MilesBuzz! - Best Hotel Program for Fastest Free Rooms?

Howdy,

Ok, so I used to do the Hilton thing with Mariott as a backup. Loved getting out to HWV for a few weeks each winter and a few odd trips elsewhere during the year.

I make around 40 trips a year, 1-2 nights for the most part.

Right now - Priority Club has some a fair amount of hotels offering 3k points as a bounus; that + a 50% elite bonus and I'm averaging around 7k per night/stay (I bounce on 2 day trips for hotel to hotel). Therefore, at 25k points for a stay - It takes me just under 4 nights to get 1 free room.

Anyway - not being real familiar with hotel programs - if anyone has any advice as to how to further maximize my return - I'd appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

Keep the faith,

Pakse

Right now - Priority Club has some a fair amount of hotels offering 3k points as a bounus; that + a 50% elite bonus and I'm averaging around 7k per night/stay (I bounce on 2 day trips for hotel to hotel). Therefore, at 25k points for a stay - It takes me just under 4 nights to get 1 free room.
Are you also reading the Priority Club forum here on FT, and specifically the sticky Promos thread there? If not, you can probably earn even way more points on many stays, because people in that thread dig up a lot of promos (that typically can be "stacked") which you would never otherwise likely find (and Radioman does a great job routinely updating post #1 to reflect that collection in a concise way).

You're on the right track. In my experience, the two hotel families that have ultrarich promos (and the key to getting free rooms way faster) are Priority Club and Choice Privileges (www.choicehotels.com). And they even tend to complement each other somewhat on when their promos start and end, so for example since December through early Feburary Choice has no promo I tend to concentrate on Priority Club then, and then when Choice starts up a rich promo I jump to there for a while, etc.

Choice properites in the US are mostly a bit downscale from Priority Club properties, but also tend to be less expensive. (Though I'm not clear on whether you're paying for your own stays or not, because you're talking about "3000 bonus points" rates at Priority Club which tend to be way more expensive than the cheapest rates there -- unless perhaps you always book last minute and don't belong to AAA -- and so few people who pay their own way tend to use them.) Choice properties in many European countries are much better yet often as little as 16k a night (which during some promos you can earn in 2 to 3 cheap one-night stays in the US!), but that only helps if you want to redeem in Europe. (In the US, you tend to need many more points a night at expensive locations.)

Note: Choice only works well for those who can hotel-hop, since so many of their promo are stay-oriented rather than night-oriented, meaing you earn the same bonus for a 10-night stay as for a 1-night stay. (And, remember, the universal hotel program definition of a stay is "any number of consecutive nights at the same hotel, no matter how many times you check in and out".)

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When it's offered, Hyatt's Faster Free Nights (FFN) promotion is probably the best deal for you. Every two stays (even one-night stays) earns one free night. Check the sticky at the top of the FT Hyatt forum for details of the last FFN promotion, which ended last month.

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When it's offered, Hyatt's Faster Free Nights (FFN) promotion is probably the best deal for you. Every two stays (even one-night stays) earns one free night. Check the sticky at the top of the FT Hyatt forum for details of the last FFN promotion, which ended last month.
If you can live with the restrictions, and if you have a big travel budget (at least in the areas I travel, Hyatt is always signficantly more expensive than many Priority Club properties, let alone Choice), and if you're alwyas staying in big cities.

The restrictions vary from round to round. The latest round didn't have day of week usage restrctions, but previous rounds have had restrictions like free nights could only be used on weekends. The one time I tried FFN I earned an award I was not able to use it because I had no weekend travel planned to a city where Hyatt had a hotel within the few months I had to redeem the award! (This was before they bought Summerfield.)

Priority Club and Choice Privileges give you bonus points, which you can choose to use how/when you wish at many thousands of locations. Hyatt gives you certificates, which work for some people but not for others.

Like mentioned above take advantage of as many bonus offers as you can by reading FT and also see my hotel section which covers bonus offers for many hotel programs
www.frequentflyerbonuses.com/hotel.html

Also Priority Club offer Points Break. A list of hotels from across the whole of the groups brands offering rooms for 5000 points per night. The list is updated about every 3 months; the latest update is due soon.

I still find Hilton Honors to be a decent program for earning free nights. Depending where you travel you can find Cat 1 hotels which for 10,000 points are a real bargain. I was able to use some Cat 1 awards when I was in Denver in August at the Democratic Convention when room rates were sky high. I also check for point stretchers as well which are 40% off usual rates. The other great thing is that award nights count towards elite requalification with Hilton which is not true of most other programs.

Not exactly a program, but Club Quarters - every stay you get a certificate to validate on your next stay. Each cert = 1 free night. Technically, if each stay is one night, it's buy one, get one free.

Not exactly a program, but Club Quarters - every stay you get a certificate to validate on your next stay. Each cert = 1 free night. Technically, if each stay is one night, it's buy one, get one free.

got a website for Club Quarters ?

got a website for Club Quarters ?
Have you tried clubquarters.com?

got a website for Club Quarters ?

http://www.letmegooglethatforyou.com/?q=club+quarters

:p

The Club Quarters Night on the House program is not bad, but does have a fee associated with using the certificate and a limited set of dates when they can be used:
http://clubquarters.com/NightOnTheHouse.aspx