Originally Posted by
Doppy
An appraisal is great if you're trying to sell something like an apartment or house, but that gives you a sense of what the market price for resale is, not what something is worth to you. How is an appraiser going to tell me if I'm better off spending $800 for an economy ticket or $3500 for a business class ticket on the same flight?
Here, maybe this will help. I have more miles than I have vacation days so I book intl F for parents. Except they tell me explicitly that they don't really care for two-stops even though they get to fly CX F long haul and would rather me book them on Y non-stop DL (ignore whether I can find lowest tier DL awards). But I still book them CX F with two stops. Why? Because it is a better value, I get more bang out of my miles and I would refuse to let them use my miles if they insisted on DL in Y. Oh and I also feel good about beating someone else out on a CX F seat in summer or xmas time
And in any case we've determined that you don't care about market rate - you'd rather stay at a $35 hotel out of town than a $500 hotel in town. If market rate were the same thing as value to the consumer, you'd be totally indifferent between the two options.
Well let's look at that example. I stayed four nights at two 5k IHG hotels over labor day weekend in knoxville area. The cash cost was $125-150 (note it was also UT football weekend). Well I am getting 2.5-3 cents per point.
Lets look at a 30k room. The cash cost would need to be $600 to get 2cpp, $900 for 3cpp. 50k room? Yeah $1000. See what I mean? It's not just the absolute cost of the room, it's how much cpp you get out of it. I would gladly choose a 30k room over a 5k room if the market price were $900.
And that's not even taking into account that the more expensive room would likely not have paid parking or a fridge or free breakfast. Yes even cheap hotels in downtown have free parking.