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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?
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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?
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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.
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@:-)
Originally Posted by bigjimbo99
(Post 25226077)
$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?
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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. |
Originally Posted by pinniped
(Post 25226880)
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. |
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.
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Originally Posted by dayone
(Post 25227363)
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.
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 |
Originally Posted by jm1991
(Post 25227478)
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 |
Originally Posted by NDN
(Post 25227391)
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.
Originally Posted by NDN
(Post 25227391)
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.
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. |
Originally Posted by NDN
(Post 25227641)
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.
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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.
Originally Posted by s0ssos
(Post 25228590)
.......booking last-minute almost always gets you more, because the hotel rates shoot way up.
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Originally Posted by dayone
(Post 25227363)
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.
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.
Originally Posted by NDN
(Post 25227391)
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.
Originally Posted by dayone
(Post 25228415)
I define "business hotels" as full service properties. Most are Cat 3 and above. That's not "very low."
Originally Posted by s0ssos
(Post 25228590)
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.
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Originally Posted by pinniped
(Post 25230005)
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. Washington Dulles Marriott Suites - Cat 4 Two properties I have stayed in that are "business hotels" and low category. |
Originally Posted by dayone
(Post 25228415)
I define "business hotels" as full service properties. Most are Cat 3 and above. That's not "very low."
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Thoughts on 2 generalizations mentioned here:
Business hotels=full service: aren't CYs marketed (or were) as business hotels? Categories follow rates: I'm staying at a SHS north of Boston this weekend where, using the 5th night free (and booking before it went from a Cat. 2 to 3), I was able to get over 0.02 per point. Heck, it would have been cheaper to outright buy the points than to pay the cash rate - by several hundred dollars, in fact. |
Originally Posted by Twickenham
(Post 25230610)
Business hotels=full service: aren't CYs marketed (or were) as business hotels?
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To further add to the confusion: I tend to think of hotels completely different if I'm in a suburban location vs. downtown in a large city.
To me, CY = suburban business hotel. I consider staying there because it's cheaper than the suburban full-service Marriotts that sometimes also exist. When I see CY building a large downtown full-service hotel (e.g. Chicago), my first thought is "why would I stay there when I don't get elite benefits and I can often stay in a nearby Renaissance or Marriott for the same price?" Some of these Courtyards even put a nicer full-service restaurant inside, but why would I pay a 15-20 Marriott point per dollar tax to eat there? Presumably, if I worked for one of these large corporations, I'd see great CY rates and the Marriotts and Renaissances would look much more expensive - so much so that I'm willing to go endure subpar treatment (or forced to do so by my company). Perhaps I was lucky in that my last large-firm employer who had a Marriott corporate agreement had a flat city rate. For example, for the DC area, our rate was $180/nt. for any hotel, provided property had rooms available under our rate code. Granted, there were a few hotels that *never* showed up, but there were always a couple dozen that did, sometimes including the Ritz Tyson's Corner. (Kind of an odd place for a Ritz IMHO, but still...I stayed there a couple times.) |
For me, I use points when I have a gut feeling the hotel is over priced and the point redemption isn't horrible. For example, I often use 35,000 points for 1 night (Saturday) at the CY Atlantic City. Is that a lot of points for a CY in a non-major location? Sure. But the going rate in the summer is $299/night + tax. I refuse to pay that for a CY in that location. So it's an easy decision to use points (plus my Sunday night govt rate of $94) and I end up getting 2 nights for about $115 and 35k points, versus paying $400+. Seems like a good value to me.
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Originally Posted by jlb3
(Post 25236378)
For me, I use points when I have a gut feeling the hotel is over priced and the point redemption isn't horrible. For example, I often use 35,000 points for 1 night (Saturday) at the CY Atlantic City. Is that a lot of points for a CY in a non-major location? Sure. But the going rate in the summer is $299/night + tax. I refuse to pay that for a CY in that location. So it's an easy decision to use points (plus my Sunday night govt rate of $94) and I end up getting 2 nights for about $115 and 35k points, versus paying $400+. Seems like a good value to me.
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Originally Posted by joshua362
(Post 25236396)
I've struggled with that in AC as well. Until you notice a very adequate Sheraton across the street for 7000 SPG points ($7,000 credit card spend) vs. $25,000 on the Marriott. That is what it was the last time I looked in 2013 so holy S, category inflation!! And this was on Saturday nights...
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To add to NDN's correct observation, there's *almost* no reason to ever use the Marriott Visa outside of a Marriott hotel. Perhaps there's a case for using it at foreign hotels, airlines, and rental agencies if it's the only FX-free card you hold, but I'd probably respond to that by saying "get a better FX-free card."
I suppose there's also a *very* niche case of being 1 night short of an elite tier, and spending $3,000 on the card (costing you $60 or so vs. using a better card) beats a mattress run. The MR Visa is primarily for use at the hotels. For that, it's fantastic. Given that a Cat 5 free night is still worth (IMHO) about $85 or perhaps a little more, it's basically a free card to have. It nudges you along towards Gold/Plat more quickly and bumps your earnings on stays a healthy amount. But basing calculations on 1pt-per-dollar spend it kind of meaningless. You shouldn't be doing that to begin with. Use your SPG Amex (or something else if you don't like SPG). |
Originally Posted by pinniped
(Post 25260721)
To add to NDN's correct observation, there's *almost* no reason to ever use the Marriott Visa outside of a Marriott hotel. Perhaps there's a case for using it at foreign hotels, airlines, and rental agencies if it's the only FX-free card you hold, but I'd probably respond to that by saying "get a better FX-free card."
I suppose there's also a *very* niche case of being 1 night short of an elite tier, and spending $3,000 on the card (costing you $60 or so vs. using a better card) beats a mattress run. The MR Visa is primarily for use at the hotels. For that, it's fantastic. Given that a Cat 5 free night is still worth (IMHO) about $85 or perhaps a little more, it's basically a free card to have. It nudges you along towards Gold/Plat more quickly and bumps your earnings on stays a healthy amount. But basing calculations on 1pt-per-dollar spend it kind of meaningless. You shouldn't be doing that to begin with. Use your SPG Amex (or something else if you don't like SPG). |
Originally Posted by NDN
(Post 25236932)
You are looking at it the wrong way. Most Hotel loyalty programs work by making it easiest to earn points with hotel stays. Marriott and Hilton are the prime examples, but IHG is that way, too. Airline loyalty programs, however, make it easiest to earn points through credit card spend or other means--NOT BY FLYING. SPG works like an airline program, which is why the points are transferrable 1-1 or greater to airline programs. So your example is correct if you are considering credit card spend, but in terms of hotel stays, the 25,000 marriott points are $2500 in non-elite hotel spend or $1667 in highest-level hotel spend. Consider the same for SPG... 7000 points is $3500 in hotel spend for regulars and $2333 for platinum members.
And recall that CY is now 35,000, up from 25,000 in 2013, simply absurd. But with Marriott's runaway category inflation, I really should burn those points first... |
Originally Posted by joshua362
(Post 25261027)
But with Marriott's runaway category inflation, I really should burn those points first...
And Marriott isn't the worst with category inflation. Hilton and IHG both have been worse over the last few years (with IHG handing out the double whammy of increasing points costs while reigning in the bonus points opportunities.) |
Originally Posted by NDN
(Post 25227391)
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.
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Originally Posted by sethb
(Post 25262293)
I agree that it should. I observe that it doesn't.
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Originally Posted by NDN
(Post 25262852)
I observe the opposite. I see the best value from low-category hotels in a price per point.
My point was that points are not anywhere near linear with dollars. |
Marriott, IMHO, has been the least-inflationary program of the majors.
The type of hotel I now get for 330,000 points used to (typically) cost 270,000 points - but that 270k point world had lower earnings - slightly fewer points to Plats in general and 2 points per dollar fewer to credit card users. It also had a two-tier availability scheme that often made it tough to find 7 consecutive award nights. At one point I did the math and came up with 8% net inflation for a Platinum member, assuming the property was hit with category creep one time. In exchange, redemption did get legitimately easier. For Golds, or for a property that jumped two categories, it's more like 15-20% inflation, but I'll still take the trade-off vs. the former, often infuriating redemption process. I have *other* complaints about MR, but the inflation/redemption side isn't one. I still feel like I get solid value for the points. Compare to HH, with its massive restructuring of program twice in 5 years PLUS a bunch of big category jumps. Compare to IHG which was so built around the bonuses that the act of taking them away completely changes the program. Compare to SPG which I like as a program, but each single category jump can result in almost double the points required. |
Originally Posted by pinniped
(Post 25260721)
To add to NDN's correct observation, there's *almost* no reason to ever use the Marriott Visa outside of a Marriott hotel. Perhaps there's a case for using it at foreign hotels, airlines, and rental agencies if it's the only FX-free card you hold, but I'd probably respond to that by saying "get a better FX-free card."....
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Originally Posted by MileageGoblin
(Post 25266085)
Not so fast my friend... The card is invaluable for business in addition to the 5x Marriott stays for its 2x dining and travel and $3k/night for PLT qualification for sub-50 night butt-in-bed travelers.
Don't get me wrong: I like MR Plat, although I don't really miss it too much in my Gold years since there's so little difference between the two levels. It's just not worth enough to make me pay a great deal for it through the suboptimal use of credit cards. |
Originally Posted by pinniped
(Post 25266148)
But even for dining and travel, you're leaving a bunch of value on the table every single time you use it outside of Marriott.
Don't get me wrong: I like MR Plat, although I don't really miss it too much in my Gold years since there's so little difference between the two levels. It's just not worth enough to make me pay a great deal for it through the suboptimal use of credit cards. Whether that's sufficient value varies. |
Originally Posted by pinniped
(Post 25266148)
But even for dining and travel, you're leaving a bunch of value on the table every single time you use it outside of Marriott.
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Originally Posted by MileageGoblin
(Post 25270402)
I can redeem MR points for over 3c during holidays.
Oh, and my airline miles are worth 10 cents each because I redeemed them for an international F ticket... |
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