Originally Posted by
sdsearch
I you already had a certificate, I presume you'd try to use it up (rather than throw it away)? There must be "decent enough" non-aspirational properties to "use up" a certificate on if you happen to have one (just to save some money on one hotel night where you're not doing much at the hotel anyway)?
So I presume what you actually meant was that you've never bothered to pursue earning a certificate?
You know what you do when you assume, right, and I'd say presuming is about the same. No, I didn't mean that. I meant we do strictly aspirational travel, and have never found a use tor the domestic certificate, so it just expires unused. Pretty much the same story with the Marriott certificates. In the past we used them in airport hotels, but then all of those moved up from 4 to 6. Besides which, we haven't done any of those stay somewhere crummy before an early morning flight trips lately. Doesn't matter so much now that we can't even get Marriott personal cards anymore, due to 5/24.
If we had business travel it would be different, but we don't, and are aren't about to waste a day of vacation travel in a cheap hotel just because we have a certificate for it.