Daily Getaways 2023
 

Its about time, June 12
Daily Getaways (ustravel.org)

Thanks for the heads-up here.

Looking forward to the deals this time. Plan on buying more of the same as last time, but also to buy some offers which I had previously skipped buying.

I made the choice to participate in the same deal you think is an especially good value and I have to say I agree

The first two weeks of preview is up, appears to be the usual offerings but Marriott is in the first 2 weeks

Is there any of you Ladies / Gents who is not based in US and has succeeded using a non-US CC to pay?

I would take interest in some hotel points, not because of the price (e.g. one can regularly buy direct with 100% bonus from both Hilton and IHG), but because these purchases would come on the top of the yearly purchase limit.

I have purchased with a Canadian credit card in the past. From Loews, Marriott and Hilton,

Thanks a lot allbrosca. I am based in Europe, so I presume it will be trickier, but I will give it a try on Monday with IHG.

Is the 0.5 cent/ ihg point a good deal? Thank you!

This is as good as the best offers IHG itself has had from time to time (which are in some cases targeted). In my approximately 12 years of being IHG member I have not seen anything better. I have read stories about 0.4c sales in the not recent past, but that has been quite a while ago.

However, the usual disclaimer: one would buy points only when one would have plans how to use them, piling them up is no good with dynamic pricing (unless one willingly wants to take the risk and wait for the next IHG IT breakdown to book reward nights at criminally cheap point rates)

When IHG runs 100% bonus, you can buy through TCB from points.com for that price and you also get a few percentage points rebate (it always works out for slightly more than what TCB posts for some reason) so effectively, buying via an IHG sale rate is a bit cheaper than this deal.

Yeah, I wish they would offer more Marriott. I know these are pretty much the same as previous years, but it still seems some of these do not really have any value added savings.

I got some IHG points yesterday, any idea, based on previous years' experience when do the points actually post? The site says 10 business days, which seems a bit long.

Was expecting the IHG sales to remain unsold through the end of the day (like in past years) but surprise, they all show sold out! It would have been a preemptive purchase so I am not too bummed but a data point for 2023 Daily Getaways buyers.

IHG Points appear to have posted today, but the amount is wrong if you purchased more than 1 package.

I bought 2 x 25000 and 4 x 5000.
Only got 1 credit of 25000 and 5000.

Gonna wait out the entire 10 business days.

I got a correct grand total of 295k points today (spread across multliple amounts and 6 separate transactions). :tu:

IHG points can be insanely good value these days, especially if you're US-based and hold the Chase credit cards that give 4th night free and 10% points rebate. For instance, I just booked 4 nights at IC Singapore for 104.4k points. Cheapest nonrefundable cash rate would be SGD1732 (=$1290 USD). Even if you get 10% cashback on that, buying points at .5cpp still means that you're paying less than half of what you'd be paying in cash (and of course the award rate also is refundable, so really better than the $1290 cash rate). I could list dozens of similarly amazing redemption deals. However, IHG points can also be truly terrible -- 74k for a mediocre Holiday Inn Express that sells for $200. Personally, I happily bought all I could get my hands on, but it's not for everybody -- highly dependent on one's travel and redemption patterns.

Had the mistaken amount (one of each package) post some 6 hours ago, but now it appears to be correct. Was worried about having to chase points, but thankfully it has worked out. Quite surprised it was so quick!

Deal hunting for travel space savings may be in overdrive along with the revenge travel spending still going on in the country for those who did way better than average during the pandemic.

Personally, I am trying to grab to more hotel points on the relative cheap than ever before. And one of my prime objective deals this time around has a lot fewer packages than it has had in prior years, so it’s going to be interesting to see how many we can grab this time to maximize savings on the lodging expenses.

Oh, I concur and hold both Chase cards for the 10% rebate and 4th night free myself! That was really why I had planned (not too well however) a pre-emptive purchase to get around the annual points purchase limits because I certainly make use of the recurring sales IHG does otherwise at US$0.005 per point. A busier day at work and relying on past years' precedent where the IHG offers didn't sell out well into the Daily Getaways promo made me miss out this time.

Curious which Chase credit cards offer 4th night free? Also haven't heard of Chase doing rebates (I know a Citi Rewards+ card can give 10% points back when transferring to partners).

All Chase IHG credit cards offer this benefit.

Hilton points have been credited sometime in the last 24h. :tu:

And the original Chase IHG Select credit card (no longer available for new applicants) grants the 10% rebate on points used for award nights.

choice points purchase
 

Was able to get 4 of the lowest offer (14K points)
nothing else is available.

And I was on at 12:59 pm

I am nursing what may be the last one or two of those 14k packages.

Within the first minute, every package except the 14ks seemed to have been taken into at least one basket already. Some got released later, but this was the fastest I’ve seen the lots locked up in a basket when it comes to Choice packages.

At around 1:38pm NYC time, a first offer had sold out. At around 1:45-1:48pm a second offer had sold out. By 1:54-1:56pm the third offer had sold out.

The remaining 14k offer is still tied up at 2:16pm with one package nursed by me and perhaps a couple of others being nursed by some other(s) still. But they’ve been as good as locked up since at least 1:30pm or so except for the re-released.

am i the only one completely shocked and confused by this purchasing frenzy behavior? not just choice pts. we talking ALL packages that get nuked like taylor swift era tix. makes no sense. all prior years, we would still see plenty IHG and HH. its almost like a broker is purchasing these via bot. this doesnt make sense. i suspect something is up. i havent been able to load up on anything this year.

I wish I could say I’m shocked by what’s going on, but I am convinced that “Deal hunting for travel space savings may be in overdrive along with the revenge travel spending still going on in the country for those who did way better than average during the pandemic.”

It doesn’t help when an offer has “a lot fewer packages than it has had in prior years”. I will try for the Hyatt ones, but I’m betting that I catch zero on that.

but i would have expected similar purchasing behavior in the past. this year is truly unprecedented. everything is being sold out ASAP like a broadway show. not to mention, i had expected hospitality companies to raise capital from nothing via selling even more pts and packages then devalue given our current economic climate. but they are offering less. im confused.

No I was thinking the same. Just crazy and taking all the fun and usefulness out of it. Only thing I can say is whoever/whatever is buying everything seems to be too stupid to realize what is a good deal and what isn't

I'm wondering if Daily Getaways is just buying the Hyatt points at the regular price and selling them at a lower cost just to keep some of us paying attention. That would explain the basically useless quantities.

Feels like just a way to dump extra amusement park and Vegas inventory this year.

exactly. i did a double take and started reading blogs/reddit and doing my own math for cents per pt calculation to verify i didnt miss some insane deal cuz i was so confused. doesnt look like anyone else in the comments section noticed anything because they prob didnt even care.

wyndham and BW are coming up. if those get nuked in a few seconds, we know something doesnt smell right. maybe some broker bot just buying everything.

It absolutely has to be brokers/bots. I started refreshing the Choice page about 30 seconds before the atomic clock turned 13:00 on my PC and phone simultaneously and kept at it for at least 15 minutes until I miraculously managed to get one of the 55K packages. Everything was already "on hold" as soon as it went on sale. Same w IHG. Things were never like this for those programs in the past. And HH @ 0.5 cpp is just incomprehensible. I would never buy HH at that price and in most cases it's a terrible deal-- but for a handful of luxury properties I imagine a broker with enough points might be able to sell the rooms at a discount off the cash price-- probably without telling the buyer it is a points redemption. I can't think of any other viable explanation. "Revenge travel" just doesn't explain it.

If not that, then the basically useless/reduced quantities could be a function of USTravel.org’s partners cutting back on their own marketing expenditures funding the sale of discounted items.

If going with the broker/bot narrative, then that would suggest the fast grab/purchases is the action of sophisticated buyers with a better sense than the average Joe for what makes for good return on the $ spent on these packages.

IHG awards nights are now eligible for elite status benefits; and there is that fourth night free thing that has some people wanting as many IHG points as possible.

I am thinking Wyndham also will get grabbed faster this time. Best Western? Well, there was the value gotten on the night of the Beyoncé concert in Stockholm that has me almost thinking maybe I should consider buying more BW points. [Not likely.]

One of my colleagues, who I'd given the heads up to, told me they used their teenager's help to set up a 'clicker' app on their computer and set it to repeatedly mash/click on the purchase button when the Choice deal went live. While not quite a bot, I think workarounds like this may be putting many packages into shopping carts nearly instantly after they become available. They managed to pick up four sets of Choice points (and not the $84 variety either).

I've only had luck with the $100 (2) Marriott gift cards this year.

I didn’t have us try for Marriott, but we got most of what we wanted for Choice.

Wyndham hasn’t sold out still from today’s sale, and that’s even as it’s not like Super8 and DaysInn are all they have to offer as redemption options.

The MGM packages today were all on hold within 15 seconds of the 1:00 window. I was looking first at the Skylofts packages, and they were on hold at 13:00:02. No fun to compete with bots.

The quantity of the packages is so few that they would go fast even without automated grabbing tools in use.

It’s rather telling which packages aren’t selling out at all yet.

AFAIR these packages are donated by the companies to the US Travel Association for free.

Have you received the Choice points to your account? My first year participating in this, so wondering how long does it generally take to get the points in the account

As of an hour ago, they had yet to show up in my account or any of the other accounts to which I have access. Wouldn’t be surprised if they show up by this coming Thursday/Friday or before next Thursday/Friday.

I don’t know if they are donated and thereby taken as a marketing-related charitable expense tax deduction by the partner companies involved here, but at least historically the US Travel Association has almost certainly been funded by other sources that dwarf any revenue from these package sales.

Still waiting here too. The terms said it could take up to 14 days.