Originally Posted by
theplayer
It's not even that....No business travel, but we acquire points every year with sign up bonus and take a 2 week vacation in the winter. We've gone to Europe last 4 years. When should we use the points if not for our vacation? I don't look at it like ..the room is only $175-200 in the off season so it's not a good deal, but same room in peak season is $500, so great deal. We are staying for free at a time when we are able to travel.
Pretty similar to our approach.
We have redeemed points in every program that is NOT the optimal value but hey, those pts would otherwise just sit there versus if we use them they save our out of pocket cash.
In the recent trip we redeemed a 5th night free award at 4Ps at Brisbane at 70K total. Hotel has weekend rates very cheap like around 100 AUD, so 73 USD but on weekdays it jumps to 130+ AUD so 95 USD. We had 2 weekend days and 3 weekdays - the total pay amount would have been 450 USD max. Some would say that at 0.6 cent it is less than what its "value" should be (at 0.8 cent) but I view it we saved $450 instead.
Another case is with IHG program on the same trip. We needed an overnight stay at MEL where there is a Holiday Inn within walking distance from the terminal. IHG wants 35K while cash rate is USD135 (we stayed there before when it was only 20K) True, we used the IHG pts at below "breakeven" if you acquire the pts via the Cash and Point booking trick (lowest at 0.005 per pt cost) - but again, those IHG pts were from sign up bonuses and all kinds of promo and they just sit at the accounts. Either I "save" the pts for better value redemption or save $135 cash. We opted the latter.
OTOH we redeemed a 5th night free at Sheraton on the Park in Sydney for 140K - hotel cash rate was around US$270 per night, and US$1362 for 5 nights. So we get almost 0.01 per pt value, slightly better than the 0.007 I pecked it for a long time, since 4 or 5 years ago - because it seemed to be 50% of the case in our travels.
Anytime one can save real cold hard cash without undercut your point hoarding much, it is a win to me.