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I usually plan my trips a year in advance. Giving me plenty of time to find award space on the airlines I want to fly to get to my destination. Knowing that, Australia was not one my list of 2022 destinations.

I was in Sydney when lockdowns began happening. Even though I was keen to resume that trip, it was hard to make plans when their borders were still closed. But then Australia announced their borders were opening to fully vaccinated. And I remembered I had a Qantas flight voucher.

A couple of searches later. And I booked a trip to Sydney.

How I Booked: Sydney and Brisbane

Flights

With everyone wanting to travel to Australia, flights were expensive. Playing around with dates, I found some that would more than cover my voucher for a round trip in economy from Columbus to Sydney. The voucher was worth about $1,000. This was from a Sydney to Hong Kong cancelled trip. With some extra money on the voucher, I ended up adding on a flight to Brisbane before coming back home.

Complete routing for this trip: Columbus to Dallas to Sydney to Brisbane to Los Angeles to Boston to Columbus.

Normally I would hate this, but I’m working on requalifying for AA status. Since I will be between grad school semesters, I had nothing pressing to get back for.

If you wanted to book this with points, AA is the best option. Availability to Australia is okay. To find the amounts listed, you will need to be flexible on dates.

Taxes and fees will vary based on operating airline, connecting airports and class of service.

AA doesn’t partner with any flexible currencies. The easiest way to earn AA miles is through Citi and Barclays cards.

Hotels

For this trip, I’m staying at three different hotels. All Hyatt’s. I’m doing my best to requalify for Hyatt Globalist status this year.

First up, I’ll be returning to the Park Hyatt Sydney for one night. I stayed here during my previous visit to Sydney. I really enjoyed the hotel then and I don’t expect this stay to be any different. The Park Hyatt Sydney is a Category 8 hotel. It previously was a Category 7 hotel, but recently increased in March 2022.

I booked the hotel prior to the category increase. Because of that I was able to use a Category 1-7 Free Night Award. I earned this due to my Hyatt Globalist status. I’m bummed that this redemption isn’t possible anymore.

Unless Hyatt changes those awards to be good at Category 8 hotels, you’ll need to use points.

This is a pricy hotel. Standard cash rates start at $919 per night.

The next three nights I stay at the Hyatt Regency Sydney. I didn’t have any experience with this hotel prior. I’ll be reviewing this hotel in an upcoming post. This hotel also changed hotel categories, but unlike the Park Hyatt it went down a category.

The Hyatt Regency is a Category 4 hotel. Member rates are reasonable in my opinion starting at $203 each night. Even with that, I still got a pretty good redemption at 1.35 cents a point. Most May nights were off-peak. As my luck would be, my nights were standard rates.

Because this is a Category 4 hotel, you’ll be able to use Free Night Awards. You can earn these after 30 nights at Hyatts or from Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card.

After four nights in Sydney, I stayed four more nights in Brisbane. There is only one Hyatt in the city: Hyatt Regency Brisbane.

This is a Category 3 hotel. Cash rates were still low. Averaging $172 a night during my stay. There weren’t any off-peak nights. Just standard points nights at 12,000 WOH. I still decided to use points as I was getting an almost 1.5 cents a point redemption rate.

How I Booked: Sydney and Brisbane Bottom Line

While this wasn’t a complete points trip, I came away from the booking process happy. The voucher covered all my flights and I’ll earn some extra AA miles. I could have found better uses for my World of Hyatt points. But I wanted to save the money. So I’m happy with my redemption choices.

In future posts, I’ll be reviewing all these flights and hotels.

These opinions in this article are the author’s 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.