47 Days of Hotels in Egypt for $0

We decided to take advantage of all the cheap points hotels in Egypt so we spent 47 days in different parts of Egypt.

That’s 264,000 hotel points that can be earned fairly easily by anyone. This post will go over the earning and burning of the points. I’ll do a post on all the hotels, and another post on the sites of Egypt later.

The idea here is to have $0 in hotel bills for each of our stays through out our nearly 6 weeks. It’s really the same idea of the other $0 Trips we did.

We did a Latin American Hopper styled trip that was a $0 Trip. We only used miles and points for all of our flights and all of our hotels. We spent a week in Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala.

Then we did a $0 trip to Oman. All of our hotels were free, but the flights were really a $200 mistake fare. But not only do we have credit card points to reimburse the expenses, but we were lucky enough to be given flight vouchers for the IFE system not working (I didn’t even notice since I slept the entire time). Not cash, but expenses were already low on a mistake fare so it seemed ironic.

 

With those other two trips, they were roundtrips from the US and detailed all expenses. However, this time we’re neither coming from the US nor going onward to the US. So my “goal” or self made challenge was to have all the hotels be $0.

I didn’t really know a lot about Egypt but I knew I wanted to see a few sites like Luxor and different spots on the Red Sea.

I didn’t really plan much but I knew the hotels I wanted to hit and how I was going to pay for them. I was sure about timing though. And I didn’t plan on going to Marsa Alam which really just got added.

But at this point, the trip isn’t over but everything is booked. Here are the hotels and how we paid for them…

 

Hotels:

 

Hilton Ramses Cairo

• 2 nights
• 10,000 Hilton points a night
• 20,000 Hilton points total

Sofitel Winter Palace Luxor

• 2 nights
• $84 Orbitz Orbucks a night
• But given $87.44 Orbitz Orbucks back due to BRG
• $80 Orbitz Orbucks total

Hilton Marsa Alam

• 4 nights
• 20,000 Hilton points a night
• 80,000 Hilton points total

Radisson Blu El Quseir

• 11 nights
• 9,000 Club Carlson points a night
  • But booked when credit card gave free night per stay
• 54,000 Club Carlson points

Hilton Hurghada Resort

• 5 nights
• 5,000 Hilton points a night
  • But Hilton gives 5th night free
• 20,000 Hilton points total

Radisson Blu Sharm El Sheikh

• 2 nights
• 15,000 Club Carlson points a night
  • But booked when credit card gave free night per stay
• 15,000 Club Carlson points total

Park Inn Sharm El Sheikh

• 2 nights
• 15,000 Hilton points a night
  • But booked when credit card gave free night per stay
• 15,000 Club Carlson points total

Hilton Waterfalls Resort Sharm El Sheikh

• 10 nights
• 5,000 Hilton points a night
  • But Hilton gives 5th night free
• 40,000 Hilton points total

Hilton Dreams Resort Sharm El Sheikh

• 5 nights
• 5,000 Hilton points a night
  • But Hilton gives 5th night free
• 20,000 Hilton points total

 

Totals in points:

• 180,000 Hilton HHonors Points
  • 26 nights
• 84,000 Club Carlson Points
  • 15 nights
• $80 Orbitz Orbucks points
  • 2 nights

 

 

Earning These Points

Hilton

180,000 Hilton points may sound like a lot, but consider that we both recently got approved for the Hilton Visa Signature which gives 75,000 points, and Carrie recently got the Hilton Surpass card, which gives 85,000 points.

• Citi Hilton Visa Signature x2
• Hilton Surpass

 

It’s really that simple. Although, another thing you can do is try to do a Best Rate Guarantee on some of these Hilton hotels. See Hilton’s BRG policy is to give $50 off for international bookings, and some of the hotels are barely over $50 a night. I think the ones in Sharm were $60 when we were there.

 

Club Carlson

We spent 84,000 points total for all our Club Carlson hotels and by coincidence, the Club Carlson credit card has a bonus of 85,000 points.

Plus the Club Carlson credit card gives 5 points per dollar on all purchases. So if you buy Simon Mall GCs for $3 per $500, you’re really paying/ losing 0.6% per dollar. Or it’s like buying 5,000 points for $6.

And the Radisson El Quseir (which is pretty darn nice), is only 9,000 points a night. That’s basically $12 a night.

 

Even without spend, the signup bonus is enough for 9 nights at the Radisson Blu in El Quseir. Or it’s enough for nearly 6 nights in the Radisson Blu in Sharm.

The difference between the two is that El Quseir is very very remote. This isn’t the review post, but it’s relevant in that there is absolutely nowhere else to eat except the hotel in El Quseir… which adds up! Trust me.

 

I’ll talk about the Orbitz stuff below, in the Luxor part of the burning section.

 

Burning These Points

Picking the hotels seemed pretty easy.

I mapped out a bunch of destinations and hotels around the country that I wanted to visit. Then I started looking at reviews on FlyerTalk and pictures from the hotel on TripAdvisor.

The picture thing seemed to matter most for the beach resorts. I wanted to be at a place where I could snorkel.

However, in the first week someone at the Hilton Waterfalls was adamant that if I liked snorkeling I needed to go to the Hilton Marsa Alam. Turns out there is a Hilton there, and it’s on the short All-Inclusives list of Hilton hotels. It’s 20,000 points a night. More than all the other hotels I picked out, but I kept hearing the same advice from locals I met, that Marsa Alam is the best for beaches and snorkeling.

 

For Sharm El Sheikh, I didn’t know what I was doing, apparently. The Hilton Dreams wasn’t even on the beach, and I’ve already complained about everything else.

I figured at the very least I could spend a lot of time working… which we did nearly all hours of the day in Sharm, Hurghada, and El Quseir… our long stretches.

 

But picking the hotels was easy. I tried all the super cheap category 1 hotels. Which turned out pretty well, except for the Park Inn (only 2 nights) and Hilton Dreams Sharm, and Hilton Hurghada Resort. For each of those I wish I woulda just stayed at the previous hotel.

There are some category 1 hotels with Marriott and SPG but all things being equal, I’d rather burn Hilton and Club Carlson points.

 

Cairo

With Cairo, there is a hotel for 5,000 points out by the Pyramids, but I wanted to be downtown. So the Hilton Ramses seemed like a better option for only 10,000 points. The other 2 nights we’ll spend at a friend’s place.

In Cario there are more options in general. Marriott seemed like a good option, and there were IHG options but I didn’t want to burn that many points.

 

Luxor

In Luxor, there was only SPG and Hilton. Actually, the main reason I didn’t try any SPG hotels this trip is because we’re totally out of points. And the Hilton in Luxor is 20,000 points. Which is totally not expensive until you do one search and realize that chain hotels can be as little as $30 a night.

Actually the Sheraton was $30 a night for the advance purchase rate when booking 3 nights or more on most booking sites. Total steal.

As I said in the BRG Experiments (which I’ll newsletter about soon), Orbitz has had some generous policies on BRGs. They were giving up to $200 in coupons for a BRG, depending on your status. They changed that, but needless to say, I have some Orbitz Orbucks.

Since hotels were so cheap, I had to opt for burning Orbitz points. So I chose the Sofitel Winter Pavillon Luxor… which turned out to be an awesome redemption.

The Sofitel Winter Pavillon was $60 a night, which was way more than the Mercure, which I could also use Orbucks on. However, there were lower rates for the Sofitel on Expedia, so I decided to experiment and “risk” it by booking my free night at the nicer Sofitel. Worst case scenario was still good; pay $60 a night for a Sofitel in downtown Luxor.

Two things happened. I got the BRG. And then it turned out that the Pavillon isn’t even open. They’ve been refurbishing it for awhile now and a local told me that a Belgium friend had the same thing happen. They let me pay for the Sofitel Pavillon which is half the price of its neighboring partner, the Sofitel Winter Palace. Turns out they are taking reservations but then just giving people a free upgrade to the Winter Palace, an actual 5 star hotel. What the heck? A double win.

Anywho, I’ll talk more BRG stuff in the newsletter soon.

 

 

Conclusion

I actually love Egypt. I was having more of a love/hate in Sharm El Sheikh, but now it’s love. It’s super ancient, and unique.

The only thing I regret is skipping Alexandria in order to spend more time on the beach. Alexandria has a very centrally located Hilton for only 5,000 points a night. However, I didn’t really want to do the city thing.

But the best part of Egypt isn’t the beaches, in my opinion, it’s the history. And I actually enjoy the city because you can see local culture and get local food… which is pretty good. Not India good, but good. I missed out on a lot by being on the beach so much. Although, who knows if I woulda liked Alexandria. But I obviously would’ve had more options.

 

There are tons and tons of options for free hotels in Egypt, and I showed how it’s actually really simple to get 47 free nights. However, I strongly recommend you don’t make your decision of where to go based on cheap hotels. Make your decision based on where you want to go, and fill it in with points.

Trust your gut on where to go. Look at pictures or reviews to get an idea, and you’ll know what’s more appealing. Don’t talk yourself into a bleh experience (Hilton Dreams) to save on points.