The Maldives had been on my bucket list of places to visit for a while. I mean who wouldn’t want to hang around super clever blue water? My husband also always loves a good beach vacation. The Maldives can be super expensive, so I decided to make it my goal to get to the Maldives as cheaply as possible by using my credit card points. After hours of extensive research, here is how we got to the Maldives using points.
TripAdvisor is a great place to start your hotel search. Search for the best Maldives hotels here! Other options include the following hotels.
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Maldives Hotel
The first thing I needed to decide on when visiting the Maldives using points was a hotel. Since I had over 500,000 Hilton points, I decided I would try to find a Hilton property to book while staying in the Maldives. With Hilton, if you stay using points, the 5th night is free so essentially you only pay for 4 nights’ worth of points.
While searching through properties, I came across a new Hilton property that was open: The Hilton Maldives Amingriri Resort. This property opened in July 2022 and looked like an amazing option. Each room had its own private pool and it was relatively cheap to book an overwater bungalow.
I was able to book a rate of 110,000 points a night for a 1 Bedroom Overwater Bungalow. It ended up costing 440,000 points total for 5 nights since the 5th night was free. I found this to be an amazing redemption value because any other overwater bungalow I found was over that price just for one night.
If you were paying out of pocket for this hotel, the cost during the time we stayed would have been about $1200 a night. Thus by using our points, we saved about $6000.
How to Get Hilton Points
The first way to get Hilton points for getting to the Maldives using points is by opening a Hilton Credit Card. There are three different cards you can open, but I recommend the Hilton Honors Surpass Card to start off with. You will receive 150,000 points after spending $3000 in 3 months. It has a $95 annual fee and gets you Hilton Gold Status (more on the importance of that later).
Teacher Tip: Remember that you MUST pay off your credit cards each month in order to earn points. Do not open credit cards if you are not going to be financially responsible.
Next, you can get Hilton Points by using that credit card for all of your expenses. Depending on the category, you can earn 3 to 12 times the points. For example you earn 6 times the points for dining out.
You can also earn points by signing up for the Hilton Honors Dining Rewards. This gives you even more points for dining at certain restaurants. You can stack this with the points you earn from the credit card.
Another way to earn a lot of Hilton points is to stay at Hilton Properties when you travel. With each stay, you will earn 12 times the points by using your credit card. You will also earn points in general for your stay.
You can also change your member benefits so you can get extra points instead of getting extras like snacks during your stay. All of these extra amounts of points can quickly add up when you stack them together.
If you have an additional person in your family, you can also open another Hilton Card for bonus points. In total, it took me about two years to save about 500,000 Hilton Points.
Maldives Airfare
The next expense to figure out was airfare. There are quite a few airfare options to get to the Maldives using points. Flights from Los Angeles to the Maldives typically cost about $1200 and up during peak season. Since I had a stash of points saved up from other credit cards such as the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Venture X, I had plenty of options to choose from for airlines.
I ultimately decided on flying Singapore Airlines to have a stopover in Singapore (one of our favorite stops from our honeymoon). Each economy ticket cost 92,000 points plus $125 in taxes and fees. Unfortunately, I did not have enough for us to fly business class, plus there were not any reward tickets available.
To book this ticket, I transferred the points from my Venture X to Singapore Kris Flyer (their rewards program). It took 3 days for the points to transfer. I was then able to book the tickets directly through Singapore Airlines.
Other options I could have chosen included Qatar Airlines and Emirates. However, the times of the flights did not work as well and it cost more points and had more fees. I also decided I wanted the stopover in Singapore.
Additional Maldives Costs
No matter what, you will have to spend some money when getting to the Maldives using points as there are some things points won’t cover. This includes things like transfer fees, food, and optional activities.
Transportation
Most resorts to the Maldives have a mandatory transfer fee, either by speedboat or by seaplane. For the Hilton Maldives Amingriri Resort, you were required to pay $300 plus taxes and fees for the speedboat transfer. This ended up costing about $375 once you added in the extra fees. The Maldives has a 16% GST, so these can add up quickly.
I helped offset this cost by upgrading my Hilton Surpass card to the Hilton Aspire credit card. This card comes with $250 Hilton resort credit.
Food
We had an included breakfast with our stay due to our Hilton Honors Diamond status. With either Gold or Diamond levels, members get free breakfast during Hilton stays. You will get this status automatically with the Suprass or Aspire credit card.
For lunch, we packed a lot of snacks such as protein bars and cup noodles to eat during the day. We also ate breakfast as late as possible.
Dinner is where the food prices add up. At the Hilton Maldives Amingriri Resort, there were 3 different restaurants you could choose from for dinner or you could opt to order room services. The food was pretty pricey but was also good quality. Think it is as if you were going out to a nice dinner every night.
To save some money, I would recommend ordering room service and sharing meals since some of the portions were pretty large. No matter what, it will add up due to the 10% service charge and the 16% GST.
While we could have saved a little money on food by sharing more nights, the meals we did eat at the restaurants were delicious.
Activities
Activities are another area that can add up quickly. While the resort has some included activities, you can pay to do additional activities such as motorized water sports, scuba diving, guided snorkeling, or spa treatments.
Disclaimer: Thanks to Sub Oceanic for a discounted rate on our tour.
We opted to take a daytime guided snorkeling tour with Sub Oceanic. This cost $95/person plus taxes and fees. They take you out on a boat about 15 minutes from the resort to some better reefs than surround the resort. It is a small group, a maximum of 10 with a guide. You get one hour to snorkel around the reefs prior to returning to the resort.
In total, we were able to save a lot of money by traveling to the Maldives using points. What would have been close to a $10,000 vacation cost us just over $1000 total. Note that I did not include our stopover in Singapore in these costs, as that is an optional add-on to a Maldives trip.
Total Costs for the Maldives Using Points
- Hotel: 440,000 Hilton Honors Points
- Airfare: 184,000 Venture X points plus $250 total or 92,000 points plus $125/person
- Transportation: $750 total or $375/person
- Food: $500 total or $250/person
- Activities: $170 total or $85/person
- Total Cost: $625/person
