Doing The “Planning Ahead” Thing

Due to the Club Carlson devaluation, I figured I would go ahead and actually do that thing where you like… plan ahead. Basically the value of Club Carlson points will cut in half for me as right now they give credit card holders a free award night per award booking, but that ends this month.

Because of the extremely high value of Club Carlson points with this benefit, I went a little crazy and stocked up on points. There are a number of ways to earn points; there are multiple Club Carlson credit cards, and US Bank is generous in giving them out to existing customers. Plus the card earns 5 points per dollar.

I know that I spent $0.00225/point, and will reflect that in the stats. Right now a 9,000 point property will cost me $20 for 2 nights, a 15,000 point hotel will cost me $34 for 2 nights, and a 50,000 point hotel will cost me $112 for 2 nights.

Now it’s time to burn these points.

Remember I’m on a $900 a month budget for the two of us. Luckily, there are a number of Club Carlson hotels in some of the places I’d like to go this year. I’d like to do Latvia, Estonia, and Finland. And I’d like to go south through Yugoslavia… where Club Carlson isn’t too helpful. Yet there are a couple properties, like in Bulgaria and we may do Turkey.

I don’t like planning ahead, but the thing is that if I book now, I can get twice as much value.

Don’t get me wrong I’ve booked ahead before, like I’ve booked all my AA and United flights at least 21 days in advance. But normally I book the hotels the week of, sometimes even the day of. There are exceptions, like hotel mistake fares or PointBreaks, but normally that’s one booked week in the general direction I’m going. And then I can still wing it the weeks before and after.

Often the biggest stresses (or expenses) come when we have to be somewhere for a plan or reservation but haven’t yet booked the transit. And in reality we’re not going to book busses around Croatia ahead of time; I’ll land and then find the bus… like always.

What would be nearly impossible to keep track of is whether I spend a lesser amount of time planning ahead doing it for 2 days straight (like I’ve done the last 2 days) or doing it as needed on the fly. Not sure, but this feels like an incredible time suck. And when I hear about people spending hours for their next trip, now I can be more sympathetic.

 

What I’m doing differently:

I have specific places I want to go and I will get from point A to point B on dates booked, with sometimes nothing in between. Like normally I’d book a flight to Bali and then make my way across Southeast Asia based on the next close place I want to go to.

In this case, I’ll book the most direct flight at a specific time.

Last year, I realized a number of things that are effecting what I do this year.

 

1) The best hotel redemptions are not always for top tier hotels.

Actually I realized this after the first year of keeping track of everything we spend. After analyzing chasing promotions and not chasing promotions… the stats were undeniably clear to me.

And this goes against all I heard before, which was “earn your points at cheap hotels and burn them at expensive hotels”. This is largely bad advice. Don’t earn your points at cheap hotels.

For occasional travelers: earn your points from credit cards and burn them wherever you want to go.

However, as soon as you crossover into someone who uses enough hotel points that you end up paying for hotels out of pocket, your game plan is best taking the opposite of the advice above… At least according to the meticulous stats I’ve run.

For anyone who ends up paying for hotels: earn your points from good deals, burn them at the cheapest hotels.

 

Now we’re constantly completing promotions with cheap stays.  Seriously, we do it all the time. But my main point is to burn up all your points for as many hotel stays as possible. And when I need to replenish, I pay. Or when there’s a good cash deal with a promo, I do it.

 

The simple math for planning out your future hotel stays is “what gets me the most award nights”. The long version, which I’ve tried to already do for you, is “what gets me all my hotel stays covered for the least amount of money”.

Now there are exceptions all the time. I constantly needed cheap IHG hotel stays to complete my “Big Win” promotions, which I was largely doing for the points. Or on the other end, I gladly burned my Club Carlson points at the Radisson Blu Vienna because I don’t need paid stays to earn Club Carlson points, and I haven’t been worried about running out.

But what I want to do is challenge the typical advice given. Instead of just paying the points, check for deals and check to see if you can burn your points for more nights elsewhere (if otherwise you would be paying cash elsewhere).

I wrote about 6 ways to get “amazing” hotel deals and of the number of ways, I wrote about hotel promotions. If I can save a ton of points and earn points, that’s a win for me.

Believe it or not, we who averaged $20 a night at IHG hotels last year paid cash for the InterContinental Vienna.

Stacking deals is the biggest win though. For example we paid for the InterContinental Vienna to earn points during a “Big Win” promotion. Not only did we earn points, but we used our Ambassador buy-one-get-one-free cert. We paid $200 for the two nights, but one night counted towards my “task” of staying at 5 different IHG hotels. Plus, I saved 70,000 IHG points.

The best example is when I was looking at Helsinki. If I arrive on a weekend I can use Club Carlson’s 2-4-1 weekend rate (for Gold members, and you get Gold status with the credit card), or I can pay a minimum of 38,000 Club Carlson points, which I said I’ve been getting for .00225/point.

Here’s the rate for the weekend I’m looking at: $29.50 for 2 nights.

This rate would earn me points.

Or I can spend 38,000 points, which would cost me $85.50 for two nights.

Not only is the paid rate a better price for me, it would save me points for a cheaper hotel in Tallinn, starting at 15,000 points for a hotel in the city center, near old town. And while Helsinki is a more expensive city, the hotel prices are comparable.

And to sum it up, the fact is that hotels in cheaper places can charge a lot for cash rates because there are fewer nice hotels. Yet, they tend to have cheaper points rates.

Again, there are exceptions. Holiday Inns in Thailand can be $40 a night and we got the Hyatt Phuket for $80 with an elite rate, and used a suite upgrade. I’d have been crazy to use points for that property.

 

2) I spend a lot on transit

At the end of last year’s stats, I realized that our “transit” stats were way way higher than I would have guessed. Discount airliners and trains in Europe simply added up to more than I would have ever guessed.

Spending $7,764.10 on transit with a $20k a year budget… is bad.

Therefore: Burn em!

My thought has always been to use your miles to fly internationally and always pay for domestic flights, pay for short regional flights, and pay for land transit (like trains). But… we spent $7k last year on that plan, so that’s out the window.

This year I’m burning without regret. Maybe I should be more aggressive with the earning, maybe I’ll regret it later, or maybe I’ll never go back.

For example… this feels like a confession. I was looking at tickets to go from Helsinki to Croatia. I’ve really wanted to hop around the Dalmatian coast.

If you recall, we flew into Italy in the winter and made our way to Slovenia. The plan was to go down to Croatia but one comment made a lot of sense to me. Basically the commenter said that I shouldn’t see Croatia in the winter. Made sense. I love swimming, hiking, etc… I didn’t want to get there and stay inside.

So when looking for discount airline tickets from Helsinki, I was looking at flexible dates and the only “cheap” tickets were to Germany, Poland, Lithuania, etc… Places I’ve already been and it doesn’t actually save me much.

Tickets to Dubrovnik (which is only an hour from the Bay of Kotor) were $200+ for the week I wanted. But using AA miles it was 10,000 points plus $16.

Every step of the way I see expensive tickets and am tempted to just using miles, regardless of what the “best use” will be. But this will still require strategy, as I’ll need to save enough miles in the programs I want to do big redemptions with – like saving United miles for a “hopper” redemption.

 

Conclusion

1) I’m planning ahead because I’m trying to burn a lot of Club Carlson points. “Planning” isn’t such a dirty word for most of you, I know, but it could determine a lot of our daily life for the next 6 months or so.

2) The rule of thumb for hotel points is not to burn your points at the most expensive hotel and then run out and pay cash for cheap hotels. That sounds like a terrible idea and I think you’ll get more luxury, more nights, and spend less money not doing that.

3) Burn your miles, I know I will. Instead of paying a ton in the end for my land transit, I’m now more willing to pay the miles to go direct. Not because I’m getting old and am tired of long carpooling rides, that’s still a great deal. However, if there’s someplace I want to go, I’m going to just pay the miles.

Too much money on transit last year, and maybe we’ll spend too many miles poorly… but I have more miles than money.

 

I struggle with knowing how much to fit into the next year. A lot of times when we get tired of a place we move on. I struggle with the thought of planning so much we miss out on another amazing deal because we don’t want to cancel a flight or something.

I’ve seen other people nervous about how to figure out public transit, or to communicate in another country. I’m used to that… but knowing where I’m going to stay next month… that makes me nervous! Well, really it’s the commitment part.

Wish us luck.