U.S. Travel Association posted the offers for 15 days of Daily Getaways 2019 offered each weekday at 1:00pm Eastern from Monday, May 6 through Tuesday, June 4. There are currently offers posted for IHG Rewards Club, Choice Privileges, Wyndham Rewards and Best Western Rewards. I consider the best value deals in Daily Getaways to be hotel points, which are generally sold at their lowest available price of the year.
This article looks at the posted hotel points sales and features a table I created showing the points items for sale, price, purchase limit, cost per 1,000 points and potential maximum purchase for each loyalty program.
Main thing to know is these sales are only open to USA and Canadian residents, excluding Quebec (2018 rules).
[click on image to enlarge]
IHG Rewards Club – Monday, May 6, 2019 1:00pm Eastern
You can sign up for an alert about each sale on the Daily Getaways offer page through the links below.
IHG Rewards Club 10,000 points – $50
IHG Rewards Club 35,000 points – $175
IHG Rewards Club 60,000 points – $300
IHG Rewards Club 100,000 points – $500
$5.00 per 1,000 points is about as low as IHG Rewards Club points are available. There have been some Points & Cash 20% discount offers that have put points down to as low as $4.85 in the past. This is a great price if you are in the market to buy IHG points.
I have no interest in buying IHG points. I find it easy enough to earn 100,000 points a year through 5 or 6 paid nights. Generally I only find value in IHG points when there is a PointBreaks hotel I want or at a few hotels in the 10,000 to 20,000 points range ($50-$100 at this price)Â that are high priced for my dates and come out to be a better value than other hotels in the area.
Wyndham Rewards – Wednesday, May 8, 2019 1:00pm Eastern
Wyndham Rewards 15,000 points – $175
Wyndham Rewards gutted its GoFast cash and points program last year and earlier this month made additional changes. My analysis revealed to me this program has little usefulness for my travels. I placed great value on Wyndham Rewards points since 2015 when I regularly redeemed 3,000 points for $60 to $100+ per night in hotel rate savings. Now that GoFast rates have a cash portion pegged to 70% of the Best Available Rate, there is far lower potential value in points through GoFast Rewards.
GoFree Rewards at 15,000 points per night still offer some good deals, primarily due to the fact there are hotels around the world where a free night reward includes a choice of different hotel room categories, even suites at some hotels.
There are some good opportunities available with Wyndham Rewards points at this price for a handful of hotels. However, for me, I have written off Wyndham Rewards after the program changes of the past year. After spending some 150,000 points over the past 5 years, primarily at 3,000 points per night for GoFast reward stays, I redeemed my remaining 45,000 points for Ramada Apollo Amsterdam over this past New Year’s Eve as my final hurrah. I have fewer than 300 points remaining and I have no interest in buying Wyndham Rewards points during 2019 Daily Getaways.
Loyalty Traveler – Any value left in Wyndham Rewards? – April 5, 2019 offers my analysis of Wyndham Rewards after the most recent program changes on April 3, 2019.
Loyalty Traveler – List of 30,000 points Wyndham Rewards hotels – April 8, 2019 is a list of 167 hotels at 30,000 points. You can look over the list and see if any of these hotels look worth $350 to buy 30,000 points on April 8. I think the best value to be found are 15,000 points hotel GoFree nights at hotels offering suites.
I predict this Wyndham Rewards points offer with 1,143 sets of points for sale will move unsold sets to the Daily Getaways ‘Last Chance Offers’ warehouse page after May 8 and this offer will remain there for the duration of Daily Getaways 2019.
Choice Privileges – Wednesday, May 15
Choice Privileges 14,000 points – $80
Choice Privileges 28,000 points – $144
Choice Privileges 42,000 points – $205
Choice Privileges 55,000 points – $265
The sale I most anticipate during the year is Choice Privileges points in Daily Getaways. To my great disappointment the date of this sale means I need to be home at my computer at 10am Wednesday, May 15 when I had planned for months to be at the 10:10am start of Stage 4 of the Tour of California cycling race at Laguna Seca Racetrack near Monterey.
I find great value in Choice Privileges points. In the past month I redeemed 76,000 points for 8 nights in Prague, Czechia; Malmo, Sweden; and Oslo, Norway. 76,000 points will cost about $380 in the Daily Getaways sale.
The 8 nights I stayed using Choice Privileges points had total published room rates of $1,105. My cost would have been about $48 per night at the Daily Getaways rate. My actual rate was closer to $570 to buy 76,000 points at $7.50 per 1,000 points through Points Plus Cash bookings. Still, $60 per night for 8 nights was a deal that I could have probably matched in Prague, but no way I could have booked a comparable room to The Thief in Oslo for $150.
Best Western Rewards May 21, 2019
Best Western Rewards 10,000 points – $55.00
Best Western Rewards is a sale I will consider. I had fantastic value from 90,000 Best Western Rewards points in 2018 during the November to January stay anywhere in USA, Canada or Caribbean for 10,000 points promotions. In January 2018 I stayed in Key West for 10,000 points per night when room rates were $250 to $300 per night. In November 2018 during Thanksgiving holiday week, I booked 5 nights at two Best Western hotels in Anaheim, California across the street from the Disneyland gate entrance. Those room nights averaged $240 per night after tax, so $55 was an incredible deal.
My primary concern though is no guarantee Best Western Rewards will repeat this 10,000 points per night offer again in 2019.
Still, I also ended up staying at Best Western Old Town in Krakow, Poland and two Best Western hotels in Rome, Italy last June for 20,000 points per night. Room nights at Best Western Art Deco Rome were priced at 152 EUR/$187, so $110 at the Daily Getaways provides a good savings that would be hard to match in Rome in summer.
I used to be fond of saying that Best Western’s competitive advantage is many of their properties are the closest chain hotel you can book near a National Park entrance. After looking at my article titles from the past 15 months, I realize that great locations are also a feature of Best Western hotels in several cities too.
Loyalty Traveler – Best Western North America 10,000 points reward nights to Jan 31, 2018 (Nov 13, 2017).
Loyalty Traveler – Best Western USA-Canada weekday 10K rewards Nov 15, 2018-Jan 15, 2019 (Nov 1, 2018)
Loyalty Traveler – Best Western Hibiscus Motel Key West great location (Jan 28, 2018).
Loyalty Traveler – Pack a helmet for Best Western Plus Old Town Krakow (July 10, 2018).
Loyalty Traveler – Best Western Artdeco Hotel Rome central city location (July 14, 2018).
Loyalty Traveler – Best Western Rome Airport FCO and a walk in Fiumicino, Italy (July 20, 2018).
Loyalty Traveler – Fantastic Disneyland location at Best Western Plus Park Place Inn Anaheim (Nov 25, 2018).
Orbitz $1,000 hotel voucher Friday May 24
Orbitz $1,000 travel voucher – $650
The final offer I see worth highlighting is the Orbitz $1,000 travel voucher for $650. This is a significant discount for travelers who do not plan to be in chain hotels. With only 60 of these for sale, I expect it is probably a hard item to buy. Be ready right when the sale begins.
There are many other offers for hotel stays in Las Vegas, rental cars and theme park tickets if those are of interest to you. My focus is on the hotel points deals.
I will update my table when the final two weeks of sales are posted. I anticipate we will see Hilton and Hyatt points again, as in years past.
Marriott Bonvoy is the one offer I am curious to see. For the past several years Marriott Rewards offered travel cards at a discount. Given they recently launched their first hotel points sale promotional discount, I wonder if they will participate this year with the same voucher discount or offer a points sale discount.
7 Comments
Comments are closed.