Labor Day Weekend in Las Vegas for 5 people for $5 each

Reader Jermichael wants to take a boys’ trip to Vegas Labor Day weekend. He and his four friends want flights and hotels paid for with miles. Here’s our proposed itinerary:

DC to Las Vegas

Las Vegas to DC

And the credit cards we’ll be signing up for:

Flights

Chase AirTran

32 A+ credits after $2,000 spend in 3 months

$69 annual fee first year

-OR-

Chase Southwest

25,000 points after $1,000 spend in 3 months

No annual fee first year

Hotel

Chase Sapphire Preferred

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

No annual fee first year

Total Miles: 32 credits or 26,000 points

Total General Points: 43,000

Total Cost: $0-$69

Flights

Unfortunately, direct flights are hard to come by between Vegas and Dulles or Reagan. US Airways has only one flight a day from Reagan, and finding award space on US Air for one person on Labor Day weekend is hard enough, let alone five. I won’t even bother. United runs two flights a day out of Dulles, but there aren’t five seats available on the dates we want. American Airlines doesn’t operate any direct flights but they too do not have award space at the Saver level. Delta too has no Saver space. This leaves us three options:

1. Book paid tickets using points as cash
2. Book multi-stop itineraries with United
3. Book nonstop from BWI on Southwest

Paid tickets are looking like $500 roundtrip for that weekend, so at 50,000 point each, this doesn’t seem like a good value. United’s latest flight out of Dulles leaves at 445pm on Friday, and the only Monday availability is at 950am and actually puts us on the redeye out of LAX, arriving on Tuesday morning. That’s out.

So we’re left with Southwest. Southwest runs eight flights a day on the weekdays between BWI and Las Vegas, the last one on Fridays being at 755pm. On Labor Day Monday, the last flight leaves at 330pm. Here are some options:

Friday 8/30 – BWI-LAS

Monday 9/2 – LAS-BWI

So for 24,780 points we can fly the latest flights on each of the days, falling just inside the amount we would get with the Southwest signup.

With the AirTran card though, we can get an extra roundtrip flight. With AirTran now being owned by Southwest, you can transfer 16 credits from AirTran to Southwest and fly any flight operated by either airline where the flight has a Wanna Get Away fare available. This is regardless of the cost of the fare. So basically for an extra $69 (the AirTran card annual fee), we can get two roundtrips instead of one out of this card.

Total Miles Used: 24,780 miles or 16 credits

Total Cost so Far: $5-$74 (includes $2.50 tax on each flight)

Hotels

As you might imagine, Vegas has some pretty insane hotels. With five people going, you’ll probably want to be booking two rooms. Chase Sapphire Preferred earns you Ultimate Rewards points, which can be used at 1.2 cents apiece to book flights or hotels. The Ultimate Rewards site allows you to search for the hotel you want, and I found exactly the place:

At 16,000 points per night, three nights at the MGM Grand Hotel, one of Vegas’ most famous hotel/casinos, are affordable on the Chase Sapphire Preferred. Each person must pay for 1-2 of the three nights with their points. You can call the hotel after booking to combine the reservations. In the room of three people, each person books one night. In the room of two people, one person books two nights and the other books one.

Total Points Used: 15,899-31,798

Total Cost so Far: $5-$74

Here’s a look at the actual price for flights and this hotel on the same days:

Flights

$447 each

Hotel

$596.22 ($199-$298 each)

Total Savings: $572-$740 each

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

Credit Card Links

Chase Southwest

Chase Sapphire Preferred

Chase AirTran