We recently spent 10 nights in Hawaii (Oahu) and it was $2800 CAD for four of us. This doesn’t include food but includes accommodation, flights, and car rental. Here’s how we did it with my mild travel hacking strategies. I started planning for this trip about a four months prior so I would say it is pretty successful given the short notice. I typically like to plan for the trip at least a year in advance.

Here’s what we did with mild travel hacking this time to Hawaii.  When you don’t care too much about your credit score, travel hacking using credit cards is glorious!!

How to Go to Hawaii for Cheap

Here’s the break down:

• Accommodation for 10 nights: $1880 CAD
• Flights for 4: $680
• Car Rental: $300

Total cost $2860 CAD (with a savings of $2700)

Cheap Flights to Hawaii

There was a seat sale to Oahu from Vancouver with Westjet. It was around $330 CAD per ticket for a direct flight for Ultrabasic fare.

I couldn’t help myself but booked the Ultrabasic fare.

If you haven’t heard of it, Westjet introduced the Ultrabasic fare where you are not allowed to pick your seat, you cannot bring a carry on luggage, and you are boarded last. I think it was around a $50 savings per seat so it made sense for us to book Ultrabasic. We have the Westjet World Elite Mastercard so you can have one checked luggage (first one) on the reservation.

You don’t have to pay for the tickets with your Westjet World Elite Mastercard to get the free check in luggage.

If you are traveling with children, they allow you to pick your seats even if you use Ultrabasic fare. So we were all able to sit together.

The only thing is the degrading ‘boarding last’ requirement. They really do board you last and you are required to line up in “Zone 9” a separate line up from all the other Westjet passengers signalling that you are a peon and paid the lowest class fare.

We used 68,000 of our Scene+ Points from the Scotiabank American Express Gold Card to pay for half of the tickets. As mentioned, I like the Scene+ Points because you can redeem your points retroactively up to 12 months from travel purchase.

Cost: $679 (total savings $680 from Scene+ Points)

TraveL Hacking Hotels in Waikiki

We stayed at a Hilton hotel near Waikiki beach which would normally cost $450 USD a night. It included breakfast (very substantial breakfast). I had 70,000 Hilton Honors points and a free Hilton night stay. There was a promotion where you could buy Hilton points and get bonus Hilton points.

We spent $350 USD for this bonus points promotion and used the 70,000 Hilton Honors points and a Hilton free night stay for 3 nights at the Hilton hotel.

Then we stayed 7 nights at a 3 star hotel with a kitchen. It was not very nice in the room and I think I will not stay there again since this time we saw a cockroach on the last night of our stay. I am pretty frugal with traveling, but I draw the line at cockroaches especially if I have kids traveling with me. Zip up your bags when you travel folks! We had stayed there in the past without issue though. The third time is always the non-charm for us.

We used about $480 in TD Rewards points and another $100 TD Rewards credit for booking accommodation over $500, to save us $580 CAD.

• 3 Nights at a nice Hilton hotel: $350 USD (savings $1000 USD or $1400 CAD using Hilton Honors Points)
• 7 Nights at ghetto-ish hotel: $1425 CAD (savings of $580)

Car Rental Travel Hacking

We weren’t very aggressive with the savings for car rental. We rented a car about 2 days and then used a car for another half day.

Again, I used the TD First Class Travel Visa Infinite TD Rewards points to save $40 CAD on the car rental booking- it was around $110 CAD initially.

For the other days, I used Hui Car Share. It takes a while to set it up beforehand (you have to send your driver’s license information ahead of time) but it is convenient and sort of like renting an Evo Car Share here in Vancouver, except you have to return it to the original station that you borrowed it from.

For a full day rental with Hui, it is about $119 USD.

• Hui Car Share $170 USD or $236 CAD
• Car Rental $70 ($110- $40 TD Rewards redeemed)

Past Travel Hacking for Hawaii

We go to Hawaii about every 1-2 years (with a big pause during COVID) so it’s interesting to see what we spent in prior years and how much inflation gets us over the years.

The great thing about a blog is you can review how much you spent previously.  It looks like I got a better deal via Aeroplan points in 2017 when I travel hacked the flight tickets, they were only $75!  However, that was a strict return flight instead of multi-city so it’s not comparing apples to apples.

However, in 2018, when I travel hacked the trip, it was $720 for two adult tickets, after redeeming $280 from a credit card (not Aeroplan because we didn’t have enough points).

In 2019 I was able to get 12 nights for $1640 CAD on both the Big Island of Hawaii and Waikiki for 3 paid tickets (our younger one was about 6 months old when we went).

Last year we took a 9 night cruise to Hawaii and stayed about 5 nights and spent $3300 on that trip.

And this year we spent $2850.

You may also be interested in:

• Free things to do in Singapore with kids
• Reethi Faru Resort Review
• Is Legoland Hotel worth the money?

Hopefully this answers the burning question, how to go to Hawaii for cheap! 

Have you been to Hawaii before?

Have you tried travel hacking before?