As often happens, a trip idea emerged from an award alert I received last week. Straight to the Points is a great award alert service that quite often finds space before other alert services and also highlights when there is space for multiple people on each flight which is important if I want to stay married.

We have long had Morocco on our list of places to visit. It’s fairly close to the East Coast, has a lot of history, interesting architecture and natural beauty (mountains, deserts, beaches). Last week, there was an alert for two business class seats across several Royal Air Maroc routes from the US to/from Morocco next winter. I managed to cobble together a round-trip that would work for us in February/March which should be a good time to visit as it’s not too busy but also not too hot at that time of year.

There were a couple of different ways to book these flights. I first checked Alaska and American for flights with no added surcharges, but I could not find two seats on any date. British Airways and Japan Airlines did have the flights available. BA had them for 68k each way plus about $600 in fees for each flight. Japan Airlines had them for 42.5k each way plus about $500 in fees, but you could get that price down to 40k if you booked a round-trip (80k total). JAL allows you to fly to and from any gateway and count it as a round trip. I transferred Bilt points to JAL last month during a 125% transfer bonus where I turned 150k Bilt points into 338k JAL miles. Thus, our 80k round-trip flights cost about 36k Bilt points! In the end, booking via Toronto on the outbound lowered the taxes and fees for the whole trip to $1600 from $2100. So, we are planning to fly to Casablanca from Toronto and then return to Washington Dulles about 10 days later.

The flight from Toronto to Casablanca is on Royal Air Maroc’s 787-9 which looks decent. There’s 1-2-1 reverse herringbone lay-flat seats. The flight is only about seven hours anyway. I found positioning flights on Delta and used Virgin Atlantic miles to book those for 11k each (instead of $300 or 24k SkyMiles per person). Our return to DC is on the 787-8, which has a weird 2-2-2 configuration with one seat in the pair having a lower position in lay-flat mode. This is a daytime flight anyway and the assigned aircraft could still change before the flight. Due to an arrival too close to the last flight to Atlanta, we’ll have to spend the night in DC and fly home the next morning, but that works for us as we can have dinner with our daughter there. I booked the flight home from IAD-ATL using 7k Flying Blue miles per person (instead of $200 or 15k SkyMiles per person). Both the Virgin and Flying Blue miles were already in my account.

As for our time in Morocco, I’ve mapped out that we would spend a night in Casablanca at the Sofitel using Accor points and visit the mosque there before heading to Fes on the train for a couple of nights. In Fes, there’s a nice looking Marriott resort near the medina that’s only 17k Marriott points per night. From Fes, we can take an overnight desert/mountain tour, sleep in a tented camp and then end up in Marrakech the next day. It ticks off a few places to see and gets us from one city to the other.

In Marrakech, I think we’ll stay in a riad for a couple of nights. These are small hotels within the historic bustling medina. The historic beach town of Essaouira is close enough that we could go there for an overnight trip and stay at an Accor property there using points. We could then return to Marrakech for the final two nights at the Park Hyatt resort just outside the city for a relaxing end to the trip. I plan to book a domestic flight from Marrakech to Casablanca on the morning of our return flight. I should be able to use expiring Etihad miles to book that flight with Royal Air Maroc.

Of course, all of these plans could change as that’s the beauty of using points and miles. I’m going to focus on our Japan trip which is coming up in a few months before I go back to planning anything for Morocco, but I’ll have an update as the trip gets closer.

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