I lived in Washington, DC with my partner for five years, and both of my children were born there. We moved away in 2021, but because both of my kids were so young, neither of them remember the city. I loved living there, because the city is highly walkable and has great public transportation, and so many of the attractions are totally free to visit. When we found ourselves with a Friday off school in the spring, I knew that DC was the perfect destination for a three-day weekend. 

	Cash Price	Points Paid	Out of Pocket Cost
Outbound flight	$520	18,000	$83.20
Hotels	$1,355.47	60,000	$0
Return flight	$736	33,000	$61.26
Grand totals	$2,611.47	111,000	$144.46

Flights

Because we have two companion passes, Southwest is typically our go-to airline for domestic flights. Unfortunately, Southwest doesn’t operate any direct flights between Raleigh and either of the DC airports (I don’t count BWI as a DC airport), so we had to look elsewhere. 

The ability to transfer American Express Membership Rewards points to Alaska via Hawaiian has been a gamechanger for our family this year. We don’t have any American Airlines points, so our only option for booking AA flights previously was to use Avios. Sometimes this works out, but it’s rarely a good deal anymore, especially for short-haul flights. 

Instead, we were able to book direct flights on AA mid-morning Friday for only 4,500 points per person. Alaska charges a $12.50 partner booking fee for partner award flights, which does add up quickly for a family; we paid $83.20 in taxes and fees for the four of us. Still, this was better than paying the cash price of $520.

Alaska didn’t have any award space available for our return flight, so we booked a direct flight home on Delta on Sunday evening, using a combination of points, travel credit, and cash. I transferred Amex points to Delta to book seats for myself and the two kids. Originally, we booked these at 13,500 points per person, but I didn’t stop there. 

There’s a little-known trick to repricing Delta award flights. The cash price and the award price aren’t directly correlated, but oftentimes when the cash price drops, the award price will also drop–about 12 hours later. I used Google Flights to track the price of this flight, and rebooked it twice, eventually landing at 11,000 points per person.

My partner opened the Capital One Venture card last year with a welcome offer that included a $250 travel credit. We had used some of it for a previous trip, but I put the remainder toward a ticket for him on the same Delta flight–just booked through the Capital One travel portal instead of directly with Delta. We paid a total of $61.26 out of pocket to cover the remainder of his ticket, as well as the taxes and fees on our award flights.

Hotel

As a dedicated Hyatt fangirl, the question wasn’t whether or not I was going to book a Hyatt, but rather, which one. Wanting to conserve points, I initially booked the Hyatt Place Washington DC.White House; this property is a category four and even has rooms that sleep five. Since my partner’s mom would be joining us for one night, this meant we could book just one room instead of two.

But then, I started hearing reports about how awesome the Grand Hyatt Washington is after its recent renovation (hat tip to the Wonderland on Points and Churn and Burn podcasts). The club lounge especially received rave reviews, and I’m a sucker for a club lounge. I like to think of club access as a sort of roll-your-own all-inclusive. Of course, you don’t get get unlimited food or drinks in the club, but I can often make breakfast and dinner out of the club buffet, which cuts back significantly on food expenses. My kids can be picky eaters, so the buffet format works well for them because they can try lots of different things and just eat what they like. 

With this information, I canceled our room at the Hyatt Place and booked two rooms at the Grand Hyatt Washington. I applied two Club Access Awards, one for each room. You can get these awards either as a milestone award after staying 20 nights in a year at Hyatt properties, or you can trade free night certificates for these and other awards in Hyatt trading groups. The Grand Hyatt is a category five, so we paid 20,000 points per night for three nights (two nights in one room, one night in the other) for a total of 60,000 points. I transferred these points from Chase Ultimate Rewards.

Although we ultimately booked this trip for early May, we also considered going for Memorial Day weekend. I was surprised to see that award nights at this hotel over the holiday weekend were a combination of standard and off-peak rates. If you’re looking for a place to go for Memorial Day, the Grand Hyatt Washington would be a great choice

The Bottom Line

Points and miles allowed us to book this $2,600 trip for about 6% of the sticker price. Applying a Club Access Award eliminated costs for breakfast and dinner, making this trip even more economical. Because the city also has excellent low-cost public transportation and many free attractions, Washington, DC is a fantastic destination for families looking to leverage award travel to minimize out-of-pocket costs.

Photo by Andy He on Unsplash