Our Fifth Year Of Road Tripping – The Numbers

Every January I like to publish a post sharing lots of different info and stats relating to our travel from the previous year; that includes both our 50 state road trip and overseas travel.

For reference, here are our posts for previous years:

• 2021
• 2020
• 2019
• 2018

Here’s a roundup of all our stats for 2022.

Miles Driven

We started 2022 with 170,461 miles on our car’s odometer. At the end of the year we were at 191,930 miles which means we drove 21,469 miles in 2022. That’s more than we drove in the previous two years, but fewer miles than we drove in the first couple of years of our road trip.

For comparison, here’s our mileage from previous years:

• 2021 – 20,059
• 2020 – 18,375
• 2019 – 25,006
• 2018 – 27,643

Number Of Countries Visited

Shae and I have different numbers for 2022 because I went abroad without her for the Frequent Miler 3 Cards, 3 Continents challenge. Shae went to four countries, while I went to seven.

Shae

• England
• Northern Ireland
• Republic of Ireland
• France

Stephen

• England
• Northern Ireland
• Republic of Ireland
• France
• Scotland
• Egypt
• Singapore

I also flew through Abu Dhabi, but that doesn’t count as it was only a 1-2 hour layover.

Number Of Cities Stayed In (Officially)

We have slightly different numbers again for this due to my extra international travel. Shae stayed in 57 cities, while I stayed in 58.

Number Of Cities Stayed In (Unofficially)

65. This total includes cities we stayed in a night or two while moving from one place to another.

Number Of States Visited (Officially)

6 – California, Utah, Nebraska, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Number Of States Visited (Unofficially)

16. The other 10 states were just ones that we stopped over in for a night or two or where we’d visited before.

Number Of Hotel Brands Stayed At

32. That’s more than we stayed at the last couple of years and included a few brands we’d not stayed at before, including:

• Waldorf Astoria
• InterContinental
• Hyatt (as in the regular Hyatt brand)
• Destination
• SLH
• Moxy
• Mr & Mrs Smith

Here’s a list of how many nights we spent at each brand:

Number Of Nights In Airbnbs

53. That’s far fewer than we’ve stayed at in recent years; in 2020 and 2021, we’d stayed at more Airbnbs as that was before we’d had a chance to get vaccinated against COVID, so we wanted to stay less frequently in hotels where possible. In 2022 we also found better deals on hotel stays – both when paying for stays with cash and when using points.

Average Accommodation Cost

$43.52 per night. That’s the highest average amount we’ve spent on accommodation on the road trip so far, but isn’t at all surprising considering the first 2.5 months of the year in California where hotels cost more, plus inflation went up a lot over the course of the last year.

For comparison, our average accommodation spend in 2021 was $38.77 and in 2020 was $42.67. That’s still not as good as 2019 though when our average nightly spend was $24.79.

If you’re wondering how we can afford to spend so relatively little per night on hotels and Airbnbs, it’s because we have a good stash of hotel points which reduces our average nightly cost. We also stayed with family and friends for 13 nights on the road trip which helped further.

Paid Nights Vs. Award Nights

We paid cash for 125 nights in 2022 and used points or free night certificates for 196 nights. That doesn’t add up to 365 because I’ve only included hotels and Airbnbs we stayed at on the road trip, not the hotels we stayed at while overseas or when we stayed with family and friends.

Hotel Points Earned

Thanks to Dr Jay in the comments for the suggestion to add this and the next entry to the stats.

In case you’re wondering how we earn so many hotel points, check out this post as it’s not just from the fact that we have so many hotel stays. In addition to those methods, in some cases we’ll book a stay, cancel it and then rebook a different stay. The points we get back from cancelling the stay get accounted for in our earnings, as do both redemption transactions, so in those instances we’re effectively double counting. That doesn’t happen too often though and it would be a lot of work to go through to try and work out when that had happened.

• IHG One Rewards – 1,159,528
• Hilton Honors – 788,628
• Marriott Bonvoy – 513,296
• World of Hyatt – 829,925
• Radisson Rewards – 70,000
• Choice Privileges – 6,921
• Wyndham Rewards – 91,294
• Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 2
• Chase Ultimate Rewards – 393,408
• Capital One – 112,360

Hotel Points Redeemed

In a number of cases here, you might notice that we redeemed more points than we earned in 2022. That’s because we already had a healthy balance of hotel points coming in to 2022, so it’s not like we’re overdrawn on our points balances.

• IHG One Rewards – 1,416,000
• Hilton Honors – 803,750
• Marriott Bonvoy – 1,068,500
• World of Hyatt – 858,590
• Radisson Rewards – 90,000
• Choice Privileges – 10,000
• Wyndham Rewards – 121,500
• Hotels.com Rewards Credits – 10
• Chase Ultimate Rewards – 394,000
• Capital One – 1,000

Total Pet Fees

We were due to pay $2,345 in pet fees at hotels in 2022. In previous years, a lot of hotels didn’t end up charging us a fee. Unfortunately most of them did last year and so we paid $2,243.41 in pet fees.

Hotel Status Levels

In 2020 and 2021 hotel chains eased their status earning requirements due to COVID. Things went back to normal in 2022 and so in theory it was harder to earn status again. Seeing as we live in hotels though, it was still easy to retain top-tier status with most hotel chains. That was usually done via stays, although with Hilton that was achieved simply by having their Aspire credit card which gives Diamond status among many other benefits.

We ended up staying at Hyatt brands so frequently that we managed to earn Globalist status for both me and Shae once I’d maxed out the Milestone Rewards I could earn with Hyatt.

Average Daily Spend

We spent $41,740.43 in 2022, but we’d budgeted for $41,812.50 due to spending some of the year overseas. That means we underspent by $72.07 which means we stayed under budget by less than $0.20 per day!

Number Of Blog Posts Published

We published 114 blog posts in 2022. That’s the fewest we’ve published within a year on the road trip; part of that is due to how busy we’ve been, but also because many of those posts were lengthier and more comprehensive than posts we’ve written in the past.

Total Website Visitors

We had 172,068 people visit the website in 2022 versus 234,389 in 2021, so it’s disappointing to see such a drop. I think a large part of that is because some of our posts got widely shared in 2021 which meant we had a lot of one-time website visitors.

Total Page Views

We had 246,197 pageviews in 2022 versus 341,825 in 2021, 235,599 in 2020, 304,588 in 2019 and 160,788 in 2018. That was therefore an average year of readership based on years past.

Question

Are there any other numbers you’re curious about from the fifth year of our road trip? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll try to provide them 🙂