One of my biggest accomplishments last year was planning and taking a vacation with my husband where our flights and all-inclusive resort were paid for 100% with credit card points! I've had an interest in travel hacking (free or heavily discounted travel with maximizing credit card points) for years, but it wasn't until 2024 that I finally took the plunge into switching my personal strategies with credit card usage and spending to start my own travel hacking journey.
In November 2025, Ryan and I enjoyed a wonderful five-day trip to Riviera Maya, Mexico for our first anniversary. I don't like to gate-keep, so I'll be sharing with you the exact strategies and credits cards that we used to get our resort and airfare for free. If I could figure out how to do this, anyone can!
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First off- I do want to share an important disclaimer that you should only explore utilizing travel with points if you are using credit cards responsibly. A free or discounted vacation is never worth taking on any type of credit card debt for! We were able to accrue all of the points needed for this trip with responsible spending over the duration of a couple of years, and neither Ryan nor myself has ever carried credit card debt.
Okay, now that the above disclaimer is out of the way- let's get into how we went to Mexico for free!
I've been fascinated for years by those who play the credit card points game for free or heavily discounted travel. What I learned over years of watching others is that you need to have a heavily stocked wallet with lots of different travel rewards credit cards. The best travel rewards credit cards where you get the most points bang for your buck do have annual fees, but the annual fees are quickly offset by the amazing travel points that you are reaping. Any credit card that doesn't charge an annual fee is going to offer very poor rewards (a good example of this would be a Discover card, or a cash-back card that your local bank might offer with no annual fee), compared to those that do charge annual fees. While some premier level credit cards charge exorbitant annual fees in the upper hundreds of dollars, there are tons of good travel rewards credit cards available with annual fees of around $100 per card. Those are the ones that Ryan and I personally utilize.
I also learned that the most useful credit cards to have for travel hacking are the general big bank travel rewards cards, not specifically branded hotel and airline credit cards! Examples of these would be cards from Chase, Capital One and Citi, to name a few. A general big bank card has transferable points, which is key to points success! You can transfer out your big bank rewards points to various hotel and airline rewards programs, instead of being tied to just using one if you had a specific branded hotel or airline card. And flexibility with transfer partners is so important to success with this game.
I finally decided to toss my hat into the ring of travel hacking in 2024, while I was engaged and planning my wedding. In March 2024, we booked our honeymoon to Barbados for that November. Our honeymoon was one of the most expensive trips either of us has ever taken, and once our travel agent sent over the final trip invoice it was clear that it was going to be an extremely large credit card purchase for us. I knew that was the perfect opportunity to open up a new rewards credit card, and probably hit the initial spending bonus almost instantly! So I started researching which new credit card made the most sense for us.
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| Our Barbados Honeymoon, November 2024 |
As I mentioned above, learning transfer partners (transfer partners are which hotel and airline rewards programs that you can transfer general big bank travel rewards credit card points to) is so important. Our November 2024 wedding reception was held at a Wyndham hotel in Virginia Beach. Ryan and I learned that we would be getting a good chunk of Wyndham Rewards points for booking a large-scale event like a wedding reception at a Wyndham! A lot of chain hotels offer points bonuses for booking your wedding or other large event there. While the amount of points we were getting from having our wedding at a Wyndham wasn't enough for a full vacation, it was about enough points for a free night's stay at a Wyndham property. So the wheels in my mind started turning, what new credit card could we open to pay for our honeymoon that would offer us more Wyndham Rewards points?
I learned that Wyndham Rewards is a transfer partner for the Capital One Venture travel rewards credit card. So it made total sense for me to open a Capital One Venture card last March, and use it to pay off our honeymoon. A large purchase like that allowed me to instantly gain 75,000 Capital One travel points from the Venture sign-up bonus, which could be transferred at a 1:1 ratio to Wyndham Rewards! So that is exactly what I did. 😊
It would've been very easy to just turn the entire Capital One Venture sign-up bonus of 75,000 points all into Wyndham Rewards points and then automatically have enough points for an actual vacation at a Wyndham property. But I ended up strategizing a bit more with other credit cards to get the most bang for our buck! Let's get into more of the nitty gritty of how I actually booked this trip.
Resort:
We stayed at TRS Yucatan, which is an all-inclusive adults only resort. It is one of four resorts located within the Grand Palladium Riviera Maya mega-resort complex. Palladium hotels have a points sharing agreement with Wyndham hotels, so you can use your Wyndham Rewards points to stay at a Palladium resort.
A one night's stay for two guests (two guests in the same room) costs 30,000 Wyndham Rewards points. A four-night trip like we did would cost 120,000 Wyndham Rewards points. Here's how I got to 120,000 Wyndham Rewards points, and was able to book this resort!
- 1. Wyndham Rewards points earned from our wedding: We earned 15,000 Wyndham Rewards points from having our wedding reception at a Wyndham hotel. Technically these points were for my parents, since they generously paid for our wedding reception. But my dad prefers to travel with Marriott or Hilton points, and my parents never really stay at Wyndham properties. I asked him if we could have them sent to me instead and he said yes!
- 2. Buying Wyndham Rewards points with cash-back rewards from an old cash-back credit card: All of the major airline and hotel rewards programs allow you to pay cash for points. This can be very useful if you're trying to make a redemption for a trip and have just slightly less points than what's needed to book. It allows you to purchase the small amount of points needed, and then you're good to book your (almost) free travel! Points are usually sold in increments of 1,000. For about $13, you can purchase 1,000 Wyndham Rewards Points. From 2017-2021, my main credit card was a no-annual fee cash-back Visa through the bank that I used to have my main checking account with. I never redeemed any of the points in the years that I used this as my everyday credit card, and by the time I stopped using it in 2021 (and got my first travel rewards card), I had over $1000 in cash-back points waiting to be redeemed. I used some of these points for a flight to Florida in February 2025, but still had hundreds left to be used. I wanted to finally close this credit card since I never used it anymore, so I wanted to redeem the rewards sometime in 2025. Wyndam Rewards was doing an amazing points purchase bonus sale last March. By paying to purchase 51,000 Wyndham Rewards points, I received an extra 35,700 points for free!! That is huge!! I was able to purchase 86,700 Wyndham Rewards Points for $663, and I used my old cash-back credit card for this purchase, so that I could immediately reimburse myself for the purchase with the thousands of cash-back reward points that I had. This was a great way to use up the majority of the rewards left on this old credit card, and get us the bulk of what we needed for this trip points-wise! Win win, albeit a bit complicated to figure out.
- 3. Capital One Venture points transfer to Wyndham Rewards: I was now sitting at about 101,000 Wyndham Rewards Points, and I needed to get to 120,000 to book our four-night trip. I transferred the remaining 19,000 points needed to Wyndham Rewards from my new Capital One Venture card! That's the credit card I had opened the year prior to book our honeymoon with, that I talked about earlier in this blog post. And I could've taken the easy route and simply used 120,000 Capital One Venture points and transferred them all to Wyndham Rewards points if I wanted an easier way to do this trip! 😉
- 15,000 points from having our wedding at a Wyndham hotel
- 86,700 Wyndham Reward points purchased for $663 (and immediately reimbursed with rewards on an old cash-back credit card)
- 19,000 points transferred to Wyndham Rewards from my Capital One Venture credit card
- @aunt.kara (My top recommendation to follow for credit card points educational content!)
- @travelpointerswithalli
- @pointsandmilesteachers
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