NCommander

I currently have 3110 points in my account, and another ~7000-8000 on the way (had a wonderful week long stay at the Golden Lion BW in Anchorage), and I was kinda curious how most people around here spend their points. I'll have about 10,000 once my last stay posts (hopefully sometime this week), so I could redeem them for SkyMiles/Mileage Plus, although the 5000->1000 rate seems kinda painful and not a great way to spend said points.

It seems a lot of properties (by searching in random cities) usually require 20,000 points to stay, but my last stay should qualify me for the SUM10, although I'm not sure if these will just show up in the mail, or on my BWR account, or whatnot, although having a free night is nice.

So I guess my question for FT is how do you spend the points you earn, and how will I get my free night voucher?

jamesteroh

if the stay is under $200 I just go for southwest credits. If it's over that and I jsut get the points. I am going to wait until I need some southwest credits and just exchange them for that.

sdsearch

Since I've found that near some US National Parks a BW can be the only property, and in some cases can be expensive in money but not so expensive in points ($150++/night or 16K points/night for one of the two BWs at the entrance to Bryce Canyon NP, for example), I now save my points for hotel nights, but only use them when the ratio is this good (and when I can't find another chain where I have more points or the ratio is even better). It helps that BW points never expire, because they can be slow to earn, and so you may have to patiently save them up for a while before you'll have enough to help in a situation like that.