Lately, cash prices to fly economy have gotten so cheap for international flights that points bookings are a terrible value proposition. At the same time, airlines are selling more and more business class seats at reduced cash rates relative to a few years ago, meaning award availability is more difficult on the routes that I want to fly. The options for someone loathe to pay cash for flights (and who mostly has fixed dates and locations in mind), therefore, have gotten fairly slim.
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Last year was something of a turning point for me in terms of my travel habits. Whereas two years ago I let my travel be largely dictated by mistake fares and other sales, this past year I had a very explicit list of places I wanted to go, and I used my miles and ‘hacking’ in order to reduce the cost as much as possible (and/or fly in premium cabins).
It’s pretty evident why this would be the case for someone. Once you have built up miles and points balances through credit card signups and manufactured spending, means are less of a bottleneck. Traditional award charts offer fixed miles prices for flights irrespective of the cash price, which means that (assuming you can find availability), a $500 flight to a random U.S. city near a national park costs you the same as a $200 ticket between two major domestic hubs. For premium cabins, the value proposition can be even greater, because the miles prices are typically marked up 50-150% relative to coach, whereas cash prices can differ by up to a factor of ten.
Travel hackers are a really weird bunch. After all, who in their right mind would spend their time chasing deals that earn 1000 miles here or a slim 1-2 points per dollar spent? This doesn’t even count for all the time we spend feeding various obscure routings into award flight searches in order to find that “perfect” redemption that includes the newest plane model or an amazing lounge stop (you know who you are).
Before I dive into what is (intentionally) a controversial topic, I just want to take a second to welcome all our new readers who found us through Doctor of Credit. We’re super excited to have you, and hopefully you’ll find that we have an interesting thing or two to share. And of course, I’d be remiss to thank all of our existing, long-time readers (dad, I’m talking to you) for supporting us and valuing our voices. As we close in on the anniversary of our starting the blog, I couldn’t be happier with how it has turned out, and I know Esther and Michael feel the same way. We’ve managed to break some deals, share some different perspectives on hacking, tell some funny stories, and extend our hobby with our friends in family. What more could we want?
Recently, a co-worker of mine asked for help booking his family’s summer travel to London. Searching for himself, his wife, and three kids, the price he had found (despite building in flexibility on both ends of the trip) was $14,000 for 5 people.
….for economy.
Summer travel to Europe is expensive. London travel is even worse, because it always has a steady flow of business travelers.
Given that my co-worker had a fairly tight set of constraints on his trip, the traditional sources of flexibility we look for — changing dates, changing locations — weren’t going to be sufficient in this situation. Add to that the fact that he needs five tickets, and we had a challenge on our hands.
This is the sixth in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.
Choice Hotels wasn’t in my initial list of chains to review because of how weird and restrictive their loyalty program is, but given their large footprint and a few requests for a writeup, I realized it would probably be useful to look at. So, without further ado…
This is the last in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.
Today we will be looking at the last major hotel rewards program, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG), which will hopefully remain in tact through the end of 2016 but may not be long for this world due to the merger finalized earlier this year.
This is the fourth in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.
The Details
Marriott Rewards is actually two programs in disguise, offering rewards for both the standard set of Marriott branded properties as well as the hyper-luxurious Ritz Carlton portfolio. Because of this, it has fourteen separate categories for its hotels — nine for Marriott and five for Ritz Carlton. It’s award charts are as follows:
This is the third in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.
The Nuts and Bolts
Disclaimer: This is a big fat dud. Tomorrow’s on Marriott should be interesting, though, as there are a couple of angles from which to approach the hack.
I’m somewhat loathe to talk about Hilton hotels, since their HHonors program is one of the worst around in terms of redemption rates, and that’s if you can actually find award availability in the first place. That said, it is one of the largest chains in the world, and there is some value to be had if you look hard enough, so here it is.
This is the second in a series of posts on how to save money on hotel bookings by purchasing rewards points. For a more detailed explanation and walk-through of the theory, see the first post on Hyatt hotels.
The Nuts and Bolts
IHG Rewards Club is a slightly special snowflake since they offer two ways of buy points from them. Since there have been plenty of posts giving detailed explanations (see here for a good one), I won’t go into detail on how to purchase the points, other than to say that that the second method utilizes the points and cash option on bookings and IHG’s unique mechanism of refunding the total points cost if you cancel your booking. In practice, the purchase costs are:
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