Last updated on January 31st, 2016 at 04:46 am
I have a confession to make. Even though I publicly denounced Hilton after their 2013 Massacre of a devaluation, I still hold points in the program and occasionally stay there when convenient.
There are many occasions in travel where it simply isn’t feasible to stay at your preferred hotel chain or a place where you hold status. Two recent examples of mine are staying on the islands of Moorea in French Polynesia and St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. In both cases, my schedule had me confined to specific islands and my preferred programs of Hyatt and Starwood did not have properties on these specific islands (SPG does have hotels on nearby islands, but getting there would not have fit into my schedule).
Fortunately, these islands did have properties available through Hilton, Marriott or Intercontinental, so there was a points redemption option available if needed. Having points in those programs proved to be a huge money saver for me.
I found myself in a similar scenario as I tried to book a hotel in London as part of the whirlwind weekend award I booked yesterday.
If I were to want to stay anywhere in London and earn elite qualifying nights with Starwood or Hyatt, I would have 6 hotel options available (4 Starwood and 2 Hyatt).
But London is a huge city, and it is imperative that I stay close to the venue where my presentation is being held. None of the Starwood/Hyatt properties were near my location, so I needed to look elsewhere.
One of the ways that I check for places to stay is fire up TripAdvisor and search for a city with results filtered to only rewards programs where I have points available. Using this method for London I saw that there were 26 Hilton properties and 12 Marriott properties where I could target my search for a hotel in proximity.
Sure enough, a Hilton property was about 1/3 mile away from the venue, while the Hyatt and Starwood properties were nowhere near. In this case, I needed to choose convenience over elite status earning.
This is where having flexible points can make a big difference. The retail rate for this room was $250/night for the dates of my stay. Or I could have paid 50,000 Hilton Honors points a night for an award stay (about a .5 cents per point value). I could choose to pay $750 cash or burn 150,000 worth of Hilton Honors points for this stay. In the end I chose to burn the 150,000 points to keep expenses low on this trip (note, you could make an argument that it paying cash was a better deal for this redemption for those who have the cash available to burn).
6 Tips for Being Flexible with Hotels
I learned a long time ago not to put all of my eggs into one basket. This applies to the points and miles game as well. Obtaining miles and points in a single program can open up many travel opportunities for you, but it may also limit your options in the long run. Here are a few tips to help you diversify in this area.
Tip #1: Obtain a co-branded Hilton, Marriott or Intercontinental credit card if you haven’t already. If for no other reason, use the card to earn the signup bonus and to pay for any time you stay at their hotel. Since they make it so easy to earn points, you can often obtain a lot of points with minimal effort. Bonus: two of the Hilton cards give you Gold Ssatus in their program, which entitles you to free breakfast and Internet. Score!
Tip #2: Earn points in flexible currencies that transfer to multiple partners. Chase Ultimate Rewards and American Express Membership Rewards are the gold standard in this area. SPG points are also good if you want to transfer to airline partners.
Tip #3: Be careful with transfer rates on flexible currencies. It’s often more valuable to transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards for a redemption on United Airlines than it is to transfer those same points for 1-2 nights at an Intercontinental property.
Tip #4: Keep the points you earn in your back pocket for any trips that rely on staying in a specific part of a city (or on an island).
Tip #5: For vacations it rarely matters where you stay in a city, so you can plan your trip around staying at a specific property.
Tip #6: For business or semi-professional events it makes all of the difference in the world to carry flexible currencies.
While this may be common knowledge for many advanced points and miles collectors, I hope that those of you new to this hobby will now have a better understanding of why diversification is a great strategy.
