Our itinerary looked like this:<\/p>\n

SMF-LAX-AUH-MLE<\/strong> flying Etihad International First Class with American miles.<\/em>
\n 10 days at Hyatt Hadahaa<\/strong> using Miles + Cash Hyatt Points<\/em>
\n MLE-CMB Overnight in Colombo, Sri Lanka<\/strong>\u00a0flying Emirates Business Class with Alaska Air miles.<\/em>
\n CMB-DXB-SFO<\/strong> flying Emirates International First Class with Alaska Air miles.<\/em><\/p>\n

Most of the booking was done a year early and we had 12 months to look forward to the trip. I don\u2019t like to use this word often, but it was going to be epic. We were excited.<\/p>\n

Then the call from corporate HQ came in. It seems that the original date of our national sales meeting needed to be moved. Forward. By 3 months. The new date for the meeting fell square in the middle of the Maldives trip. That\u2019s correct, right in the middle of our epic trip. Crap.<\/p>\n

I was very disappointed by the news. I started thinking to myself what were our options. Rescheduling wasn\u2019t one. For many reasons, but the biggest reason was that the redemptions I had booked a year out were now not going to be available just 3 months out. Could I miss the meeting? Susan could tell something was bothering me and I hadn\u2019t broken the news to her yet.<\/p>\n

“Sweetheart, they moved the national sales meeting into the middle of our trip.”
\n“I\u2019m sorry Jimmy, I know how much you were looking forward to that trip.”
\n“You\u2019re not upset?”
\n“No, what choice do we have. The business is important and you can\u2019t miss that meeting.”<\/p>\n

She said that last statement in a very sweet and kind way, and of course she was right. I run a sales office (with my counterpart Paul) and he could not attend the meeting without me. My vocation paid the bills and HQ would look unfavorably at our office if only half of management bothered to show up. I slowly came to the realization we wouldn\u2019t be going to the Maldives for this trip. Susan\u00a0commented as\u00a0she walked away, \u201cYou\u2019ve been wanting to use up the AA miles, maybe you can do that now.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Suzy meant is that American Airlines had announced a big devaluation and it was\u00a0taking place in March.\u00a0I was intent on using as many AA miles as possible the next year to extract our value out of them. I could redeposit the Alaska miles and use all AA miles on a new trip. She was looking at the half glass full, and I\u2019m also sure looking for a way to get to Thailand. Instead of taking vacation time for a Maldives trip we could use all AA miles and go somewhere else.<\/p>\n

I appreciated the fact Susan was understanding on the entire issue, including the importance of my attending the meeting. As I looked over to Susan to say “thank you”, I noticed she was already on her iPad searching for hotels in Thailand. “I guess we’re going to Thailand” I said to myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa Susan and I used quite a few US Air miles while they were still a part of the Star Alliance group, and took a great trip through Asia and on to the Maldives back at the beginning of 2015. The highlight of the trip was staying at the Park Hyatt Hadahaa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","WB4WB4WP_MODE":"","WB4WP_PAGE_SCRIPTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_STYLES":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FONTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_HEADER":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FOOTER":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118,129],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-airlines","category-thailand"],"yoast_head":"\n