I do look at competing properties to get some idea of a "fair" valuation of the room cost. For instance, in Venice, I can see that the Hotel Danieli is going for some astronomical rate in the fall. But C&P is available -- but at 8,000 points and $150 in cash. Usually, if I see C&P available at a *w property, I consider it a slam dunk and generally don't check elsewhere. But at Category 6, both $150 AND 8000 SPG points are significant chunks out of my budget.

So I check tripadvisor, and find that the hotel doesn't rate all that well. I also find a local hotel for less than $200 is #1 on the TA list. People can say what they want about TA reviews, but I generally find them to be more helpful for me than the reviews from Plats that dominate FT discussion.

But I don't look at Priceline and Hotwire as fair comparison. First and foremost, you don't know what you're getting. Sure, sometimes you can guess. But what happens if there's a change and you guess wrong? Second, award reservations are refundable. That matters. If I'm planning 6 months out (or more) lots of things can be subject to change, and I really don't want to be locked into a prepaid rate.

As I wrote, 5 star Venice is a special case. It's the Hilton and only the Hilton. With Hotwire the features list and a visit to betterbidding will typically identify the hotel, with 100% accuracy in my limited experience.

Of course. Book the points or C&P as refundable, then go to Priceline or Hotwire 2 to 5 days before travel. They typically will have a good deal but you are covered in case they don't. Safety net reservations are one of the best uses of hotel points!

You asked if my valuation properly accounted for Priceline and Hotwire. Your caveats make it hard -- yes, I know this game takes elbow grease to play (and I have lots of it) but honestly, your question asks me if my valuations take a moving target into account.

The answer is, no, it doesn't. Given that I book several months out, you're asking me if I've considered that maybe Priceline and/or Hotwire might have the Hilton available? What rate should I use? I can't fairly value the hotel at the listed Hotwire price -- a perfect comparison would have to add a fudge cost to the price to account for the extra time and uncertainty I had to track down Hilton availability. I put a non-trivial amount of elbow grease into every hotel I book, particularly non-refundable ones. So Hotwire has some cost greater than the published price.

You are asking an almost impossible question. I place a valuation on my points based on my options at a given point in time. Now, 2-5 days out I should take a stab and see if Hotwire has my property available, and then use that as the proper valuation criteria? Sure... let me ask you this: Hotel X has C&P available and a 30% discounted prepaid rate that must be booked 30 days in advance. Inside that 30 days, that rate gets pulled, and the best I can do is BAR. What's the appropriate way to value my points?

Don't get me wrong... I'll switch to a cash (or even prepaid) rate if an appealing one comes along. But I value my points (and make my plans) based on the information I have at time of booking.

I agree it's hard to pin down, but the average value you are getting for your points is their average replacement cost. I contended that is the cash price at which you would have changed your refundable reservation to nonrefundable. Maybe that's the prepaid rate 30 days out or maybe it's the Priceline rate. That depends on whether you like to gamble a little. To compute an average value of your points only the average outcome of your gambles matters.

There's another way of looking at this which results in a higher value for points. If you use points for safety net reservations, the value of the points can be estimated as the avoided cash room cost averaged only over those cases in which a "low enough to purchase" rate never appeared. That was the case for my recent Park Hyatt Sydney booking. The avoided cash room cost was not the full $795 room rate, but rather the rate I would have ended up paying at some not quite as nice hotel: maybe $300. That comparison is very much a judgment call.

As you say, it's hard to pin down.

It's hard to pin down precisely to optimize, but easy enough to determine satisfactory return. For me, air and hotel are very different situations.

International Air: Booked in award J, valued at $125/flight hour. It generally doesn't matter how much the cash price is as to whether I have "value" (unless a discounted J fare is really cheap such as the ongoing mid-summer fares on routes such as ORD-DTW-FRA). Based on where I want to go and have miles for the next 4-5 years, that comes out to $0.015-$0.0175 in terms of accrual and evaluating earning deals, MRs, and the like. But really, I could not accrue another non-Southwest airline mile and still cover all my international travel for the next five years, as sadly vacation time is more of a limiting factor than cash.

Domestic Air: Southwest RR2. Treat like cash.

Hotels: I pretty much know my profile... and the wildcard is the value of status vs the value of points. After work travel, I need about 15-16 status-earning stays each year to maintain all status level and maximize promos. But I can easily divide the world into three buckets:
- Places where I'm going to earn my status and beat up promos.
- Places where I'm probably going to end up with Priceline 3.5* NYOP.
- Places where I'm probably going to end up burning awards.

It's very rare that I pay more than $150/night cash for a leisure hotel room, and the last time I paid more than $200 was at Ayers Rock five years ago. Other than small town international and casinos, 98% of my stays are with the big five chains. Usually 6-12 nights a year are redeemed at the SPG Cat 5 / Hilton Cat 6-7 / Hyatt Cat 5 level, and another 5-7 are redeemed at the Marriott Megabonus / HIX 15k / Hilton Cat 3 level.

It's not just about free trips
 

In the last week I have gotten two calls from UA agents who went out of their way to look after me... A rebooking and an upgrade. That is worth a lot!

Finally found a thread that could offer answers to my questions. I am one of those that has recently found himself in a job that has me flying often - but not far. I have been reading and reading on this site - and others - to try and learn the best way to leverage my travel. So far, it is a HUGE endeavor - and I have not been able to get any straight answers. I am hit with abbreviations - FT, FO, etc. etc. I have learned FT = frequent traveler.....pretty sad for all the time I have spent learning. Anyway, we are all busy people so on to my request - I am in the Milwaukee area - fly to MSP often, (loved the old airtran.....will not fly SW- too long of a story to go into here) fly to OMA often also. And soon will add STL to my list of cities. I have switched to Delta - can sometimes book first class. Is this the best airline? and what do you experienced flyers suggest I do to gain status as quickly as possible?

Thank you very much for your candor and help.

I will let the other, more experienced FT-er's answer your questions but I will suggest, as a fellow newbie, that the Glossary (in the help section) is your friend. I often have it open in a separate tab so I can decipher some of the acronyms.

And this is the first chance I've had to say it to someone: Welcome to FlyerTalk ff160000!

Everything depends on circumstance. The CC deals and programs can be very good for people in the right situation.
They can be awful for others who don't think things through.

I can care less about hidden fees outside of the annual fee because I pay my credit cards off every month. If you are using these for credit then it might not be a good idea to play the credit card game.

I also never take worse routes unless the savings is huge. You need to factor in everything from cost to hassle etc. Many times I have skipped using miles and instead purchased a ticket that just made a lot more sense.

I also think doing the end of year runs needs to make sense. I am sure there is people out there paying more for flights to stay with a airline or to gain miles. All it takes is to sit down and crunch the numbers. I'm sure there is plenty of people who don't factor everything in but hopefully most do.

Also the seat availability thing is not a problem for everyone. I am a very flexible traveler and pick my dates by lowest price or mile seats available. I have almost never had a problem finding a seat for a trip I want to take. This is only a problem for people who need exact dates.

Thank you for your comments. I will be sure to look into the Glossary - thank you for that tip. I fly 90% for business. I do not have any airline CC's. I only have one CC and would only add others if it makes financial sense - I pay my CC fully each month. When I travel, I am always on a very tight schedule and often have to plan trips with 2-3 day notice. Of course I then need a car and a hotel for each trip. My hope is to find one airline to leverage all my travel. I currently use National / Marriott for my car/hotel respectively. My goal is to be able to work during my flights (laptop) and at six feet tall, 230 lbs., center seats do not allow much room for me to work. Even tho' my flights are typically short hops - 1hr or less - I have to maximize my productive time. For those in the know - I have looked at Delta and United. I do fly to SLC and MCO about 6 times per year. Is there a better choice? Are there CC's that offer real benefit? Does it make sense to use hotel/car points for airline miles and vice versa? These are probably basic questions - and if this site had a "newbie" section - I wouldn't have to post what could be the same questions again - but they are very helpful to me.

thank you again

Hi ff160000,

Since you mention SLC and MCO specifically, my first thought would be to lean towards Delta, since SLC is one of their hubs, and they have a really strong presence at MCO (about 2 dozen destinations). Most airline credit cards offer a free checked bag and priority boarding, but not usually upgrades, so your best bet is to focus on one airline to earn elite status with them, at which point you'll be able to earn complimentary upgrades and be more comfortable when flying.

One simple way to compare airlines is simply to do a search of typical flights that you take for work. If you often need to fly MKE-MCO last minute, for example, do some searches on Kayak to compare fares. See if one airline consistently has better fares for your specific needs. Different airlines focus on different markets, and thus there isn't a universal airline that is "best" for everyone.

Another good aspect to investigate is looking into award availability for redeeming your miles. You can search on most airline websites for an award reservation (even without having many miles in your account), and you can see what sort of availability comes up. Again, depending on where you think you might be wanting to travel for redeeming points, one airline may be better than another. If you have family you like to visit or a special destination spot, try checking out each airline's award searches. While this is not 100% guaranteed in every case, Delta typically has relatively poor award availability, but each situation can very.

Hope that helps!

Sorry to go back to this, but... what if you wouldn't have flown a "purchased" flight at all if it you didn't have the miles for an award ticket? Does simply saying that make the value zero?

Personally, I've come out at over 2 cents each many times due to use of last-minute bookings and certain intra-Asia flights, even by the valuation system you use (for example- I have to go PVG-NRT-YVR-SEA-MSO, taking advantage of the free stopover in YVR. Looked to be about $1600 in Y if booked separately using YVR as separation point. Would've had to go in any case so would that and the subsequent valuation of 2.9cpm of the J redemption at 55k be it?)