youranut

I just got this email today. Ten thousand points per night is a good deal if the price of the room is under $100 in my opinion. I have been on the the site looking for that 10k point room and have only been able to find a couple that offered 3k points for a $250 room. I would like to ask the community to post any 10k point rooms you find through this promotion. Or any room that will award points at a 50:1 ratio or better. The destination I'm most interested in is Colorado but I'm definitely open to others. And it would benefit the rest of the community to post all of the locations that have a high point/dollar spent ratio from this promotion.

Thanks for your help and happy hunting

Marcus Harper

smmrfld

Peoriaman1

I stopped booking hotels on the Southwest site when they switched to this new system, what, a couple years ago now I think.

Typically, I only see the high-earnings-rate (say, 1000 points or more) on the very most expensive properties listed. The lesser ones are only one point per dollar. Ain't no way I'm paying $250 or $300 or more a night just for the points; instead I now book via the hotel's website and I still earn my 600 Southwest points just like I did under the old system. Even for a cheap room. This assumes of course that I have already set my Profile on the hotel's website to "earn partner airline miles" instead of hotel points.

pinniped

Every time I get one of these sweet-looking Rocketmiles (or similar) deals, I always go take a look and play around with some scenarios. I occasionally have stays at the midrange brands where forgoing hotel elite status benefits is tolerable, so I figure these would be good targets for a 5k/10k/whatever deal.

Unfortunately, it never works out. Once you start doing side-by-side rate comparisons, you always pay more for the miles than they're worth. Eventually you're down to the point where you're doing the math on $7 rate differentials to earn 500 miles at a Super 8 and you stop and think "wait, why am I looking at a freaking Super 8?!?"

Then you go back to Hilton.com and book the HGI using your best available rate codes and forget about Rocketmiles until the next juicy email arrives a couple months later.

Peoriaman1

I'd be the guy staying at Super 8. But if it costs $79, I want to earn my full 600 points, like I would have with the old system, not 79 points like with the new system.

Actually, I think Super 8 is no longer a Southwest earnings partner, but I might be wrong about that; I'd have to check. It may have changed with the new system however.

shellmisi

youranut

I'm assuming that the 11k was not per night but for the total 4 nights?

GreenPlastic

I just booked 2 separate stays (4 nights total). The rates were about the same as when I went to the Marriott site, and I will earn 11k on one stay and 8k on the other. Not sure what the downside is if you don't book a more expensive place than you would normally, or if you don't pay way more for the same room as you can get via the chain's site?

I assume you cannot earn loyalty points with the hotel chain?

synergistic

We've used it pretty successfully. Above and beyond the bonus for the hotel booking, it lets you buy an extra 2k points a night (sometimes 4k points a night, can't tell when or why...) for 1.9c each.

We stayed several nights in Orlando - single night bookings each time - for about $600, and earned 20k points. I don't think an overall cost of 2c a point is out there, but it's certainly attainable if you value the hotel stay. We plan to earn another 18k points that way in the next couple of months.

NoStressHere

Since when are SW points worth 1.9 cents?

The math does not work unless I am doing something wrong.

I just did some double checking and points to cash are between 1.4 and 1.6 cents

Critterlynn

When you need points to post quickly to earn the companion pass?

It's really not all that different from someone taking a cheap flight to anywhere at the end of the year just to earn the points.

GreenPlastic

toomanybooks

NoStressHere

On the cheaper fares, it does get much closer. Not quite sure how that works out, but you are right.

Just looked at some $45 tickets from LAX to LAS. Points are 2,227 which come to 2.02 cents.

But - don't you just hate the buts..... there is the $5.60 "let us make you feel good tax" that is added to points purchase, but included in cash purchase.

So, that $45 ticket is really $39.40 base fare which changes it to 1.76 cents per point.

On higher price tickets, it has way less impact.

(please let me know if I got my numbers wrong)