username

My Hilton stays are not as lucrative since we have to use the company credit card. I think many people are on this boat so our valuation is somewhat different.

Adelphos

eajusa

RobotDoctor

As more programs merge the benefits, and certainly the accruals and redemption of points, will continue to be a shell of what they once were. Less competition means worse benefits because where are we, the consumer, going to go. This is the same for airline programs and car programs.

xooz

Since OP's focus is "...about points and redemptions when comparing hotels of similar location, rooms, and service.", I think HH compares pretty favorably to MR, as OP is taking luxury/aspirational properties mostly out of the equation.

My personal quandary is that I care less about points accrued per paid stay than most since I use regular (non-bonused) CC spend to accumulate most of my points, and then look for comparable hotels to book. In most big cities I see reasonably comparable nightly redemptions as: 45K MR = 70K HH= 20-25K HY. This equates to a CC spend per night of roughly: $22k MR/ $23K HH/ $15K HY (where HY spend is on Chase Freedom/CSR). This recent comparison has caused me to consider focusing on Hyatt, but the lack of good options in many cities makes me pause. Also, I find that MR and HH often have reasonable cash prices much more often than Hyatt.

All this to say, for straight up earn and burn with credit cards, Hyatt is sort of attractive now. But since OP seems to have some reasonable number of paid stays, the impact of bonus points for paid HH credit card stays might rule the day, not to mention the plus of Gold/Diamond status via card.

pinniped

Since SPG Amex was nerfed in August, I've started thinking about using Hyatt Visa a little more for general non-bonus spend. I consider 1 HY about equal to 2 MR these days, and diversifying into Hyatt as a place to redeem 1- and 3-night higher-end stays fills a needed gap in my redemption options. (Marriott = 5 to 7 nighters. Hilton = 5 nighters. IHG = 1- to 3-night midrange brands. Citi Prestige Card = 4 night stays.)

I've been using the Costco Visa for travel expenses. Kind of an unsexy option but right now I don't really need more points.

xooz

I may get the Hyatt card for the bonus, but would not put more spend on it beyond qualifying for the bonus. The Chase Freedom at 1.5 points per $ is better and more flexible, as long as you have one of the premium Chase cards to use for transferring.

arlflyer

I have never understood why people always talk about cents per point as a valuation metric. As we all know, the absolute number of points needed for something varies widely by program. The useful metric is dollar cost averted divided by spend dollars. The cost you are avoiding (lowest cost alternative to a redemption) over the spend it took to get the points needed to avoid said cost. By that metric, Hilton hotel spend usually lands me about 15% return at a minimum, sometimes much more.

craigthemif

I agree that you can calculate a "rebate" based on the value of points received for every $ spent on hotel stays, but you need a cents per point valuation in the first place. And that valuation has very little to do with how you earn those points, but how you can spend them.

arlflyer

Why? It is just an intermediate variable. What matters is what you spend and what you get. If you compare costs of redemptions, CPP/CPM is baked in.

craigthemif

Cost of redemption where? At which hotel? It's relatively rare for people to use their points at the exact same hotel where they are earning points through paid stays. So they estimate a points valuation that works across various hotels.

arlflyer

escape4

I don't intend to dispute this because I have not been paying attention, but can you please elaborate on what this devaluation is that affected all hotels?

B3nder

There were some threads around that time about noticing point increases. Most redemptions now use a dynamic point/$ calculation rather than a fixed amount per property. Hilton does not publish a point/$ conversion rate, so you would have to compare a sample set. Even though one is not published, it's relatively consistent across all hotels I've looked at, with only a few outliers. So a small sample group seems sufficient to estimate values.

I compared such a representative group to a set I had done the month before, it's linked in this post https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/30231443-post10.html. sorry for the chain of links, but the thread also has several people discussing point values, so seems relevant to your question.

That reminds me I haven't looked at values for months now, maybe I'll try to redo the same set of properties and start a new thread this weekend to more cleanly track historical values.

escape4

Well the shift to dynamic occurred much longer ago than November 2018. Also many hotels' maximum redemption rate did not increase when this was rolled out, so in theory that move alone did not devalue everything 12%. It is in the subsequent months that some hotels increased their cap and it was done in an opaque way so there was a devaluation at that time, but once again, it was not 12% across the board it was rather hit and miss. Or so I thought.