Originally Posted by
TravelinSperry
Spend your points in 2018 before the merger is complete and the top tier hotels go up!
Agreed, better safe than sorry!
Can always book stays forward well into 2019 for travel which may or may not actually materialize ( i.e. vacation stays I want - hope to take but have not yet booked rest logistics , flights whatever ) and worst case just cancel & refund the points.
BTW IMHO yes got a little lucky with some arbitrage, but they were pretty close
e.g. I've just made an airport booking PHX at spg
cat 2 which is weekend 3,000 weekday 4,000
so comparing that to Marriott is 10k cat 2. So some days weekdays we win with transferring to 12,000 Marriott, while other days weekends we loose transferring to 9,000 Marriott. Overall still pretty close.
EDIT: I thought about this and one concern is while the "categories" are inline numerically not so much on what get! In this example spg gets me a decent full service Sheraton but after looking around the equivalent cat 2 / 10k Marriott gets nothing in Phoenix and cat 3 is just residence inn... I'd definitely say getting the Sheraton is superior. Hmmmm