We split time in the rainforest area of La Fortuna Arenal (the volcano) and the pacific side beach area of Playa Langosta and Tamarindo. This post will focus on the hotel we stayed at with points!
Tabacon Thermal Resort and Spa
What
Tabacon is an independent 105 boutique hotel, located roughly 10 minutes outside of the town of La Fortuna (Arenal) and approximately 3-hour drive from either major airport (Liberia or San Jose).
The hotel itself is located one on section of the property and has a thermal hot spring resort on a separate section of the property. It's a 3-minute walk between the two areas or you can utilize the hotel shuttle.
The thermal hot springs are open to the public (for a fee; for our family to get a one day pass would have cost $399!)
Booking with Points
The cost to stay 5 nights Tabacon Resort, which is part of Small Luxury Hotels, bookable with Hilton
- Cash price: ~$2,800
- Price We Paid: $0 ($0 resort fees when booking Hyatt or Hilton on points; $0 for kids - see below)
VS
- Points price: 400K Hilton points (at 80k/nt * 5 nights (although it can run higher))
- Points paid: 160k Amex points (transferred to Hilton to book direct)
How?!
1. Amex points transfer to Hilton at a 1:2 ratio. So when I transferred 160k points Amex to Hilton, I automatically had 320k Hilton points to book direct. (Here is a refresher on how to transfer points from a bank to a travel partner. Scroll down)
2. You’re doing the math and 320k pts isn’t 80k/nt* 5 nights 🤔… you’re right.
That’s because with Hilton, when you have Silver status or higher, if you book 4 nights, you get the 5th night free!
I’m a personal platinum holder, which automatically got me Hilton Gold Status. I opened the platinum right before we booked this trip, knowing I would be able to utilize this benefit. For 5th night free, you need to have all of the points and status at time of booking (ie need to have 4 nights on one reservation)
American Express Family Rule: for personal cards there are the green*, gold, and platinum. The Family Rule states that you need to open the cards in lowest to highest order, in order to be eligible for the sign up bonus. For example, if you open an Amex Platinum card, then in the future you can't get a Gold card SUB. (This is NOT applicable to American Express Business cards)
*many people, myself included, skip getting the green card and go right for the gold as the green card sign up bonus is usually 15-25k points and often not "worth" a 5/25 spot. (I already had opened the Gold, before I opened the Platinum).
If you're interested in opening an Amex Gold (or Platinum), you can read more here on the Gold. As always, I share my points knowledge in hopes to inspire others but also appreciate you using my referral links!
Timing: I booked our stay roughly 4.5 months in advance. (Although it's worth noting, the hotel is already sold out for Winter 2025 holiday stays Dec 16-Jan 5. If you want a holiday stay, you need to be ready to book as soon as the dates release. For Hilton this is up to 365 days in advance)
Room Type: We booked two King Orchid Rooms since we were traveling with my parents. Each room could accommodate 3 people (2 adults on the king bed and one child on the "couch", which the staff made up into a bed).
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Paying for Kids
I specifically want call out how we stayed at this resort with kids, because at first, it's frustrating and tricky. I know I had questions about booking with kids and there is little information since this resort switched to SLH/Hilton, so I hope this will help others
When you do a points search on Hilton's website for Tabacon, as soon as you add a child to your reservation, most likely, all room availability will go away. I realized when I was searching that even though I could find a room type that accommodated 3-4 people (King Orchid for 3 or Queen Orchid for 4), whenever I put in more than 2 adults for a points booking on Hilton, the room availability completely went away.
After calling Hilton and Tabacon directly to question why this was, I was told to book the points stay for 2 adults and as long as the room type could accommodate more people, we could pay to add the kid at time of check-in, at the cost of $75/kid/night. This wasn't quite ideal, to pay $150/night to bring our kids, but we decided it was still worth it.
And guess what?! We checked in and checked out; they never charged us for our child!!! I'm not sure if we got lucky or the hotel front desk doesn’t know they’re supposed to charge; but I tripled checked our bill and we didn’t pay anything extra.
Other Tabacon Thoughts
The hotel is fairly small, but we found it lovely (gorgeous grounds) and amazing staff. Twice, we came to our room and found free “extras” like a delicious fruit plate and macaroons.
Free breakfast for all, with omelet and waffle station; plus hot items, fresh fruit and juice, several, yogurts, toast/pastries, etc.
Cocktails were awesome and so fresh, but $17-23ea. We purchased beer from a liquor store (the room had a small mini fridge) and we able to bring them to the hotel pool without issue.
I would say it’s similar level luxury to Grand Hyatt Kauai, but a much smaller scale (and not as nice of a gym 🤣; but the free yoga classes were lovely!). Better breakfast!
The hotel guest-only hours for the hot springs resort and the adults-only/hotel guest-only section of the hot springs were a highlight of this property for us.
We had a rental car and were glad we did. While excursions generally offered transportation; we went to town most days and appreciated having the car for that. Valet parking was free (plus tip).
Note: June 11-16, 2025 the resort pool with the water slide was closed under construction and is NOT advertised online from anywhere we looked. That was a bit disappointing, but thankfully we hadn’t shown our kids in advance that it existed.
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| Hotel Pool (for guests only) |
Curious what cards I (and/or my husband) have, and why? Read here!
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