Using MP for hotels
 

Is there ever a case where using MP miles for a hotel is a good deal? Is it generally just a bad way to spend miles?

Obviously it depends on how you value your miles, but in general...?

It's rarely a good case, but a rule of thumb is to value miles at the cash acquisition cost of 1.9-2.1cpm ... Just call it 2cpm for simplicity

If UAMP wants 20,000 miles for the hotel room per night, check if the rate is above or below $400.

If you're miles-rich, cash-poor, and don't plan on using your miles for flights. It's usually better to redeem for flights, but you have to evaluate your own situation.

Since it's more typical to acquire miles for much less, this really overvalues the miles.

Thanks. This year I will probably rack up a lot more RDMs than usual as I fly a lot of TPAC in J. There's no way I'll be able to fly enough to use them and I'm sure further devaluations are coming soon.

Yes - it can make sense if you invoke the law of diminishing marginal utility. If you have 100,000 miles, using all of them on a poor redemption value award is probably not a good deal. If you have three million, why not?

I used to do the reverse; I had something like a million IHG points and I redeemed them for air travel several times. I knew it would take a long time to use them for hotel redemption, I figured I might as well spend them before they get devalued.

I move all my Marriott points to UA and use them for upgrades. I've never really "done the math" as far as $ value. But I almost always get free upgrades to a suite at Marriott and never get a free UA upgrade.