Thanks for the advice - highly recommend. ^^
We put feelers out to get a 3 bed appt for our group of 7 a couple of months ago - willing to pay 20-30kRMB a week but got no takers. PC points idea was out of the box and greatly appreciated.

Other experiences from Down Under.
- Plenty of flight award availability to HKG or SHA 300+ days out. Train required to Beijing.
- we hit approx 20% tickets via Co-Sport (finals only applied for) which was on par with SYD olympics. We have some tickets which we might have to give up due to work schedule - I have to build my thread count for CC or PM.