The year 2020 has a lot of long weekends. Long weekends are ideal for taking mini-vacations to relax, rejuvenate and join back work with renewed enthusiasm. One such long weekend is coming up in the 1st week of March from 7th to 10th March. 7th and 8th March is the weekend, you will need to take off on 9th March (Monday) and 10th March (Tuesday) is Holi Holiday. If you are wondering that a mini-vacation will burn a hole in your pocket, then don’t worry. We will show you how you can save money on all aspects of a mini-vacation: flight tickets, hotel accommodation, cab travel, etc.
Saving on travel expenses
- Flight ticket booking: Let us start with saving money on flight ticket booking. You can buy Gift Vouchers of MakeMyTrip or Goomo from the HDFC SmartBuy website, powered by GyFTR, and get double savings. Firstly, you can get up to 33% savings with the 10X reward points offered on specified HDFC Bank credit cards or 5% cashback on specified HDFC Bank debit and credit cards. Secondly, you can benefit from BOGO offers that are introduced from time to time. For example, when you buy a Goomo Gift Voucher, you will get a Fab Hotels INR 400 Gift Voucher free.
- Hotel accommodation: Now that flight ticket booking is taken care of, let us look at the second biggest expense of a mini vacation which is hotel accommodation. Here too, when you buy Gift Vouchers of Fab Hotels or I Can Stay, you can get up to 33% savings on specified HDFC Bank debit and credit cards. Also, when you buy a Fab Hotels Gift Voucher, you will get a Fab Hotels INR 400 Gift Voucher free. When you buy an I Can Stay Gift Voucher, you will get a flat 20% discount on the voucher value.
- Cab booking: So, you have ticked off flight ticket booking and hotel accommodation from your list. Let us finish the list with cab booking. When you buy Gift Vouchers of Uber or Ola, you can get up to 33% savings on specified HDFC Bank debit and credit cards. Additionally, when you buy an INR 500 Uber Gift Voucher, you will get a Fab Hotels INR 400 Gift Voucher.
Please note that the above BOGO offers change every month. Please check the HDFC SmartBuy website to know about the latest BOGO offers.
Save up to 33% with HDFC credit cards
The below table shows how you can get savings of up to 33% with the 10X reward points offer on specified HDFC credit cards.
| HDFC Bank card name | Regular reward points on every Rs. 150 spent | 10X reward points on every Rs. 150 spent | Value of each point | % saving | Maximum monthly points cap on SmartBuy 10X |
| Infinia | 5 | 50 | Re. 1 | 33% | 25,000 |
| Diners Club Black | 5 | 50 | Re. 1 | 33% | 15,000 |
| Diners Club Miles / Diners Club Premium | 4 | 40 | Re. 0.50 | 13% | 5,000 |
| Diners Club Rewards | 3 | 30 | Re. 0.30 | 6% | 5,000 |
| Regalia | 4 | 40 | Re. 0.50 | 13% | 5,000 |
Other HDFC Bank credit cards and debit cards will be eligible for 5% cashback subject to a maximum of Rs. 1000 cashback per month.
Make 2020 the year of travel
In the beginning part of this blog, we told you that we will help you save money on all aspects of a mini-vacation: flight tickets, hotel accommodation, cab travel, etc. We hope that with our combo of up to 33% savings on HDFC credit/debit cards and BOGO offers, we more than kept our promise. If you like our idea of savings, then along with the March mini-vacation, you can enjoy many more mini-vacations on long weekends this year. The year 2020 has more than 10 long weekends. So, let out the travel bug in you and make 2020 the year of travel and go around exploring India.