Bargain Travel Extraordinaire Saves $38,000 on a $40,000 Trip

If you’ve ever patted yourself on the back for scoring a great deal on a travel purchase, you may want to take it back after reading about this. The Chicago Sun-Times recently posted an article about Brad Wilson — founder of bradsdeals.com — who took his wife on a sweet vacation to Australia and New Zealand. He estimates that the two week trip, at full price, would have cost around $40,000, but he only paid about $2000.

So how did he do it? Well, first of all, he’s no slouch when it comes to bargain hunting. His website is all about deals. They post coupons and the best deals to be had. About the growing success of his site — which he started in 2001 as a way of tipping off fellow students to deals on school supplies — he says,

I remember getting excited when 10 people used to show up to the website in a day. Last month, we got about 2 million visits.

Armed with this penchant for taking advantage of the multitude of offers that are constantly out there, he came across an ad from Hyatt who were giving away a free night for every two nights stayed at one of their properties. The key was that it didn’t matter what kind of property it was, so he found bargain basement prices at the chain’s cheapest hotel line near his home, booked and paid for rooms, and started racking up free nights. At the same time he racked up 270,000 frequent-flier miles because of a deal between Hyatt and United Airlines.

He used 220,000 of these miles for two business class tickets on Air New Zealand which included first-class seats from Chicago to California, then business class to Auckland and finally Sydney. In New Zealand, they stayed at the Hyatt Regency (he estimates $1600 worth of accommodations) and in Sydney the Park Hyatt Sydney; their room had a rack rate of $1100 per night. They also received free room upgrades, free breakfasts and complimentary Internet as a result of becoming Hyatt Diamond members due to a promotion that reduced the stays needed to become one.

But they weren’t done yet. They still had leftover airmiles and Hyatt stays, so they used those on a trip to Paris later.

[Image: Richard Moross / Flickr]

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