Buying a house and taking the family to the Seychelles are two life events that rarely appear in the same sentence.
One generally empties the bank account. The other does exactly the same, only with significantly better views and considerably more cocktails with little umbrellas.
But for the Boston couple Ngan and Connor, the two experiences became delightfully intertwined.
After welcoming their young son, the healthcare professionals had planned a return to the Boston area to be closer to family. Life, however, had other ideas.
A devastating house fire suddenly accelerated their plans, transforming what should have been a measured property search into a race against time.
Most people faced with such upheaval would be forgiven for putting holidays into the “maybe next decade” basket.
Instead, the couple found themselves swapping stress for sand, thanks to an increasingly intriguing concept that’s beginning to turn heads in both the property and travel sectors.
Connor stumbled across RBN Rewards while hunting online for ways to claw back some value from what is, for most families, the single biggest purchase of their lives.
“I was looking to get some value back from the real estate transaction,” Connor explained.
After registering with the platform, the family was matched with a selection of vetted local agents before ultimately purchasing a new home in Stoneham, Massachusetts.
And this wasn’t just any reward.
The family’s US$1.32 million home purchase generated an eye-watering 880,000 RBN Rewards points.
Rather than splurging on gadgets, gift cards or enough kitchen appliances to open a department store, the family aimed considerably higher.
Much higher.
The points funded a luxury family adventure through Kenya, France and, most memorably, the Seychelles.
Their stay at Four Seasons Resort Seychelles at Desroches Island proved to be the jewel in the crown.
Picture this: pristine beaches stretching seemingly forever, bicycles replacing traffic jams, giant tortoises wandering around as if they own the place, which, frankly, they probably do.
For Ngan, it was unforgettable.
“We felt like we were the only ones on this entire island and it truly was magnificent,” she said.
She described the Seychelles simply as “a true paradise”.
Parents travelling with young children know that luxury holidays are often only as successful as the youngest family member allows. Fortunately, the trip coincided with their son’s birthday, and the Four Seasons team rose magnificently to the occasion.
A surprise birthday cake appeared.
Ngan recalled that her son “went wild” when it arrived.
It is those moments, the unexpected gestures, the family memories, the stories retold around dinner tables years later, that increasingly define luxury travel in 2026.
Ngan also credits RBN Rewards with removing much of the guesswork from choosing a real estate agent.
“There are thousands of real estate agents to choose from when you go on your own, but good ones are harder to find,” she said.
“Having someone else, in this case RBN Rewards, do the vetting for us helped save time and helped us find an agent who excels at their job.”
That agent was Guy Coltaldi, an RBN-participating agent ranked among the world’s top 2 per cent of real estate professionals.
Equally important, Ngan found redeeming the rewards refreshingly easy.
“It was straightforward, similar to booking hotels online since the rewards are valued like currency,” she said.
Frequent flyer programs have long taught travellers the art of earning while spending. RBN Rewards is taking that principle and applying it to bricks-and-mortar and, in doing so, may have found an entirely new way to inspire travel.
After all, if buying a home can end with your family watching giant tortoises wander past a private villa in the Seychelles, moving house suddenly doesn’t seem quite so painful.
Almost.
For more information, visit RBN Rewards at https://rbnrewards.com.
By: Anne Keam – © 2026.
Read Time: 4 minutes.
Author Bio:
Anne Keam’s story begins in Queensland, on a grain farm in the state’s wide western reaches, where the days were long and the lessons simple: work hard, look after your own, and don’t make a fuss. Those early years left their mark.
She later studied Arts at the University of Queensland, before doing what felt natural at the time, heading back home to the family property. But the world was calling. Anne packed a backpack and went looking, spending years on the road and finding herself most alive in South America. She wrote everything down along the way. Those notebooks, full of dust, colour, and curiosity, eventually became her blog, a quiet, personal record of seeing the world and learning from it.
