Right after Christmas of 2013 we were able to to escape the cold and spend 4 nights in beautiful Marco Island, Florida. It was our first time there, and it will not be our last. We enjoyed the trip so much. It was totally free (for flight and hotel and hotel breakfast), which made it even better! How did we go to Marco Island for free, you ask? I will let you in on the secret (it’s not a secret at all, everyone and their brother is doing it). We saved about $5000. Five. Thousand. Dollars. We would not have actually SPENT 5 grand on this trip, as that is approaching our travel budget for a whole year & we can usually get 50 hotels nights out of that. Because it was Christmas time, the hotel and flights would have been particularly expensive if we had purchased them.
We chose this hotel because it was free, but I would stay here again in a heartbeat. It was right on the beach. We could walk out of our room and be on the beach within one minute. Perfect. There is a great pool that the kids loved. They made tons of friends over our four days at the hotel, as this is a very family-friendly hotel. There is a pool bar serving food and drinks. There are plenty of pool and beach chairs to use. I wish I was there right now.
Our room was large, with a king sized bed and a queen sized pull-out sofa. The kids are still young enough that this works for us. We know we are nearing the time when we will have to spring for 2 rooms, so we are taking advantage of this while we can. The hotel was completely booked, so they did not have a 2 bed room available for our whole stay. We could have switched rooms, but ended up being happy with the room we had, so we stayed put.
I love love love seashells, and this beach did not disappoint. In fact, we had gone to Sanibel Island for a visit on this trip as well. It is supposed to be the shelling capitol of the universe, and I’m sure it usually is, but on this trip our Marco Island hotel beach proved to have even more shells (although Keewaydin Island had the mother-lode). I loved being able to wake up, stumble out of bed at the crack of dawn (my kids are NOT the sleep-in types), and be on the beach searching for shells within minutes.
Funny story: my son thought it would be a fun idea to bring a bag of goldfish crackers to eat on the beach. He was promptly attacked by seagulls. Even after he threw the bag and ran for his life down the beach, they still kept chasing him. I missed the whole thing because I was looking for shells. He said “I wish you were videotaping that so I could win the grand prize on America’s Funniest Videos”. True Story.
The top secret way that we got these free hotel nights is through applying for a couple of credit cards, meeting the minimum spend, getting the nights posted to our accounts, and then using them to book this hotel.
For 2 of the nights we used this card:
Citi Hilton Reserve Credit Card:
Earn 2 weekend night certificates each good for 1 weekend night (standard room, double occupancy) at select hotels and resorts within the Hilton HHonors portfolio after $2,500 in eligible purchases within the first 4 months of cardmembership
10 HHonors Bonus Pointsper $1 spent on hotel stays within the Hilton HHonors portfolio
5 HHonors Bonus Pointsper $1 spent on airline and car rental purchases
3 HHonors Bonus Pointsper $1 spent on all other eligible purchases
Enjoy the benefits of HHonors Gold status as long as you are a cardmember
This is also how we got free breakfast each day (the hotel gave it to us for having Gold status)
For the other 2 nights we used HHonors Points that we had accumulated from credit card spending, some hotel stay bonus points, and some other credit cards.
We were able to fly from Trenton, NJ direct to Fort Myers, FL on Frontier Airlines using miles that we got from this credit card:
Frontier Airlines Mastercard -
Earn up to 50,000 bonus miles — starting with 40,000 bonus miles after spending $500 in the first 90 days.
That is enough for two roundtrip award tickets (plus fees/taxes from $10).
If you have an American Express card that earn Amex Travel. It is often a better deal to transfer the miles, but each situation is different.
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