Originally Posted by
FlightBOS
Airline miles are definitely worth more, so a good decision here. I only had 150k SPG miles to play with, so I opted for one big package. That being said, I do think you tend to get more value out of the higher tier hotels. Not that you can find value in cat 1-5, but I think its easier to get value for points at a higher tier...plus I'd never pay $800/night for a premium hotel. $100/night for a cat 5 in southeast Asia, I'm much more likely to pay out-of-pocket.
That Crete property is one where it makes sense to actually stay all of the nights while not worrying about visiting other places, though I imagine you can comfortably do at least an island hop or two. For me personally, there aren't too many places where I care too much about the room. I generally like to go to Europe and with a few exceptions, you can find rooms almost anywhere for $100-120 a night that are 4 stars or better and in a fairly central location. I tend to usually have a decent number of Radisson points as well and they almost always have properties that meet that bill as well that I can pay with points. But again, Crete would be somewhere that I would want an extravagant room. Hawaii of course too. The Caribbean and other tropical places as well.
I agree as well on your assessment, but the good news is, while I'm not really excited about the current cat 1-5 hotels, I feel pretty good about the packages mapping to the new cat 1-4s, which when the SPG hotels are added in opens up a lot more possibilities.