Not factoring in the fourth free night benefit of the prestige what non co-branded card would you use for hotel spend? So cards like the spg/ritz/hyatt etc are out.
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Security Service FCU Power Travel Rewards WMC. Simply the best.
CSP and Amex FHR.
Personal Cards: Amex Plat | Amex Delta Res | CSR | Citi AA Exec Business Cards: Ink+ | Amex BGR
@happypill wrote:Security Service FCU Power Travel Rewards WMC. Simply the best.
Not necessarily true. I booked a Hyatt for 12,000 points which cost $450, that's 3.75 cents per point. Your cost would have been 45,000 points.
CSP and Ink w/ 5x cat and 2x gas I may never pay for a hotel again.
@DrZoidberg wrote:Cobrands always give you the most points .
I spend about $25k a year on hotels. I use my Hilton Surpass which gives me 12x points. That's 300k points just for using the card. CSP would only net 50k and Citi would net 75k.
Usually true, which is why I specifically did not want to ask about co-brands, because that changes the math and would also require staying with specific chains where I am curious about a card for general hotel spend that could be used at a variety of chains.
@Anonymous wrote:
@red259 wrote:Not factoring in the fourth free night benefit of the prestige what non co-branded card would you use for hotel spend? So cards like the spg/ritz/hyatt etc are out.
Even if you exclude the 4th night free benefit, the Citi Prestige is 3x TY points per dollar spend on hotels. As a reference point, ThePointsGuy values TY Points at 1.6 cents per point, so that's 4.8 cents per dollar spent under that valuation. That's pretty good.
Then when you add in the 4th night free (especially if you get reimbursed by your employer like me) and it's an absolute no-brainer.
Yea, my problem is I rarely stay at a hotel for more than three nights when I travel. I tend to move around a fair bit on vacation. I think the prestige may be my go to card for general hotel spend when I don't have a co-branded card for the particular property I am staying at.
@redpat wrote:
@happypill wrote:Security Service FCU Power Travel Rewards WMC. Simply the best.
Not necessarily true. I booked a Hyatt for 12,000 points which cost $450, that's 3.75 cents per point. Your cost would have been 45,000 points.
CSP and Ink w/ 5x cat and 2x gas I may never pay for a hotel again.
45k spend on the SSFCU Power Travel Rewards card would be worth $1485 at the 3.3% rewards rate. The thing about that is, you're not locked into any particular hotel or any particular booking site. To redeem hotel points, even with an exchange partner, you'd have to book on their site. Often, the best deals (depending on where and when you're booking for) appear on sites like Kayak, Priceline, Hotwire, etc, which you'd be excluded from using if you're booking with points. So, if the cash value of a redemption is anywhere in the neighborhood of a point value redemption, I'd take the cash value 100% of the time becuase you have infinitely more flexibility in brand, time, location, etc.
So, are there one-off cases where if you stay at a particular hotel or fly a particular route where the point redemption value is more valuable? Of course. But if you use points you'll often need to book way in advance, limit yourself to certain brands or properties, be subject to blackout dates, be locked out of last minute deals, be locked out of additional earning (if you book on Orbitz, Hotels.com, Expedia and elsewhere with your cash rewards you get those rewards on top) and be subject to whatever restriction or devaluation they want to subject you to. So, for a given example, points might look great, but cash will always be cash and the Power Travel Rewards will always give you 3.3% instead of 3.75% in some unique instance.