I had a light bulb moment whilst staying at the Hilton Garden Inn Ngurah Rai just recently! It looks like I quite easily afford to retire at a Hilton, albeit a Hilton Garden Inn. Mind you, this is no HGI in the middle of nowhere but one on a tranquil island called Bali!
The rates at this property hover around the US$50 mark. Doing my sums, that equates to $1500 a month which is significantly less than an average one bedroom apartment rental in Sydney or Melbourne, Hong Kong, Singapore, London or LA. As a Diamond Honors member, I get free breakfast so that’s one meal taken care of every single day. In fact, I could turn that into two meals a day by having a heavy late breakfast and skipping lunch. One could easily get a cheap but decent feed in Bali at dinner time for under $5!
I worked roughly how many points I would be earning as a Diamond member too. At $1500 a month, I would be getting 30,000 points a month and that’s just the usual base and status bonus. Hilton runs year end year round bonus offers so I am pretty sure I’d be getting significantly more than that. At 30,000 points a month, I could be paying for 10 months and staying for another 2 months for free (award nights are only 5000 points here). What a bargain!
HGI might not be by the beach but getting an Uber (ooops, Grab or GoJek in Indonesia) is cheap and easy. I call this the affordable paradise and here are some photos to tempt you into thinking about this too!
