Paris and Switzerland 2026

The biggest trip we took/will take in 2026 is our family of 4 trip to Paris and Switzerland in July! With flights and 11 nights of accommodations, we would have spent well over $47,000... and let's be honest:

1. We don't have that kind of money to spend

2. The majority of that cost comes from flying 4 people in business class to and from Europe; again something we would never pay cash to do, but is possible only because of points and miles!

Here's an overview of our trip. For each booking I made, I include: which points I used, how many points I used, cash paid for taxes/fees/upgrades, and equally important: when and how I booked.

At the bottom, you'll see which points/miles programs I used (yes, more than one!) and how many points and how much cash we spent out of pocket for flights and accommodations, during peak travel season (July 2026).

Paris/Switzerland Trip Overview

• Flight to Paris
• 3 nights in Paris
• Train to Switzerland
• 7 nights in Switzerland
• Flight to Boston
• 1 night in Boston
• SW flight home

Flight There (DEN to CDG)

The booking process for this flight took a couple of iterations. It's daunting enough (and may make your head spin), that I gave it, it's own post. You can read what I did (when and how), here.

For 4 business class flights, total price in the end for 2 adult/2 children:

 Booked originally 9mo in advance; but altered 3mo in advance and 24 hours before the flight.

 192,000 pts + $1300 (a combination of Chase, American Express, and Capital One points; with Chase and Amex points transferred directly to Air France to book and Capital One points used for Travel eraser)

 Cash Value: $20,000 (CPP*: 9.74)

*CPP is equal to Cents per Point; it's how some points people gauge "value". The higher the CPP, the better. In comparison, when you use your points to book travel in a bank travel portal or cash out points like Capital One Travel Eraser, this is typically at 1 cent per point.

In the case of our flights to Europe, I got 9.74 CPP; which means I got almost 10 times the value than had I cashed out my points. This is an incredibly high CPP and great value! A "good" CPP is usually consider 2 or above.

Paris Hotel - 3 Nights

We stayed at Hyatt Regency Etoile in the Eiffel Tower Suite. This hotel is popular amongst points people for the value provided, especially if you have club access (free breakfast, snacks, and happy hour); but it is NOT in the heart of Paris. It worked really well for us, and I would stay there again, but I want to note that it's about a 20-30min commute to most attractions.

 Booked 8mo in advance by transferring Chase points to Hyatt to book direct on Hyatt (only Chase and Bilt are direct partners of Hyatt)

 I booked a standard king room at 20K points per night, but I had seen that the standard Regency Suite was available, so I contacted the hotel directly via email (reception@etoile.hyatt.com and parisetoile.regency@hyatt.com) to request using a Suite Upgrade Award I had to change from the standard room (occupancy 2) to the Regency Suite (occupancy 4, plus club access for free breakfast, snacks, and happy hour). 

In total for the 3 nights, I paid 20K pts per night plus the Suite Upgrade Award (60k Chase points moved to Hyatt total)

: I emailed the hotel again after booking was confirmed and asked to secure an Eiffel Tower view. I was offered a cash upgrade option (and given that it was peak travel season, I decided to take it, instead of gambling if I could get a free upgrade at check-in). I paid $276 in advance and the room type was changed to Eiffel Tower Suite (included club access for free breakfast/lounge access)

 Cash Value: $2,900 (CPP: 4.37)

TGV Train from Paris to Switzerland (Basel)

Rather than flying from Paris to Zurich and then spend another 2.5 hours on trains; we took a train directly from Paris to Basel, Switzerland. I paid cash for these tickets using my Chase Ink Preferred for 3x travel points and booked via Trainline for Rakuten. I booked us in first class, which cost roughly 20% more, but gave us guaranteed seats together with a table.

 Booked 4mo in advance (First Class can sell out)

Swiss Half Fare Card

I'm not going to sugarcoat it - the train pass situation for Switzerland is really confusing, mostly because there are several options!

After developing my itinerary, I used two different AI’s to analyze if we should by Jungfrau Region Pass or Half Fare Cards; Half Fare made more sense and also got us the Family Card, which made the majority of our travel free for our kids (under age 16).

 Purchased the week before departure

$372.46 for 2 adult half fare cards; purchased with my Chase Sapphire Reserve to use $300 travel credit. I purchased via Get Your Guide for Shopping portal points; at the time I booked, Southwest Rapid Rewards Shopping had a promo; so I earned 2k pts for the purchase and because of using my CSR Travel Credit, we paid $72 out of pocket.

This is also why for the TGV Train leaving Paris, I only booked that itinerary to go to Basel, instead of going all the way to our destination of Wengen. Basel to Wengen required 3 trains....and because we had the Family Card, by way of the Half Fare card, that meant our kids rode for free! (which was a lot better than paying for them when we didn't need to!)

View from Bristol Apt K Balcony

Rental in Wengen, Switzerland - 6 Nights

While I generally try to use points for our accommodations, sometimes it just doesn't make sense. I researched briefly using points and/or hotel credits from premium credit cards; but ultimately due to hotel occupancy limits, we would have had to book 2 rooms and that quickly would have added up to over 500,000 points - which I wasn't willing to spend.

Instead, I figured that because we were pulling the kids out of summer camp for two weeks and "saving" on camp costs, I would use that budget towards a short term rental. I'm so glad I did! With this, we were able to eat breakfast and several dinners at our condo (food/drinks are not cheap in Switzerland).

 Booked 5mo in advance (this was late! There were limited options (maybe 4 or 5) left at the price point of under $300/night)

 Paid cash ($2,100) using the card we were working on a signup bonus for at the time. I booked via VRBO for 5% back on Rakuten. I had intended to pay the final payment with my Capital One Venture Card to use points for a partial credit to reduce our out of pocket costs, but there was a miscommunication and this didn’t work out . (Which in the end is okay, since I used Capital One points for our red-eye business class upgrade instead!)

We stayed at Bristol Apt K, managed by Interhome. We would absolutely stay here again and honestly probably stay at any Bristol apartment managed by Interhome, with the amazing views from the balconies! I will say communication with Interhome before our say was lacking and had me nervous, but it is a long established reputable property management company. At the time I booked, I did look at booking direct, but it was the same price as booking on Airbnb or VRBO, and with VRBO I got the 5% back (which was $105 or 10,000 points!)

Leaving Wengen, we took the train(s) to Zurich, booked the day of, with our Half Fare and Family Card in the SBB app (it takes about 2.5/3hours). We took the train that went directly from Interlaken to Zurich Airport (to avoid a train transfer at Zurich Main Station).

Zurich Hyatt Place - 1 Night

We were completely satisfied with this hotel! I've seen a lot of recommendations that Park Hyatt Zurich is amazing.... but for one night and four family, gosh, you can't beat Hyatt Place Zurich Airport Circle. It's literally less than a 5-minute walk to airport check-in counters and it's only a 20-minute train ride to downtown. I would stay here again in a heartbeat. It was perfect for our 7am departure the next morning.

They do have rooms that can accommodate two adults and 2 young (under 10?) children, but I think it would be tight. By the time we had our dates lined out, roughly six months in advance, the four-person room wasn't available for direct booking with Hyatt.

It was available in Chase Travel portal, but the problem with that, for me, was that I needed to book direct with Hyatt, to get credit for spending the night, towards my Hyatt status and not all Hyatt stays booked with a third party (like Chase Travel portal), count towards status.

So, we ended up booking 2 rooms:

• Room 1: I did book in the Chase Travel Portal. I paid the cash price of $213 with my Chase Sapphire Preferred, that way I could utilize the annual $100 hotel credit. Our out of pocket cost was $113.
• Room 2: I booked direct with Hyatt and paid cash, using my Capital One Venture card, for $193. This gave me the qualifying night credit I needed with Hyatt and allowed me to use to use points to "erase" the travel purchase (after I couldn’t use on our rental). Final cost: 19,300pts +$0

 Booked the week before! Lol 

 19,300 pts + $113

 Cash Value: $406

Flight Back to US

Believe it or not, this was much more straight forward of a booking, compared to our flights going to Paris. Although....as I type this, I'm realizing some of you will disagree.

So, we live in Denver, but we flew into Boston. WHY?! Because the points price for flights to get from Zurich to Denver were actually MORE expensive in economy, than it was to fly from Zurich to Boston in business class! What?! I know, it's crazy!

This is called repositioning and it's very common in points travel. Basically, you add a flight to your itinerary in order to get better pricing and/or a better flight; in our case, we got both.

We flew Lufthansa on a A380 (double deck plane!). I booked as one itinerary, ZUR > MUC > BOS 60,000 pts + $136 each. To do this, I created an Air Canada Points Pool, which allowed me to transfer points from P2's American Express and my American Express to combine together to book with Air Canada. 

Keep in mind, we flew Lufthansa, but because of airline alliances, we booked the flight through Air Canada.

 Booked 8mo in advance

 240,000 pts + $546

 Cash Value: $20,000 (CCP: 8.11)

Boston Harbor Hyatt Regency - 1 Night

This was an easy choice. The hotel really isn't downtown, but it is VERY close to the airport and has a free shuttle. Since we were basically flying into Boston, going to bed, and flying home the next morning, this was a perfection option for us. 

(Note, there are two difference Hyatt Regencies in Boston. If you are actually wanting to stay in Boston, I would not stay here. I would book Hyatt Centric instead.)

 8mo in advance; booked direct with Hyatt by transferring Chase points to Hyatt

 15,000 pts + $0

 Cash Value: $369 (CCP: 2.46)

Final Flight Home: BOS > DEN

Again, we flew to Boston from Europe, because it was cheaper and nicer cabins than flying to Denver.. but really the key strategy and reason this worked for us, is that Southwest flies direct from Boston to Denver. We hold two Southwest Companion Passes, so for this final flight leg home, we only "paid" for two flights (using points) and then paid $11.60 for the kids flights because of companion pass.

 Booked 8mo in advance (using points we already had in our Southwest accounts) and rebooked a few times to drop the price 

 46,000 pts + $22

 Cash Value: $1,334 

Summary

Did you make it this far?! I used a variety of transferable points from various banks to make this trip happen. This flexibility helped me to take advantage of transfer bonuses and lower my out of pocket costs. If you're curious or tallying up... as you'll see below, I used:

• Chase: 192,000 points 

I really usually try to save Chase points for Hyatt explicitly, but I couldn't pass up the Flying Blue Transfer Bonus, which got us premium seats on the red-eye flight to Europe) 

• Southwest: 46,000 points

Again, companion passes came in handy as part of my booking strategy. They saved us another 46,000 points and "allowed" us to fly the international flight in business class

• American Express: 275,000 points 

Typically I find these are the easiest points to earn, so they are the first points I try to use; especially on flights

• Capital One: 59,000 points  

I could have saved these points and paid $590 cash, instead of using the travel eraser option; but we have enough of these points that it was worth redeeming at 1:1 for what I did 

 

And because I love a good spreadsheet, here's the "raw" form for my fellow Type-A friends ;)

(Click to enlarge/view clearer)

This trip planning was absolutely a puzzle to piece together, something that I enjoy doing... but for my family and the memories we made, the trip itself was absolutely incredible!

I hope that my posts and sharing can help you find ways to use your everyday spending to inspire you and your family to make your own special memories with the help of points and miles!

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