jamienbaker

So basically every night at the Palace you come close to throwing away a one-way business class flight to Asia on Cathay Pacific, in order to save $500. I personally can't think of a more value destructive trade. But maybe this is why I never have difficulty claiming CX awards and seeing the world. So on second thought, keep up the good work!

teeceedee

So many numbers here - I never thought about redemption value, but I have noticed points go much further in Asia than they do in US.

travelswithmyself

While I wasn't the one to state the $150 cut-off point, and my personal cut-off point is more like sub-$100, I'd have two other factors I use in deciding:
. current earning promotions (since points stays often don't count)
. upgrades - I personally feel that a cash rate increases the chances of an upgrade. This is speculation on my part, but was tacitly confirmed by management at one hotel

Of course anecdotes on FT seem to indicate excellent SPG recognition even with points stays, but that's my opinion anyway.

andreirublev

I'd say I use a modified cent-per-point system, where the "c" is modified by the perceived value of the hotel.

On the high end, I'm more lenient on the ratio for properties that I can't otherwise afford -- London and Paris where it's $700-1000 for 25,000 or 30,000 is only in the $0.025-0.030 range, but worth it to me because I could not stay there otherwise.

In the midrange, I hardly ever use just points unless the hotel comes in "too high." For example, a few weekends ago I was staying in Chicago and due to local events, lots of hotels were at high occupancy and my preferred SPG option (Westin River north) was going for $420. Other acceptable options (Sheraton, Westin Mag Mile) were similarly priced. 12,000 points was an easy decision for the Westin River North for a few reasons: 3.5 cpp, that property is absolutely not worth $420/night, I need the SPG stay credit so I don't want to look at other options, I really don't want to stay in the Chicagoland suburbs and be burdened with a car because the purpose of my trip was to drink to oblivion in Wicker Park.

On the low end, I don't ever see a reason to use points. It's never more than a savings of $100 or so. I'd pretty much always just rather have the points that result from the stay+bonus+promo.

The exception is cash+points when the cpp is just too good to pass up, at any price point. It's few enough points not to worry about their loss too much.

In general, I'd rather save up points for aspirational stays at high-end properties, but keep a buffer of 80-100k points for "too expensive" stays. If I were more disciplined in the inspirational stay matter, one day I'd really like to have enough for a 4-night-5th-night-free at an exotic (expensive) location.

allanak

While nowhere near a good C+P redemption, I'm booking 2x Emirates F tix on the A380 BKK-HKG for 37.5k miles each (30k points each + xfer bonus). It beats paying ~$900 for the ticket to cross showering on a plane off the bucket list Since I booked LAX-HKG RT for <$700 as the long haul part of my trip, I couldn't convince myself to shell out that much cash for this segment so thought this was a good use of some of my stash.

tpr

I use the points on my vacation and don't look too much at the cpp, but in general we stay in cat. 4/5 which with taxes and resort fees is usually $200+.

It feels good to spend a week with the family at the beach and pay nothing.

MrNagy

I routinely use 2,000 points for a $70 room at the Four Points Kansas City Airport when after taxes it comes to about $83. To me this seems like a great value.