pinniped

Figure this might be a good (and cheerier) companion to the threads here and in prominent places on a couple of different airline/hotel boards about devaluation...

Have you ever had a case where existing miles already in your account actually increased in value?

Mine:

(1) When AA and UA rolled out one-way awards, those miles instantly became worth quite a bit more to me. I now redeem one-ways or mixed cabins quite often. At least for my travel patterns, this more than offset the loss of stopovers...and I know there are some FT'ers who'd rather have the old stopover rules back. I just know I've had a lot of trips that flat out wouldn't have gotten booked at all if it weren't for one-way availability.

(2) During periods when the dollar is weakening, I get a bit more out of my hotel points. It's sometimes temporary - when hotels reset their categories I'm sure they take exchange rates into account. But in years where the dollar weakened substantially against the Euro, my hotel points were a savior.

(3) In general, the 2010-2011 increases in demand for air travel have made availability a little bit tougher in some places....but the awards I do get have more value. Since award charts haven't changed on the trips I've booked, I consider them increases in value. Not sure I should be happy about it...and you could argue that the miles relative to the trip itself mean the appreciation didn't happen. Only measured against the cash cost did the appreciation occur, but still...unless the price hike would have been enough to make me not travel at all, I'm going to count it.

Yours?

safigan

Recently airfares have risen, but the point awards have seemed to remain the same. So I notice my DL miles generally buy me about 1/2 cent per point more than they did before.

Unlimited free award redeposits have saved me many cancellation fees I would have incurred on paid tickets.

These fall more in the category of avoiding bad things (higher ticket prices and higher change/cancellation fees) but technically it increases the dollar value per point.

aubreyfromwheaton

Airfare at prime times seems to be appreciating like crazy.

Contrary to skypeso belief, I have found increasingly great value with the peso vs the AA mile or UA mile and certainly the NK mile.

But that's not exactly what u r asking.

I don't know how the vast majority of America can afford airfare anymore between kettle bags etc etc

NYBanker

They reduced the miles price of JFK-lhr tickets by 20% this year. Great for me!

GUWonder

I've used miles/points to make more miles/points in such a way that it saved me money, sometimes even saving/making me money more than expected.

Sometimes the cost in miles/points for a given product/service has dropped while the cost in real money has stayed stable or increased.

The opportunities where such appreciation occurs is limited and usually limited to benefit a minority of the customers of the miles/points program. At the same time or later, the miles/points get devalued for most customers.

Ancien Maestro

Can't say that FF miles have appreciated.. but my PC points did..

I ended up booking 4 nights free, instead of the stand 1 night free on Priority Club Points Break program.. and also secured a suite on the redemption..

birdseye

I thought Priority Club didn't upgrade on reward redemptions? How did you secure a suite? I'm always happy to learn new tricks and redemption possibilities.

biggestbopper

When the dollar goes down, the value of my Starpoints and other hotel points goes up outside the US.

Of course, there are other, undesirable, effects to a dropping dollar.

pinniped

Hell, they don't upgrade me on PAID reservations.

Granted, I'm just the basic PC Plat that everybody gets when they earn a few points from any source. Maybe the paid status (Ambassador or whatever) has a little more pull when it comes to suites...

But I did just do a normal PC redemption for about 1 cpp. I was happy with that given how easy it is to earn points and how a baseline expectation for the points is closer to 0.6 or 0.7 cpp.

diljs

Aside from temporary promotions, I have never seen this happen.

Ancien Maestro

Priority Club runs promos all the time.. and they still have this promo called Points Break.. so instead of say the regular redemption of 20,000 points for a free night, you can get a free night for 5,000 points at selected hotels..

As for the suite, you have a choice of rooms when booking on points break, so the suite was a selection for the same amount of points, so I just selected the suite online and got it booked..

dbh1

I agree, the oneway rewards have been a huge benefit to me, especially since I often make pretty crazy itineraries that very often have mixed cabin or double points in one direction or something. Stopovers were nice, but only used them on occasion.

As to the common complaints about Delta, I have had the opposite experience. Though maybe since I have only been using them on skyteam partners. Was able to book last minute trips to Kilimanjaro and Tel Aviv from Boston this summer each with an easy stop in Europe on the way there and an intentional overnight in Amsterdam / Paris on the way back. Each was booked at the minimum 80k skymiles. I recall AA would have been at least 90k miles for a RT to TLV and their only availability required a lot of use of BA, meaning fuel surcharges and LHR fees as well.

mahasamatman

In my view, the recent rule change allowing award and C&P reservations to earn night/stay credit has increased the value of Starpoints.

belfordrocks

Most of the Points Breaks hotels are Holiday Inn Expresses though, and the rare time it is an InterContinental it ends up being somewhere like Cleveland or Detroit... (but for 5000 points it is still a great deal )

Ancien Maestro

The hotel list is limited indeed..

but we were in Houston anyways and needed accomodations so.. getting 4 out of the 5 nights we needed on PointsBreak.. and last minute as well on the one hotel.. was nothing short of score..

Depleted my entire account.. happy to earn and burn..