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I just returned from my first visit to New Zealand. What a beautiful country! I already feel like I need to return. On this trip, I stuck to the North Island. I planned on flying into Auckland and out of Wellington.

Things didn’t turn out exactly like I planned on this trip.

How I Booked: New Zealand and a Dose of Weather

Flights

As the title implies, I experienced some weather challenges during my trip. I’ll talk about what I originally planned and then what happened.

For the departure, I took the long route. I had 150,000 British Airways that were expiring. Wanting to use them, I found a Dallas-Doha-Sydney flight for just 120,000 Qatar Avios! On the DFW-DOH leg, I was supposed to fly in QSuites and from DOH-SYD in Qatar First.

For those wondering, British Airways and Qatar allows you to transfer points between them.

Since I was departing from Dallas and live in Columbus, I needed a positioning flight. I used $200 in cash and AA gift card to fly one-way from Columbus, Ohio to Dallas. Because of expected snow in Columbus on my original departure day, I moved my positioning flight up three days. This ended up being a great decision when the original one was cancelled due to the Dallas ice storm.

For the final leg from Sydney to Auckland, I planned on flying Qantas business class. I decided to use $900 in cash to book into business class. Points weren’t available. This flight was on an A330 and had lie-flats.

Weather was a theme of trip. The yearly Dallas ice storm just happened to occur during my stay. I was convinced that my Qatar flight would be cancelled. I couldn’t get Qatar to rebook me for a flight that departed that night. I started looking for any option that left that night to Australia or New Zealand.

I found one option. An 80,000-mile Dallas to Auckland flight in American Airlines Flagship Business. I booked this flight at 6PM for a 10:30PM departure. Nothing like last minute? I figured if the flight ended up getting cancelled, I was in the same position. If the flight took off, I got to enjoy a few more days in New Zealand.

This entire trip was kicked off when United had a flash sale to Asia-Pacific. One-way business class tickets were going for just 60,000 points each way. I couldn’t pass that up! I booked Wellington-Sydney-San Francisco-Columbus for a February 2023 departure. Routing changed after booked which was expected since I booked this in May 2022. I ended up flying Wellington-Sydney-Houston-Columbus.  

Hotels

When I found myself with three extra days in Dallas, I booked the Hyatt Regency Dallas. I’ve stayed there many times while a Dallas resident. I always enjoyed the hotel. To book, I choose a points + cash rate for the first two nights and a Category 1-4 Free Night Award. The points + cash rate was 6,000 points plus $100. This booked me into a standard 1 King, but with my Hyatt Globalist status I was upgraded to an Executive Suite.

As originally planned, I stayed one night at the Hyatt Regency DFW. I did this one night using cash. It was $232 after taxes. This booked me into a standard 1 King, but with my Hyatt Globalist status I was upgraded to an Executive Suite. When I switched to the AA flight, I didn’t end up spending the night. I enjoyed working from the room before the flight pivot.

In New Zealand, I planned to stay at three different hotels, Park Hyatt Auckland, Hilton Lake Taupo and the InterContinental Wellington.

In Auckland, I spent thirteen days at the Park Hyatt Auckland. I originally planned seven nights. Switching two the AA flight added three nights. A cyclone added three. I can’t wait to share the reviews. I stayed in three different rooms and staff was wonderful. There was a small hiccup which I’ll talk about in the review. They did a great job on the recovery.

I have zero Hilton or IHG points. I planned to just use cash and book the Lake Taupo and Wellington hotels via Rocketmiles to earn loyalty points for AA status. There were no Hyatt’s in either location. Due to the weather, neither of those happened. I ended up cancelling the Lake Taupo stop. In Wellington, I booked the DoubleTree by Hilton Wellington. It was $260 for the one night.

How I Booked: New Zealand and a Dose of Weather Bottom Line

While I’m bummed I didn’t get to try Qatar QSuites and Qatar First, I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with a potential weather delays. All my flights were great! Some hotels were more luxurious than others, but all were solid.

Be on the lookout for these upcoming reviews!

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The opinions in this article are the author’s and not those of a bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.