How might the World of Hyatt-Oasis partnership work?

Via Travel with Grant, I saw the other day that World of Hyatt is planning to partner with a luxury home rental company called Oasis (and that you can use discount code "UnboundxHyatt" for a $100 discount if you book before October 31). Apparently at some point in the near future you'll be able to earn and redeem World of Hyatt points on these stays.

When I first saw this tie-up described, I thought there was no way it could possibly work. After doing a bit of digging, I've actually come around to the idea that it's possible, if well-executed, for the partnership to make sense for customers.

Let's take a look.

World of Hyatt points are very valuable because of the low maximum points redemption

Setting aside for the moment the value of the World of Hyatt program (it's comparable to the other major programs for paid stays, contingent on your elite status and credit card) and focusing on the value of World of Hyatt points, you see that World of Hyatt points are uniquely valuable because of the very low maximum number of points you need to redeem: the most expensive Park Hyatt properties in the world cost no more than 30,000 World of Hyatt points.

Since Chase Ultimate Rewards points can be transferred to World of Hyatt, that puts a hard cap of $300 per night in cash value on the cost of your hotel stays in destinations with Hyatt properties, subject of course to award availability.

Across all redemptions Hyatt presumably turns a profit

While an award redemption during a particularly busy or expensive weekend may require World of Hyatt to pay properties close to retail, most of the time Hyatt pays just a small fraction of the retail cost of your stay (properties sometimes accidentally print on your folio the amount they're paid by Hyatt so it's worth taking a look at your folio on award stays if you're interested).

I don't have any special insight into the economics behind this process, but across all award stays I think it's safe to assume Hyatt makes a modest profit: Chase pays them more for World of Hyatt points than Hyatt pays out on award stays, and Hyatt properties pay more in licensing fees than they get paid for award redemptions (hopefully making up the difference by being able to charge more and attracting customers loyal to the program).

How could World of Hyatt redemptions work with Oasis?

I did some clicking around Oasis to get a feel for the prices these properties typically charge, and they span a pretty wide range. I searched for the 6 US cities on Oasis, for a 3-night weekend stay in November. Here are the rates I found:

• In Austin, prices range from $110 for a one-bedroom to $1,200 for a 4-bedroom;
• In New York City, from $222 for a one-bedroom to $1,350 for a 5-bedroom;
• In Chicago, from $140 for a one-bedroom to $2,160 for a 5-bedroom;
• In Los Angeles, from $144 for a studio to $6,000 for a 6-bedroom;
• In San Francisco, from $152 for a one-bedroom to $519 for a 2-bedroom;
• In Miami, from $180 for a one-bedroom to $4,995 for a 7-bedroom.

To synthesize these rates, in the US market Oasis charges between $110 and $222 per bedroom on the low end, and between $259 and $713 per bedroom on the high end.

My mistake when I first glanced at the Oasis website was to think that there's no way Hyatt could square the circle of paying $4,995 per night to an apartment's owner while charging a low enough number of World of Hyatt points to make the redemption reasonable to their members (who only pay 30,000 points at the most luxurious properties in the Hyatt portfolio, remember).

The answer, of course, is that they'll charge per bedroom per night, as Wyndham Rewards currently does for redemptions at their vacation properties.

If I had to guess I'd say redemptions will start at 12,000 or 15,000 points for the cheapest apartments, and top out at 30,000 points for the most expensive, on a per-bedroom, per-night basis. Redeeming 210,000 World of Hyatt points per night for a 7-bedroom house in Miami obviously isn't something you'd do for a weekend getaway, but for a wedding, bachelor party, or other special occasion it would offer 2 cents per point compared to paying cash. There's no question there would be some takers at that rate (and since each property can only accommodate one reservation per night you only need to book a maximum of 365 nights per year).

I could see this working for family trips

Right now Oasis doesn't have very many participating cities or properties, but presumably they're intent on rapid expansion to new cities and signing on more properties within their existing footprint. Once World of Hyatt redemptions are live, we'll see what kind of value redemptions ultimately offer. The obvious value of these redemptions will be for folks traveling as a family who want additional living, kitchen, and dining space compared to what they'd get at a hotel.

If the alternative is booking multiple hotel rooms and eating out for every meal, or having to spend a lot of time driving between your hotel and your destination, then being able to stay in a single unit, in a good location, with a kitchen and other amenities could be very valuable.

The devil will be in the details

Obviously since the partnership hasn't launched yet, it's impossible to say whether it will "really" be a good deal or a bad deal. There are a lot of ways it could go wrong:

• World of Hyatt awards include all taxes and fees. Will taxes and fees be included on Oasis awards? If not, they'll become a significant co-pay on award stays, since in addition to taxes Oasis reservations also charge a cleaning fee.
• Will award availability match paid stay availability? Most (all?) Oasis properties have minimum stay requirements, but will they be longer for award stays than for paid stays? Will there be blackout dates for award stays, or will you be able to book with points any nights available with cash?
• Will award rates be too high? You can imagine Hyatt investing nothing in this partnership and simply allowing you to redeem World of Hyatt points for one cent each towards Oasis stays. That's an extreme case, but if they set redemption rates too high on a per-bedroom, per-night basis, the whole thing will be a meaningless embarrassment.

Conclusion

While I doubt I'll ever book an Oasis stay with World of Hyatt points, over the course of writing this post I slowly came around to the idea that, if well-executed, the Hyatt-Oasis partnership might provide good value to families under certain circumstances.

But until redemption details are announced, all we can do is speculate.

How I would requalify for World of Hyatt Globalist status

[edit 8/30/17: corrected to reflect that Globalists qualifying under this promotion will not receive a Category 1-7 free night certificate; only 60-night Globalists receive free night certificates] 

This is my second and last year of top-tier Hyatt elite status. I matched to Diamond status during their short-lived offer when the Starwood-Marriott merger was announced, then requalified as a World of Hyatt Globalist through credit card spend and a few mattress runs at a local property.

This year, I have five elite-qualifying nights so far, which were credited to my account in error due to meeting my annual credit card spend threshold relatively late last year.

Like other credit cardholders, I received an e-mailed offer to renew my Globalist status by staying 20 paid nights between September 1 and December 30, 2017.

I'm not going to do this, but 20 paid stays is a pretty easy threshold to meet. Here's how I would meet it, if I were so inclined.

Swap out award nights for Points + Cash nights

If you value World of Hyatt points at 1 cent each (their cash value if transferred from Chase Ultimate Rewards), then at most low- and mid-tier properties you can pay a nominal sum to turn non-elite-qualifying nights into elite-qualifying ones, subject to Points + Cash availability. Ignoring taxes, the marginal amount paid on Points + Cash nights is:

• Category 1: $21.75 ($25 less 325 points earned on the $50 cash component);
• Category 2: $11.42;
• Category 3: $10.12;
• Category 4: $18.50;
• Category 5: $16.87;
• Category 6: $15.25;
• Category 7: $130.50 (yes, that's a staggering jump; don't do this at Category 7 properties!).

If you are traveling between September 1 and September 5, you'll also receive a 10% rebate on the points portion of your stay (if you registered for that promotion in time).

Book rooms for others

We all have people in our lives who aren't travel hackers, but still travel with some frequency.

If you know a traveler who is planning to pay cash for a hotel room in a city with Hyatt properties, you're virtually certain to save them money by booking their reservation using your World of Hyatt points and their cash. They can pay you for the points portion of the reservation and pay the hotel the cash portion directly. By staying on your Globalist reservation, they'll also enjoy breakfast and club access at applicable properties.

Be sure that you're not making a "Guest of Honor" reservation. Instead, book a room in your own name and then add the other person to the reservation so they can check in (and pay).

I divide the world of travel not into paid reservations and points reservations, but rather reimbursed travel and non-reimbursed travel. The above works best if you're booking for someone with unreimbursed travel, since you can save them money directly by reducing their out-of-pocket travel expenses.

In the case of a reimbursed business traveler, the logic of the situation is reversed. You'd like someone whose employer or sponsor is paying for their hotel room to forego earning points and status in their own account and instead credit the paid nights to your account. If the person doesn't care about points or status, they may be willing to do this simply as a favor, or in exchange for breakfast and club access. If they're a bit more mercenary, they may ask you to pay them for the privilege.

As indicated above, it seems that $10-$20 per night is a reasonable range to pay for an elite-qualifying night, which gives a total breakeven value for 20 nights of $200-$400. That doesn't strike me as a totally unreasonable amount to pay if you can take aggressive advantage of Globalist late check-out, suite upgrade awards, waived resort fees, and free breakfast.

Mattress Run

Of course the last refuge of a scoundrel is the mattress run. Depending on where you live, you may have access to cheap weekend nights or Points + Cash reservations at nearby properties. While you'd be nuts to mattress run all the way to Globalist status, the fewer nights left in your challenge the more enticing it may be. If you can naturally accumulate 18 nights before December 30, what's a few hundred dollars between friends for the remaining two nights?

Conclusion

Twenty nights in four months is an utterly reasonable threshold to earn top-tier status with Hyatt, and I expect this promotion to be quite successful at filling up Hyatt's top-tier elite ranks. While I won't personally be putting any effort into requalifying, if you do I hope some of the ideas above will make your requalification as painless — and cheap — as possible.

Are your unredeemed points killing your game?

I haven't written about this lately, so hopefully my long-time readers will indulge me as I dive back into what I find is one of the most under-appreciated risks of travel hacking: the risk of unredeemed points.

Plenty of attention is paid to devaluation risk, which is what you encounter when it takes you too long to earn the points you need for the trip you want to take, and the amount you earn in anticipation of a redemption ends up not being sufficient. This risk does not concern me in the least. Earning more points is the natural condition of the travel hacker, so who cares if every few years you need to pack on a few tens of thousands of points in order to secure the redemption of your dreams?

No, the real risk faced by travel hackers every day isn't earning too few points — it's earning too many points, and finding them unredeemable or redeemable only at much lower value than the redemption they were earned in anticipation of.

It turns out flying to Munich is very cheap

The occasion for me thinking about this subject is my partner's planned intercontinental family reunion in Germany this year, which I figured was the perfect opportunity to prove the value of all those trips to Walmart: with all the transatlantic Star Alliance traffic, it should be a piece of cake to find some premium cabin award space so we can travel there in style and comfort. Since I've got way more Ultimate Rewards points than I'm comfortable with, a quick transfer to United would yield a high-value redemption and take a weight off my mind.

Unfortunately, flying to Munich is very cheap. We can fly there and back, nonstop, on the day of our choosing for $775. That's handily under the $800 US Bank Flexperks redemption threshold, so I can book a nonstop ticket for $400 in Flexpoints.

Meanwhile, two roundtrip award tickets in Lufthansa's business class would cost 280,000 Mileage Plus miles and $212 in taxes and fees, or $1,506 per ticket valuing Ultimate Rewards points at their cash value of 1 cent each.

$1,106 is a lot of money, and $2,212 is even more money, so I'm not going to pay that much to upgrade us to business class on a couple of 8-10 hour flights.

What do you do when this happens over and over again?

There are two potentially competing forces at work here: the drive to earn the most valuable points possible and the drive to redeem the right points for each individual redemption. I say "potentially" competing because in many — hopefully most — cases you'll find they are not: if you primarily travel to cities with Hyatt locations that meet your needs, you'll almost invariably find that cheaply-earned Ultimate Rewards points transferred to Hyatt are one of the best values available.

For example (just because I like examples), in Seattle a night at the Hyatt at Olive 8 costs 15,000 World of Hyatt points ($3,000 in office supply store spend with a Chase Ink Plus) while the Hilton Seattle may cost 70,000 Honors points ($11,667 in bonused spend on a Surpass American Express).

But what happens when "high-value" redemptions like the Lufthansa business award I described above are ruled out over and over again by far cheaper paid tickets booked using fixed-value currencies like Flexpoints?

I stay at a lot of Hyatt properties, and I book them for friends and family every chance I get, and I still have enough World of Hyatt and Ultimate Rewards points for 10 nights at a Category 7 property, or 64(!) nights at a Category 1 property. Having too many points to redeem doesn't feel as acutely painful as having too few points to redeem, but both situations send the same signal: that my system is out of of balance.

I think you should redeem your points for cash, but you won't (and neither will I)

The funniest thing I see on Twitter and in the miles and points blogosphere is people bragging about their points balances, as if having a high balance was a point of pride, rather than an admission of failure.

To state what should be obvious, the best number of miles and points to have in all your accounts is zero: the perfect calibration of your earning and burning activity would leave all of your accounts empty virtually all the time, with all of your earning activity purposefully directed towards particular planned redemptions.

That's impossible, both because the world isn't so tidy and because humans are blessed with foresight: odd numbers of points accumulate here and there as various promotions are triggered, and points are earned in small amounts in anticipation of large future redemptions. Such is life.

But the necessity of living in the world as it actually confronts us is sometimes converted into the false belief that high balances are good in their own right, because they give you "flexibility" for future redemptions or "insurance" against a particular deal or earning opportunity dying.

Conclusion

I understand that one subset of travel hackers is wealthy people who use miles and points as a kind of stunt to save money on the kinds of luxury vacations they'd still take if the game didn't exist.

Above I compared a business class award flight on Lufthansa to a paid economy class flight on United. However, if your alternative to each redemption were payment in cash, the comparison would look very different: the $775 United flight gets you about two cents per point on a Flexperks redemption, while the $1,506 Lufthansa flight gets you over 4 cents per point (for a ticket that would otherwise cost $6,143). There you'd be comparing a "good," or even "great," Ultimate Rewards redemption against a "standard" Flexperks redemption, and you wouldn't be wasting $1,106, but rather saving $4,637 per ticket!

That is, needless to say, not my perspective.

My favorite credit card auxiliary benefits, ranked

I've been thinking lately about the Bank of America Alaska Airlines credit card, since it has a somewhat higher signup bonus than usual, at 30,000 Mileage Plan miles, a $100 statement credit, and a taxes-and-fees-only companion ticket for the first year, instead of the usual $99-plus-taxes-and-fees offer.

Since Alaska companion tickets can be used on any economy fare, and Mileage Plan has last-seat award availability, this is basically a signup bonus of between 1.5 and 2 roundtrips on Alaska or Virgin America, depending on whether you can find low-level award space or have to redeem all 30,000 Mileage Plan miles for a one-way (or possibly a few more if you're flying to Hawaii or Mexico).

Since Bank of America lets you apply for and receive the same card and signup bonus multiple times, it used to be popular to apply for a new Alaska Airlines card every 91 days and then request product changes to the Better Balance Rewards card, which can be automated to spin off $30 every quarter in cash back. I believe that product change is no longer available as the Better Balance Rewards card isn't being offered to new customers, but a product change from a card with a good signup bonus is still likely the best way to get a card like the BankAmericard Travel Rewards card, which only has a standard signup bonus of 20,000 points.

Since ranking stuff is fun, here are a few of my other favorite credit card auxiliary benefits, ranked.

5. Centurion Lounge access

This is technically not one of my favorite auxiliary benefits since I don't have an American Express Platinum or Business Platinum card, but it's one of my favorite auxiliary benefits for other people to have so they can guest me into the lounges.

I've invited subscribers to join me at meetups in the Centurion lounges in Las Vegas, New York La Guardia, and Dallas/Fort Worth, and as someone who would never pay for lounge access I am happy to say they really are terrific lounges. Great food, cocktails, views, seating, and wi-fi. If I lived in or regularly traveled through cities with Centurion Lounges I could certainly see applying for a Business Platinum card. I don't, so I won't, but this benefit still sneaks into the top 5.

4. America Express Delta Platinum and Reserve companion tickets

I don't think the Delta companion tickets, which can both be redeemed for tickets in certain cheap domestic economy fare buckets, and in the case of the Reserve companion ticket in first class, are as valuable as people claim. They essentially function as a not-quite-50% discount on economy tickets, if you are willing to be flexible with your routing and plan far enough in advance, because you still have to pay taxes and fees on the second ticket.

The best value of the companion tickets, of course, is to simply sell them to someone who isn't a travel hacker. That's an easy way to bring down the out-of-pocket cost of your annual fee, if you're primarily interested in the cards in order to earn bonus SkyMiles and waive the Medallion Qualifying Dollar requirements for status.

Finally, Frequent Miler has written about the opportunity to combine Delta companion tickets and the American Express Business Platinum card's 35% Membership Rewards point rebate. Apparently Membership Rewards points can be redeemed against purchases made with the Business Platinum card outside the American Express Travel booking portal. It does require a phone call and is apparently up to the discretion of the phone agent, and I've never tried it, so don't take my word for it. To give a simple example, two $500 tickets with $11.20 in taxes and fees would cost a total of $511.20 if booked with a Delta companion ticket. Since you can pay for Delta companion tickets with any American Express card, you'd then put the charge on your Business Platinum card. Calling into Membership Rewards, you'd redeem 51,120 Membership Rewards points, and eventually receive a rebate of 35% of those points, or 17,892. That would give you a total out-of-pocket cost of 33,228 Membership Rewards points for $1,000 in flights, or 3 cents per Membership Rewards point.

Be careful to note the reason this works: you can't pay for Delta companion tickets with any card that is not an American Express card. If you could, you'd be better off paying with a travel rewards card that you manufacture cheap spend on, or a card that offers free trip delay insurance. But since you have to choose an American Express card, the Business Platinum is the card that lets you leverage the value of your Membership Rewards points against the already-discounted cost of the companion ticket.

3. Trip Delay insurance

Speaking of trip delay insurance, after my experience getting stranded by United in Denver, I've come around to the idea. I'd never pay for it separately, and I probably wouldn't keep a card just because it offers trip delay insurance, but if you already carry a card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Barclaycard Arrival+, then you should be booking as many of your flights with it as possible.

That won't always be possible, for example if you're booking tickets using US Bank Flexpoints or Chase Ultimate Rewards points, but for tickets you book with cash, or award tickets that give you a choice of cards to pay with — use the right card! It only takes one claim every few years to pay for many years of $89 or $95 annual fees.

2. Hilton Honors Gold (Diamond) status

Hilton Gold status is notoriously easy to earn, and Hilton Diamond status is notoriously worth little above and beyond the benefits of Gold. Nonetheless, no matter how easy it is to earn, you still want to earn it somehow if Hilton is going to be one of your primary loyalty programs. Personally I carry the American Express Hilton Honors Surpass card, which gives automatic Gold status and Diamond status when you spend $40,000 on the card, although the Citi Hilton Honors Reserve card has the same status earning structure (but earns just 5 Honors points per dollar spent at grocery stores).

1. Hyatt annual free night certificate

The annual free night certificate earned by the Chase Hyatt credit card is the best credit card free night certificate for a few reasons:

• Unlike the Citi Hilton Honors Reserve free night certificate, it can be used on any day, not just on weekends, and doesn't have a $10,000 spending requirement, allowing that spend to be put on more lucrative credit cards.
• Unlike the Chase IHG Rewards Club free night certificate, the Hyatt certificate can be combined with valuable World of Hyatt points instead of worthless IHG Rewards Club points. To illustrate this point, a 3-night stay at a top-tier IHG Rewards Club property like the InterContinental Sydney would require the transfer of 120,000 Ultimate Rewards points to IHG Rewards Club, plus the use of an annual free night certificate. A 3-night stay at a top-tier Hyatt property requires just 90,000 Ultimate Rewards points — no certificate required! The corollary of that is the ability to save valuable World of Hyatt points at lower-tier properties by swapping in the free Category 1-4 certificate. The credit card's $75 annual fee buys you a free night certificate worth between $50 and $150 in Ultimate Rewards points.
• Unlike the Chase Marriott Rewards Premier free night certificate, the Hyatt free night certificate can be used at properties you actually want to stay at. The Marriott Rewards Premier certificate can be used at properties up to Category 5, which would cost 25,000 Marriott Rewards points, if you could find one to stay at. But while Marriott has so totally gutted their categories that there's no reason to count on finding a Category 5 property that's worth an $85 annual fee, there are still plentiful Category 4 Hyatt properties where paying a $75 annual fee will get you a reasonable discount.

Conclusion

Naturally, your ranking should differ based on your own travel needs:

• if you travel often enough that you are desperate for lounge access, the premium airline credit cards will offer it;
• likewise Hawaiian travelers may get value from the Barclaycard Hawaiian Airlines credit card's companion ticket;
• and if you stay at a lot of Sheratons the American Express Starwood Preferred Guest Business card gives Sheraton Club Lounge access (I've never stayed at a Sheraton or visited a Sheraton Club Lounge but I'm sure they're nice).

But for my own travel needs, these are the five benefits I value the most.

Let's talk about the Hyatt signup bonus change

As I first saw on Wednesday afternoon via Charles Barkowski's Running With Miles, but which you can now read about everywhere fine affiliate links are sold, starting June 29, 2017, the Chase Hyatt credit card will apparently come with a signup bonus not of 2 free nights at any Hyatt in the world, but rather 40,000 World of Hyatt bonus points.

This is being treated in most corners of the blogosphere as a simple question of whether 40,000 World of Hyatt points are worth "more" or "less" than 2 free nights, which leads to the simple answer that the new signup bonus is worth "less" if you were planning to redeem your 2 free nights at properties that cost more than 20,000 points per nights (category 6 and 7 World of Hyatt properties), and they're worth "more" if you were planning to redeem your 2 free nights at properties that cost 20,000 or fewer points per night (since you would have points left over).

That's fine, as far as it goes. What this changeover does give me the occasion to mention is my general preference for points over free night certificates. I already have a Hyatt credit card, but for people considering whether to apply before or after the changeover, here's my logic.

There are three possible situations in which you might redeem Hyatt free night certificates, good at any Hyatt in the world:

• A stay in a city with only a category 6 or 7 property. If you're flying into Milan for two nights, you can redeem your two free night certificates for two nights at the Park Hyatt Milan, which retail for hilariously large sums, and are worth $300 per night in transferred Ultimate Rewards points. Here, your two free night certificates are worth $600, the value of the Ultimate Rewards points you don't have to transfer to World of Hyatt. This is a straightforward savings of $200 compared to the 40,000 World of Hyatt points available under the new offer. The same logic applies to Hyatt's luxury resort in the Maldives. If you're going anyway, you should pay less, rather than more, for your stay.
• A stay in a city with properties in categories 6, 7 and below. Take a destination like Paris, home of the notorious Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome, a category 7 property. Paris is also the home of, a few blocks away, the Hôtel du Louvre-Paris, a category 5 property. If you are staying for exactly two nights, then you are perfectly justified in preferring two nights at the category 7 property over the same two nights at a category 5 property. But what happens on the third night? The Park Hyatt Paris-Vendome costs an additional 30,000 World of Hyatt points, while the Hôtel du Louvre costs just 20,000 additional points. On longer stays, choosing to redeem your free night certificates for "maximum value" costs an additional 10,000 points per night, unless you're interested in moving between hotels during your stay.
• A stay in a city with properties only in categories 1-4. Here the advantage of the 40,000-point signup offer is obvious: in categories 1-4, 40,000 points go further than 2 free night certificates do. Seattle is an example of a city with a slew of downtown Hyatt properties, all of which cost less than 20,000 points per night. If that's where your next trip is planned, you'll be better off with the new signup bonus rather than sitting on free night certificates waiting for the "perfect" high-value redemption.

I don't have anything against luxury travel, if that's what you're interested in, and the current two-free-night offer is worth up to 20,000 more World of Hyatt points than the upcoming 40,000-point offer for travel to the most expensive Hyatt properties.

But it's also worth up to 30,000 points less, if you tend to redeem your Hyatt points at category 1 properties that cost just 5,000 points per night.

If you trade 8 nights at a category 1 property for 8 nights at a category 7 property (with two nights free), you'll find yourself spending 180,000 World of Hyatt points or tens of thousands of dollars in cash.

Call that an extreme example if you like, but I've always found spending money is damned strange way to save money.

Hyatt takes suite upgrade awards seriously. Be sure to use them!

On my recent trip to Lexington, Kentucky, I stayed at my favorite downtown hotel, the Hyatt Regency Lexington. It's got a great central location and a decent restaurant downstairs where Hyatt Globalists can take their free breakfast, either from the buffet or off the menu.

Since award stays are now eligible for suite upgrade awards, I called Hyatt as soon as mine posted on March 1 to upgrade my room to a "Junior Suite." The upgrade was confirmed and the suite upgrade award was deducted from my account.

Now, I wasn't traveling with my extended family — I wasn't traveling with my family at all! But I was pretty excited about finally being able to stay in a suite at this property which I've stayed at umpteen times before, so I was naturally disappointed when I checked into my room and discovered it was...a standard room.

Round 1: Hyatt Twitter customer service

My friend and I were anxious to go out that evening so I sent a direct message to Hyatt's Twitter account explaining the situation. Their first reply was:

"I'm very sorry to hear that you did not get the suite that we confirmed with the front desk prior to your arrival. I attempted to call the front desk to assist with the situation, and was told that there is not a manager on duty to assist with the situation, and was unable to garner assistance from the front desk associate. I am emailing the hotel's executive management team to have them assist with the situation directly, and they should reach out to you tomorrow to assist with the situation."

I asked if they could refund the suite upgrade award, and they replied:

"At this time, we are unable to return the suite upgrade to your account, as we sincerely hope the hotel will be able to rectify the situation, and get you into your suite as soon as possible. If, in the course of correcting the situation, the hotel feels that it is best to return the award to your account, they will contact us directly, and we will return the award to your account."

Round 2: Hotel customer service

The next day at brunch I received a call from the Hyatt Regency's general manager. He apologized profusely, explaining that I hadn't received a suite because my reservation "had a lot of touches" from Hyatt central booking. He offered me two options:

1. he could move me to a suite for the remaining 3 nights of my reservation;
2. or he could refund me the entire points cost of my reservation (32,000 points) and give me a $50 credit in the hotel's restaurant.

After about 2 seconds of deliberation I chose the second option. For your future reference, I only used about $46 of the $50 credit and the remaining $4 was refunded to the credit card I had provided on check-in.

Round 3: Hotel follow-up

After checking out, I watchfully waited to see if the promised 32,000-point refund would post automatically. Once I saw it still hadn't after a few days, I called the hotel, and the evening manager transferred me to the general manager's voicemail. I briefly summarized the situation and asked him to let me know the status of the refund. The next day he e-mailed me that he had requested the refund of the points and the suite upgrade. A few days later, all 32,000 points had posted back into my Hyatt account.

Round 4: Hyatt follow-up

The points posted back to my account, but my account still showed 1 of my suite upgrade awards as having been redeemed and no longer available. I placed another call to Hyatt and explained the situation, and was told they would look into it and get back to me. The next day I received the strangest e-mail:

"Thank you for your message regarding your stay at Hyatt Regency Lexington.

I am sorry to hear that your suite upgrade award was redeemed by the hotel although you did not stay in a suite. I contacted the executive management team at Hyatt Regency Lexington on your behalf. By sharing your experience, you have a direct positive impact on future stays, which allows us to maintain the level of service that Hyatt is known for.

In an effort to make things right, I would like to upgrade your room accommodations for your next stay at a full service Hyatt Hotel to a suite based on availability. We ask that you make your reservations for a standard room and then call Hyatt Guest Relations at (800) 323-7249/(402) 592 6465. Provide us the reservation confirmation number, refer to case number CASxxxxxxx, and we will work with the hotel to provide an upgraded room for the duration of your stay. This offer is valid for one year and is based on availability."

In other words, instead of simply changing the "available" counter in the suite upgrade award database from "3" to "4," they decided the best method would be create and annotate a case number which I have to hope a future customer service representative will be able to locate and handle correctly.

Strange way to run a railroad.

Conclusion

The reason I have laid out this situation in such detail is not to complain about Hyatt or the Hyatt Regency Lexington. While their methods certainly seem odd, I have no complaints about either: I got a free four-night stay at a downtown Lexington property. I hope every hotel I stay at treats me so "poorly!"

The reason this story may be relevant to you is that it appears that when Hyatt confirms a suite upgrade award, they mean it, and they expect properties to do absolutely everything in their power to honor the upgrade or make it right with the customer, all the way up to refunding the entire cost of the stay during an extremely busy weekend (it was a race weekend in Lexington).

So use your suite upgrade awards! They'll either be honored and you'll get a nice suite upgrade, or they won't and you'll walk away with a free stay or a points windfall.

Do this now: register for 2017 second quarter bonus earning and World of Hyatt promotion

The second quarter of 2017 is right around the corner, and that means it's time for your friendly reminder to register for bonus earning on credit cards with quarterly rotating bonus categories, and some suggestions to maximize their value.

Chase Freedom

Next quarter each of your Chase Freedom cards earns 5 Ultimate Rewards points on the first $1,500 spent at grocery stores and drugstores. These categories are layups, with easy opportunities to manufacture spend in virtually every part of the country. If you were particularly inclined to be strategic you might wait to see if we get another grocery store promotion like the one that ended yesterday and try to stack the opportunities, but personally I'm not overthinking it. I have two Chase Freedoms and expect to have maxed out my bonus earnings by Sunday afternoon (CVS limits prepaid card purchases to $2,000 per rolling 24-hour period).

Activate bonus earning on each of your Chase Freedom cards separately here.

Discover it

The Discover it offers 5% cash back at home improvement stores and wholesale clubs next quarter. If you took advantage of one of the dozens of offers for cheap or discounted wholesale membership in the last year, then your best bet is to visit Sam's Club and see if you can find some PIN-enabled prepaid debit cards. I've never set foot in a Sam's Club, let alone manufactured spend at one, so I'm not sure what options they have available, but you may be able to find prepaid debit cards issued by Greendot Bank, US Bancorp, or Sunrise Bank.

Log into your Discover account to activate next quarter's bonus categories here.

Citi Dividend

Citi Dividend cards throttle bonus spending slightly differently from the other quarterly bonus credit cards: your total cash back is limited to $300 per calendar year, but you can earn the $300 through any combination of bonused and unbonused spend throughout the year. That means it's best to hold back on putting any spend on a Citi Dividend card until they have a particularly lucrative bonus category.

This year, that category falls in the second quarter, when you'll earn 5% cash back on purchases at drugstores and fitness clubs. After taking care of my Chase Freedom cards at CVS this weekend, I'll be maxing out my Citi Dividend card by spending $6,000 there over the next three days, thereby earning the maximum $300 annual cash back.

Activate your bonus earning here.

US Bank Cash+

Unlike the other cards here, US Bank allows you to pick 2 categories in which to earn 5% cash back on up to $2,000 in total spend. In the second quarter of 2017, your options are:

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Slim pickings! If you commute by train then ground transportation might be worth picking, especially if you can add a large amount of value to a commuter pass and don't have another card that bonuses travel purposes generally (many people would consider the 3 Ultimate Rewards points earned by a Chase Sapphire Reserve more valuable than 5% cash back). Other than that, I don't see many opportunities to manufacture spend. Furniture, electronics, and cell phones are all expensive, however, so you might decide to just save some money on a purchase you were already planning to make.

Select your bonus categories here.

World of Hyatt Double Points for Being You promotion

Also next quarter, World of Hyatt is running a promotion. Between April 1 and June 30, 2017, earn double base points on eligible stays starting with your second eligible stay. Register for the promotion here.

While you're at it, check out all the current hotel promotions I'm aware of on my Hotel Promotions page.

Rewards programs, ranked by reliability

One fun thing about writing a blog is that reader feedback gives you a chance to see how different ideas interact and collide. Last Friday when I wrote "While I'm willing to take unlimited risk in my investment portfolio, I'm willing to take virtually no risk in my travel hacking portfolio," reader Danny commented:

"This seems like an interesting sentiment. I'd be far more concerned with keeping my investments sound than my points balance."

Then on Monday I wrote with respect to my findings on Hilton all-inclusive award pricing that:

"If points costs will fall to match low revenue rates, it is easier to justify earning large quantities of Hilton points knowing that you'll almost always get close to, or above, their imputed redemption value."

I've been thinking about these two ideas, risk and reliability, and how they interact in my travel hacking practice.

Devaluations are the big, unknown risk

For several years, the US Bank Club Carlson credit card offered the last night free on all award stays. Now, this benefit was never quite as good as it was cracked up to be since Club Carlson properties, even or perhaps especially high-end Club Carlson properties, are dumps (true story: months after the Radisson Blu Warwick Hotel Philadelphia finished their renovations to not be a dump any longer they left the program).

Many people, expecting that benefit to continue indefinitely, earned hundreds of thousands, or millions, of Club Carlson Gold Points (trust me — many of them are readers of this blog).

Then the last-night-free benefit ended, and those points could only be redeemed at still-crappy Club Carlson properties. The same spend that earned those millions of points could have been used to earn 2% cash back, unbonused Ultimate Rewards or Membership Rewards points, or another rewards currency.

That's the kind of risk that I do my best to avoid in my travel hacking practice, by earning the rewards I redeem and redeeming the rewards I earn.

Reliability is the certainty of being able to redeem rewards for the trips you want to take

Reliability is something slightly different than risk. A reliable program offers consistent redemption values, whether or not that value is high or low, attractive or repulsive.

For example, according to Hotel Hustle, the IHG Rewards Club offers quite remarkable consistency, with a median value of 0.58 cents per point, with 75% of award searches above 0.44 cents per point and 75% of awards below 0.68 cents per point. That doesn't make it attractive to manufacture IHG Rewards points, but it gives you a clear view of the value of any points you might earn in one of their periodic sweepstakes or promotions.

My top ten loyalty programs, by reliability

Whether a particular rewards currency is "worth earning" depends on both your cost of acquisition and your particular travel plans, so this is not a list of the top ten most valuable loyalty programs. It's only a list of the top ten rewards programs sorted by my view of their reliability.

1. Cash. Cash has the great benefit of maintaining its dollar redemption value no matter what happens. It is, in that way, the most reliable rewards currency. Into this category also falls the fixed-value redemption of currencies like Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards, BankAmericard Travel Rewards, and other rewards programs with fixed values, like Delta SkyMiles Pay with Points redemptions. Their reliability is unimpeachable.
2. IHG Rewards anniversary free night certificates. In the several years I've been travel hacking, I've never seen an IHG property that I would be willing to transfer points, buy points, or manufacture points in order to book. But they really do have a Chase IHG Rewards credit card that gives you an annual award night at any IHG Rewards property in the world! I've never seen a report of the certificate not being honored for any reason, except the chain's preposterously loose rules on award availability. As far as I can tell the thing is completely reliable. Compare that to Marriott's anniversary night certificates, which have become almost unredeemable as properties continually migrate up out of Category 4.
3. Flexible Ultimate Rewards. Chase Ultimate Rewards points held in a Sapphire Preferred, Sapphire Reserve, Ink Bold, or Ink Plus account are more valuable than cash but slightly less reliable, since their value depends in part on the value of transferred points. One component of the value of a flexible Ultimate Rewards point is the value of one United Mileage Plus mile, but the value of a United Mileage Plus mile is highly volatile, so that portion of the value of an Ultimate Rewards point is also volatile. Nonetheless, Chase strongly supports the 1:1 transfer ratio of Ultimate Rewards points to their partners, so the reliability of the program overall is raised by the relative constancy of programs like World of Hyatt and Southwest Rapid Rewards.
4. US Bank Flexpoints. Long-time readers know I love the US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards Visa because of its generous bonused earning categories, but the process of redeeming Flexpoints introduces some unreliability into the system. Flights will sometimes be shown with odd fare differences which push them into a higher redemption band, for example. Nonetheless, the ability to redeem Flexpoints for between 1.33 and 2 cents per Flexpoint makes them one of the most reliable currencies around.
5. Flexible Membership Rewards. Here the problem of transfer partner volatility is magnified by the eclectic range of partners Membership Rewards has. For example, in 2015 the transfer ratio to British Airways Avios dropped 20%, from 1000:1000 to 1000:800. Then in 2016 British Airways created a special exception to their distance-based award chart in order to charge between 33% (off-peak) and 60% (peak) more for business class flights between Boston and Dublin on Aer Lingus. Today, you may need to transfer 75,000 Membership Rewards points to Avios to pay for a flight that would have cost 37,500 Membership Rewards points before the two devaluations. This doesn't mean that Membership Rewards points themselves have radically decreased in value (how often do you fly between Boston and Dublin?), but the example illustrates the way in which their reliance on transfer partners for value introduces a lot of volatility into the value of their rewards currency, since they don't control their partners' award redemption rates.
6. Southwest Rapid Rewards. Unlike a true fixed-value currency, Southwest Rapid Rewards points have fixed values only within each fare bucket: Wanna Get Away (between 1.4 and 1.6 cents), Anytime (about 1.1 cents), and Business Select (about 0.9 cents). That means that while you know you'll get one of those three values, which one you get depends on availability, reducing in my view the overall reliability of the program. Southwest enthusiasts avoid this problem by carefully watching the schedule and snapping up Wanna Get Away fares as soon as they become available, increasing the overall reliability of the program for them, at least for flights booked far enough in advance.
7. World of Hyatt. According to the Hotel Hustle database of search results, the lowest value redemption at Hyatt properties is 0.91 cents per point (the median is 1.78 cents). If my Chase accounts were abruptly closed and I had to speculative transfer my entire Ultimate Rewards balance, I would choose World of Hyatt in a heartbeat. Hyatt doesn't have properties everywhere in the world, which makes it hard to rely on as a first-string hotel rewards program, but if there's a Hyatt in your destination you're exceedingly likely to get a good redemption value.
8. Starwood Preferred Guest. Starwood has three different sources of value: their points can be redeemed for hotel stays at Starwood and Marriott, they can be transferred to airlines partners (either directly or through a Marriott Hotel + Air package), or they can be redeemed for revenue flights. That makes it almost impossible to get a bad value for your Starpoints, although it also causes the much more serious and common problem of hoarding Starpoints and being unwilling to redeem them for anything but the perfect redemption!
9. Hilton Honors. As I've been discussing lately, the biggest effect of the recent changes to Hilton Honors is that they've apparently deliberately increased the reliability of the program. While there will always be sub-par redemptions in any non-fixed-value loyalty program, Hilton appears to have increased the number of properties where points redemptions make sense compared to paying cash rates.
10. Legacy airline programs. I got into travel hacking at the very tail end of the period when, with flexibility and planning, it was still possible to fairly reliably book low-level domestic award tickets. Those days are over. Virtually all of my domestic travel today, in both economy and first class, are revenue tickets, not because revenue tickets have become cheaper but because award tickets have become completely unreliable as a means of booking domestic travel. International travel, especially on partners, hasn't seen quite as bad a gutting, and flexibility and planning still go a long way to booking flights overseas. Having access to legacy airline currencies through Ultimate Rewards, Membership Rewards, and Starpoints is still a reasonable tactic in case you happen to find award availability, but I don't think it can be the cornerstone of a strategy any longer.

Conclusion

There you have it, my completely subjective top ten ranking of rewards programs by reliability. This is certainly not the only ranking possible: those whose travel regularly brings them to expensive cities with Starwood properties will find they're able to get consistent value from Starwood Preferred Guest, and those who live in cities with many international partner airlines will likely get more consistent value from legacy airline programs than I do. But today, a combination of cash back, Ultimate Rewards or Membership Rewards, and one or two strong hotel programs seems most likely to help you pay as little as possible for the trips you want to take.

How do you want to think about budgeting for your hotel stays?

I've written a series of posts about my preferred metric for evaluating hotel loyalty programs, which I call imputed redemption values. This is a straightforward metric that tells you if redeeming hotel rewards points gives you a better or worse deal than paying cash that you've manufactured on your most lucrative cashback-earning credit card.

For example, a 95,000-point Hilton Honors redemption would require $15,833 in bonused spend on a Surpass American Express card. If your most lucrative cashback card earns 2%, that gives you a breakeven point of $316 (since for prices above that, a points redemption will require less manufactured spend), if it's 2.105% cashback you have an imputed redemption value of $333, and if it's 2.625% your IRV is $415. 

This metric doesn't tell you what you should do with points you've already earned — I always prefer to redeem points before spending cash. But if your points redemptions come in consistently above your imputed redemption values (95,000 points for a $2,000 night), then you are well-advised to continue earning those points, while if you fall consistently short (95,000 points for a $95 night), you might consider moving away from those loyalty currencies and towards additional cashback, instead.

Yesterday Frequent Miler posted an interesting analysis of some data (with a followup here) from the Hilton Honors program showing, as I'd hypothesized last month, that the new program would see redemptions bunched more tightly around the 0.4 cent per point redemption level. He provides some important insight on different factors that might affect the ultimate value you receive; read the whole thing.

Such analyses are very useful, but it's also helpful to pull back occasionally and give some thought to more basic questions: what's the best way to save money on your hotel stays?

What programs allow you to earn the stays you want as cheaply as possible?

Bottom-tier stays

There are phenomenal values at the very bottom of several hotel loyalty charts:

• If you have a US Bank Club Carlson credit card earning 5 points per dollar on all spend, you can earn a free night at any Category 1 property every time you spend $1,800. Even if your backup card earns 2.625% on unbonused spend, you're exceedingly unlikely to find a room for less than $47.25 per night — taxes alone are likely to be that much!
• With an American Express Hilton Honors Surpass card you can earn 5,000 Honors points, which is, I believe, still technically the fewest points required for a Hilton award stay, after spending $833 at a bonused merchant. That's not a value that any other hotel loyalty program currently offers.

Mid-tier stays

If you're staying in a more expensive market, for example mid-sized or larger cities, there are a few options for getting reliably outsized value:

• If you signed up for a Barclaycard Wyndham Rewards credit card back when the card still earned 2 Wyndham Rewards points for each dollar you spend, you can earn a free night at any of Wyndham's properties for every $7,500 you spend on the card — and Wyndham has a LOT of properties!
• In my experience Hyatt offers consistently reasonable pricing for mid-tier stays. For example, while the Chase Marriott credit card's Category 1-5 annual award certificate has become worthless as desirable properties migrate up and out of Category 5, most of Hyatt's centrally located city properties still top out at Category 3 or 4, costing 12,000 to 15,000 points per night, and are eligible for the Chase Hyatt credit card's annual free night certificate. If you have a Chase Freedom Unlimited credit card earning 1.5 Ultimate Rewards point per dollar, and a premium Ultimate Rewards card that lets you transfer those points to World of Hyatt, these mid-tier properties have an imputed redemption value between $160 and $200, while nightly rates can be substantially higher.

Top-tier stays

At the most expensive properties, a travel hacker has a few options:

• Hilton Honors currently tops out at 95,000 points per night (when standard room awards are available), allowing you to earn a free standard room award night for $15,833 in spend, or $12,667 on stays of exactly 5 nights, since the fifth night is still free on award stays;
• World of Hyatt standard room redemptions top out at 30,000 points per night. If you choose to manufacture unbonused spend on a Chase Freedom Unlimited in order to transfer Ultimate Rewards points to World of Hyatt, such a top-tier redemption would require $20,000 in spend, with an imputed redemption value of between $400 and $525 per night, depending on your best cash back alternative.
• Starwood Preferred Guest, and their new owner Marriott Rewards, seem like they should potentially offer some value, and indeed if you're committed to visiting one of their top-tier properties you should certainly redeem points instead of paying cash. If you're committed to visiting a top-tier, 45,000-point Marriott Rewards property, then manufacturing $15,000 in spend on a Starwood Preferred Guest American Express card and transferring the points to Marriott Rewards at a 1-to-3 ratio is clearly the cheapest way to pay for such a stay. However, for stay categories below top-tier Marriott Rewards stays I believe most travel hackers are likely to find more value elsewhere.

Conclusion

I have always thought it was a curious fact about travel that, when you do enough of it, transportation itself consumes a smaller and smaller portion of your travel budget. Of course you can make it more expensive by traveling in more expensive cabins, but the fact is a single night in a hotel can easily cost as much as a plane ticket!

I've never had any trouble finding miles, points, or cash to pay for flights; I spend much more time calibrating the points I earn for hotel stays than I do for my air travel.

My Jamaica all-inclusive wasn't annoying for any of the reasons I expected

I got back from Jamaica on Monday night, and had an absolutely marvelous time. On Friday I wrote about some questions I had about the experience, since I've never visited an all-inclusive resort (or Jamaica) before.

Now I have the answers to those questions and more! This is a pretty detailed [i.e. boring — ed.] post so go ahead and skip it unless you're curious.

Getting to the resort is totally seamless

All the Zilara website says is "After passing through customs, simply visit the Hyatt Lounge, where airport agents will arrange travel to our hotel."

I had no idea what this meant, but it turns out be to uncannily accurate. Immediately after customs in Montego Bay, you enter a large arrival hall with "lounges" for most or all of the resorts on the island. There, I confirmed the credit card I had on file, filled out some paperwork, and after 5 or 10 minutes a driver arrived to take us to the resort.

I'm not entirely clear on the economics of these airport vans, since none of the vans I saw had any kind of resort branding, so I assume they're private contractors who take turns driving guests to and from all the resorts as they arrive and leave.

Everything about the physical property is terrific

Reader Ben commented on Friday's post that the Hyatt all-inclusive properties are relatively new, and as far as I can tell the Hyatt Zilara Rose Hall opened in late 2014. If anything, I'd say the property felt even newer than that. The little things that are usually the first to go worked flawlessly: the sinks, showers, light switches, air conditioning, phones, etc. never gave us any trouble at all, which is something at a property where people are constantly tracking around sand and seawater!

My Diamond status maybe got me an upgrade or two

When we checked in at the airport I saw that our room type was "Jr. Suite King," which is at least an upgrade from the room I'd reserved, and which I assume was based on my Diamond status (it certainly wasn't based on the rate I paid). We arrived at the property around noon, and were told that we wouldn't be able to check in until 3 pm, the guaranteed check-in time.

When 3 pm came and went, our room still wasn't available, so we parked in the lobby to wait. After half an hour more, the front desk clerk came over, apologized even more, and upgraded us again to an "Ocean View Jr. Suite King."

It was great! Here's the view from our balcony, in case you missed it on Twitter:

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We ate several meals out on the balcony, as well as resting and reading out there.

The employees are incredibly friendly

I always have a lot of followup questions when I'm in a new and unfamiliar environment, and all the employees were friendly and accommodating.

One interesting thing I observed and finally asked someone about is that the hierarchy of employees felt very "flat." There were always a lot of staff around but I never observed anyone "managing" anyone else, giving instructions or criticism. It turns out the only way to identify the supervisors is that their shirts, which are otherwise identical, have a slight slit at the bottom that I never would have noticed if I hadn't asked. After that it was funny to keep an eye out for who was in charge at each restaurant, bar, and activity.

I discovered two and a half rules governing guests

As the curious sort, one of my biggest questions was just how many rules we'd accidentally bump against. I figured as a bumbling American people would always be telling me to do this and not do that.

But over the course of our 3-night stay I only ever observed 2 (and a half) rules being enforced.

First, children are absolutely forbidden on the adults-only Zilara side of the resort. This was somewhat funny because the Zilara side, especially at the beach, literally runs into the family-friendly Ziva side; it has to since the two properties share the same water sports booth. But if any kids stepped over onto the Zilara side security suddenly materialized and ushered them quickly away. The parents did not, usually, find this as funny as I did.

Second, you had to wear a shirt in the food service areas, which is not an unreasonable rule and one I only discovered because I tried to grab a sandwich from one of the to-go areas on my way back to my room.

The half-rule I also discovered is that the bars don't serve beer before 10 am. I don't have a good sense of why this rule exists, since the minibars in each room are restocked with beer every day.

You may ask, what rules did I expect to encounter? Lots! For example, the swimming pool is right next to the beach, and there's a long list of rules, including the obvious "guests must shower before using the pool." I am the only person I observed, in 3 days, showering before using the pool. So, the pool had some sand in it, but no one seemed to mind, including the employees.

I didn't observe anyone trying to sunbathe in the nude so I don't know whether they'd allow that or not. It seems like an obvious benefit of an adults-only resort, but perhaps they get too many American tourists for anyone to be interested. I didn't see any rules posted against it, though.

Order room service all the time

If I go back to this property I'll order room service for breakfast every day (I recommend the Yardie omelette, side of toast, side of bacon), and then just grab a sandwich, burger, or pizza for lunch. I tried a couple of the restaurants that open for breakfast and lunch every day and they made no impression whatsoever. One served a "barbecue chicken" that didn't taste like anything even after I doused it in hot sauce, and I got some eggs and toast at the other which tasted about the same. Just a waste of time waiting to be seated, waiting for a waiter, and waiting for your food.

Plan around dinner

I knew this going in, but didn't put enough emphasis on it while actually planning our days. The dinner restaurants open at 6 pm each day, and if you don't get there at 6 pm, you're going to have trouble eating there. Our first night we managed to be seated immediately at the French restaurant, our second night we gave up and ate at the buffet (big mistake), and our third night we couldn't get seated at the Italian restaurant but ended up having an amazing meal at the Caribbean restaurant.

It seemed like the consensus was that the Italian restaurant was the best on the property, so it's a bit disappointing we didn't get to eat there, although we could have done a lot worse. I'd recommend picking a restaurant in advance every day and simply planning to be there at 5:55 pm, since I don't know of another way to be sure you get your first choice.

People were tipping a lot

I don't know what the point of going to an all-inclusive is if you're going to walk around with a wallet, but people were tipping everywhere. People sitting, in swim trunks, at the swim-up bar would pull soggy dollar bills out of their underwater pockets to hand to the bartenders! I'm glad the US dollar is so durable, and I'm sure the staff were appreciative, but it seemed like overkill to me.

The entertainment surprised and delighted

In the evenings there were a lot of very strange events going on. One night on our way back to the room we accidentally stumbled upon a fashion show, firebreathing performance, and synchronized swimming show (in that order, not all at once). There was nothing about any of them in the daily program so it felt oddly serendipitous, although I'm sure I could have asked someone what the evening entertainment was in advance, if I'd known there would be evening entertainment.

Likewise someone told me Saturday morning that they'd just been going for a walk on the beach the night before and discovered the resort had set up a rum bar and dance party.

Basically, save some energy for the evening and walk around after dinner and you'll likely run into something totally unexpected.

Conclusion

Overall, I'd say my expectations were exceeded in almost every way: the resort was great, the beach was great, the pool was great, and the staff were terrific.

The only area where I'd say my expectations were met, but not exceeded, was at the themed restaurants, which it turned out work just like the cruise ship dining experience I feared: either plan ahead or plan to wait if you want to eat at the in-demand restaurants.