So last night I got an email from Melia saying they were adding 10,000 points to my account to book a room at their Nassau, Bahamas hotel. I'm not interested in the Bahamas, but I'm headed to Portugal later this year. There were no points added last night but, this morning, there are now 10,000 points in my account.

When I clicked on a Lisbon hotel and went through the booking process, it does look like it will allow me to use the 10,000 points at ANY Melia hotel. There are very few hotels that are under 10,000 points, but when I used the "sliding scale" that's displayed on the subsequent booking pages, I do get a very worthwhile discount.

I have several Melia accounts that I opened on the initial promo -- but I never used any points. Reading through this thread, it seems like folks are generally having success with using multiple accounts. So if I can find hotels that work for me, I think I will use this promo at different properties. There doesn't seem to be any downside -- although I will be annoyed if I find out several months from now that all my reservations are gone! Any tips to avoid that happening?

EDIT: Interestingly, while my main Melia account had 10,000 points in it, my "duplicate" Melia accounts (which I opened up for the initial promo) has 12,000 points in them. So I booked my reservations from there. So far so good. I'm a bit surprised this thread doesn't generate more interest since this Melia deal -- which seems to be recurring if you have an account -- can be quite lucrative.