Originally Posted by
blitzen
Yes there is always " what would the room/flight be" vs "what would I have booked without miles"
Sometimes the hotel status are just for fun ( no money saved) but I fly to India and would have paid for business myself ( big savings for two tickets and one way is even first).
I can buy that argument with first class airline tickets (i.e., the retail price was $8k, but you never would have agreed to pay that much out of pocket), but I don't buy that argument for hotel stays. For instance, in the case of our Park Hyatt redemption, my wife and I normally would never spend more than ~$375/night out of pocket on any hotel stay anywhere. But the quality of the room/hotel we got with Park Hyatt was far greater than what we would have gotten at any other hotel had we paid out of pocket. So while using the 2 free night certs may have only *saved* us $375/night, the actual value of what we received at the Park Hyatt was much greater than $375/night, and based on the quality of the room we stayed in, I have no reason to dispute that the actual value of what we got was $850/night (the regular booking rate on the date we stayed there).