Worth using points?
 

$280 room or 45,000 points? Is .01 still a reasonably good value for MR points, or has that slipped? I'm not so sure about .0062, and wonder would you just pay cash for the room?

I have been able to get 1.2 cents per point on my uses this year, although that has been in the cat-2 and cat-3 range. I personally try to get a value close to .01 and could see 45k getting me better use toward a 5th night free award somewhere. Perhaps at $280 you might have luck with a LNF rate?

I think you can pretty get close to 2c per point if you redeem for a Cat 8 or RC travel package. I set my threshold accordingly, so I won't go near 1c per point or less. That said I don't like paying cash rates over $200 without good reason. So I would look for a LNF or options in one of my secondary programs.

@:-)It's all about where you might use it. I have found that I can get as much as 2c per points staying at some hotels. The "normal" redemption value that I have seen for a 1-night stay is 0.8c. Remember, it's all about where you are looking. Some hotel shave a very high variance on weekdays vs. weekends. For example, the Gaithersburg Marriott Washingtonian Center can run $250+ on weekdays, but $90 on weekends! As a cat-3, that is more than 1.9c per point during the week, but a terrible .69c on the weekends (including taxes)--same hotel!

I usually look for 1.2 to 1.4 cpp out of Marriott when I redeem Travel Packages.

I call it 1.5 cpp for the airline miles and then estimate what I'd really spend on a hotel room in the destination if I didn't have Marriott points. Usually the hotel cert portion itself is a penny a point, maybe a little better, but that's partly because I wouldn't regularly book a Ritz at retail rates using cash if I didn't have points.

But this requires 300-400k points. If I *only* had 45k, maybe I'd think differently, but I think I'd still want closer to a penny a point.

Exactly--its all relative. I regularly book Ritz for business (great corporate rate). For personal stays, I am usually at RI. I redeem at anything that is interesting. I redeemed two travel packages this year for two 7-night cat-7 certificates and 284,000 points. However, I usually wouldn't have the time for 7 nights in any place.

Unless the planned stay is 7 nights, a travel package is a skewed basis to value points. A penny a point is still a good rule of thumb. The higher the hotel category, the easier it is to beat it.

I disagree. I would say category should map closely to the price point, which makes it roughly as easy to get the same ratio in a high-category hotel vs. a low-category hotel.

Instead, I would say that it is easiest to beat the 1c-per-point rate when hotel prices vary a LOT--either by day of week or by season.

Is that considered a low rate or average for the property? Check with my dates are flexible

If it's a category9 hotel I would assume that rates could go much higher depending on how far in advance you are booking. If I saw that this was a low rate on average for that property then I would know I'm not getting the most out of the points and just pay for the room.

If you need to stay bUT can't necessarily afford the cash rate, then use points. That's what they are for

Cat 9 really just means that people often use points to book there; it does't mean anything directly about price. Price tends to follow category, but not always. Business hotels not likely to have people use points to stay there (i.e., not in a vacation spot), may be very expensive, but have a very low category.

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree. At lower Cat properties, I can almost always find a rate that is a better value than points.

It seems like you're saying that points are a better value when the rate is high. I don't think anyone is disputing that.

Hotels that have highly variable rates are often mid-category (4-6) properties. Corporate, loyalty and advance purchase rates usually mitigate wide rate swings. If the rate is very high, it could be due to unusual demand, which is an anomaly.

I define "business hotels" as full service properties. Most are Cat 3 and above. That's not "very low."

I find that higher category hotels give you much less cents per point, and lower category ones give you more (because it is hard to drop below $80 for a hotel room anywhere).

However, if you are just trying to get more "value" then booking last-minute almost always gets you more, because the hotel rates shoot way up.

Not always.
If the property has a significant vacancy you might see prices significantly lower. Just consider business hotel rates on weekends.

Fair enough, but that's what I use because that's how the Marriott Rewards program is built. It's designed to reward the 120,000-mile Travel Package above all else. The "penalty" for booking a single-night stay is comparably high.

Starwood and Hyatt are my single-night programs. Of course Starwood rewards 5-night stays, but the penalty for booking a 1-night C&P award is much less.

If I didn't do the volume of hotel stays required to reach a Travel Package at least once every 2 years, I have to admit I'd consider moving *all* stays over to Starwood, Hyatt, or IHG. Those can be much more rewarding for people like redeeming short award stays more frequently.

Agreed...the variability helps, assuming you want to redeem during the peak days/season of course. I'll give Marriott credit for *generally* making these rooms available at a greater rate now than they did a few years back. Redeeming in Phoenix in March is a good example. There aren't many cheap alternatives, Priceline probably won't yield a good result, so using MR points can be pretty attractive. Then you look in August and think "Why is this Category 8 hotel $99/nt.?"...just remember March. :)

Almost nothing is Category 3 anymore. I have a reservation at a Category 5 Spring Hill Suites in three weeks. A mundane airport hotel in Minnesota. Granted, one I like and visit 2-3 times a year, but that's the baseline for Category 5 these days. I used to value my credit card annual certificates at $200 each, because I could always find a really good hotel for them...midweek stay in DC, even a couple decent European stays when the Euro was $1.40. Now I value them at maybe $100, max. (Thankfully the annual fee is still less than $100.)

That implies that the value of the hotel to me on that stay has also shot up. Just because Marriott wants $300/nt. doesn't mean I value it any more than $150/nt. If I redeem points for it, I'm might still be taking my $150/nt. rate in mind when deciding whether it's worth it....depends on what the other hotel options are and whether I'd really take the trip if I didn't have the points.