Marriott Cash + Points redemptions could be great for you

Yesterday I saw on Travel Codex Scott Mackenzie sharing some details of Marriott's new Cash + Points redemptions, which will apparently become available early next year.

First, two important caveats. The new Marriott Cash + Points redemptions will not change or slow the relentless upward drift in Marriott property categories. Three or four years ago, the Courtyard Portland City Center was a Category 5 hotel. Today it's Category 7. Additionally, Marriott points are extremely expensive, costing one cent per point when Chase Ultimate Rewards points are transferred in, or 2-plus cents per point if you choose to manufacture spend on a Chase Marriott co-branded credit card instead of a cashback-earning credit card.

But sometimes you just can't help but earn Marriott Rewards points. And Cash + Points redemptions are going to make it much cheaper to drain those balances back down to zero, where they belong.

Always redeem for Cash + Points, where available (with 4 exceptions)

As Marriott Rewards makes clear, "members will be able to redeem their points for the NEW Cash + Points at participating Marriott brand hotels and The Ritz-Carlton hotels when available. Participation will vary by hotel."

In other words, just because a paid night is available, and just because an award night is available, a Cash + Points night won't necessarily be available. But when a Cash + Points night is available, it will usually be better than a straight points redemption.

Here's Scott's chart showing the new Cash + Points redemptions, and the implicit price paid per "saved" Marriott Rewards point:

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Only at Marriott Rewards Category 1, Category 2, Category 9, and Ritz Carlton Tier 5 properties do the "missing" points on a redemption cost more than 1 cent each. In other words, if you're considering transferring points in from Ultimate Rewards, you'll be better off at all other properties simply redeeming your Ultimate Rewards points for cash and buying the missing Marriott Rewards points!

Don't compare Marriott Cash + Points rates to cash; compare them to the competition

All I've said so far is that except in a few situations, if it makes sense to make a Marriott Rewards point redemption, it will make even more sense to make a Cash + Points redemption.

But don't let that lure you into thinking that it makes sense to make a Marriott Rewards point redemption!

For example, there are two Category 7 Marriott Rewards properties in Manhattan: the Fairfield Inn & Suites New York Manhattan/Downtown East and Residence Inn New York Manhattan/World Trade Center Area. Those properties cost 35,000 Marriott Rewards points or, under the new 2016 Cash + Points regime, 21,000 Marriott Rewards points and $90 in cash.

If you're paying for your hotel stays exclusively with Chase Ultimate Rewards points, however, there are seven Hyatt Gold Passport properties that cost less than that, and one (the Park Hyatt New York) that ties at exactly 30,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points!

Conclusion

After the new Cash + Points redemption rates go into effect, Marriott Rewards points will still be extremely expensive to acquire and Marriott Rewards properties will still require far more points than their competitors.

But if you are stuck earning Marriott Rewards points through corporate contracts, the imperative of location, or the simple compulsion to sign up for every 80,000-point credit card offer that comes along, you'll want to keep an eye open for Cash + Points availability starting early next year.

The single best award redemption, by transfer partner: Chase Ultimate Rewards

As my regular readers know, I don't chase "aspirational" redemptions; I earn the miles and points I need to pay for the trips I want to take as cheaply as possible.

But many of you do chase aspirational redemptions! That gets me into hot water whenever I point out that a Chase Ultimate Rewards point is worth 1 penny (its cash redemption value), or that American Express Membership Rewards points are hard to redeem for cash.

So in the spirit of reconciliation, I though it would be fun to put together a list of the absolute best redemption values for the transfer partners of each flexible rewards currency. Since I'm most familiar with Ultimate Rewards points, let's start there.

Airline Partners

As a reminder, here are the Chase Ultimate Rewards airline transfer partners:

• United MileagePlus
• British Airways Executive Club
• Korean Airlines SKYPASS
• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
• Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards
• Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

United MileagePlus

Two of the best international first class products, Lufthansa and Singapore, belong to the Star Alliance, and United MileagePlus miles can be redeemed for first class on either airline at their partner award prices. But which is the better redemption?

One-way award seats in Lufthansa first class between New York and Frankfurt cost 110,000 MileagePlus miles, plus $5.60 in taxes and fees. Unless you're a MileagePlus elite, you'll also pay a $75 close-in ticketing fee, since Lufthansa first class seats are generally made available to United only a few days or weeks before departure.

At the time of writing, Lufthansa first class seats between New York and Frankfurt cost $11,049 on October 10, a date Lufthansa first class award seats are also available. Less the $80.60 in taxes and fees, that gives a redemption value of just about 10 cents per Ultimate Rewards point.

We can actually do a hair better than this by flying not to Frankfurt, but to Tokyo's Haneda airport via Frankfurt. This itinerary also costs 110,000 MileagePlus miles, but retails for $952 more, at $12,001, giving us 10.8 cents per MileagePlus mile:

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By comparison, Singapore's JFK-Frankfurt flight costs a mere $7,108. In any case, since Singapore Air is also a Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer partner, Lufthansa walks away with an easy victory here.

British Airways Executive Club

A safe choice for best British Airways redemption is a 4,500-Avios American Airlines short-haul flight like Norfolk, VA, to Charlotte, NC, which can get you about 9.9 cents per Ultimate Rewards points.

Knowing that Brazil forbids airlines from adding fuel and passenger surcharges to tickets, I was hopeful that a route like Sao Paulo — London would generate an astronomical value per Avios. But it turns out those flights don't get more expensive by distance in the way that Avios redemptions do! A first class seat from Sao Paulo to London costs just $5,783, which at 120,000 Avios gives a piddling 4.8 cents per point.

You're better off moving to Norfolk.

Korean Airlines SKYPASS

A popular use of SKYPASS is to book cheaper award tickets from the US mainland to Hawaii than those available on domestic US carriers. So, for example, while a Delta Skymiles award ticket to Hawaii from the continental 48 costs a minimum of 45,000 miles roundtrip, a SKYPASS award ticket costs just 35,000 miles.

Delta flies nonstop from Atlanta to Honolulu, so let's use that as our basis for comparison. A roundtrip departing March 8 and returning March 16, on which there's low-level award availability, costs $1,134. Less $11.20 in taxes and fees, that returns a SKYPASS redemption value of 3.24 cents each. That's not bad for SKYPASS miles, but it's not the best.

That's because Korean Airlines SKYPASS miles can also be redeemed for first class on Korean. On April 4, 2016, a first class flight from New York JFK to Seoul Incheon costs $10,032, but just 80,000 SKYPASS miles plus $104.20 in taxes and fees, giving 12.4 cents per SKYPASS mile, the highest transfer value for Ultimate Rewards we've seen yet!

It should be possible to kick that up another few cents per point by booking a single first class award from New York to Sydney for 120,000 SKYPASS miles, but I cannot for the life of me get the Korean Airlines website to price out such an award.

Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer

Remember the disappointing, $7,108 New York - Frankfurt flight operated by Singapore that I mentioned above? The good news is that it costs just 57,375 KrisFlyer miles (after their 15% online booking discount) and $203.30 in taxes and fees, or just over 12 cents per KrisFlyer mile.

There are more expensive Singapore Airlines routes, but they cost many more KrisFlyer miles such that you're unlikely to do better than the above. For example, it costs $984 to continue in first class to Singapore from Frankfurt, but 36,125 more KrisFlyer miles. At 2.7 cents per mile, that's a pretty good redemption in its own right, but it drags down the overall redemption value significantly.

Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards

Since Southwest is a revenue-based program, you're not doing to do better than 1.6-1.7 cents per Rapid Rewards point unless you have the Companion Pass. If you do, congratulations, you can get up to 3.2-3.4 cents per Rapid Rewards point when booking Wanna Get Away fares.

For example, with the Companion Pass you could fly two passengers from Baltimore, Maryland to Aruba for 11,620 Rapid Rewards points and $31.20 in taxes and fees, a $407.60 value, giving you 3.24 cents per Rapid Rewards point.

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

Virgin Atlantic has a number of partner airlines that could potentially offer some value, like South African Airways. Their website even contains this mysterious language:

"Economy Class Mileage* 40,000
Business Class Mileage* 50,000
Between Dakar and New York***"

Mysterious because South African Airways does not fly from Dakar to New York, although it's possible to book itineraries connecting in Washington Dulles. Maybe that's what they mean?

Virgin Atlantic does partner with Delta, which basically makes it a poor man's Skyteam partner. You can fly from the US to Europe for 100,000 Flying Club miles roundtrip, as long as you can find Delta low-level availability, compared to 125,000 Skymiles for the same awards. You can fly anywhere in Africa for 120,000 Flying Club miles roundtrip in business class, compared to 140,000 Skymiles to northern Africa and 160,000 Skymiles to South Africa (I think — no award charts, remember?).

I couldn't find any low-level availability on Delta metal to Johannesburg, but a roundtrip business class flight with award availability between New York and Dakar priced out at $3,375. Assuming Virgin Atlantic charges the same taxes and fees as Delta, $127.60, you could get about 2.7 cents per Flying Club mile on such an award.

Hotel Partners

Here are the Chase Ultimate Rewards hotel transfer partners:

• Hyatt Gold Passport
• Marriott Rewards/Ritz Carlton Rewards
• IHG Rewards Club

Hyatt Gold Passport

There are two places you can look for the highest redemption values in a program like Hyatt Gold Passport. You can look at properties in the highest categories during the property's high season (after all, they're there because they're expensive!), or you can look at properties in the lowest categories during major events. So, which approach yields the highest redemption value?

I looked at a range of top-tier properties, and the best I could do was at everyone's favorite aspirational beach resort, the Category 6 Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa, where rates go up to $2027 in early January, or 8.1 cents per point. Then Grant pointed to a May 29, 2016, stay at the Park Hyatt Milan, when the Hyatt Daily Rate is $4577 — and rooms are still available for 30,000 Gold Passport points, or 15.26 cents per point.

Other top-tier properties offer fine redemptions, but nothing like that: the Category 7 Park Hyatt Sydney charges about $814 on January 25 (the day before Australia Day), or 30,000 Gold Passport points, for about 2.7 cents per point.

What about on the low end? During CES in Las Vegas, you can book the Hyatt Place Las Vegas for 8,000 Gold Passport points or $338, about 4.2 cents per point. My main problem searching for these low-end redemptions is that enough people have obviously had the same idea that room rates are extremely difficult to find during the Super Bowl, Kentucky Derby, Indianapolis 500, and other high-profile events! So if you want to secure an outsized value during those events, book as early as possible!

Marriott Rewards

Obviously the best Marriott Rewards redemption will involve a Hotel + Air Package, which allows you to buy much more valuable airline miles at a deep discount. Since we've already established that 110,000 MileagePlus miles are worth 10.8 cents each ($11,880), let's use that as our baseline and figure out where to redeem our 7, Category 5 nights.

The most expensive Category 5 Marriott Rewards property I found is the Courtyard Paris Saint Denis, where you can redeem your 7 nights for a stay that costs $3,027, bringing your total return on 250,000 Marriott Rewards points to $14,907, or 5.96 cents per point. That's true, however, If and only if you begin your 7-night stay on July 4, 2016.

Award rooms are not available for those dates. Marriott Rewards is a terrible program.

IHG Rewards Club

IHG Rewards properties get so exorbitantly expensive in points, so fast, that the best awards will invariably be on their PointsBreaks list. I've spent a couple lovely summers in Brno, Czech Republic, so I was pleased to see that I could get 3.6 cents per IHG Rewards point at the Holiday Inn Brno on October 13, which would otherwise go for $180.12.

The best rates found on Hotel Hustle's Hot Rates page top out at 1.94 cents per point (exclusive of taxes), so if you're looking for outsized value from your Ultimate Rewards points, stick to the PointsBreaks list (or look elsewhere).

Conclusion

When I started writing this post I thought this would be an easy and fun exercise. It turned out to be difficult, time-consuming, and boring, which I hope speaks to my basic point: seeking the "best" value from your miles and points is a thankless chore.

You'll always be better off redeeming your miles and points for the trips you actually want to take, rather than the ones some blogger tells you are the best.

Topping up accounts, or, throwing good points after bad

Marriott Rewards is the worst hotel loyalty program: it has all the low earning rates and high property costs of IHG Rewards, with none of the potential upside offered by IHG's PointsBreak list and occasional lucrative promotions.

Nonetheless, I have a small balance of Marriott Rewards points that I'd love to redeem if an opportunity ever presented itself. The problem is that the kind of downtown Marriott properties I wouldn't mind staying at are so expensive that I only have enough points for a single night. In that way, my balance is like a free night certificate: great if you only want to stay one night, but worthless if you're trying to plan an actual vacation.

When topping up an account can make sense

Of course, Marriott Rewards is a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards, which means I can top up my account at any time and suddenly have enough Marriott Rewards points for a longer stay.

Under most circumstances that would be crazy: Ultimate Rewards points are worth 1 cent each when redeemed for cash, which is virtually never true of Marriott Rewards point redemptions.

Here's where the worthlessness of unredeemed points is such a useful framework. Since I have no plan to redeem my existing Marriott Rewards points, they're worth nothing to me as long as they're just sitting in my account.

That means that even if it doesn't make any sense to transfer all 35,000 Ultimate Rewards points required to stay at a Category 7 Marriott like the Courtyard Portland City Center, it can make sense to transfer 5,000 points to top up your account from 30,000 to 35,000:

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For an upcoming trip to Portland, I have 2 nights booked at the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower for 80,000 HHonors points, with an imputed redemption value of approximately $280 ($13,333 in bonused spend with an American Express Surpass co-branded card). Since I have a Marriott Rewards balance of just over 58,000 points, I'd have to transfer 12,000 Ultimate Rewards point to replace those two nights with two nights at the Courtyard Portland City Center.

Since my current, unredeemed 58,000 Marriott Rewards balance is worthless, that means I have the opportunity to pay $120 and recoup at least $280 in value from HHonors points. That's a no-brainer.

Conclusion

Remember, besides saving money, redeeming your existing points balances whenever possible has a unique upside: it gives you an instant snapshot of what your points are actually worth, which lets you decide critically whether to continue earning them, or to shift your earning to other, more valuable loyalty currencies.

Breaking: Hotel IT is not very good

One reason I love meeting travel hackers is that every one has a unique "origin story" for how they became interested in the game in the first place. For example, I accidentally earned elite status with Delta one year, and in the course of searching out the benefits of my Silver Medallion status began to learn about and get involved in the community, as well.

Often an initiation into travel hacking comes with the discovery of a new trick. A friend discovered that his United global upgrade certificates weren't actually disappearing from his account when he redeemed them. He was sure no one else on Earth could possibly know about this bug (I believe it was actually quite widely known among travel hackers who fly United).

Hotel loyalty programs have pretty bad IT

In many ways this is understandable: Hilton HHonors has to design systems that allow both the Hilton Garden Inn DFW Airport South and Conrad Maldives Rangali Island to interact with Hilton's sprawling reservation system — and Hilton doesn't even own most of the properties using their software!

Sometimes bad IT just makes interacting with the chain more of a nuisance — IHG Rewards turns something as simple as signing up for a promotion into a Herculean achievement, and Hyatt doesn't allow award stays to be changed or canceled online.

But at other times, bad hotel loyalty software design can be turned to your advantage. Here are a few questions you might ask as you make your way through the world of hotel loyalty programs. 

How do hotels batch nights into stays?

Every hotel loyalty program I'm aware of "batches" consecutive nights at the same property into a single stay for the purposes of earning elite status and qualifying for promotions. For example, pre-devaluation a single Club Carlson credit cardholder couldn't book multiple pairs of award nights and receive every other night free. For stays longer than 2 nights, people developed workarounds like having a spouse book every other pair of nights, or booking the first two and last two nights before booking a fifth night connecting them to receive 5 nights for the price of 3.

Another workaround was to simply pay cash for a third night, which gave you the added flexibility to make your cash reservation for either the first or last night — whichever was cheaper. In one of my very first subscribers-only newsletters, I shared my experience doing so during a promotion that gave 38,000 bonus Gold Points after 3 paid stays. Even though only one of my 3 nights was paid, my theory was that since my first night was paid, when the two reservations were batched together all three nights were treated as paid nights and I earned the bonus Gold Points — enough points to cover the entire 2-night award reservation!

I don't know how other loyalty programs batch nights into stays — but I'd like to find out.

How do hotels determine if a stay is eligible or not?

Marriott has recently run a series of promotions where bonus points are earned starting on your second eligible stay with Marriott. Besides being another example of how poorly Marriott Rewards treats its members, it also raises the question of how Marriott determines if a stay is eligible or not. After all, even if you stay with Marriott frequently, you want to start earning those double points as soon as possible. It may be that Marriott requires you to stay on a paid rate. It may be that Marriott will treat stays as eligible if you simply charge a movie or a beer to your room on an award stay.

I don't know how Marriott determines if stays are eligible — but I'd like to find out.

Peak under the hood whenever possible

I hope you're already logging into your hotel loyalty accounts after your stays are completed in order to make sure you received your earned points. Instead of just making sure stays appear, you should also do your best to understand why you earned the exact number of points you did. One of the reasons I developed my points density charts is precisely how difficult the chains make it to determine how they award points.

For example, Hilton awards 10 "base points" per dollar spent. If you select the "Points & Points" earning style, you earn a 50% bonus on those base points. If you're a Diamond elite, you earn another 50% bonus, but only on those base points, not the Points & Points bonus points. In other words, Diamond elites earn 20 HHonors points per dollar spent at Hilton properties — plus 1,000 extra bonus points at many Hilton brands!

Conclusion

In many ways these are the same kinds of questions we ask about airline loyalty programs (if I'm rebooked on an award ticket into a paid fare class, will I earn miles? Can I apply upgrades?) and manufactured spend (are these debit cards PIN-able?).

On the other hand, hotel loyalty programs are different in that consolidation has been much more gradual than what we've seen in the airline industry and that hotels are, by and large, not owned by the chains that administer their loyalty programs. Meanwhile, hotels constitute a large part of my travel budget; as I sometimes point out, I only need one or two plane tickets, but I might need 5 or 10 nights in a hotel.

That increases my incentive to be more aggressive with hotel loyalty programs than I am with airlines — I often simply pay whatever the airlines are asking for, but almost never stay at hotels on paid rates.

Retiring to hotels: good idea, or great idea?

After a prominent miles-and-points blogger cast off the chains of the rental housing market I wrote a light-hearted piece about manufacturing enough spend to, with the help of the Club Carlson last-night-free benefit, spend 30 days in one of their Category 1 properties.

Since that benefit can no longer be used on new reservations, I thought I'd revisit the topic, but cast a wider net this time: how many points would be needed to live in each chain's cheapest properties year-round? In other words, should you retire to hotels?

Starwood Preferred Guest

As a rule I don't find Starwood Preferred Guest's co-branded American Express card to be a great way to manufacture points for hotel stays (it's great for manufacturing Alaska Mileage Plan and American AAdvantage miles). The exception is Category 1 and 2 hotels, where weekday nights cost 3,000 and 4,000 Starpoints and weekend nights cost 2,000 and 3,000 Starpoints, respectively.

That puts the weekly cost of a Category 1 stay at 19,000 Starpoints. Manufacturing those Starpoints has an opportunity cost of $380 — that's how much you'd earn using a 2% cash back card, instead. So what can we get for a little over $1,520 in monthly rent?

Well, there are a lot of Category 1 properties in China and India. Since we're retiring, beaches should be considered, like the Four Points by Sheraton Puntacana Village in the Dominican Republic, where $1,520 is little over a 50% discount for the dates I checked in September. The Sheraton Ambassador Hotel in Monterrey is "within walking distance of the city center." But the winner for me is the Sheraton Catania Hotel & Conference Center in Sicily, which actually looks extremely comfortable. It's a bit of a hike to the city center, but it's important to stay active in retirement.

Retirement savings: 912,000 Starpoints annually ($18,240 in imputed redemption value).

Hilton HHonors

Unlike Starwood Preferred Guest, Hilton HHonors their elites the fifth night free on all award stays — including Category 1 stays. That makes five-night stays at Category 1 properties cost just 20,000 HHonors points, or $3,333 in manufactured spend at gas stations or grocery stores.

With 5-night Category 1 redemptions having an imputed redemption value of $66, our monthly rent will be 120,000 HHonors points or $400 in foregone cash back. But what does that get us?

Hilton's Category 1 properties actually include a few Hiltons, like the Hilton Alexandria King's Ranch and Hilton Hurghada Resort, so if you're really committed to Peter Thomas Roth bath products those are options. In Poland you have your choice of the Hampton by Hilton Krakow and Hilton Garden Inn Rzeszow, while over the border in Russia you can stay at the Hilton Garden Inn Ufa Riverside or Hampton by Hilton Samara. Personally, I'm leaning towards the Hampton by Hilton Panama, which seems to have a pretty good location in downtown Panama City. $400 per month is a roughly 85% discount off retail for the dates I checked, and in fact on the dates I checked HHonors redemptions gave an astonishing 2.17 cents per HHonors point.

Retirement savings: 1,440,000 HHonors points annually ($4,800 in imputed redemption value).

Marriott Rewards

Marriott offers the fifth night free on all redemptions, even for non-elites, so five-night Category 1 stays cost 30,000 Marriott Rewards points.

Since Marriott Rewards points cost one cent each when purchased with flexible Ultimate Rewards points, but 2 cents each in foregone cash back when manufactured using a Marriott Rewards co-branded credit card, we're realistically looking at 180,000 Ultimate Rewards points per month, or $1,800 in monthly rent. Are there any properties that would make that redemption worthwhile?

The Courtyard Kazan Kremlin has a nice location right on Karl Marx Street, but $1,800 will rent you a lot of house in Kazan, and I suspect that's true of most of Marriott's Category 1 properties.

Retirement savings: 2,160,000 Marriott Rewards points annually ($21,600 in Ultimate Rewards points).

Hyatt Gold Passport

While Hyatt redemptions start at 5,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points, they don't offer a fifth night free, so it'll cost us 150,000 Ultimate Rewards points per month to live in a Category 1 property — a $1,500 value.

The Hyatt Regency Kuantan Resort in Malaysia looks superb, as does the Hyatt Regency Kathmandu, and neither is so isolated that you'd be stuck buying food in the hotel, plus Hyatt Diamond elites would receive free breakfast at either property. The Hyatt Regency Bali is currently being renovated, but when it reopens it should be beautiful — if it's still a Category 1 property!

Retirement savings: 1,800,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points annually ($18,000 in Ultimate Rewards points).

IHG Rewards

Here the situation is even bleaker, since Category 1 properties cost 10,000 IHG Rewards points per night, and there's no fifth night free benefit. Instead you can chase the 5,000-point PointsBreaks list around the world, in which case the math is the same as above, since IHG Rewards is also a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards.

The current PointsBreaks list includes gems like the Holiday Inn Andorra and Holiday Inn Trnava, in Slovakia.

Retirement savings: 3,600,000/1,800,000 IHG Rewards points annually ($36,000/$18,000 in Ultimate Rewards points).

Club Carlson

Category 1 Club Carlson nights cost 9,000 Gold Points, or $1,800 in manufactured spend per night. At a $36 nightly imputed redemption value, our monthly rent will be a little over $1,000. Not as bad as Marriott, Hyatt, or IHG, but also not great.

The Park Inn by Radisson Budapest (where I have a reservation next June) has a great location, and I've enjoyed all the Park Inns I've stayed at so far. There are two Radisson Blu properties, the Radisson Blu Resort, El Quseir in Egypt and Radisson Blu Hotel, Mersin in Turkey. Both are great deals at $36 per night. I like the Country Inn & Suites By Carlson, San Jose, Costa Rica, since it includes breakfast, but it's not terribly close to downtown San Jose.

Retirement savings: 3,240,000 Gold Points annually ($12,960 in imputed redemption value).

Choice Privileges

Choice Privileges hotels start at 6,000 points, which can theoretically be earned for as little as 2,000 Ultimate Rewards points if you're able to transfer Amtrak Guest Rewards points to Choice Privileges. At $20 per night we can figure $600 in monthly rent, the second-lowest value so far, after Hilton HHonors. To get that value month after month, however, you'd need to first rail run your Amtrak elite status up to Select Executive status, which allows you to transfer an unlimited number of Amtrak Guest Rewards points to their hotel partners.

Choice Privileges doesn't share a consolidated list of their properties by point cost, so it takes a little bit of work on AwardMapper to find 6000-point properties.

In Sweden, the Quality Inn Hotel Prince Philip offers a free buffet breakfast, and $600 is a steal in famously-expensive Scandinavia. The Clarion Suites Roatan at Pineapple Villas seems like a lovely resort in Honduras, although close-in availability was spotty for the dates I checked. Personally, I'd probably splurge the extra $200 monthly and move into the Clarion Congress Hotel Prague, an 8,000-point property.

Retirement savings: 2,160,000 Choice Privileges points ($7,200 in Ultimate Rewards points, with Amtrak Select Executive status).

Conclusion

This was a fun exercise, but there are a few problems which make it impractical to permanently retire to hotels, as opposed to moving into one for a month or two. First, you face the problem of award availability: at chains that don't guarantee standard room availability, you might be stuck paying cash for a hotel room if award availability suddenly dries up. Second, over the longer term you face the risk of devaluations: properties themselves can move up or down in award categories and new categories can be introduced, but rewards programs also sometimes go through wholesale devaluations, for example shifting to a revenue-based redemption model that would leave you stuck with much less valuable points.

Still, if I ever need to spend a month in Krakow, I know where I'll be spending it!

Anatomy of an Award Trip: City of New Orleans

As teased in yesterday's housekeeping post, I'm headed to New Orleans for a week! Here's the scoop:

Getting there: a family bedroom on Amtrak's City of New Orleans

Amtrak operates a daily service between Chicago and New Orleans stopping in, among other places: Champaign-Urbana, IL, Carbondale, IL, Memphis, TN, and Jackson, MS.

Since both Chicago and New Orleans are in Amtrak's "Central Zone," a roomette award costs 15,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points while a bedroom award costs just 25,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points. Importantly, such awards include the fare for up to the maximum occupancy of the room. In other words, up to two people can travel in a roomette on a single, one-zone 15,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards award redemption.

Since my partner and I have already experienced the "roomette" (on the Empire Builder) and "bedroom" (on the Southwest Chief and Coast Starlight) room types, I decided to redeem my points for a "family bedroom." Here are a few key things to know about such redemptions:

• They cost the same number of Amtrak Guest Rewards points as a regular bedroom award;
• They include up to two adults and two children;
• They have windows facing out both sides of the train (roomettes and bedrooms are lined up along each side of the wagon, looking out one direction or the other);
• They do not have en-suite facilities. My understanding is that the family bedroom is on the same level of the wagon as the public showers, while bedrooms have private showers and toilets directly off the sleeping quarters.

Since the ride is just under 20 hours, my expectation is that the roomier accommodations and better views will make up for the lack of a private toilet and shower, but on a longer, cross-country trip that may become increasingly inconvenient.

Total cost: 25,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points (transferred instantly from Ultimate Rewards).
Total value: $637. Value per point: 2.55 cents.

Staying there: Club Carlson and Hilton HHonors

Since we'll be in New Orleans for 7 nights, there were a few decent options for hotel redemptions:

• There's a category 6 Marriott downtown, the AC Hotel New Orleans Bourbon/French Quarter Area, where I could have redeemed 230,000 Marriott Rewards points for a 7-night Hotel + Air package and received a rebate of up to 55,000 United Mileage Plus miles or, more realistically, 50,000 Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles. That would have involved transferring 180,000 Ultimate Rewards points, worth $1,800 in cash. Since 7 nights at a 4-star hotel downtown cost (very roughly) $1,300, even generously valuing the Alaska miles at 2 cents each I'd only be getting about 1.28 cents per transferred Ultimate Rewards point. I felt I could do better.
• There's a Club Carlson property downtown in the French Quarter, the Country Inn & Suites By Carlson, New Orleans French Quarter, LA. As a Category 5 property costing 44,000 Gold Points per night, I could theoretically book 7 nights for the price of 6, or 264,000 Gold Points. Using the same $1,300 valuation as above, that would yield 0.49 cents per Gold Points. Since the Club Carlson Business Rewards Visa earns 5 Gold Points per dollar spent, that would yield a return of 2.46% on the spend I manufacture with the card, which isn't terrible for non-bonused spend.
• There's also a category 7 Hilton property downtown, the Hilton New Orleans/St. Charles Avenue. It ordinarily costs 50,000 HHonors points per night, but due to weird Hilton premium award pricing is available for 44,519 HHonors points during our stay in New Orleans. The wrinkle is that as an HHonors elite, I can book 5 nights for the price of 4, or 200,000 HHonors points, but unfortunately that benefit only applies to standard room awards, not premium room awards, which is where "weird" award pricing comes into play! Nonetheless, 280,000 HHonors points for a 7-night stay, $1,300 stay would yield 0.46 cents per HHonors point, or a 2.79% return on gas station and grocery store spend with my American Express HHonors Surpass card.

Ultimately, I split the difference: since the last night is free on all Club Carlson award reservations separated by at least one day, I booked our first two and last two nights in New Orleans at the Country Inn & Suites, and the middle three nights at the Hilton New Orleans/St. Charles Avenue, taking advantage of "weird" premium award pricing. In total, I paid 88,000 Club Carlson Gold Points for four nights (0.84 cents per Gold Point at $185 per night) and 133,557 HHonors points for three nights (0.42 cents per HHonors point at $185 per night).

However, if standard rooms open up for five consecutive nights at the Hilton, I'll cancel the first or last Club Carlson redemption and rebook using 200,000 HHonors points instead, saving the Gold Points for another day.

Getting back: US Bank Flexpoints for Delta first class (credited to Alaska)

For our return, I noticed that Delta was selling first class seats on the perfect itinerary home for just a hair under $400: $392.10, to be precise. Since I'm sitting on a constantly-growing stash of US Bank Flexpoints, it was a no-brainer to book us in paid first class for 20,000 Flexpoints per ticket. I'll credit the flights to Alaska, which will net me 3,922 Mileage Plan miles and get me 2,139 elite-qualifying miles closer to MVP status for next year.

Total cost: 40,000 Flexpoints.
Total value: $784.20. Value per point: 1.96 cents.

Conclusion

We're thrilled to be headed back to New Orleans, and I'm excited to try out a new Amtrak accommodation type on a new route. So until next week, I'll leave you with this:

Have a great weekend!

Is the Marriott Rewards Premier Visa free night certificate worthless?

It's perfectly natural, when you're deeply involved in a hobby like travel hacking, to develop some intuitions that guide your decision making, shortcuts that let you quickly decide whether a given award redemption actually saves you money compared to other obvious alternatives.

One thing I love to do here on the blog is to dig into those intuitions and make sure the numbers behind them really do make sense.

Since this week I've been hammering on the Chase IHG Rewards Club and Hyatt Gold Passport co-branded credit cards, and the value of their annual free night certificates, I thought I'd finish out the week discussing a card I actually have (against my better judgment): the Chase Marriott Rewards Premier Visa card.

The card has an $85 annual fee, and each year cardholders receive one free night certificate, valid at Marriott properties in Category 5 and below. The certificate can be redeemed for any room that has standard award availability.

What I want to know isn't whether the free night certificate is worth $85, but rather whether it's worth anything at all. That is to say, based on the actual distribution of hotels within Marriott's reward categories, can I consistently expect to redeem my free night certificate at properties I actually want to stay at?

The release of Marriott's 2015 hotel category adjustments provides a good occasion to apply some data to this question.

Methodology

I travel primarily for leisure, primarily to cities, and want to stay as close to those cities' downtowns as possible. Marriott has a huge footprint of downtown hotels in cities around the world, so the question is how many of those hotels will be in Category 5 or below for reservations made after March 19, 2015.

Marriott Rewards divides the globe into 11 regions. For each region, I picked the 5 largest cities by population, and simply noted whether there was a single downtown hotel in Category 5 or below.

Results

This is the answer to a very specific question: how many of the top five cities by population in each Marriott region have a downtown Category 5 or lower property? In two cases, the definition of "downtown" is clearly disputable, which earned Seoul and Paris 0.5 points each.

• United States: 1/5 (Houston)
• Africa: 2/5 (Cairo and Alexandria)
• Asia: 3.5/5 (Shanghai, Karachi, and Beijing. Seoul is a megalopolis which earns the Courtyard Seoul Times Square half a point)
• Australia and Pacific Islands: 0/5
• Canada: 3/5 (Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa)
• Caribbean: 1/5 (Santo Domingo)
• Central America: 1/5 (Tegucigalpa)
• Europe: 1.5/5 (Madrid. Paris is a megalopolis which earns the easily accessible Category 4 and 5 properties half a point)
• Mexico: 2/5 (Mexico City and Puebla)
• Middle East: 2/5 (Riyadh and Ankara)
• South America: 1/5 (Bogota)

Of 11 regions, and 5 cities per region, only 18 have Category 1-5 Marriott Rewards properties, or roughly 33%.

On the one hand, that's preposterously low to speculatively pay $85 on the off chance that a free night certificate in such a city will prove valuable.

On the other hand, if one of those cities is one you regularly need to stay at, you're in luck: the Chase Marriott Rewards Premier card will give you a free night there.

Marriott rollover nights and the hunt for Gold elite status

Last October I wrote a couple of posts about an idea I had to use Marriott rollover nights in order to earn elite status once every two years. The technique takes advantage of the principle that elite status is valid for the remainder of the year in which it's earned, plus the entire following elite membership year (which may even reach into the year after that, depending on the loyalty program).

In other words, if you were somehow able to earn elite status on January 1st, you would have that status for two full calendar years.

Marriott Rewards isn't a program I find particularly lucrative for my own travel, which is 100% leisure, but I know many business travelers love their essentially universal footprint and elite recognition.

I love digging into the nitty-gritty of loyalty programs, so I decided I'd give this technique a try to see how it works in practice. 

Elite-qualifying night breakdown

When you log into your Marriott Rewards account, you can click on your "Account Overview" and see the breakdown of all your elite-qualifying nights so far this year. It looks like this:

View fullsize

My Chase Marriott Rewards Premier card has an anniversary date in April, when 15 additional "Rewards Credit Card" nights will post to my account, bringing my "2015 Total" to 34. At that point, I'll need 16 additional elite-qualifying nights, or $48,000 in spend on my Premier card, in order to reach Gold elite status with Marriott Rewards. At that point I'll have exactly 50 elite-qualifying nights, and in January 2016 my total will reset to 0, since I won't have any 2015 rollover nights.

Rollover nights don't roll over!

What I didn't appreciate, Marriott Rewards not being one of my primary or even secondary loyalty programs, is that elite-qualifying nights only roll over one time.

At the end of 2014, I had 42 elite-qualifying nights: 8 paid nights, the 15 bonus nights I receive from my credit card every April, and 4 nights I'd earned through spend on the Premier card, plus 15 nights I rolled over from 2013. I assumed that I would roll over all 32 nights in excess of the 10 elite-qualifying nights required for Silver elite status.

But instead, only 17 nights rolled over: my 2013 rollover nights simply vanished.

Does it matter?

When I originally hatched this elite-qualification scheme, it was in the form of a question: if the Marriott Rewards Premier credit card earns 15 bonus nights per year, and only 10 are required for Silver status, doesn't that mean the 5 rollover nights will accumulate so that every 8 years cardholders will suddenly receive Gold elite status?

The answer to that question is "no:" each year, 5 rollover nights will "expire" and 5 rollover nights will be added, leaving the cardholder running in place towards Gold status.

On the other hand, this has no effect on the strategy of earning Gold elite status every two years using rollover nights.

• In year 1, receive 15 annual bonus nights and manufacture $45,000 in spend to end the year with 30 elite-qualifying nights;
• In year 2, receive 15 annual bonus nights and roll over 20 nights;
• Also in year 2, manufacture $45,000 in spend to reach Gold elite status;
• In year 3, receive 15 annual bonus nights and manufacture $45,000 in spend to end the year with 30 elite-qualifying nights;
• In year 4, receive 15 bonus nights and roll over 20 elite-qualifying nights;
• Also in year 4, manufacture $45,000 in spend to end the year with 50 elite-qualifying nights.

Using this technique, you'd only be without Gold elite status in "even" years, and only until you met that year's $45,000 spending goal.

Is it worth it?

Absolutely not.

Remember, when you manufacture spend on any credit card that earns just 1 mile or point per dollar, as the Marriott Rewards Premier card does, you're buying those points at 2 cents each, since you could put the same spend on a 2% cash back credit card. That means besides the Marriott Rewards Premier card's $85 annual fee, you'd also be foregoing at least $900 per year in exchange for Gold Elite status.

In fairness, you would also receive 45,000 Marriott Rewards points for your purchases, which are worth perhaps $450, if you're consistently strategic in your redemptions.

Who might seek Gold status in this way?

Everything I've said so far implies you never stay at Marriott properties, which would generally make you a poor candidate for Marriott Rewards Gold status! This strategy is vastly more realistic for members who actually have paid elite-qualifying nights at Marriott properties.

Since Marriott allows elite members to renew Gold elite status each year by simply paying 25,000 Marriott Rewards points, which can be transferred in from Chase Ultimate Rewards, the absolute most money you should be willing to spend pursuing Gold status on an annual basis is $250 (the cash value of the transferred Ultimate Rewards points).

A rough guideline that $3,000 spent on the Marriott Rewards Premier card earns $30 in points and costs $60 in foregone cash back would imply that you should be willing to manufacture no more than $25,000 per year on the Premier card pursuing Gold elite status. That would get you to 23 elite-qualifying nights annually (15 annual nights plus 8 nights earned through spend).

In other words, since Gold elite status requires 50 elite-qualifying nights, this strategy might be worth pursuing if you have 27 or more paid nights per year. In that case, manufacturing just $24,000 per year on the Premier card would earn you the marginal elite-qualifying nights you need to reach Gold status.

Update: selling Marriott gift cards to Cardpool

Last month I wrote about a nice opportunity to score Marriott stays on the cheap or make a quick buck buying Marriott gift cards for 25% off and then reselling them at 92% of their face value.

First the good news: as expected, Marriott gift card purchases of $200 or more made at Marriott properties (not their multitude of other brands) counted towards the American Express Sync offer, and I received $50 statement credits on all my cards within a day or two.

However, you may remember that my plan was to resell those gift cards, since I so rarely pay for hotel stays that it would take me years to spend $800 at Marriott properties. Consequently, last week I went to sell a single Marriott gift card to Cardpool, and immediately ran into a problem: when submitting a card's details, Cardpool requires a 15-digit gift card number. But the cards I bought have 20-digit gift card number, plus 4-digit PIN's! Fearing the worst, I wrote to Cardpool asking if they only purchased 15-digit gift cards, and whether there was a workaround.

There was. This afternoon, Cardpool wrote me back, explaining:

"Simple [sic] enter the 15 digits for the gift card number and input the remaining number + the PIN number as PIN number or CID."

So there you have it: if you're reselling a 20-digit Marriott gift card to Card Pool, enter the first 15 exposed digits as the card number, and the remaining digits plus the PIN in the second required field.

Oh, and if you're reselling to Cardpool, be sure to click through TopCashBack in order to earn an additional 4% of the card's face value in cash back.

Quick hit: free money from American Express and Marriott Hotels

I don't write about (or take advantage of) deals like this very often anymore, but this one is easy enough to be worth a quick mention.

If you registered in time for the current American Express "Offer For You" at Marriott Hotels, you can get a $50 statement credit when you make a single purchase of $200 or more at Marriott Hotels (excluding all their other brands: "The Ritz-Carlton®, EDITION®, AC Hotels by Marriott®, Autograph Collection®, JW Marriott®, Renaissance Hotels®, MOXY(TM) Hotels, Courtyard®, SpringHill Suites by Marriott®, Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott®, Protea Hotels(TM), Residence Inn by Marriott®, TownePlace Suites by Marriott®, Marriott Executive Apartments®, Gaylord Hotels® and Marriott Vacation Club®").

If you have a local Marriott Hotel (or if you'll be traveling near one before December 31, 2014) you should be able to buy a $200 Marriott gift card at the reception desk. Then use TopCashBack to click through to Cardpool.com and earn an additional $8 per $200 card, on top of the $176 Cardpool will mail you as a check. Earn $34 profit per registered American Express card (I have 5).

Cautious as I am, I'll be buying one $200 gift card first to make sure the statement credit posts properly. If it doesn't, I do have an upcoming Marriott stay which I can pay for with the gift card, rather than the points I was planning to use. That's less than ideal, but since Marriott Rewards points are seldom worth even a cent each on award night redemptions, I don't consider it a great sacrifice given the potential upside of the experiment.

Naturally, I'll report back once my statement credit posts (or doesn't).