A Weekend in Mexico City

By Ramon

Ramon is the creator of Travelling Companion. He focuses on flight review, hotel reviews, and helping stretch your travel dollars, miles, and points further. ​​

A Weekend in Mexico City Trip Report
A Weekend in Mexico City Trip Overview  
 Delta A321 DCA-ATL Review 
 Delta Boeing 737-800 Economy ATL-MEX Review
 Hilton Mexico City Reforma Review 
 Exploring Mexico City
 Delta A319 Economy MEX-ATL Review
 Delta A320 Economy ATL-DCA Review
In April 2018 we headed to Mexico City for a quick weekend trip which was prompted by an amazing fare deal from Washington D.C. to Mexico City on a Delta flight operated by AeroMexico. In this trip report I plan to focus on how we implemented some of our tips for saving on airfare and utilized hotel points to stretch our travel dollars further. 

At first we were nervous visiting Mexico City because of the reports of crime and the major earthquake which took place in September 2017 which killed over 200 people. However, I can tell you that Mexico City is amazing and I would strongly recommend going. This was my first trip to Mexico and Christina's first trip to Mexico City and on this short weekend trip we barely scratched the surface of everything to do in the city. At the end of our trip I was left impressed by the art, music, food, and history in CDMX (Mexico City).

Palacio de Bellas Artes

Booking Flights
In my last post I shared tips on booking cheap flights and for this trip I used one of those tips to book the cheapest flight I have every purchased. Specifically, I saw a link on a travel blog to The Flight Deal which advertised flights to Mexico City from Washington D.C. for under $200. Christina and I had no plans to go to Mexico City in 2018 but with such a good deal we decided we had to take advantage and go. We ended up booking our roundtrip economy tickets non-stop from Washington Dulles (IAD) to Mexico City International Airport (MEX) for $166 each! I was so happy that we were able to book such a good deal and ended using the trip as a birthday celebration for Christina.


Our original tickets were booked through Delta Airlines on a flight operated by their codeshare partner AeroMexico in which Delta has a 49% stake. However, a few months after our original tickets Aeromexico made a major schedule change and our flight which was supposed to arrive in the early morning would now arrive late a night. This was completely unacceptable for our quick weekend trip. Because the schedule change was over 90 minutes we could have requested a refund of our ticket. However, we were determined not to let this fare go to waste so called Delta hoping to change from the non-stop flight operated by AeroMexico to a flight with connections operated by Delta. However, when I called the Delta call center the wait was several hours long so I asked for a call back and ultimately we were successful switched from IAD non-stop flight to a flight with connections out of our preferred airport Washington Regan National (DCA) which would have cost several hundred dollars more. This was an example of how to utilize schedule changes to your advantage and something I plan to talk about in a future post. Below is a map of our final routing.   

Flight Routing Map generated using the Great Circle Mapper-copyright Karl L. Swartz

Christina credited her flights to Delta SkyMiles and because the actual fare minus taxes and fees was only $30 roundtrip the mileage earning was minimal. In total she earned 3,756 Medallion Qualifying Miles, 30 Medallion Qualifying Dollars, and 150 SkyMiles. Because of the low fare I decided to credit these flights to Delta's joint venture partner Virgin Atlantic's Flying Club. These miles can be transferred from all the major transferable currencies and these flights earned me 20 Virgin Atlantic tier points and 1,888 Flying Club miles. 

 Booking Hotel
One of the incredible things about visiting Mexico City as an American is how incredibly cheap it is and this definitely carried over to the hotel room pricing. There were numerous hotels located in the center of the city pricing at under $100 making this city much more accessible than European destinations. Generally, at these prices we would pay cash for our stay. However, Christina had Hilton Honors points which were expiring because  we switched our loyalty to Marriott so we decided to try and use those points for our stay. Hilton Honors does not have an award chart which means that their award prices are completely variable and generally vary with the cash price of the hotel. Because Mexico City is so large covering an area of over 570 square miles we decided to focus our short stay on one area the Centro Histórico. After looking at the hotels in the area we settled on the Hilton Mexico City Reforma because it was a full service hotel within walking distance of the historical sites. 

At the time we booked this hotel it cost 30,000 points per night but Christina did not have sufficient points for the stay so we used Hilton's "money and points" option. This option allows you to pay for your stay with a mix of points and cash starting at a minimum of 5,000 points and increasing in 1,000 point increments. In total we ended up paying 58,000 points and $10.47 for our two night stay. This meant that all in all we spent less than a $180 per person for flights and a hotel! 
 
Summary
The deal we got to get to go to Mexico City was fantastic and despite only spending 3 days and one night in Mexico City this trip was amazing! We really loved the city and would love to go back in future. Thank you all for reading and I am excited to share our fun adventures with you all!