When I tell people my favorite Hotel program is Hyatt, the first question I usually get is "why not Marriott?" Anecdotally, I've felt that since the merger with SPG the continued devaluations have just gotten out of control. For example, In 2019 we stayed at the Ritz Kyoto for 60,000 Marriott points per night. Looking at the 2025 calendar, there's one night going for 96,000 points at the low end and some nights reaching as high as 152,000 points. Hyatt has had it's share of d

Our original honeymoon plan was to spend a week in the Côte d'Azur and end with a few days in Paris as Gwen had never been before. Due to the constantly changing COVID restrictions, we moved our planned trip from June to September and spent a weekend in St. Kitts right after our wedding instead. During this time, France introduced a mobile pass you needed to enter all public venues to prove either COVID vaccination or a negative test every 3 days. For those outside the EU wit