Do I pay with points? Do I pay with cash? Do I pay with points and cash?

This age old question depends on the math. Let’s take them one at a time:

1. Cash: Cash is king. As such, I prefer to keep it in my bank account and find no satisfaction in spending it to prove the point that I can afford to do so. However, there are times when I will make a hotel booking with cash instead of the other options. For example, I am going to Auckland in a couple of months and there are no great points options. It makes more sense to spend money on a boutique hotel than it does to waste all my Hilton points to stay for free at a hotel that doesn’t seem special. The second instance I use cash is when the rate of the hotel is less than the value of points. In these circumstances I find myself strangely wishing that the room would cost more so I could justify using points instead.
2. Exclusively Points: Almost as precious as cash is my cache of points. I have separation anxiety when I make a points reservation completely with points. The level of stress depends on the hotel group. Here’s my ranking from easiest to burn to the other extreme, from my cold, dead hands.
   • Club Carlson: If I am booking with Club Carlson which has hotels located in more exotic destinations like Stockholm, Sweden, Riga, Latvia or Corsica where rooms range for a few hundred dollars, I have no problem burning my points. This is especially true after Club Carlson’s devaluation.
   • IHG: TPOL has missed the boat on IHG giving away buckets of points through its promotions. The highest my balance ever reached was 100k points primarily in thanks to Chase’s sign-up bonus. I used those points to book two nights at the InterContinental Bora Bora.
   • Hilton: The same can be said of Hilton which also experienced a terrible devaluation. 95,000 points gets you what 50,000 points used to be able to. So long as I am using my Hilton points at a top-tier property like the Hilton Moorea, I am at peace with using points to make the reservation. The problem with Hilton is finding properties of this caliber in locales that I want to visit.
   • Hyatt: Cash and points is not always available for Hyatt hotels. When this is the case, I don’t mind spending my points to get a free room.
   • SPG: SPG points are difficult to accrue even with an Amex sign-up offer. After you’ve burned through the initial bonus, the best way to obtain a significant amount of points is to stay at SPG hotels, devote your spending to your Amex card, or beg blog followers to give you a referral. Because I value SPG points like my unborn children, I tend to use them for stays requiring 2-3k points per night (see Aloft Bangkok).
3. Cash and Points: Cash and points go together like tacos and Tuesday if the value is right and the availability is there. The simple formula for determining value is as follows: number of points(valuation of points) + cash < room rate.
   • Hyatt: Is Hyatt worth 1.7 cents per point, is it worth 2 cents per point? That’s up to you to decide. I use 2 cents because it makes me scrutinize the deal before booking the room. I seldom have buyer’s remorse when I do a points booking whether it be exclusively points or a combination when I surpass the 2 cents threshold. At the same time, I will rationalize that my value of Hyatt points is overvalued when I come up a bit short of the 2 cent mark.
   • SPG: SPG points are worth 3 cents each. I assign this premium to SPG points because I fought hard to build up my SPG account and must remind myself that trading them away for a 30,000 point stay at the St. Regis New York is not as good a value as  cash and points redemptions at the St. Regis Osaka or St. Regis Mauritius.
   • Domestic Reservations: The exception to the winning cash and points formula is for domestic reservations. The points for premium rooms in the United States in cities like Chicago and New York are inflated. Staying at the W in New York or the Park Hyatt NYC may appear to be a great mathematical deal but I would rather stay at a Hyatt House in Scottsdale or Four Points in New York than burn my points on domestic service.

Summary

In the end, it is a better idea to Shut Up and Book! than get too involved in the Money Ball game of points valuation. Concurrently, it is also a good idea to establish your own rules for what is and what isn’t a good value.

In full disclosure, I am NOT compensated by AwardWallet. Isn’t that refreshing to hear? 

It truly doesn’t get any better than AwardWallet Plus. Everyone in the points game uses AwardWallet to track his points but the new version can do so much more. I believe in this app so much that I am going to spend a few moments highlighting a couple of changes that I find especially useful.

1. Actual Account History

Have you been in the situation where you swore that you had more points and then your balance unexpectedly went down? The History tab in AwardWallet shows you where the points went without having to login to an external account.

2. Only Update Relevant Accounts 

When you have too many accounts, it is pointless to update all accounts. AwardWallet now lets you select the accounts you would like updated in bulk.

3. Travel Plans

This is the biggest enhancement for AwardWallet Plus. I didn’t pay attention to it before because I used TripIt. The problem with TripIt is that it added every reservation that I made but did not remove those speculative bookings after I cancelled them. I would receive alerts saying my flight to Phoenix is departing in an hour and wonder why I wasn’t at the airport.

In the Trips section of AwardWallet, all of my future (and past) trips are organized chronologically and without duplicates. It even shows me changes that were made to my flights, a valuable tool for cancelling or modifying a booking for free.

It also has a nice Great Circle Mapper graphic and the ability to see more information for each reservation. I find the contact information very handy as well. If I do want to make an edit or delete something, it is very easy to do.

I’ve only been using the new version for a day so I’m sure there are other tips and tricks that I have yet to discover.

Here are other updates provided by AwardWallet’s website.

Did you book all your suite upgrades? Some people apparently got extras. Some people were able to book past February 28, 2017. I have no idea what I ended up with because some stays didn’t include confirmation emails. Checking Hyatt’s site doesn’t help because the reservation details give no indication of what kind of reservation it is, even though I tried to book cash n points.

In the end, this whole exercise may prove to be a waste of time as I don’t foresee myself going to Trinidad or Tobago, a suite upgrade reservation that I apparently booked. In the end, greed and my imagination got the best of me.

The real winner is Hyatt who stands to make money off of trips we did not plan to take and cash that we do not want to spend. Keep in mind that DSU require a cash or cash n points booking. I’ve found it more effective to show up at the hotel on a points booking and talk my way into an upgrade. That is free and does not require the time and stress that this artificial deadline created.

Who’s with me?

TPOL burned the rest of his DSUs today or so I thought. Hours after I made my March bookings, I hadn’t received confirmation for the suites. I called Hyatt Gold Passport and was given two critical pieces of information:

1. 2015 upgrades can’t be booked for stays past February 2017. Even though you can book for stays in March, suite upgrades will not be issued for those dates.
2. 2015 upgrades booked by tomorrow can be changed after tomorrow.

Number two is huge. Although I changed all my bookings from March to February 2017, I no longer have to be worried that I picked the perfect dates for what will be an epic trip to Nepal, Tanzania, Zanzibar, and the Netherlands.

With the new coding in the computer, I no longer think that it will be possible to use 2015 upgrades for stays past February 28, 2017 as I originally speculated. Still, for those of us who just received Diamond status in 2015 and in lieu of the new DSU policy for 2016, this should be welcomed news.