Travel Tip Favorites: Evaluating Hotel Points vs Free Night Offers

Ran into this article today and it is a great tool to help decide if you should go with the hotel points as a credit card bonus or if you should go with the free nights.  I came to this dilemma ad I recently applied for a Hilton Honors credit card.  The problem was figuring out if I should get the AMEX card that offered 100k points or the Citibank card that offered two free weekend nights.  Some Hilton properties can cost 100k point alone just for one night, so the better value looks like getting the Citibank card with the free weekend nights.  But after considering my upcoming travel needs, I decided to go with the AMEX card that offered 100k points.  I did this because it also offers one free Hilton reward night on account anniversary and I can be more flexible about redeeming the 100k points at cheap properties and at higher end ones.  In the end, I think I can squeeze out a little more value out of the 100k points instead of just the free weekend night certificates.  I could be wrong, but I’m okay with my decision and we’ll see how my points redemption works out in 2018.  Check out the article below…

 

https://awardwallet.com/blog/free-nights-versus-free-points-best/

 

Travel Tip Favorites: Chase Ultimate Reward Point Redemptions

I love Chase Ultimate Rewards.  Lisa and I both signed up for the Chase Sapphire Card and received 50,000 points each.  With 100,000 points total, we were able to:

  • transfer points to Amtrak Rewards and book a sleeper car from New Orleans to Los Angeles to Portland.  (unfortunately, Amtrak is no longer a partner and points cannot be transferred to Amtrak)
  • transfer points to Hyatt and book free stays in Cleveland, OH; Vancouver, BC; Charleston, SC; and upcoming trips to Cabo San Lucas and Phoenix, AZ.

We still have about 50,000 points to use, which will come in handy for our trips in 2017 to transfer to other travel partners.  How might we spend them?  This article provides a bunch of different scenarios, which makes this a bookmarked travel tip favorite for future reference!

https://upgradedpoints.com/redeem-chase-ultimate-rewards-points-for-max-value/

Travel Tip Favorites: Free Hotel Nights

Every day I spend a few minutes perusing some of my favorite travel blogs, and every now and then there is an article or post that gets bookmarked in my favorites folder for future reference.  Here is one that can come in really handy when seeking to maximize hotel stays with free nights.

From MillionMileSecrets.com August 2015

Which hotels give you additional free nights on award stays?