I thoroughly enjoyed my 1-week award stay at the Marriott Kauai. Nice hotel and grounds, great location, excellent treatment for Golds (big upgraded room, welcome gift). Sadly no concierge lounge, but that wasn't a big deal to us since we could buy a twelve-pack and snacks down the street and sit on our big balcony overlooking the ocean.

There are no Big Island Marriotts. (Edited to add the Outrigger Waikaloa might have converted to a Marriott. I don't really know. This appears to be a less expensive mid-scale family hotel. I've been on the grounds to catch a boat tour, but never stayed there.)

I am not an Oahu fan and haven't stayed at a Marriott there. (It sounds like there are a couple of so-so ones and one really nice one. See the MR board for more details.)

[This message has been edited by pinniped (edited 07-21-2003).]

To be fair to Starwood (and I am no great fan) does offer a nights and flights award that would give you 50,000 FF miles and five nights hotel for 70,000 points. Even if you did not want the miles you could convert the miles ironically to 100,000 Hilton points.

The other comparison point that is not taken into account here and is especially true in the Hawaii arena is the availabiltiy of the awards. With Marriot you will pay a premium to override the blackout restrictions. Hilton will not allow it unless you are a diamond, and I do not know Hyatts policy. Starwoods great claim to fame is no blackout dates. This can be an important consideration to those of us with children who travel at premium times of the year.

The comparison is still apples and oranges.

You might want to revise your figures - as you actually get 3 points per eligible dollar at Starwood (I don't know about Hyatt). Another consideration is whether you can get Hyatt points another way - such as whether they have a Hyatt branded credit card (I really don't know anything about the Hyatt program). If Hyatt doesn't have one, I'd say that swings things a lot toward Starwood or Hilton.

Could you e-mail me the spreadsheet? E-mail is in my profile -- click on the mail icon just above this post.

Volleyball Ferd - Thanks for the correction. It is three points per eligible dollar. It was not clear to me how the "50%" bonus was calculated.

This brings Starwood down to $2687 revenue required for a free night on Maui. More competitive, but still the most expensive.

I use an affinity card (either Amex or a UAL Visa) for all the purchases I can, so anothe affinity card doesn't help unless they are way ahead of the curve for the points they give out.

I like the idea of no blackout dates at Starwoods, but it really depends on whether the rooms are available anyway. Planning two months in advance or more, I've never had a problem with Hyatts in terms of getting the space. I would expect the same availability as an elite member of any other program.

Again, I now have the Hyatt Diamond status for the life of that program. I'm looking for a second progam to patronize at Elite status. It really seems that Starwood has a lot of choices and flexibility, but you ultimately get fewer free nights at the type of properties I would be interested in.

I have learned a lot from this thread, but I still need somebody to close me on which program will suit me the best.

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United UGS
Hyatt Lifetime Diamond
Starwood Platimun

cygone - Thanks for pointing out the nights and flights. I suppose if you need the air miles it might make some sense, but if you convert to HHonors points, you would get 3.5 nights in Hawaii at a Hilton. Add this to the 5 Starwood nights included and you are now spending $2745 revenue for each free night.

So this award costs $23,333 in revenue. Spending that much at Marriott, I would get "18.5" free nights instead of the "8.5" at Starwood cat 4 and Hilton. I undestand Starwood has no blackout dates, but this is no guarantee of availability, right? Am I missing something? It still seems a lot more expensive.

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United UGS
Hyatt Lifetime Diamond
Starwood Platimun

The point you are missing is the Marriott reward you are using for comparison basisis the 130,000 point variety. I do not know how often you have tried to find seven successive nights in any premium season to use this award but I have. It was not easy a couple of years ago and I do not believe anything has changed. Marriott rewards are capacity controlled and capacity is quickly filled in Hawaii. To eliminate capacity controls and blackout dates you need to spend 195,000 points. Starwood has no capacity controls and no blackout dates. If you need a room during the summer, Easter break or Christmas vacation and a revenue room is available you can use an award to pay for it. Try that with the standard Marriott award.

By the way I am Hilton Diamond and I have on two occassions been told no award rooms were available even though the web site showed availability for paying customers!

cygonwe - I understand Starwood has no blackout dates, but are you saying that the award space is more readily available than Marriott and Hilton?

I agree that earning more points is meaningless if you can't redeem them. But over the past ten years, I cannot recall any significnt difficulty redeeming at Hyatt. I suppose I am wrongly assuming this is as easy with the others in their respective elite programs.

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United UGS
Hyatt Lifetime Diamond
Starwood Platimun

That is the best part of Starwood - not the lack of blackout days - but the lack of capacity controls. If a standard room is available for money, you can use points for it. And, if you are Platinum you are very likely to get some sort of upgrade.

My best experience was arriving at the airport in Atlanta at 11 pm, with a connecting flight to LA that I didn't want to take that night. From the airport I called Sheraton, and within 20 minutes I was in a free room - and I wasn't even platinum then.

What I am saying is that because of capacity controls at Marriott a few rooms at each resort are allocated for award stays. Blackout dates also create problems during events and holidays especially for longer stays. If the hotel is very popular and is selling most of its rooms it may not allocate many rooms for award stays. Marriott allows you to get around the blackouts and capacity controls on award stays but you must pay a premium of fifty percent of the points. A seven night 130,000 point award may never be available in London or Paris or Hawaii in the Summer. However Starwood has no restrictions.

As a Hilton Diamond I was turned down for an award stay in Paris and Rome, even though rooms were available for purchase. I must admit alternative dates were offered both times. This only happened twice in probably 25 award reservations so it is not common.

I do not know much about Hyatt, I worked on the Island of Saipan (north of Guam) ten years ago and stayed in one for six months. It was on a negotiated rate and I did not get any points. Can not remember staying in one since.

I am on track to do about 300 nights this year and have moved all my business hotel stays to Starwood (SPG) and Hyatt. SPG mainly because of the award availability and their online capabilities. When I started about 2 years ago, Marriott and Hilton had only paper based redemption. You couldn't even check availability online. I believe Starwood was the first chain to get the award inventory online. I don't like talking to reservations people when looking for possible dates and locations.

I will never forgot how Hilton failed when we wanted to stay at the Times Square Hilton for New Years. There was no award availability and there were blackout days. All my colleagues who were with SPG were able to get great rooms at the Times Square W with no notice.

So, not only is Hilton and Marriott capacity controlled, but they have blackouts around desirable days. A very tiny number of SPG hotels have these restrictions.

I don't have the luxury of planning vacations months in advance. I think the greatest lead time I've had was 3 weeks, for various reasons. Mainly, client obligations and timing with the rest of the family, you know how it can be.

Another thing I like about SPG and Hyatt is that they provide full elite benefits on Priceline rates. Since I tend to save up my points for the big trips, we often use priceline for our weekend travel. In combination with www.biddingfortravel.com, I have been 100% successful in targeting Hyatts and Starwoods. With the preference going towards Hyatt because they provide breakfast (or Regency Club access) for Diamonds.

In addition, with the online booking point bonus, Platinum welcome amenity points, and the SPG card, I spend about $940 to get 10,000 points. If I changed hotels everyday, that would be much less. At the beginning of the year, SPG also had a great bonus, for every 5 nights you get 5k bonus points, up to 20k points. They also have a 50k bonus for asian properties.

By far Hyatt's FFN is the best.

I spent my 25th birthday at the Hilton Hawaiian Village over memorial day week using the 100k ALON award. It cost very little to get enough points to go, and almost no money came out of my own pocket.

I love Flyertalk.

[This message has been edited by Tummy (edited 07-21-2003).]

Tummy - Can you book a specific hotel on Priceline? I have tried the site a few times, and I thought the whole concept was that you pay before they tell you which hotel (or airline or car rental company) you will be using.

It seems to me that I can only bid on a 3 star property, which includes the Hyatt and, according to biddingfortravel.com, about 5 other properties. I guess I could save a few bucks, but I know Hyatt will upgrade me and give me breakfast coupons (in ddition to the FFNs)

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United UGS
Hyatt Lifetime Diamond
Starwood Platimun

I could not agree more with cygone's original response if I had written it.

As for priceline, if the specific hotel is unimportant, for example, any 3 star in midtown manhattan, you will save enough to pay for 10 free breakfasts.

As for this thread, I salute the reasoning of the original poster. YOu have to figure out where you would be likely to redeeem to dtermine the value of accruing points to YOU. I would guess that he is a bit unusual - more of us would place a premium on Starwood's properties and lack of capacity controls to offset what may be a less generours rate of earning. What's more, their excellent customer service and the liquidity of the points and availability of an earning credit card make it the obvious choice for the majority of FT'ers.

I have done two Marriott rewards weeks in Hawaii (Maui, Kauai), both in the summer. I had no trouble with availability, booking 2 months in advance.

For Kauai, I had to book 5 nights in one room class and the last two nights in another to get my dates, but the hotel said that was fine with my 7-night certificate and that they would try and work it out so I didn't have to change rooms. About a week before my stay, availability in my preferred room-class opened up for the last 2 nights, so it wasn't an issue.

Point is...Marriott might not be as bad as you think. Granted, it's 2003 and hotels don't seem as full, and I would guess that Christmas-through-Easter is probably booked solid. I've also never had a problem redeeming Marriott points in US hotels. (Don't know about Europe.)

Certainly, if your goal is Christmas in Hawaii for free, you'd better go Starwood...or factor in Marriott's "anytime" award levels when making your decision. (Give Marriott credit: at least they have that option.)

After looking at the bid amounts for the previous few weeks you can get a good idea of what certain hotels are selling for. I'll give you an example, when bidding for *3 in Orlando near Disney, it's a good bet that you will get the Hyatt if you bid $35. If you bid $32 you will likely get the Sheraton Safari.

Another example that worked for me, in Anaheim California, in the past the Hyatt near Disneyland would always come up as *3 and $28 per night. I bid that exact amount and got it on the first try.

I'm not saying that it's a guarantee, but you have very good chance to get exactly what you want if you bid the amounts posted by knowledgeable people from the site. It's worked almost every time for me. The only time it didn't was when I got the Crowne Plaza at LAX airport instead of the Marriott, like I was expecting.

In most cases I have been able to save nearly $100 per night / room. We're staying in orlando in August for $35 /nt at the Hyatt Orlando. I bid for 2 rooms and got them on the first try (8 total room nights). That saved me around $450, in comparison to the lowest rate listed on Hyatt.com for the same property and dates. While to some people, that's not a lot of money, but it can at least buy us a nice dinner. I didn't feel that any of the two Hyatt's in Orlando was worth the use of my FFNs.

I suggest you check out of the FAQ on the BFT web site, if you're still interested.