Oh boy did I mess up.
I COMPLETELY forgot about a substantial credit on my favorite card, and the card that got me into credit card rewards in the first place: the Hilton Honors Aspire card by American Express.
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The card comes with up to $250 in airline incidental fee reimbursement, and a $250 Hilton Resort credit, good for essentially anything at what Hilton considers a resort, as long as it's the resort showing up on your statement as the merchant. This could include room rates, or anything that can be charged to the room, like food, parking, resort fees, spa services, or even shop items. As I researched before booking this staycation, however, it MUST be charged to the room to use the credit. The same food from a restaurant in a Hilton Resort, if charged independently by the restaurant to the card, will not trigger the credit.
That's an incredibly useful credit, especially because it's a lump sum annually. Let's be honest: how often can anyone go to a resort and spend less than $250 total? That means one trip per year can make full use of the credit. Fortunately, it also means that if you forget to use it until 2 weeks before your card anniversary, when it expires, it can be used all at once. Also fortunately for this trip, it really turned out to showcase a ton of the benefits of this card!
On such short notice, we really couldn't find the time to actually travel anywhere, so we decided to find somewhere to staycation to use the credit in Phoenix. The other challenge, however, was that it's currently peak season in Phoenix. The weather is perfect for golfing, spring training has just begun, and all of the snowbirds are still here for the winter. That meant the cheapest "resort" in the Hilton portfolio was still over $400 per night. With food and drinks, that would quickly become at least $600. Cutting $250 out of that is nice, but for something planned so last minute, we didn't want to be spending the remainder out of our travel budget for the year.
Fortunately, the same Hilton Aspire card also provides me with a free "standard" award night each year, and I had one to use. I was planning to use it later in the summer, because the expiration for the free nights is a few months after the card anniversary date. But with costs of Phoenix resorts, and needing to use the credit ASAP, we decided to use the free night to get the room charge covered, then splurge a little on the food.
With this in mind, my choice was easy: The Arizona Biltmore, a Waldorf Astoria resort. This is one of the premier hotel properties in Phoenix, and the room rates for when we booked in early March were running about $800. I called to book a Saturday to Sunday, and was able to do so quickly (Hilton free nights must be booked via phone, unlike using points for nights, which is online).
Before arrival, our excellent concierge, Kyle, reached out to find out if we wanted anything special, wanted any reservations, or were celebrating anything. I asked for a brunch reservation Sunday morning, but we were just going to eat dinner while hopping between a couple bars on-site Saturday. I also told him we were celebrating Kristyn's new business being profitable, which happened sometime in the first quarter of the year. Also, Kristyn is the best and I love her!
As soon as we arrived, another benefit of the Aspire card came in to assist. Because of my top-tier Diamond status with Hilton, our room was upgraded from a "resort room" (the basic room at this property) to a cottage. This cottage also happened to be about 30 feet from the adults-only pool, which was perfect for us. I quickly checked what the regular rate of the cottage rooms was, and it would have been almost $1,300 to pay for it with cash! While we were checking in, I also overheard two other parties asking for bigger rooms for one reason or another, which made me doubly appreciative of the automatic upgrade from the Diamond status.
The room was quite nice, with a sitting area, a coffee and tea setup on top of the minifridge, a very spacious bathroom with separate water closet, and a private outdoor patio with a gas fire pit. It's definitely larger than the standard resort room, particularly in the bathroom. The only downside to the room itself was that the ceiling in the bathroom was very low; I banged my hands on it every time I changed shirts. That's somewhat common, I think, with properties where the HVAC system has been added since it was originally built.
I think the patio and firepit were the most significant parts of the room upgrade: resort rooms have a balcony overlooking part of the resort, but the cottage rooms had the private patio and firepit. Kristyn got great use of both, especially Sunday morning!
When we returned to the room in the evening, Kyle had sent a bottle of Champagne and tray of macarons, with a card congratulating Kristyn! It was an incredibly nice touch. The macarons were good, and we had already finished dinner, so we used the champagne Sunday morning for mimosas.
Most of our time spent at the Biltmore that wasn't sleeping was at the pool. There are actually 3 pools on site, though I believe one of them is only for timeshare-style rooms in a separate area. The largest pool has a huge waterslide that looked very fun, though we never actually entered.
The other pool is the adults-only pool, which was where we were. It has a bar, a hot tub, about 5 daybeds and 8 cabanas available for a fee, and an interesting shape with lots of nooks. There was definitely not enough seating for the amount of people trying to use it, though, which means many of the nooks had people sitting on the edges of them. At about 9am on Sunday, every available lounge chair was "reserved" with a hat or other article of clothing placed on it. Fortunately, the nooks of the pool meant that there was tons of spaces to sit on the edge, even if you didn't have a real chair.
For food, we ate at the Spire bar for dinner, and MacArthur's for brunch. Both were very good. The spire bar is one of the top photos of the Biltmore most places I've looked, because it's very distinctive and cool when it's lit up at night. We also got a drink at the Wright bar inside, which is apparently the birthplace of the Tequila Sunrise.
We were definitely able to use the entire resort credit, actually overspending it by a bit. If there's a drawback to this property, it's that everything on-site is quite expensive. That's to be expected in relation to the room prices, though. Overall, it provided us with some much-needed relaxation, good food, and a fun place to be, all for only about $100. The Arizona Biltmore is an excellent high-end resort option in the Phoenix area, particularly if you're a Hilton loyalist, and I would happily stay there again.
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