Originally Posted by
dulciusexasperis
At the risk of taking my own thread off-topic, I have to comment on 'free nights'. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Getting one night 'free' after paying for 10 or whatever, whether from a hotel chain or from a third party booking parasite, is not free. Businesses of whatever kind, do not offer Loyalty Rewards for the benefit of customers, they are for the benefit of the business. Just as a casino isn't there for the customer to win money, they're there for the house to make money. The only difference is that with Loyalty Programs, you pay in advance fora future stay at a hotel or flight on a plane or a bag of groceries.
That's assuming that you're generating the points through staying in the property. And hey, some programs have all kinds of non-stay point earning opportunities. Sometimes, it's at a modest financial cost (the infamous original IHG 'Priceless Experiences' AMOE that got you about 50K points for less than $50 in postage); sometimes it's an opportunity cost rather than financial- I do the surveys for fun while my spousal unit is watching a tv show I'm not interested in, and will select a hotel program for that rather than get airline miles. And sometimes it's a straight out giveaway like the Marriott twitter promotions that can add up enough to get you free nights.
I'm on the low end of household incomes on FT; I'm getting good at finding the crumbs on the margin to let us travel more, and non-stay hotel points are a nice chunk of that.