4 ways we saved big on our trip to France
Our family is heading to Paris to celebrate my youngest Tanner’s high school graduation. This is my 3rd trip to Paris and my son’s 2nd. I wrote about this briefly when I booked the trip a month ago. You can read about the flights I booked and the hotels here.
This is a big trip for our family of four. I started booking this trip almost a month ago after realizing that the trip to Prague I booked for our entire family was booked for the wrong week. You can read about that here.
Flights
We used points and miles to fly our family of four to Paris from Nashville. We had to pay taxes and fees on the tickets. Our out-of-pocket for the flights was around $1200. I then paid extra to upgrade our seats to Comfort Plus. We are flying Delta, but used Flying Blue miles (Air France/KLM) to purchase the tickets, which were significantly cheaper. If you want to learn more about how to do this, click here.
2. HOTELS
We are staying at 3 different hotels on this trip. We need 2 hotel rooms at each location. We were able to book the hotel in Rouen with Hyatt Points. Next, we are heading to Caen. We could not find a hotel with any of the points I collected. So we are paying for this with a credit card. We are currently working on a sign-up bonus for my American Airlines card. We will put the hotel on this card. The two nights for two rooms and breakfast will be around $600 (depending on the exchange rate). After Caen, we are returning to Paris to stay for two nights. We are staying at the Hilton Paris Opera. This hotel is around $1600 for two nights. I recently rebooked this hotel to save almost $400 on the two rooms. We are diamond status with Hilton, we will have access to their executive lounge. They usually let the whole family, even though the rules say one guest. We will use our Hilton Aspire card for this stay. For our stay, we will get Hilton points. We also receive them for using our Hilton Aspire Card. We will also get a 10,000-point bonus. I contacted American Express when my credit card annual fee hit to see if there was a retention offer I was offered 10000 points for $1,000 spend in 3 months. I estimate we will have to pay less than $2200 for hotels on this trip. This will include several meals, which add up fast when traveling with 3 men.
Hilton Paris Opera House
3. TOURS
We booked our tours in Caen and Bayeux with Viator. I like Viator because you can book and pay later. After I booked these tours, I saw them on my cardpointers app. I had American Express offers. I used 2 different American Express offers and saved $50 on each tour. I love saving money on things I am buying anyway. I just went into my reservation and changed the credit card on file for each. This ended up saving us $100.
4. AIRPORT LOUNGES
Last but not least, we will be using the Delta Lounge in Nashville pre-flight. We have the American Express Platinum card. We can use it at the Delta lounge if we are flying Delta, as long as we do not have a basic economy ticket. We should be able to visit lounges in Nashville and Atlanta on the way to Paris. I don’t recommend the American Express Platinum card for people who do not travel often. However, we do. I have to pay $195 extra per person in my family to have their card. Yikes! However, on this trip alone, we will save $150 a person on lounge access. Everyone in our family travels often! If you aren’t familiar with airport lounges, they are a great place to relax between flights and have free food and drinks. Feeding a family of 4 at an airport is super expensive. In the long run, this saves us money.
