Originally Posted by
andreiz
My budget is generally targeted to midrange hotels with a splurge here and there and I mostly stay at hotels when I travel abroad.
Originally Posted by
andreiz
Starting off this year, I need to go to Austin for a weekend in March. For 3/22-24 I see $277/night rate at Hyatt Regency (and they'll be running the new promo soon for 4,000 points after 4 nights + 1,000 points for Hyatt cardholders). Hilton Austin is $201 and Garden Inn is $152 (and Hilton is running a couple of promos - 7,000 points for 2-night weekend stay and 33% off Any Weekend, Anywhere). I can get a $219 rate at W Austin through FoundersCard (and Starwood is doing the double points for 2-night stay promo). Marriott's Residence Inn is $184 (and Marriott is doing the Stay twice, earn a free night MegaBonus). And finally, Intercontinental Stephen F. Austin is $234 (and PC has a couple of promos for double the points every stay and 5,000 points after 3 stays).
So hard to choose..
Is this your "splurge here or splurge there"? W and Regencry and Hilton proper do sound liuke "midrange" to me.
I'm not sure which HGI you checked but the HGI Austin North is $119/night "Best Available Rate" (even less Advance Purchase or MVP or AAA if you have that), and since most of the points would be from the promo (but is 7000 points for a Thu-Sat stay or only Fri-Sun?), I don't see 'if yuo're "midrange" mostly why you'd be condiering paying almost double that for the Hilton?
(22 Mar is a Thu and 24 Mar is a Sat.)
Meanwhile, I don't know what Founders Card is or what it works for, but while it sure gives you big discount on the W (it's $400+ without it), with no such card (a no other discount) the Sheraton is $189 and the Aloft is $169. And again the promos are the same, no?
Finally, at Marriot, there's a Fairfield or two for $119 and Springhill Suites for $129.
And Marriott's stay twice promo requires you to change hotels every night to max that out! So why pick only one Marriott property for both nighs, and one of the most expensive ones at that???
(IMHO, the key to getting points is not just to choose hotels that give them, but choose hotels that give you the most points for the least spend. Then you have money left over for weekend trips on which you can find even cheaper hotels to build up your status and points at multiple chains even faster.