Continuing the story of my wife's girls trip. They just started shopping for hotels and were surprised that 4 nights was going to cost them close to $2k for the cheapest rooms.

~100k of my points later and they're down to $200 cash (some of the bookings were cash+points), plus a better room on a couple of the nights. I was also able to get them into an otherwise-too-expensive hotel closer to the city center/mass transit a night early, allowing them to return the rental car a day earlier and save on that.