Paris properties - Spending approach
 

Traveling for 5 nights with my wife and 6 year old daughter over Thanksgiving.
I can get the Opera House for 160k points, or pay 40k points and about 806 EUR (fourth night free benefit from Citi Prestige). I'm Marriott Platinum.

My wife and I stayed at the Parc Trocadero a couple years ago and loved it, but it's about 50 USD more expensive per night, and seemed more like a couples or business hotel than a family hotel.

Any thoughts on the best bang for your buck Paris approach?

I will be in Paris at the same time. I was able to book the Ren La Defense for 308 Euro and 70,000 points for 4 nights. It's a bit outside the city center, but I'm happy to ride a subway 20-30 mins and save 500 Euros. It might be a more economical option if you're looking to save points and $.

Is there an applicable travel package? You can use the airline miles/points at a later date.

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you talking about this? https://www.marriott.com/rewards/usepoints/morepack.mi

I thought those were all for 7 night stays. I've not used that program before, however.

They're for seven night stays, but you might find it useful to have the room available for an early morning arrival or an evening checkout, depending on flight schedules. So the sixth and possibly even seventh night might be useful to you. Even if not, AFAIK you can pay for seven nights with points or a seven night cert and only stay five without further penalty. This might make sense depending on how you value airline miles/points.

We looked at it. It's not out of the running. My wife is concerned about taking a 6 year old on the subway every day, and patience levels. My wife gets concerned a lot.

I'd feel the same way about a smalll kid on the Paris Metro. You'd need to pay attention to the kid and watch for pickpockets at the same time.

Got it. Right now, I've only got 164k points. I'd be reluctant to transfer more lucrative credit card points in for "junk night" Marriott redemptions, but I certainly see your point. Thank you for your input.

As an aside, I completely forgot to check that option before booking my flight. Thanks for the reminder for future trips.

To reiterate, you can use the miles/points from a travel package at some later date. They're just transferred into yor FF account and don't need to be used for the same trip as the hotel stay portion of the travel package. They're just subject to the same expiration rules as miles in your FF program that were earned by flying or spend on an affiliated credit card.

Each of us has a reason why one hotel is the absolute best and why you should stay at our preferred hotel. The bottom line is while you see many posts explaining why this or that hotel is the best, you rarely see any posts about any of the Paris hotels being bad. No matter which hotel you choose, you are going to have an awesome trip. You will think the hotel is perfect and you won't be able to imagine any other hotel being better. Make a choice, stick with it, and stop over analyzing the choice or you can drive yourself batty.

BTW. a couple years ago I did a trip with family. We stayed at the CE FS. Yes, many on here don't like the property but we had a great trip. At the same time, neighbors were staying at the St Denis CY. They had nothing but awesome things to say about their great trip and hotel. When in comes to Marriott properties in Paris, what makes the choice hard is the all options are excellent.