Originally Posted by
dsquared37
If an award room is available. However booking, and then cancelling, does not guarantee anything and won't open an award room if it's not already present.
I rebook refundable cash rates with points, and refundable point rates with cash, all the time. It's easy to cancel one and book the other.
But Yes exactly -- you can't be confident that award availability will be there later. Most often, I find award availability for properties all the way until the stay, points+cash availability goes much more often though and really can't be counted on existing in the future, and there is a decent enough chance 'resort' like properties over a peak travel time will likely stop taking point bookings months out. Thus, I would never 'count on it'.