Has anyone ever performed an analysis of what each hotel's and airline's points are worth?

I know the usual rule of thumb is 1.5 cents/point, but clearly some hotel's points are worth more than others since they can be converted into more airline miles or less points are required to get a free room.

Smittipon

I can't say much about hotel programs, since most of my travel involves staying at places that don't participate in frequent guest programs, but when it comes to US airlines it depends more on how you use miles than on the airline. All the majors give one mile per mile flown, with a minimum of 500-750 miles per segment, and elite bonuses of usually 25% if you flew 25K miles last year and 100% if you flew 50K. They all want about 25K miles for a US/Canada round trip, 50K for Europe, both coach. There are some variations but that's pretty much the norm.

Now, how much is an award worth? The conventional figures assume you'll get a US round trip that would otherwise cost $400-500. However, I got a BOS-SJC round trip on AA last May for 25K miles on short notice with no Saturday night stay. That's a $2,000+ ticket: over 8 cents/mile value. Ditto for 50K-mile upgrades from (cheap discount) coach to business class to Europe. Use the miles carefully and you can get awards that make them worth a LOT more than 1.5 cents/mi., assuming you would otherwise have paid for whatever it is. (I would have bought the San Jose ticket anyway, but could have passed on all the trans-Atlantic upgrades.)

I've also gotten a great deal of value, though not financial value, by giving award travel to family members. In my experience, people think about how long I spent in flight to earn the award, not how much the ticket would have cost. They appreciate the gift of a ticket more than they would appreciate a check to buy one with!

Good point, Efrem. i read a column a while ago which correctly stated that we have been conditioned by the airlines to pay thousands of $$$ for mid-week business trips, and use our hard-earned miles for fairly inexpensive Sat night stayovers trips. The example the columnist (Brancatelli, I think) gave involved paying $900 for r/t LGA-ORD mid-week, then cashing 25,000 miles for Fr-Mon LGA-SFO trip, which could be bought for <$300. [He actually did the opposite, and wrote about it].
So, value depends on your spending habits a lot.

Yes, value can vary quite a bit. Also depends on what Elite level one is. But I usually don't put as high a value on the free trips as others because:

1. Usually when I travel for pleasure (business picks up tab for those trips), I stay Sat night anyway.
2. Unless Platinum on TWA, there are restrictions/blackouts and limited seats available.
3. Also if a flight cancelled, airline usually won't reroute you on another airline.
4. One does not earn miles on the free trips - especially important if trying to reach the top Elite level.
5. Rarely get upgrades, if at all.
6. Lower ranking if trying to standby.


For above reasons, I value the award travel considerably less than what one would pay for a ticket. But, as like most things, it all depends....

I would like to echo the comments made by Efrem. The value comes from how you use your miles.

All my hotel points go toward airline miles. With those miles, I book award tickets that would cost at or above the 1.5 - 2.0 cents per mile value. For example, I've obtained two first class round trips from MSP to HNL for 100,000 miles on NW. Published fare for each of those seats was $1,850, or $3,700 total. $0.037 per mile value is not bad in my book.

If a ticket only costs around $250 - $300 I often purchase it rather than use miles, since you can earn the milage credit for that flight.

Also, most of my awards are given to family who have to put up with me being gone on business trips. In my mind, the value of them flying to see friends and other family around the US pays off big in non-monetary terms, especially when I'm not home anyway.

I use miles for either peak travel to Europe (for stay's longer than 30 days and a stop-over enroute), or for upgrades. The "value" of these trips are much higher then the 2 cents a mile rule. I know some people who use award travel for return trips up and down the West Coast of America. With tickets in this market costing on average $140 return, the value of these miles is around a quarte of a cent.

Unfortunately I have not made my reward flights choices very smartly so far, or have been screwed by the airlines... I have never been able to fly just for 25K miles (US RT) yet. Once, I had to book a Continental RT Aug-Dec (over 30 days, expensive). I was told that since my first leg was coming up soon (~2 weeks), they could only find an unrestricted 50K reward ticket for me, so I ended up wasting 25+12.5K=37.5K miles (some of which I had to purchase from Continental). This winter, I expected to use my 25K on American for a free flight around Xmass time (I could only find such ticket for over $400, so I figured it's a good value.) Well, as I found out the hard way, 10 days in advance is not good enough for a free American reward ticket, unless the reward was claimed a while ago; otherwise, to debit the miles from my account on shorter than 14 day notice, they charged $50... and so on.
This summer I'm planning to go to Europe, high season, on 50K United. What's the least advance time for booking I can allow myself?
Also - Tango, do normal (50K) award tickets to Europe allow stopovers? What about on the partners? (say, Lufthansa for United miles).
Thanks.

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Appropriately used, hotel points can be a fairly good value. For instance, you can use 10,000 starpoints (Starwood = Westin, Sheraton, Wyndham, W, etc.) for a night's stay at the W in NYC. Each starpoint is roughly equivalent to an airline mile, and a mid-week room at the W costs around $400 plus tax. Works out to be 0.04 $/point.

Overall I do not believe in converting hotel points to airline miles. Already have enough of those!

-Pushpak

And as it's been noted in the Marriott forum, Marriott's 200k award is a fantastic value to really get away (2 coach tickets anywhere, 7 nights Marriott, 25% off hertz rental*).

*They changed the award this year. It used to be buy 3 days, get four free on Hertz or something like that. Instead they give you a 100 minute calling card. Whoppee.

Sasha: United is not as generous as American is with award travel to Europe. You are (in principal) allowed one stop-over either on the outbound or return. A stopover is any break longer than 24 hours. If you plan on going to a destination not flown by a United plane, your miles will only take you to where United flies. You will have to cash in additional miles to fly to the final destination on Lufthansa. American will allow you to fly anywhere in Europe that British fly's without costing you more miles. Due to this, it is much easier to create a stopover with American miles than United miles. If you are looking at doing a stopover in the US between your departure city and destination city you will have no problem(as long as it is in the routing).

If you are very specific as to your travel dates, I would reserve now. If you are not picky and are going to a destination with lots of United flights (ie London) you should have no problems finding award seats up to departure time.

The value of a hotel point is also more difficult because of the economies gained on multiple night purchases.

To redeem at a nice location:

Hilton (Earn 10 pts/$)
1 Nt Premium = 35K points
6 Nt Premium = 195K (32.5 per night)
Marriott (Earn 10 pts/$)
1 Nt Choice = 30K points
7 Nt Choice = 125K (18 per night)
Starwood (Earn 2 pts/$)
1 Nt Cat 4 = 10K points
5 Nt Cat 4 = 40K points (8 per night)

So it depends on where you redeem and how many nights you redeem for. Also, Starwood requires you to spend more money, but has no blackout dates. So value depends on the individual.

Airlines typically offer richer Elite level bonuses (i.e. 100%) in lieu of discounting redemptions. So 1 ticket requires 25K and 2 requires 50K, etc.

Save up your miles and use them for international business class travel...over the past five years, I have taken my wife and kids business class to Australia ($6,500+ tickets) for 95K miles each, first class to Hawaii ($3,500+ tickets) for 60K miles each, and Ireland ($4,500+ tickets) for 80K miles each. When traveling in the continental U.S., one can always find trips with Sat. night stays for <$300 each, so it makes no sense to use miles.

I agree with Chris_K. I just recently cashed in 300,000 AA miles for two One World Explorer round-the-world tickets in business class. Comparable fare - if you bought two OWE C/J class tickets, they'd be US$5500 each, so the miles come out to $.037 each. But the OWE frequent flyer redemption has different rules than a ticket you purchase (for example, we're doubling back, where as purchased ticket requires you to travel in one direction). If you added up the individual quoted fares from the different airlines for the segments we're taking, the tickets themselves would be around US$10,000 each, making the miles worth $.067. So I agree with all the posters who say that using miles for domestic travel doesn't usually pay. The exception is mid-week travel without a Saturday stay; AA, DL allow you to use miles for this whereas UA does not.

Hotel points seem to be a mixed bag, as do Amex Membership Rewards points. You almost always lose on transfers between, and few of the hotel programs (Starwood is an exception) are really all that generous with the point values. I just redeemed 50K Marriott points for 3 nights at a Renaissance...came out to $.009 per point vs. same room at quoted rate. I think using them at the hotel was a better deal than xfering to AA, where they would have become 15,000 miles.