How to Book A 1-Week Hawai’i Vacation with Points

Dreaming of a Hawaiian getaway but having nightmares about the price tag? The good news is, those turquoise waters, lush landscapes, and golden sunsets don’t have to drain your savings. You can use points and miles to cover flights, hotels, and even rental cars, turning a dream trip into an affordable reality. Whether you’ve been collecting rewards for years or are just starting to dip your toes into the world of “travel hacking”, Hawai’i is one of the best destinations to maximize value. This post will walk you through how to make your vacation to the islands more attainable—without sacrificing the aloha spirit. A 1-week Hawai’i vacation might be more attainable than you originally thought!

If you are new to the world of points travel, we will explain points and miles redemption in a way that’s very beginner friendly. For those that have dabbled in points travel a bit, you might find some information you already know, but we have some awesome nuggets about how to stretch your points as far as possible (hint: if doesn’t always involve booking travel in the ‘award portal’).

When you’re traveling there’s five categories of expenses to consider: flights, accommodations, rental car/transportation, food, and activities. Using points to travel can significantly reduce the cost of your trip, but it’s important to know that we are not boosting a “hack” for a completely free trip. We can certainly teach you how to use miles to book flights and hotels. This accounts for a huge part of the budget for a Hawai’i trip. Depending on how long you’ve been saving up your miles, you may also have enough to cover your rental car too!

*As a disclaimer, there are no affiliate links in this blog post. We’re not associated with Delta, Chase, or Hyatt in any way. We simply live to evangelize credit card points/miles travel, and these are redemption avenues that we have found to have the best value— when traveling to Hawai’i.*

Getting There: Flights Baby

First, let’s talk about flights! If you are completely starting from scratch, without any credit card points to your name, there is a bit of strategy involved. Where you live and what airlines service your local airport will determine which airline credit card makes the most sense for you to procure. Since Minneapolis is a Delta hub we have a Delta gold card to help accrue miles more quickly. 

Getting Your Toes Wet

We recommend signing up for a card when the sign on bonus is better than their “usual offer”. For example, don’t open a card for 50k miles, when you could receive 80k miles as a sign on bonus! 

We have the Delta Gold card, and we like it for a few reasons. First and foremost, if you’re starting from scratch the sign-up bonus will go a long way in your journey to get to Hawai’i. Additionally, all of the Delta cards with annual fees (i.e. Gold, Platinum, Reserve), receive 15% off the miles price of an airplane ticket. Fifteen percent might not seem like much, but it can make a difference!

Additionally, for anyone that’s new to the credit card points “game”, the idea of paying an annual fee for a credit card can seem a little strange, so the delta gold card can be a nice introduction as you don’t have to pay for the annual fee in the first year. 

Wait, What’s a Sign-Up Bonus?

To entice travelers and spenders, credit card companies will offer a Sign-Up Bonus. You can see this above “Earn 80,000 Bonus Miles, after you spend $3,000 in purchases on your new Card within your first 6 months.” Delta and American Express will “give” you 80k miles for opening up the branded credit card… only if you meet the detailed spending requirement. 

For many adults, you will generally find you’re not hard-pressed to spend $3k over the course of 6 months. Instead of making purchases with a debit card, just pay for them with your credit card! Its goes without saying but you will definitely want to ensure you are either paying your card off at the end of the month *OR* have automatic payments ensure your balance is getting paid in full each month. 

Credit cards are an awesome way to accrue points and free travel experiences; however, credit card spending should always be done responsibly. Please be mindful and careful not to over-commit to financial purchases beyond one’s means. 

Earn More Miles!

Once you have your sign-up bonus figured out, every purchase you make on the card is earning you more miles. The general rule is that for every dollar spent, you earn a point or in Delta’s case, a Skymile. For the Delta Gold card, you can actually earn 2 Skymiles for every dollar spent at restaurants, grocery stores, and on Delta purchases.

Redeemin’ and Schemin’ 

Once you have at the very least earned your sign on bonus, it’s time to start looking for a way to spend those Skymiles. The search features on Delta’s website are pretty user-friendly and allow you to check the calendar for best prices/redemption with ease.

Be sure to click ‘Shop with Miles’ and ‘My Dates are Flexible’. Points and miles trips tend to work best when you have a bit of flexibility. For example, you can see in the search bar, I looked up February 17th-24th, but the search feature automatically shows a variety of different permutations in a similar time window. If you skew the arrival and departure each back a single day, you can travel for 3,600 less Skymiles… might be worth it! 

What makes this even better, is the additional 15% off you receive for having a Delta branded card, so that ticket would only cost you 23,600 Skymiles. If the sign-up bonus gets you 80k Skymiles and you find RT tickets for under 40k miles/person… you’ve got flights covered for two excited vacationers! There is a small fee of $12/ticket for taxes, but this is pretty minimal compared to what the tickets would otherwise cost. 

Flights? DONE! 

Stay a While: Hotels

One of our favorite hotel companies to book through when traveling with points is Hyatt. First and foremost, we’ve only had positive experiences staying at Hyatts– not just the hotels and resorts themselves but the customer service we have received has been excellent as well. Another huge plus? Compared to other hotel partners, the redemption rate for even the most posh of the Hyatt brands is beyond reasonable for what you receive in return. 

Accruing Hyatt Points 

There’s two ways to accrue points for redemption at Hyatt properties. The more obvious of the two is signing up for a World of Hyatt credit card. This card’s “normal” sign-up bonus is 30,000 points, after spending $3,000 in the first three months of opening the card. To entice you to spend more, you can earn up to an additional 30k points by spending $15k (i.e. for the first 6 months of having the card, all purchases earn double points). This card does have a $95 annual fee. While this isn’t a bad offer, it’s not exactly the strongest sign-up bonus offer. If you’re new to the world of credit-card points travel, this is not the top card we’d recommend. 

In all fairness to the Hyatt card, you do receive a free night at any Category 1–4 Hyatt hotel or resort every year on your card anniversary, so as long as you actually use your free night stay, this benefit alone covers the cost of the annual fee. It’s just…. we’re trying to spend a week in Hawai’i and 30k points just isn’t quite enough. 

Chasing those Hyatt Points

Chase is the only credit card company that maintains a partnership with Hyatt for transferring point balances. In order to do so, you must have one of Chase’s ‘premium’ cards: Chase Sapphire Preferred, Chase Sapphire Reserve, or Chase Ink Business Preferred (i.e. a card with an annual fee– their “free” cards don’t transfer to Hyatt). 

The Chase Sapphire Preferred card, generally speaking, is known to be one of the best travel cards for point accrual and redemption— or at least in its annual fee price point ($95/year). The “normal” sign-up bonus is 60,000 points, after spending $5,000 in the first three months of opening the card, but once or twice a year, Chase will increase the sign-up bonus to 75k+ points. Taking a trip with points does take some intentional planning, and this is a piece of that puzzle. I recommend waiting to sign up for this card, until they have an elevated bonus offer. 

The Chase card has lots of benefits besides the ability to transfer points to Hyatt. This includes rental car insurance, some limited trip insurance, delayed luggage insurance, lost luggage reimbursement, etc. They also have 2 other hotel partners as well as 13 airline partners you can transfer points to— in addition to being able to book travel through their award portal. 

Where to Stay

Of the four main Hawaiian Islands, three islands have Hyatt properties. You’ll find that your points have the opportunity to go the farthest on O’ahu. For Hyatt’s points system, hotels and resorts are sorted into different categories— 1 through 8, with a category 1 hotel being the least expensive and a category 8 hotel or resort being the most expensive. Hyatt’s all-inclusive properties follow a letter system, but that’s irrelevant here as there are no all-inclusive Hyatt resorts in Hawai’i. 

Now, there is only one category 4 hotel in Hawai’i, and it’s the Hyatt Place Waikiki Beach in O’ahu. Hyatt has a somewhat dynamic pricing aspect to their points system, but you can largely expect a room at this hotel to cost you ~15k points/night. That means for a one week stay, you’d need 105k points. Now, the sign-up bonus should get you most of the way there, but it might take a little bit of time and responsible spending to get the rest of the points you need. Not to be too redundant, but a points trip doesn’t come together immediately— it definitely takes time and a bit of intentional planning! 

We stayed here in June 2025, and felt the value was 10000% there. Meals in Hawai’i can certainly add up, so the complimentary breakfast goes a long way.  For what it’s worth, it was a pretty nice breakfast spread with robust options– including lots of fresh fruit! This Hyatt hotel also charges a daily “destination fee” ($38/night), in addition to the nightly room rate; however, you do NOT have to pay this fee when you book your room with points. The destination fee covers all of the below amenities. 

Any Cons?

Generally speaking, we had an overwhelmingly positive experience here, and we would certainly recommend this hotel to friends. “Cons” are pretty mild in nature. This hotel is not riiiiight on the beach, but it’s a very short, easy walk to get to the beach, so this wasn’t really a negative for us. After extensively reading google reviews on the hotel prior to our arrival, I had seen people mention the elevators could take a while, but we never ran into an issue with this! 

The pool here is closed for future construction plans (June ’25), but they do provide access to a pool at another nearby hotel. This might be a little cumbersome if you have a kiddo that’s really excited to splash around in the pool at the end of the day. Finally, our hotel room itself felt a little on the smaller side, compared to other Hyatt hotels we’ve stayed at in the past, but it was exactly as pictured and described. The ‘standard room free night’ is their ‘King Bed City View (with Sofa Bed)’, which you can check out here— you can even take a 3D tour. 

Alternate Options

Let the record show, if you have more Chase or Hyatt points to burn, the Hyatt Centric Waikiki Beach and Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort & Spa are both category 5 properties on O’ahu that are options to stay at as well. These hotel/resort options will cost around 20k points/night. 

The Grand Hyatt Kauai—category 8—is the only option on Kauai. We’ve stayed here a couple times (Jan ’22 & Feb ’22) and really enjoyed it— you can read our full review here.

There are 5 options on Maui, and they are all category 6 and above, so not exactly budget-core points options. That being said, the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa is lovely and a great redemption value— if you have extra points to burn and are open to island hopping. Unfortunately there are no Hyatt hotels or resorts on Big Island. 

Let’s Get to Booking: Finding availability

To get the ball rolling, head to hyatt.com. You’ll want to click on the “Explore” tab and then select “Hotels & Resorts” 

Once you’re on the explore page, type “Hyatt Place Waikiki Beach” into the search bar and click on the hotel option that pops up. 

This will bring up the three properties on O’ahu. In the Hyatt Place Waikiki Beach box, click on the points calendar link. This will take you to a calendar page that allows you to see reward night availability and cost of the hotel each night. 

If you remember from our flight search earlier, the optimal dates were February 18th to February 25th. This works perfectly with the hotel availability! You’ll notice early in February, the cost is 18k points/night. This reflects the dynamic nature of Hyatt’s pricing— “peak season” dates sometimes have a slightly higher cost, but it’s not an outrageous jump.

Transfer Those points

Now that you have confirmed availability for the dates that you need, it’s time to get to booking! But wait… you have Chase points, how do you use those to book a Hyatt hotel? First you need to make a free, World of Hyatt account. Remember that account number, because you’re going to need it!

Then, head over to your Chase account and click on your Rewards portal.

Once you’re in the Ultimate Reward portal, click on the far right “Travel” tab, and go to the “Transfer points to partners” link.

Once you’re on this page, click on the Hotels, and select Hyatt.

From there, you go through a 3-step process, inputting your World of Hyatt account number and selecting how many points you want to transfer. You’ll want to double, triple check your math on how many points you need, because once you transfer the points to Hyatt, you can’t transfer them back to Chase. It’s a one-way deal!

Points can take up to 7 days to transfer, but our experience is that it’s usually within a couple hours.

Transferring Points Vs. the Ultimate Rewards Portal

Before you transfer your points, you might think to yourself “What about the Chase travel portal? Why not just book it through there?” That would be a reasonable question, and it’s always worth checking to see what the points cost would be, but it’s almost always a worse deal.

As you can see below, for the exact same room, the exact same nights, the points cost is over 26k points more expensive, PLUS an additional $289-$314 in taxes…. PLUS this rate doesn’t include or waive the destination fee, so that would be an additional $38/day ($266 total). While it’s a bit of a hoop to jump through to transfer your points, it’s more than worth it to save you over $500 AND 26k points.

Back to Hyatt: Finish the Booking

Now that you have confirmed the availability AND that you’ve found the best price. It’s time to sign back into your Hyatt account. Enter the hotel, dates, and be sure to click “use points”.

The free award night option will pop up towards the bottom of the page. Smash that “Select and Book” button. It’s time for things to start getting official!

Double check everything one last time on your confirmation page. Correct dates? Right hotel? All that’s left is to press the “Book My Stay” button at the bottom of the page.

As a note, transferring your points from Chase to Hyatt is a one-way journey. However, as you can see in the cancellation policy, if something comes up, you do have free cancellation up to a week before your stay. The points would remain in your Hyatt account, but it *is* a refundable booking!

Additional Costs: Transportation

Your hotel stay is entirely covered by points and your flight cost is just over $10 in taxes. So far the Hawai’i vacation budget is looking pretty good! What’s the next big cost to consider? A rental car!

Now, of all the Hawaiian islands, O’ahu is the only one with good enough public transit that you *could* potentially use it to get around. That being said, it’s hard to beat the flexibility you gain with having your own car, but it’s worth mentioning there’s an alternate option. We didn’t utilize The Bus, but if you’re interested, you can learn more about routes, timetables, etc here. 

Back to the rental car, depending on how many Chase points you have accrued, you might be able to cover your vehicle as well. For a one-week rental (for the same dates as the flights & hotel), it will cost you 53,264 points. Now, this isn’t a bad redemption value, but it’s worth shopping around a bit to see if you can find a better deal. 

For example, if you have a Costco membership, you could book an economy car for a week for under $375. Even though Chase reflects the value at $666, if you can find something else similar for cheaper, it’s worth considering. Apples to apples, the 53k points have the potential to be worth more than $375, so we’d probably just pay cash to rent the car. That’s a personal choice though— we’re just trying to make you aware of your options. 

Sneaky Extras

Depending on how detailed you are with your budgeting, you will also want to account for the cost of gas. The exact car you rent as well as how adventurous your exploration itinerary is, will affect the gas consumption. We’d recommend budgeting $100-$200. Gas prices on O’ahu do tend to be higher than on the mainland!

Another car-related cost is parking. Waikiki Beach is definitely a bumpin’ place, so you’ll need to find a garage to park your car in overnight. The cost here ranges from $35-50/night, so if you rent a car for the week, parking will run you $245-350.

Blowing the Budget: Food, Drinks, & Activities

The last costs to consider are meals and activities. The cost here is really variable as to what your trip vision-board entails. O’ahu has so many beautiful beaches and unique hikes, so these are low-cost/no-cost adventures that allow you to take in the Hawai’i landscape for almost nothing. Inversely, there are also some amazing tours you can splurge on— snorkeling with sharks, whale watching, ATV rides, sunset catamarans…. the list goes on!

Food and drink spending expectations differ for everyone. As one might expect, meals on O’ahu tend to be a little more expensive than what you might pay on the mainland. Plus, sometimes it’s fun to be a little decadent on vacation. We found you a hotel with complimentary breakfast, so you can burn the rest of your food budget on lunch and dinner! 

---

Hawai’i is never going to be a cheap vacation, but it might just be a little more affordable than you originally thought! Spending with credit cards should always be done responsibly, but it’s always amazing to me the things you can experience for free… just because you paid for expenses with a credit card and accrued some points.

We recently visited O’ahu and Maui, so we weren’t quite on O’ahu for a week, but we have a pretty robust 3-day itinerary if you’re looking for a place to start your planning. Happy travels!

---

---