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Daily Getaways 2019 May 6-June 4 Hotel Points Deals analysis

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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).

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IHG Rewards Club – Monday, May 6, 2019 1:00pm Eastern
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Daily Getaways IHG Rewards Club May 6, 2019

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)  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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

  • Bluecat April 29, 2019

    Ric, I’ve often questioned why you are such a believer in chain hotel stays. I’ve thought that you missed out because you seem to sometimes emphasize the deal over the location, you excluded Airbnb’s, and you neglected family run hotels.

    After 4 weeks on the road, with the last two in southern Italy, I’ve come around to some newfound appreciation for your way of booking. Specifically, I’ve come to appreciate chain hotels in new ways, ways that the other types of lodging sometimes lack:
    1) if you don’t like your particular room, you can usually march down to the front desk and ask for a different room
    2) chains have mastered the art of designing the rooms to meet the needs of clients, specifically where sound proofing is concerned
    3) chains have a “neck to wring”…you can usually get them to act immediately if you have a complaint
    4) Airbnb’s have unfortunately suffered from a lot of mom and pop makeshift building, none of which is inspected by professionals or by Airbnb
    5) lies about Airbnb’s and family run hotels seem more prevalent on Airbnb, booking.com, and TripAdvisor websites. (Airbnb users seem hesitant to say negative things)

    Anyway, after a lot of crappy stays in Sicily and beyond, in disappointing small hotels and Airbnb’s, I’ve come to appreciate the standard-ness of my Holiday Inn Express or Ibis Styles.

    I’d rather have a good night’s sleep than any frou-frou features anyhow.

    I haven’t heard you talk about this aspect/benefit of loyalty travel before and wonder if you’d agree…

  • Marilyn B April 29, 2019

    @Ric – how I wish I could see any part of Tour of CA live instead of watching on TV. Love this race!
    @Bluecat – when we were in Sicily 2 years ago we stayed in a Mercure in Siracusa, and I think an NH in Catania. Both were very nice, pretty reasonable and included breakfast. We stayed in a non-chain hotel in Ragusa, and despite it hosting a tour group (that we never encountered) and having booked the last available, and smallest, room via Expedia, we were upgraded to the Royal Suite – huge, with 2 very large bathrooms and super large terrace. Sadly, we were hardly in the room. Our other 3 stays were a modern boutique hotel in Trapani (tiny room, brand new, gigantic terrace), a lovely spacious room with big terrace in a B&B in Agrigento, and an OK modest hotel in Palermo where we did ask for a room change and were easily accommodated. All reasonably priced for the most part (10 nights < $1200, so certainly not as cheap as Ric gets). Sicily was one of my favorite trips.

  • Kay April 29, 2019

    So far this is the most detailed breakdown of the daily getaways for this year
    Thank you

  • Ric Garrido April 29, 2019

    @Bluecat – Business travel is what placed me in hotel chains initially in the early 1990s with frequent travel around the USA. I recall the days when Westin and Sheraton were separate loyalty programs.

    Then through the mid-1990s I traveled the USA and Europe for years staying in lots of non-chain hotels. This was in the years before TripAdvisor reviews, Airbnb, and before many of the hotel chains had loyalty programs. I stayed in a lot of crap hotels and some nice hotels.

    Those experiences initially drove me to Priceline in the late 1990s, where I found that even if I had the worst room in a chain hotel, the room was at least reliably comfortable for my trip.

    Then in 1998-2001 I earned around two million hotel points and room rate discounts when the way to pick up loads of points was checking out new websites and online shopping through portals like ClickRewards and MyPoints. Those were the days anyone could pick up loads of points with very little investment. Those were also the days when 35,000 points would buy a 3-night reward stay with Hilton, before they went to 100,000 points for 6-night stays in 2000. Most SPG hotels were in category 1 and 2.

    Credit card games these days offer the same kind of opportunity, but that game has a much higher entry barrier than sitting at home clicking on websites earning points. I had lots of weeks in 1999-2000 when I picked up thousands of hotel points and airline miles simply clicking on websites, one after another and making small purchases.

    Once I had huge hotel loyalty points balances in several programs and thousands of dollars in Marriott $50 off per night coupons, I focused on earning elite status to make my reward stays even more valuable.

    My initial plan for this summer was to stay in more independent non-chain hotels in Europe. But now that I have actually pieced together much of my itinerary, I still find chain hotels are the most affordable way to go with good locations in most of my destinations.

    24 hour customer service is something I like. My room in Chania, Greece in March was a lovely boutique hotel. But I did not figure out how to turn on the heat the first night and it was the coldest night I experienced in years. There was nobody working at the hotel between 9pm and 6am.

    My apartment rental in Cluj-Napoca, Romania was a lovely little apartment, but I came back to the room after midnight and could not figure out how to turn on the TV. Nobody to call and ask for help at that time of night.

  • Bluecat April 30, 2019

    Ric, thanks for that reply. (I would go so far as to suggest you take that as a basis for a “why am I a loyalty traveler?” post that could even go in your “About me” section. It helps remind me where you are coming from.

    Regarding the small chain hotels that another reader mentioned: yes, I know there can be beautiful places, etc. But I’m talking about the Average: hotel chains offer some consistency—good or bad—that you can rely on. The non-chain hotels don’t.

    One more thing to mention: I find that the amount of time it takes to figure out which place to stay takes so much longer when I throw AirBnb and booking.com, etc. into the mix. I have got read each reader review and look for “hidden clues” (especially true on Airbnb) about the negatives of a place. Same sort of thing for TA reviews about these sorts of places—I’ve got to “filter “ out the obvious fake and/or ingratiating reviews.

    I sound like a curmudgeon, I know.

  • Bluecat April 30, 2019

    @Marilyn, I love Sicily too! It’s one of my lifetime top 10 places and I can’t wait to return. But I’ve got to be smarter about the places I stay at.

  • Dan May 1, 2019

    Wyndham is good if you plan on staying at a hotel that is $200 a night and is 15K in points.

    Best Western have lost some hotels near national parks or other high demand areas. some were

    in Portl Angleds WA just outside the main part of Olympic national park. It also was in Friday Harbor in San Juan Islands, This hotel was 30K+ per night but it was the only major national chain on the island. The other one lost was near Lake Chelan in Washing on the Lake. This end of the lake at boat and float plane that could take you 50 miles up the lake into North Cascades National Park. Torrey also lost a BW. i think it switched to wyndham

    Zion–choice, IHG, BW, wyndham
    Bryce- BW
    Capitol Reef –Wyndham, Choice
    Arches (Moab) –IHG, BW, Choice, Wyndham
    Grand Canyon–BW and IHG
    Estes Park (Rocky Mountain)-BW, choice,
    Grand Teton–Wyndham, choice
    Yellowstone–IHG, choice, BW
    Redwoods-IHG, choice, BW
    Glacier (west side)–IHG, choice, BW
    Seward-(Kenai) BW

    I pulled these all from memory.

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