Originally Posted by
FrAAmer
I am curious why no one mentioned Capital One Venture where you can apply the points earned to any hotel - so the affiliation (or not) with a chain is moot.
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I am looing at a trip to Portugal and although I have thousands of points with Hilton, SPG and Mariott, I found that there are "alternative" awards through American Express MR that will give us 5 star stays at properties where we could not use our other points. It would also give us an opportunity to stay somewhere that we otherwise would have "overlooked" because they weren't Hilton/Starwood/Marriott.
The reason most people don't mention Capital One is that it's simply a card that's restricted to hotel (or other travel) redemption, but beyond that restriction it's simply a 2% cashback. Also, "Match My Miles" aside, it doesn't come with that great signup bonus (it certianly doesn't give you multiple free nights with just the signup bonus the way many "true" hotel cards do.)
The value in hotel cards being sought here was for free nights earned with just the hotel bonus, and on the Venture falls flat for most people (since most people cannot do "Match My Miles" any more*).
The value beyond that is that with "real" hotel points, the redemption value is not fixed at 2%, and can in fact be much higher in some cases. (Also, you can combine the points earned from the card with the points earned from the stays you do at the brand, which Venture doesn't offer. Venture's points are not combinable with points you earn anywhere else.)
The latter point is the one that applies to "altnerative" hotel redemptions like with airline miles. Again, they tend to be at a "fixed" value (behind the scenes, they're simply paying cash to the hotel based on the miles you used), so it's hard to get a high-value-in-cash hotel on a small number of miles, the way you can at least sometimes get a high-value-in-cash hotel on a small number of hotel points.
Priority Club Select Visa, for example, give you at 60k (and there's an offer for 80k) just for the signup bonus. Well, if all the hotels you stay at are in the PointsBreaks offers (5k/night0, that's 12 nights!
Of courese, being able to use hotel points only for high-value redemptions requires taking the attitude that if it's cheap on money, use that occasion to earn points, and only redeem when it's expensive on money but cheap on points. (You can't do that with Venture, since with Venture the redemption cost is always proportional to the cash cost of the hotel.)
... Meanwhile, in Portugal, have you looked at the cash cost? When good hotels are only 40 Euros a night, why both using up points at all? (Unless you only have Venture, and have no better use for the points, since all travel uses for Venture points are exactly the same!)