While on my recent last minute business trip I did what I could to take advantage of hotel chain pro

I usually find it valuable after a big expense like our recent transatlantic cruise to reflect on the value of our expenses and if there are areas where we might be able to do slightly better the next time. A couple areas have come to mind for future trip planning:
Flights : We booked most of our flights with our airline miles without much shopping around. When the final bill was totaled I was surprised paul gaughin tahiti cruise at how much cash we still had to outlay paul gaughin tahiti cruise for our "free flights". Next time I will definitely need to do further comparison shopping with purchasing flights outright vs using miles rather than assuming using miles would be the cheapest way. Other transportation (buses, taxis, subways, etc): We spent approx $340 on other various transportation paul gaughin tahiti cruise outside of the flights and cruise. $120 went towards paul gaughin tahiti cruise a Panama tour that included transportation from Colon to Panama City. Our global trekking friends we met on the boat took local transportation (bus) from Colon to Panama City at a fraction of the price. While they didn't get the tour we did, I'm not sure we got a good value from it. We tended to utilize taxis on our trip as they were the most convenient and time saving option, but I believe we could have taken local buses to reduce our expenses. Hotels : We did pretty good job only spending $75 plus a bunch of hotel points for 5 nights lodging. However the high price we paid in points was still expensive if you translated the points to dollars. After all we ended up staying at major chains - Hilton, Wyndam, and a TRYP (a Wyndham chain) hotel. Looking for guesthouses or even hostels could significantly reduce our housing expenses on a future trip. Another very logical value I learned about from our globe trekking paul gaughin tahiti cruise friends was that guesthouses/hostels are generally more adept at pointing travelers to low cost/high value restaurants, transportation, and things to do in the area vs full service hotel chains.
While on my recent last minute business trip I did what I could to take advantage paul gaughin tahiti cruise of hotel chain promotions to maximize rewards. Here are a couple summer promotions that caught my eye:Marriott paul gaughin tahiti cruise Hotels, Earn 1 Free Night at any...
Here is a summary breakdown of our total trip expenses from our transatlantic journey. Including paul gaughin tahiti cruise travel days, we spent 21 days on our journey: Major Travel Components USD Expense Hotels $ 74.43 Cruise (including tips) $ 1,103.66 Flights $ 952.92...