Originally Posted by
ehallison
You need to separate the hotel STAY points from the hotel PAYMENT points. Because you earn the same STAY points no matter how you pay.
Here's a very easy example that I would use to calculate this for a Hilton stay of $100, using the double points promo starting May 1:
1000 base points
500 points & points bonus
150 silver points
1000 promo
2650 total points x .5 cents/point = $13.25 in points earned for the stay.
SPG Stay (I'm not familiar with their current promos so I haven't included that):
300 points = $8.10 in points earned for the stay.
Looks like Hilton is much better...then, I decide how to pay: 300 Chase UR points worth $6.60, or 600 Hilton points from Citi worth $3, or 200 SPG points worth $5.40. For either hotel chain, if you truly value UR points at 2.2, then using the CSR to pay is the best choice.
This is an excellent way of looking at it, you are indeed correct here! I knew I wasn't capturing it fully from the right angle! I would add that SPG does have a promo going, 1,500 bonus points for 1 stay and 2,500 for the second stay for a total of 4000. I will do the math with those numbers in mind based on how you calculated above. This is super helpful! Thank you so much!!