Originally Posted by
escapefromphl
There are also pretty significant swings in the award prices these days. I signed up for the 5x50k CC bonus and utilized all the certs in Switzerland this summer, getting around $2500 value. But it wasn't a sure thing and I had to wait for points prices to drop before I could use them. I also re-checked every booking every few days for price drops, and was able to claw back about 20K points. A snapshot on any one day would have yielded far less value.
This right here is a strategy I use on every single points redemption I make anymore. Over the Christmas/NYE holiday my wife and I spent a month in Thailand, staying exclusively at Marriott properties. Of the three properties where I chose to use points I was able to lower the initial number of points for all three five-night stays by nearly 60,000 points. I would simply check each day and grab the better redemption if it appeared. A lot of it was reclaimed 1,000 - 2,000 points at a time, but it all added up.
Here are the three properties names, initial points outlay for a five-night stay, what my final points outlay was and finally the savings in points. It being the holidays the cash prices were quite a bit higher than "normal", so even at the initial booking of each hotel I was getting around 1 cpp return, and it only got better from there.
Marriott Chiang Mai 167,000 - 146,000 = 21,000
Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit 168,000 - 148,000 = 20,000
Renaissance Koh Samui Resort & Spa 168,000 - 149,600 = 18,400
Total Savings = 59,400 ($498.96 @ .0084 per point)
Did it take a bit of extra effort, sure, but with how easy Marriott makes it to "change" rooms to claim a better price/redemption, I never had to spend more than three minutes each day on the task.