Hotel Award Best Uses (or “Sweet Spots”)

Continuing the theme of “sweet spots” (as I did with Best Airline Mile Sweet Spots) I wanted to do a similar thing with hotels. I’ve talked about a lot of these before, but many aren’t obvious. When you get Marriott points or SPG points, you might not know about their “Nights & Flights” option to use a little more points for a hotel stay and get a lot more miles. This post is about little know extras like these and general best uses, for hotel points.

Best Use of SPG Starwood Preferred Guest Points

There are many “sweet spots” with SPG, despite my strong stance that the best use of SPG points is transferring to miles. After all, SPG is the only transfer for many airlines like AA and JAL. Plus, flights are worth more than hotels.

Actually, the best value would be transferring in increments of 20,000 SPG points. When you transfer 20,000 SPG points you get a bonus 5,000 points. So with transferring to AA, that would be 25,000 AA miles.

5th Night Free – This is exactly what it sounds like, when you redeem four nights in a row, you get a 5th night for free. Unfortunately this isn’t offered for category 1 and 2 hotels.

Nights & Flights – Get a 5 night stay and 50,000 miles into the account of your choosing. Note that it’s only available for category 3 & 4 hotels. The cost is 60,000 SPG points for a category 3 and 70,000 SPG points for a category 4. For a category 3, you’re spending 25,000 more SPG points and for a category 4, you’re spending 20,000 more SPG points. However, you’re also getting 50,000 miles of your choosing.

Given that normal transfers get a 5,000 point bonus, you’re only getting 20,000 to 25,000 more miles than you would with a normal transfer and a normal booking. But if you’re going to stay at a hotel 5 nights anyways, why not get more miles?

Cat 1 and 2 hotels – At the bottom level, a Category 1 hotel is only 3,000 points and a category 2 is only 4,000 points. For example the other day I stayed at a hotel in Ljubljana and it ran me 3,000 to 4,000 points a night, and the hotel was well over $100 a night when I was there.

A higher category hotel could cost me 30,000 to 35,000 points (or more). The thing is, you will not get 10 times more “value” by shelling out 10 times more points. It can’t be done. Overwhelmingly with SPG, the great value for hotel stays is at the bottom end.

Weekends are cheaper – Not only are SPG awards 3,000 to 4,000 points for category 1 and 2 hotels, but there is a significant discount for booking on the weekends. Category 1 hotels are only 2,000 points on weekends, and category 2 hotels are only 3,000 points.  A discount of 25% – 33% just for booking on weekends.

FYI, Cash & Points is for people with more money than sense or time.

Best Use of Marriott Rewards Points

Travel Packages – It requires a lot of points, but it’s the best use of Marriott points (in my opinion). You get 7 nights and 50,000 miles to 120,000 miles, for the price of 200,000 to 540,000 Marriott points, depending on the hotel and package.

The best packages cost more, but it’s where you get the most amount of miles. This increases the value a lot. What I can’t answer for you is whether or not it’s worth paying for the nicest Marriott for 390,000 points, or the nicest Ritz Carlton for 540,000 points. But the appeal here is to get your miles from Marriott to an airline at a reasonable rate.

My ideal stay would be 7 nights at a nice category 6 hotel, like the JW Marriott Khao Lak in Thailand (or the JW Bangkok) and get 120,000 AA or Alaska miles. This would cost 300,000 Marriott Points. You’re transferring from Marriott to AA at a rate better than 3:1 and getting 7 nights. Consider that the stay in Thailand would cost 210,000 points, anyways. Would I pay 90,000 more Marriott points to get 120,000 AA miles? No doubt.

5th Night Free – Marriott also has a 5th night free for awards. Pay for four nights straight, but get five.

PointSavers – For whatever reason, the PointsSaver sale never has worked into my schedule. It’s not big enough to plan around I suppose, but if you’re lucky to catch it, you can save 33% on your award stay. Check out PointSavers (and Seasonal Awards).

Best Use of IHG Rewards points

I talk a lot about IHG, so I’ll make it quick.

PointBreaks – PointBreaks is a list of hotels, typically every 2 or 3 months, that has a list of hotels bookable for 5,000 points. This is incredible when the list happens to align with your travel plans.

25,000 point IC hotels – Some of the best IC hotels I’ve been to have been in Asia, and some of them only 25,000 points. The most obvious one is the InterContinental Koh Samui in Thailand. But here’s a list:

• InterContinental Koh Samui, Thailand
• InterContinental Danang, Vietnam
• InterContinental Saigon, Vietnam
• InterContinental Hua Hin, Thailand
• InterContinental Jakarta, Indonesia
• InterContinental Mumbai, India
• Basically every IC in Central America and every IC hotel in mainland China

I’ve been to many of these hotels, and some of them are simply incredible.

If you’d like to learn more about IHG (including free nights from Best Rate Guarantees, the trick to buy 5,000 points for $35, and the free night anywhere from the credit card), read: The Complete Guide to IHG Rewards

Best use of Club Carlson points

Free Award Night ( or BOGO) – Easily one of the best features of any hotel, or any hotel credit card, is the ability to book a free night per award stay of 2 nights or more. My stay at the Radisson Blu Brussels was 44,000 points for the first night and 0 for the second. My stay last year at the Radisson Blu Budapest was 9,000 points (now 15k) for the first night and 0 for the second. Simply by having the credit card, you get this benefit.

Best use of Hilton points

Category 1 & 2 Hilton – Like SPG the spread between a category 1 Hilton and a category 10 Hilton is huge. We’re talking 5,000 points vs 95,000 points, which is 19 times more! Almost no category 10 Hilton is worth 19 times more than any category 1. Still, not all the Category 1’s are very central, however, I have made a map of just Category 1 & 2 hotels. Read: Map of Category 1 & 2 Hilton HHonors Hotels.

Best use of Hyatt points

Booking Club Rooms for 2,000 more points – Know that with Hyatt you have the option of using your points to book a club room (and get lounge access) or even suites by calling and paying a little bit more points. However, at higher ends, the lounge is a rip off. Lounge access for a category 5 is 7,000 more Hyatt points. Most people transfer points from Chase, which could be $70+ and lounge access is typically sold for $50, or you can simply buy food elsewhere for cheaper. So my opinion isn’t too high of it unless it’s a category 1, but people should know this is an option.

Any other hidden redemptions or great general redemptions when using points? There used to be some amazing discount awards with Hilton but now they are all worthless. Sometimes you can pay more for their discounted (axon) redemptions than with a regular redemption. But if I’m forgetting some of value, please let me know so I can add it.