Originally Posted by
travelinfoo
You do NOT qualify for the 5th night free in any way. You MUST book a 5 night POINTS AWARD reservation to get the 5th night free. It is a bonus ONLY for POINTS awards. The 5th night free does NOT apply to $$ or points/cash award reservation.
If you book less than the 5 award nights, no discounts.
You could have checked to see if there is a discounted rate for the cash nights (MVP, AAA, etc).
In this case, the cash rate was -- let's say $150/nt for 7 nights, and the points rate was 50,000/nt for 7 nights.
But, splitting them up, both the points/nt rate and the cash/nt rate both went up. The cash rate went up to $180. In the end, it would not let me book as 50K X 3 plus $150 X 4 to get 7 nights total.
So, I took the 70K X 2 and paid $130/nt at another property for 5 nights.
Checking the same property again, and just using 1 King Standard to work with, my original 7 night stay prices at $230/nt cash or 43,500 points/nt points. Changing things around, going down to 3 days, the rate goes to $310/nt cash or 50,000 points. 4 nights yields a slightly different rate, of $270/nt cash, 50,000 points.
Bottom line - any length-of-stay rate you get will vanish if you try to combine points/cash for your booking.