^{Exploring the use of Hilton Hotels to break up long travel days by staying over a night (or two) midway between home and your destination}

 I remember distinctly the first time I learned of the concept of a Stopover.  The idea that you spend a night or two in a location between your vacation destination and home.  It’s a smart way to manage fatigue when pushing through a travel day that often includes: car rides to the airport, airport layovers, management of public transportation, and finally trying to get to your hotel in an unfamiliar location.  A stopover breaks up travel into manageable bites and allows you to rest up so that you can tackle your destination refreshed and ready to go.

My first stopover was in Istanbul when my husband and I traveled to Greece for our 25^th Wedding Anniversary.  At the time, Turkish Airlines offered a free bus tour of the city if you planned a layover longer than 12 hours.  So, plan we did; we purposely chose a flight that gave us 20 hours in Istanbul and promptly reserved a hotel in the airport to minimize the stress of also finding the hotel.    

We instantly became hooked on this travel concept.  The Turkish stopover was what we considered a light snack of Istanbul-we saw many of the highlights of the city and got a taste of the food and culture. Our time there left us longing to go back again in the future for a longer stay.  Getting a good night’s sleep in the middle of a 16-hour travel day also saved our sanity.

We have since used the Stopover on several trips with travel days more than 9 hours.  On our last trip to Finland, we converted our Hilton Grand Vacation Points over to Hilton Honors Points to stay at the Hilton at the London Heathrow Airport.  The convenience of having a hotel in the airport allowed us to fully recover from the long hours traveling.  The points also allowed us to book several rooms so that everyone in our travel party had enough space to fully relax.

It was this same trip to Finland that we experienced an unplanned stopover in Helsinki.  Travel can be unpredictable, and for us that meant our return flight to London was unexpectedly canceled.  Having a stockpile of Hilton Honors Points let us book rooms in Helsinki immediately and with ease.  Utilizing the Hilton Honors App, I had our hotel rooms booked before we even collected our luggage.

Our evening in Helsinki was truly magical.  We hopped on a train that took us directly to the waterfront of Helsinki and spent the evening on an impromptu walking tour of some of the most beautiful architecture.  The highlight was, for me, the Finland National Library.  I could have tucked away into a corner of that beautiful building for hours with a good book!

Whether planned or not, both of our stopovers left us leaving London and Helsinki with the urge to return at a future date to spend more time exploring and enjoying what each had to offer.  Both were brief side-quests on a bigger vacation which left us with stories to tell and a small glimpse into cities that we otherwise would have just been blips on the travel map to our final destination.

Currently we are planning another stopover on our way to Turks and Caicos next year.  Traveling from the West Coast to the Caribbean is a long trip and can be exhausting to say the least.  My husband and I are planning three nights in San Juan Puerto Rico to break up the travel and help us acclimate to the time (and temperature) change before our longer stay in the Caribbean at our final destination.  Planning this mini-vacation before the actual vacation has brought me so much joy!  In fact, I think I have spent more time planning those three days than remaining seven.

We obviously are not the first people in the world to utilize this travel hack.  On our last trip to Hawaii, we spoke to numerous travelers who planned stopovers at Hilton Grand Vacation Club properties in Las Vegas to break up their travel from the east coast to the Hawaiian Islands.  For them it was a way to help adjust to the time change in addition to taking a break from the long hours of air travel.

The stopover just makes sense as a travel tool when taking those longer flights as part of your vacation.  It keeps you refreshed, it helps you manage stress, and it’s just plain fun to get a bonus vacation destination as part of your travel plans.