I am a BONVOY member (currently Platinum), Vistana timeshare owner, with AMEX brilliant card. I am a long time member actually, since the SPG (Starwood) days. From a recent timeshare purchase, we have the opportunity to purchase up to 6 certificates of 330,000 BONVOY points at $2275 / each. That works out to .689 cents per point ($0.00689/pt). Should be a great deal. Everywhere I look, BONVOY points are supposed to be worth .8-.9 cents per point depending on how you slice it. So, to verify if this deal would work for us, I checked to see the worth of using points on an upcoming trip to Europe in Sept 21. After MUCH research, we scored 2 business class tix, Denver>Shannon, and Madrid back to Denver. Outbound flight is good, return flight isn't bad except for the one useless "extra" leg PHL to CLT. We saved about $350/tic as I could tell (checking on KAYAK and MOMONDO). Then I looked at hotels and this is where my disappointment lies. ANYTHING outside of Paris and London it is not worth using Points. I checked San Sebastian, Bilbao, Madrid and a few other locations. And really, only London and Paris with 5 night stays where I could replay exceed the 0.689 cents / point value. I could give examples and data but don't won't to bore you with details. While I know you HAVE to put in some time to search and make the right decisions to get value for your $$, I don't ever recall being this frustrated trying to score deals.

And another note...BONVOY points acquired in this manner expire in 6 years.

My conclusion here is that is take SO much work to a) Find flights with reasonable connections and ticket costs (why anyone would book BA with points is beyond me) and b) Hotels/lodging where it makes sense to use BONVOY points instead of $$ is making me think this effort is just not worth it. I'm wondering if I just search for sales and deals on flights and lodging using $$ would be a better use of my time. Or.........am I just doing something wrong?