Originally Posted by
skibum
The problem I find with most hotel plans is that I really only want to spend less then 75.00 for a nights stay. With Hyatt I can stay at either Hyatt place or Hyatt summerfield suites for as little as 49.00 to $75.00 and each night I generate 2500 points.
Last year I spent 64.00 average per night on 25 stays for a total cost of around 1720 with taxes. These times were used in business or weekend trips etc. This grossed me a little over 70,000 points included some bonuses. I then booked the Bali Hyatt for 5,000 points per night for a couple weeks! If I bought the room outright it would have cost well over 3,000 with taxes.
Marriott and IHG (Priority Club), like Delta and USAirways do in the airline department, offer very generous promos that are often stackable and/or free and can be utilized to get boatloads of cheap points. With Marriott, a lot of them are leveraged by having status (particularly Platinum), but lacking status doesn't mean you can't still take advantage of a lot of them. You can buy gift cards at 10% off and stack 4% cash back on top of that. You can buy those cards with a Chase Marriott card and get another 5 points/$ on the spending. You can book your room online and get another 3% cash back. You can earn 200-500 bonus points as an arrival gift if you're Platinum. Typical Megabonuses will allow another 2,000 points per night if used wisely. You can get 10-15 points/$ as a member (higher amounts the higher your status). In the end, it's usually easy to make $90/night stays for an effective cost of $75/night and get 4,000 points. If you save those points and then utilize it via a redemption like the ones I described earlier, you can make the points worth 2 cents each.
Originally Posted by
skibum
In reading over all this...I see why 25-75% is a great deal! Could have turned my 70k in 122500K (if I needed miles) How did you still get the 5 nights? I'm not clear on that part?
With SPG, every 20K points redeemed at once is subject to a standard 25% bonus, yielding 25K miles. The US promo, if you qualify at 75%, makes that 43,750. You wouldn't want to redeem 70K... you'd want to do an even increment of 20K (40, 60, 80, etc) if you are doing a straight conversion. The 70K comes into play because it is the number of points needed for a Nights & Flights II package (read the details in the link I gave earlier). Of those 70K SPG points, 40K are converted to 50K, then 87,500 US miles with the promo. The other 30K are good for the other half ("Nights" portion) of the package - five nights at a category 4 property, which can often be a nice resort that typically commands $300+/night.