Let me preface this with Hawaii is not typically a budget friendly vacation. We’ve gone to Europe for longer and cheaper, than our Hawaii trips. But! We scored some great deals on some of our favorite hotels, used miles to cover our flights, and used credit card points to cover some of our expenses to bring down our overall out of pocket cost. But! we splurged on food because if you know us, we love to travel for the food.
I wouldn’t say we are travel hackers, or thrifty travelers by any means, but we do try to be smart about our money and traveling. We stay loyal to Southwest, Hyatt, and Hotels.com (to be able to rack up the points quicker), and we have travel friendly credit cards (that rewards you points when you book or redeem for travel). I’ll have to write a post on all this one day. But in the mean time here’s our budget breakdown of our Maui 2021 trip!
We budgeted about $3500 for this trip and came in slightly under budget despite spending more on food than we originally budgeted for!
RELATED TRAVEL BUDGET POSTS: Jackson, Wyoming// Portland, Oregon // Austin, Texas // Boston + New York
MAUI 2021 RELATED POSTS: Photo Diary // Maui Food // Maui Travel Guide // traveling to Hawaii with COVID restrictions
For reference, here are our travel stats:
Departed: Wednesday March 10th
Returned: Wednesday March 17th
8 days + 7 nights in total
TRANSPORTATION
Just like last time we were in Maui, we rented a car. We make our reservation through Southwest.com to rack up flight points for our reservation, and because it’s easy to compare and shop the various car rental companies (TIP: if you want to get points for your reservation, make sure it’s indicated as a Rapid Rewards partner). We choose Hertz this time simply because it was the cheapest; and then when we got through the reservations counter, they upgraded us to a Camero SS (worth WAY more than we paid).
RENTAL CAR + FEES: $489.30 (for the car we were upgraded too, would’ve been about $1700 for the week!)
GAS: $66.56
TRANSPORTATION TOTAL: $556
FLIGHTS
We flew from Ontario (ONT) into Maui (OGG) with a layover in Oakland. We could’ve flew direct if we wanted to hike over to LAX, but it’s worth the layover and sometimes slightly higher price point to not have to deal with LAX! We were constantly looking at flights and booked them when they were the lowest. Also, we were flexible with our arrival and departure dates, which saved us some money/points too! We both had enough Southwest points to book our roundtrip flights, so all we had to cover were the fees. But, our flights still would’ve only been $289, each, roundtrip without points.
TWO ROUNDTRIP FLIGHTS: $578 and after our flight miles redemption: $22.40
FOOD
This includes all of our food for the entire trip. From food at the airport, to a Costco run for snacks and drinks, to all our restaurant, snack and dessert stops. We don’t purposefully seek out cheaper or more expensive places to eat, we just eat where we want too (as we do whenever we travel). We had budgeted $100/day for food because going in, and we ended up having a few more expensive meals which ended up throwing us over our total budget. 100% worth it though for some delicious food!
FOOD TOTAL: $980.29
Read more about where we ate in Maui HERE and where we ate in Maui on our last trip HERE.
HOTELS
Read more about the hotels we stayed at in this post. We stayed in Lahaina for 5 nights at the Hyatt Regency Resort and Spa, and then down in Wailea at the Andaz Maui for our last 2 nights. We were able to take advantage of the Healthcare Heros discount that Hyatt has been graciously offering for the past year (and good through September 12th, 2021). Using that discount saved us a lot of money – and we are so grateful that Hyatt offered it. AND! we were upgraded to an ocean view room at the Hyatt. Hyatt almost always upgrades us rooms because we are loyal members.
Hyatt Regency (5 nights, including taxes + fees): $896 (would normally be $2685 without the discount for same number of nights)
Andaz Maui (2 nights, including taxes + fees): $1042 (would normally be $2052 without the discount for same number of nights)
HOTEL TOTAL (7 nights total, including taxes + fees): $1938 and after $275 Barclays Credit Card statement credit redemption $1663
*Combined total, without using the healthcare heros discount, the hotels would have came out to $4737
Read more about where we stayed in Maui HERE.
OTHER EXPENSES
This includes our Shaka guide app for our tour of West Maui, our couples massages, any souvenirs we bought, or shopping we did. Read more about what we did on Maui in THIS POST
TOTAL: $360.12
GRAND TOTAL FOR OUR TRIP: $3400 (originally $4254 before points/miles were applied)
-This does not include almost $3000 in savings using Hyatt’s Friends and Family code for Healthcare Heros, or the difference in the rental car costs after we were upgraded. So, after we allocated $275 worth of credit card points, and redeeming $578 worth of flight miles for our flights, the total came down to $3400
PER PERSON PER DAY FOR 8 DAYS, 7 NIGHTS (after savings, and rewards and miles were applied): $243
So there you have it, a breakdown of our budget for our trip to MAUI! We do have a couple travel focus credit cards, and Hyatt hotels and Southwest airline accounts to accumulate points and miles for future travel. If we’re not redeeming points, we’re accumulating them for future travel!
RELATED TRAVEL BUDGET POSTS: Jackson, Wyoming // Portland, Oregon // Austin, Texas // Boston + New York
MAUI 2021 RELATED POSTS: Photo Diary // Maui Food // Maui Travel Guide // traveling to Hawaii with COVID restrictions
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