Originally Posted by
Batavian
I was wondering if folks have a rule of thumb for when to redeem points and when not to.
For example, if I can get a rate less than $99/night, does it make sense to use points?
Thanks in advance for any tips.
What matters is the "value" or money saved per point. Of course you should spend 10k points instead of $99, but you'd be crazy to spend 35k points... 0.5 cents per point is a useful rule of thumb for IHG.
Some people do have a mental block against paying more than a certain number per night for a hotel room, whether that's $100, $300 or whatever. So they always pay for those $100 rooms, no matter how few points it might otherwise cost. They do this because they are accumulating points to spend 80,000 points per night on what would otherwise cost $350, because they could never bring themselves to pay that in cash.
There are lots of examples in this hobby of not quite rational behaviour...