Nothing Toulouse: 4 nights in the South of France and back for $170

On the request of a reader, today we will spotlight a roundtrip flight to and stay in Toulouse. For those of you not in the know, Toulouse is the fourth-largest city in France. Far more importantly, in my opinion, is the fact that Toulouse is the headquarters for Airbus, maker of the world’s largest jet, the Airbus 380.

Yes, that is a double-decker plane. A few years ago, Air Austral (national airline of the island of Reunion) proposed to buy one of these planes and make it all coach class. To give you some idea of the plane’s size, in this configuration it would have held 840 people.

Anyways, I digress. Today we will be signing up for three credit cards to get us on our trip to Toulouse. Here’s our itinerary:

• Washington, DC to Toulouse
• Toulouse to Washington, DC

And the credit cards we’ll need:

Barclays US Airways Mastercard

35,000 miles on first purchase

No annual fee first year

Use: Flights to Europe on a Star Alliance partner

American Express Starwood Preferred Guest

10,000 points on first purchase

15,000 points after $5,000 spend in 6 months

No annual fee first year

Use: Transfer points to US Airways miles to have enough for flights to Europe

Chase Sapphire Preferred

40,000 points after $3,000 spend in 3 months

No annual fee first year

Use: Pay for hotel

Total Airlines Miles: 60,000 (35,000 US Airways plus a transfer of 25,000 from Starwood)

Total Hotel Points: 10,000 (remaining from Starwood after transfer and minimum spend)

Total General Points: 43,000 (40,000 from CSP plus minimum spend requirement)

Flights

US Airways charges 60,000 miles to fly from the U.S. to Europe in coach. We only got 35,000 miles from their Barclays credit card. Fortunately, Starwood points are transferable to U.S. Airways at a 1:1 ratio. In addition to U.S. Airways, check out the other partners they transfer to:

That’s a pretty ridiculolus list. Just don’t transfer to Air New Zealand. It costs 65 points per mile.

Another nice thing about Starwood points is that, in order to get 25,000 airline miles, you only need to transfer 20,000 points. Starwood gives you the other 5,000. So by transferring 20,000 Starwood points to US Airways, we end up with 25,000 US Airways miles, and 10,000 Starwood points remaining.

Now we have enough to fly to Europe. But US Airways is a small airline that definitely does not fly to Toulouse. Fortunately they are part of the Star Alliance, which has many airlines that fly to Toulouse. US Airways’ website doesn’t allow searching for partner availability, so we’re going to use United’s website to search, and then call US Airways to book. We’ll have approximately enough Chase points for 4 nights at a very nice hotel, so let’s go ahead and book for a long weekend, flying out Thursday (arriving Friday) and leaving Tuesday.Here’s what United’s site has:

If you’re an optimist you might say that you get to stop in Philly for only an extra $2! If you’re more normal, you would probably say that you’d be happy to take one stop for $37 instead of two for $39. Let’s choose the second option connecting via Frankfurt. Write down your dates and flight numbers so you can call US Airways to book. Remember these flights are on Lufthansa, not United.

Next let’s find our return flight Tuesday. One option, but it’s a good one:

Make sure to write down these flight numbers as well. When you call US Airways to book the tickets, they may try to charge you a phone booking fee. Politely ask them to waive this, as you were not able to book these flights online since they were on a partner airline.

I’ll be honest I’m not very familiar with US Airways’ taxes and fees on miles tickets, but I assume they will be similar to United. Plus US Airways charges a $50 award booking fee (ridiculous). So the total for flights would be about $170.

Miles Used: 60,000

Cost: $170

Hotel

The great thing about Chase Sapphire Preferred is that you can use the points in two ways. One is to transfer them to airline miles or hotel points (or even Amtrak). The other is to use the points as currency to purchase travel. If you do it this way, each point is worth 1.25 cents apiece. Chase has a travel website that you can access by logging into your account. In downtown Toulouse, it looks like there are two 4 or 5 star hotels that you can book using your points:

Or you can scroll down to see the list of hotels:

That last one, the Novotel Toulouse Centre Wilson, is really nice. In fact, it’s the second-highest rated hotel in all of Toulouse on TripAdvisor. And four nights comes in just under our budget, at 41,268 points.

Miles Used: 60,000

General Points Used: 41,268

Cost: $170

Not bad for four nights in the south of France! Let’s take a look at our savings:

Flights

$1,416 (Lufthansa via Munich each way)

Hotel

$516 (for 4 nights)

Total Savings: $1,190

Credit Card Links

Starwood Amex

Chase Sapphire Preferred

Barclays US Airways Card

Need help thinking about the right credit cards for you, or how to book this kind of trip? Head over to www.wennecorp.com and we’d be happy to chat with you.