Hi guys! So anyone who knows me, knows I love to travel, good deals, coupons and I love using points.
My family of 4 just went to Carlsbad a few weeks ago. We went for 3 days and 2 nights and stayed right across the street from the beach at Hilton Garden Inn Carlsbad Beach. A nice 3 star hotel. We were celebrating our anniversary and mine and my Husband’s Birthdays, we are both September babies! The hotel was even nice enough to upgrade us to a partial beach view room.
HOW DID WE ONLY SPEND $350?
So, back to how we only spent about $320-350 for our entire trip! I’m talking gas, food, hotel, a boogie board, ice cream, drinks.
Many of you may be familiar with redeeming points for a hotel stay, if you’re not familiar, there are different ways to go about it. You can join a hotel’s rewards program and depending how much you travel or stay with them, you can rack up points and redeem those points for a free hotel stay when get enough points, the second way is to take advantage of a credit card offer – this is the route we went. I am not in any way suggesting anyone to take this route unless you are smart with money and have good credit. I am just informing you of how we did this, and providing you with information that may be useful to you, if you weren’t already aware of it.
The credit card offer is pretty simple and straight forward. The offer is only available to new credit card members, you can google search “Hilton Honors American Express credit card new member offers”. I am not providing the link, since I am not in any way affiliated with American Express and if you choose to take advantage of this offer, I highly encourage you to do your own research. Their offers do change, so please do your own research. At this time, and when we took advantage of the offer it was spend $1,000 in the first 3 months and earn 75,000 bonus Hilton points. If you do choose to apply and take advantage of this offer, I would suggest applying for the card, putting regular purchases and bills you already pay, setting that money aside and paying it off right away.
If you are able to take advantage of this offer, I encourage you to look at different dates and locations and different hotels within the Hilton brand to give you different choices in pricing and availability.
BE FLEXIBLE WITH DATES
I did my research and I wanted to be right by the beach at a nice hotel. I don’t need a 5 star hotel or anything too fancy, but a clean nice comfortable hotel, and that’s exactly what I found. I played around with the dates a little bit and looked at different hotels, being flexible with dates helps a ton to get a good deal. The week after Labor Day in particular is one of the cheaper dates of the year. When business is slower – rates are cheaper, and hotels are more likely to accommodate any requests you have since they have the availability. I booked our stay at Hilton Garden Inn Carlsbad Beach. It’s located approximately 4 miles to Carlsbad Village and directly across from the beach. We were a little short on points, but only spent $8.65 in addition to redeeming all our points. The hotel has a $16 per night parking fee and we had to pay taxes on the room as well. In the end we probably spent about $40-45 total which includes taxes, parking and the $8.65 we were short on points. Not bad at all for a 2 night stay!
During our vacation we kept it very low key. We have 2 kids, a 4 year old and a 7 month old. We need lots of flexibility in our schedule, so our vacation itinerary literally consisted of going to the beach and going to eat in the village, and that’s exactly what we did. If you’re a parent you know kids need their naps, snacks, and get cranky if they’re too tired, hungry, hot, or just want to be cranky. Thankfully we have pretty good travelers, but they are still kids. When we’re on vacation I try to plan for a short but sweet trip, we try to see if we can move naps or skip naps, but get the kids to bed earlier or let them sleep in, and get as much out of the day as we can. Planning ahead and being flexible is key to traveling with kids.
Hilton Garden Inn Carlsbad Beach was a great choice for us, it was comfortable, clean, had a fridge we could stock with water, drinks, food, a microwave, and was at a good location. Then only unexpected thing I would give advice for is to watch out for traffic! Everywhere has traffic, but around 2pm-6pm it gets very busy and what is normally a 10 minute drive to Carlsbad Village turns into 30 minutes. So plan accordingly.
BUDGET, PLAN, RESEARCH
Before taking a vacation try to be realistic with planning, and expenses for everything! Pack what you need so you don’t have to run to the store last minute to buy it. Plan what you want to do, what is important to you and your family, and give way for flexibility. Research expenses, hotels, weather, deals.
For our other expenses – gas, food, drinks, we kept it to a minimum. We still enjoyed ourselves, having ice cream outside in the hot sunny afternoon, 2 dinners at a sit down restaurant, with drinks. We just made breakfast and lunch simple, sandwiches at a small shop, pizza, or something quick from fast food, we also had snacks we brought or bought from the grocery store, and for dinners we shared. Food portions are honestly big most places, and if you’re on vacation left overs don’t really get eaten. For drinks we ordered 1 beer and 1 glass of wine each the first night, and for our second night for dinner we shared a flight of beers. My Husband even bought a few beers to take to the hotel from a local brewery, if you want to enjoy more drinks- go to the local grocery store to save money on alcohol. We just watched our spending, but still very much enjoyed ourselves and didn’t starve or anything! If you want to save even more money you could buy food at the grocery store and get fruits, snacks, bread and make your own sandwiches. Sadly, there wasn’t anything over the top amazing at any of the places we ate, nothing bad, but nothing amazing that I would absolutely recommend – otherwise I would definitely list the restaurants. We went to an Italian restaurant the first night ordered a chicken pasta dish and a pizza. My husband and I shared with our 4 year old and our son doesn’t eat regular food yet. The second night we went to a Mexican restaurant and we got chips, guacamole, bean dip, my Husband and I shared this huge make your own carne asada taco platter and our daughter got a chicken quesadilla kids meal, we actually all even had left overs!
We really enjoyed Carlsbad, it’s very laid back, perfect weather, quaint, nice people and the beaches were clean and beautiful. We saw a bunch of dolphins and surfers. Some local surfers even helped us at the beach with our stuff. The most shocking thing to us was the free parking, in the village and by the beach – up front parking does cost about $10, but there is parking available by the road and it’s an easy walk to the beach.
Our kids are still small, so we keep our vacations pretty chill, but we will be returning to Carlsbad to enjoy the other things they have to offer such as Legoland, maybe some water sports, I really want to check out the flower fields which look amazing but are only seasonal.
TIPS FOR TRAVEL AND SAVINGS
Be flexible on dates.
Budget!
Share!
Make sure to check with the hotel for any additional fees such are resort fees, parking, taxes. Ask if upgrades are available, if breakfast is available etc.
If you are booking online search for promo codes!
Pack what you need.
Get snacks, food, water, drinks at the grocery store!
I hope this post was helpful in some way, and gave you an idea of how to save on your next trip. Vacations don’t have to be over the top or cost a ton of money! You know your family best and know what hotel, activities and schedule will work for you best! Memories and enjoying your time away with your family is what matters.
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