awesome Best Price Guarantee.  If you find a lower price on another website for the same room, your first night (even on a 1 night reservation) will be completely free.  So I took a look at the Comfort Suites in Raleigh, and found that the lowest price directly on the Choice Hotels website is $84 plus tax, while other sites, like Venere.com, have it for about $75 plus tax:

I was able to find the rate on Venere.com using HotelsCombined, which is a great search engine for quickly and easily comparing rates on multiple sites.  So, I booked a room directly on the  Choice Hotels website (which can be cancelled completely free of charge up until the Friday at 6:00 pm, in case the claim is denied for some reason and I want to stay somewhere else).

We’ll have a quick night on Friday in Raleigh before flying up to Chicago Saturday morning.  Then, we’ll be staying Saturday night at the Wyndham Grand Chicago Riverfront Hotel using some Wyndham points I had been holding onto for a while, and then Sunday night will be at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, which is just about a block away from the Wyndham.

Assuming the Best Price Guarantee claim goes through, our trip will be a hotel night in Raleigh, roundtrip flights to Chicago, and 2 nights at luxury hotels in the heart of downtown, all for $11 out of pocket per person!  I sure do love this hobby!

Now, for an important question:  I have a lot of friends and family in the suburbs of Chicago, but haven’t really spent much time downtown seeing the sites….if anyone has been to Chicago recently, do you have any tips or recommendations to share?