I've never bought points, nor will i ever do so in my entire life ...,

So as an acolyte my only epifany is that with calculations in cpm/cpp valuations.
Everyone seems to forget that Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt allow redemption for most room types:
standard, superior, deluxe, executive/club & jr. suites, premium suites.

While at IHG we are stuck with redemption for standard rooms ....
or even worse *shudder* the infamous ......cosy/cozy !

Which surely must impact the valuation of cpm/cpp.

In my experience, some properties do make different categories of rooms available but not to the level of Hilton and Marriott's Premium Rooms or Hyatt's Suites. However, I've had success with booking a Standard Award and paying a modest cash upcharge to confirm my room into a higher category at IHG properties in APAC and Europe. I find this no different than the higher points cost Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt charge for better or larger rooms. Even with the cash upcharge, there has been a notable discount for me versus booking such rooms only with cash.
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If I use my points I only use them for rooms I'm prepared to stay in not just to use them up.

If I use my points at the CP LHR T4 then that's the standard room which meets my needs and would pay cash for it. I'm only there over night so it's fine for me.

At the Kimpton de Witt it's a (King) Essential Room. If the only points room is available is a 'double city single' then I'm paying cash for a larger room

I did buy points in the recent sale but only after double checking the calculations of the cost of buying the points vs the cost of a cash booking. For the bookings I was looking at it was cheaper to buy the points than pay for the stay 250k points for � 960. Cash cost BFR � 1,300.

One thing I do find is when a lot of people buy points - whether its for hotels or airlines - they have little or no real appreciation of their value and so then get angry when they don't get the value out of them. It was the double points offer that I opted for as a 60 or 80% bonus doesn't cut it for me

I think it's in the right ballpark. It's not speculation, it is an estimate based on what I receive (currently I am on 8k BP every 4 nights targeted).

Disagree. There are differences related to the chain size and coverage, for example.
Disagree. Opportunity cost is individualistic, it depends on my preferences. I think at least 10-12% are a reasonable number. History tells us upside potential is extremely limited. Downside risk is substantial. So, saying I would use an annualized discount factor of 12% can be justified. You want the risk free rate plus a term/illiquidity premium plus a sizable risk premium.

Of course, if you turn around a point in half a year, you would discount by roughly half that. If, instead, you're not an earn-and-burn guy and wait longer for good redemption opportunities, you might hold onto a point for more than a year.

�You think� is not data. I have been an IHG member for 8 years and I haven�t done a promo in probably five years since the promos became so lame in general. So my current rate is zero points per stay. So give me some hard data because all you have offered is an opinion. That is speculation, of its own worth to you, not how much it is worth to the population at large.

You say �disagree� because there are differences related to chain size and coverage. Chain size and coverage don�t affect if something is fungible. Here is the definition of fungible: �replaceable by another commodity, mutually interchangeable�. That has nothing to do with chain size. You can get rooms, you can transfer to other point programs but as far as I am aware no reward program allows you to convert them back to cash.

You say you disagree about the opportunity costs. Where is the data to support that? And you say there is very little upside. Actually, there is great upside: rooms paid with points can be readily cancelled with no penalties. However, many of the best room rates for cash you forfeit everything. I have definitely booked rooms with points, cancelled and rebooked at a savings. Others in this thread have documented the same thing. So your statement of low potential for an upside is demonstrably false.

And of course, having the ability to effortlessly cancel gives a pretty good upside. My lovely wife and I had a a weekend in Chicago planned. Then my mother fell and fractured her hip. Then we planned for a weekend 30 miles away. Then she got a compression fracture in her back. Then she got Covid a second time and we lost her just about exactly two years ago. If we had booked the best cash rate, we would have lost it all. Paying with points saved us the pain of having a financial loss on top of losing my mother. And in case you didn�t guess it, it was a slow, hard brutal decline for her.

I think
An estimate
What I
Disagree (and not understanding what makes things fungible)
Disagree
My preferences
I think
A reasonable number
Can be justified

Those are all in you post and absolutely none of them have hard data to back them up.

And you don�t understand that there is upside potential to using points when multiple people have outlined it to you and given you examples. And those instances of saving by canceling and rebooking is more points than your promotion you might be using.



We are planning on doing a New England road trip for our anniversary next year. We are planning on visiting Acadia National Park. I just looked at rates for June for next year. The rate with points for a king with a fridge is 73000 points plus we get 10% back on the Select card and we buy points for no more than 0.5 cent per point. That is less than $330. The room rate, which in this case is refundable is $1062. I looked at Newport, RI. The refundable rate is $461, the none refundable rate is $412, our cost with points is $306. And we are also hoping to do Mystic CT, Burlington, the White Mountains and two nights in Portland, ME. For the two nights in Boston we are looking at a variety of brands.

And my mother in law has already started having falls.

So yeah, I buy points.

Being in the UK, and unable to avail myself of those lovely US card offers (silly levels of points per spend, massive bonuses, free nights / rebates and goodness only knows what else), I regard the points differently to most. I think of them as a free bonus and, in the case of the "buy points with stay" packages, as a way to get Diamond with far fewer nights / spend than would otherwise be required.

Promotions are non-existent for me over the past couple of years, other than the odd one everyone gets - nothing at the moment, for example. I have to say I really miss the old pre-Covid Accelerate promotions, they were actually great fun and more than once influenced choosing a HIX, for example, rather than a HI, and before that all the random ones which would pop up. If one does crop up I'll of course sign up for it - why wouldn't you, it's free points at best and at worst you've only wasted a few seconds.

The points have a minimum cash value of 0.1p in the UK, FWIW, and I always bear that in mind: 10000 points > 2000 Avios > �10 of Nectar points, which can be spent on pretty much anything, from groceries to furniture. There's also the option of exchanging them for gift cards, albeit the most useful one (Amazon) is no longer available... in fact, I can't even check current prices as the whole international IHG catalogue site seems to be down.

I've recently used points to book a number of redemptions (clearing out my stash of many years) and have been getting 0.46p per point of value, which isn't bad IMO. Is it as good as it used to be? Nope, but it's sure better than cashing out for Nectar points!

We in the States are fortunate with the credit cards and the various advantages they give us. I definitely understand completely how people in other territories have a different attitude towards IHG�s reward program.

But you also have higher transaction and other fees generate the cash to pay for all those �free� points and whatnots.

Here in Europe they are capped to 0.3% for credit card transactions

Yes and no... 0.3% is the cap of the interchange fee of consumer credit cards, i.e. what the card network pays the issuing bank. There's no cap on corporate credit cards, which granted isn't relevant for those collecting points on private credit cards, but regardless, the cap is only on one step in the fee chain, there are two more:

• The fee between the card network (like MC and VISA) and the merchant acquirer (often local brands, but there are global acquirers like PayPal and JP Morgan).
• The fee between the merchant acquirer and the merchant.

The last step is what you're actually paying extra for at the merchant and that hasn't necessarily come down much after the EU cap on interchange fees. Of course it depends on the bargaining power of the merchant. If I personally want to accept PayPal payments I need to pay 3%+, take it or leave it. However, if my name is Zara or IKEA, of course I can negotiate a better deal with a merchant acquirer.

Your point is of course that for consumer cards, European card issuers only have 0.3% to play with for card benefits, anything above that will have to come from consumers paying exorbitant interest rates on revolving credits. My point is that regardless of that 0.3% cap, the consumer still pays a lot more than that to the merchant, simply because there's no cap for what the merchant can be charged for accepting your card.

Also, when it comes to hotels and airlines, they need to take into account the merchant fees for accepting corporate cards when setting their prices, so in practice the European cap of interchange fees has no bearing on room rates or airline tickets anyway. Maybe it has when buying milk at the supermarket.

I.e. regardless of EU directives we in Europe still pay the same room rates, but we get less benefits than we would have without the regulations. Furthermore, those of us in EU countries have to pay higher taxes in order to pay the people in Brussels who have to come up with new rules all the time in order to justify their jobs.

Thank you for being so succinct and hopefully ending this protracted and sometimes heated exchange!

Fact is that in UK (especially) and Europe points purchase is not viable and redemption rates have changed negatively. Same probably applies to Australia where I also purchase nights each year.

In North America thanks to credit card promos including 4th night free - anywhere in the world - points puchase is mostly viable. And local redemption rates if viewed dynamically look relatively unchanged.

I was able to find some value for the remainder of my points. One more IC stay before my Ambassador status expires and one Even stay to use up the rest of the points before my Diamond status expires. Then I can say a fond farewell to IHG One Rewards.

Without telling us where and when and why - you aren�t really contributing much to this thread!

I am also skeptical about buying points, but I did find that buying a bunch at 100% match was worthwhile. I bought and used the points within a month. Holding points too long subjects them to devaluation risk, which I don't like one bit.

I gave an example above where for one of my bookings buying the points with the 100% bonus was much cheaper than paying cash for the same room.

So at times points buying is clearly a viable option because of it wasn�t I wouldn�t have done it!