This month, Hyatt made quite a stir by announcing changes to their loyalty program set to go into effect in May. Hyatt has been the darling of the points-and-milesphere, as it has maintained a stable award chart over the years that has allowed guests to get reliably good value from their points when booking with the program. The announced changes will vastly increase the range of points needed to book a room with the program and have been one of the bigger award travel bummers in recent time. Time will tell how bad these changes will be – while I’m sure there will still be deals to be found, the time of finding consistent value in the World of Hyatt program seems to be coming to an end.
Around here, though, we are reminding ourselves that while one of our favorite hotel stays ever, was courtesy of the Hyatt program (I’m looking at you, Grand Hyatt Kauai), we’ve actually had a lot of success with diversifying our hotel loyalty points over the years. We’ve seen some amazing opportunities suddenly disappear – but then there’s always been a new and often surprising place to find amazing value in our travel endeavors. In other words, sometimes when a Hyatt door closes, a Hilton window might just open up.
To remind ourselves of all of the fantastic things we’ve been able to do without Hyatt, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite stays in other programs. While these perhaps are not the fanciest properties out there, they have worked really well for our family and have cost my favorite price: zero dollars.
IHG Program
Our family had such a great time visiting Arches and Canyonlands a few years back. As we are more of a forced march of happiness type of family, we did not need a fancy place to stay since we knew we’d be exploring all day and using the hotel simply as a place to lay our weary heads. We found the Holiday Inn Express and Suites Moab to be perfect for our needs. Suites can sleep a family of 5-6, breakfast got us going before long hiking days, and the heated pool and hot tub was a perfect end to each day, even in 50 degree weather.
What’s more, because I had the IHG Premier credit card at the time, we were able to take advantage of the “every fourth night free” perk on points bookings. This perk is available if you hold the IHG Traveler and IHG Premier business card as well, and gives you your fourth night for zero points. While a stay at a Holiday Inn Express may not be the most exciting thing to write about, keeping IHG in mind for fancier endeavors can definitely pay off.
For instance, The Kimptom Seafire Resort in Grand Cayman – which would cost over $3000 if you booked four nights with cash – typical costs 70,000 points per night. With the fourth night free perk if you hold the credit card, you could get that same stay with 210,000 IHG points. It’s worth noting that the IHG Premier Business credit card currently has a welcome offer of up to 200,000 points. You could be on your way! Another great thing about IHG is that frequently their points go on sale for as low as a half cent per point. So, you could even purchase all of those points for around $1000 and get that same stay for a third of the cash price.
There are lots of opportunities in the IHG program – and they outnumber Hyatt properties worldwide five to one! This is a program to add to your arsenal of hotels and is not one to sleep on for sure.
Marriott
This is where I say that I still believe in the Swan and Dolphin, the Marriott hotel complex on Walt Disney World property that is in walking distance to both Epcot and Hollywood Studios. This property also gives guests some of the same benefits of staying on property at Disney hotels. If you are flexible with dates, nights can be booked for around or under 50,000 points per night. Often the Chase Bonvoy Boundless card has sign up bonus promotions for five 50k free night certificates that could work at these hotels. It’s worth noting, though, that these free nights expire in a year and can only be topped off with an additional 25,000 points. Many nights at the Swan and Dolphin can be in the 80-90,000 points per night range, which is way too many points for these hotels and makes the free night certificates unusable.
All that being said, we had a great time staying there and loved the convenience to the parks. I haven’t kept up on all of the on-property perks that Disney currently offers, but when we stayed there we had early entry and late night “extra magic hours” that helped us do all of the attractions at less crowded times.
Marriott has such a huge global footprint with nearly 10,000 hotels worldwide. It is almost necessary to dabble in its Bonvoy award program. There are both excellent redemptions to be found and of course, really poor ones. We’ve stayed in some lovely hotels with points or free nights over the years – a particularly nice stay was at the Lindy Renaissance in Charleston. We don’t currently have a useful Marriott card, but have in mind to pick one up sometime in the next year to rebuild our stash of points. Co-branded cards are available through both Chase and Amex. There are complicated rules around when a person is eligible for a sign-up bonus with these cards, though. We recommend studying this chart from The Frequent Miler until you go cross-eyed. There are many confusing details about maximizing points and miles, but Marriott card eligibility is the thing that breaks my brain the most.
Hilton
We’ve been using the Hilton program more and more, and really have only scratched the surface of making it work for our crew. We’ve visited the same hotel in Times Square several times using points and free nights from sign-up bonuses, and just had really fun stay in Aruba. Over the summer, we also were able to book a more boutique SLH property in Barcelona with a Hilton free night and points. We’ve had a really positive experience at all of these places, and have our eye on another SLH property in Iceland – Hotel Ranga.
Like Marriott, the footprint of Hilton is massive. There are a lot of things to like about the Hilton Honors reward program. For one, free night certificates are relatively easy to earn and can be used to book any standard room if there is availability. Meaning, you can book a room priced at 120,000 points or more with these certificates – these are often at higher-end properties with room rates of $1000 or more. By contrast, most other reward programs offer free night certificates that have a cap on how many points or the category of hotel in which they can be used. We also enjoy that it is extremely easy to pool points between us which is not always the case in other programs. Additionally, simply by holding one of their credit cards, Gold status (or higher with the premium card) is granted. This gives continental breakfast or a breakfast credit for two among some other small perks. This came in handy at our stay in Barcelona – the breakfast buffet was huge and delicious.
Like with IHG, Hilton points also can go on sale throughout the year for a half cent per point. This can be another avenue to save a lot of money compared to the normal cash rates. Buying points on sale and taking advantage of their 5th night free when booking with points has the potential to save a ton of money by booking this way. Since Hilton recently acquired the SLH portfolio, there are hundreds of upscale and boutique hotels around the world added to the already endless options.
Aeroplan Pay Yourself Back
Changing gears for a moment, for a greater amount of flexibility, we’ve taken advantage of the “Pay Yourself Back” on travel feature of the Chase Aeroplan card. By transferring Chase points on a 20% transfer bonus, we’ve gotten up to 1.65 cents per point on travel redemptions. We booked a fantastic Air BnB on Lake Annecy in France. The cash price was around $1200 which we were able to erase with 75,000 points transferred on a transfer bonus. Of course, there are ways to get even more value out of Chase points, but this method has been worth it to us and has given greater flexibility for traveling with five people.
Various and Sundry
We’ve also stayed in some great places by using different credit card portals – we booked on-property hotels in Universal Studios Florida and thus received early entry and skip the line perks, we found a great four person suite in Madrid, and even booked an upcoming stay through the BILT portal at one of our old favorites, the William Henry Miller Inn in the Finger Lakes.
One of our favorite stays was in a condo on Kauai that we booked with Wyndham points through their now defunct partnership with Vacasa. While this is no longer a thing, I bring it up to make the point that these sweet spots can come and go, and we shouldn’t get too bent out of shape when something has run its course. My guess is, there is always going to be a shiny new deal if we have patience and persistence. I just feel so lucky to be able to travel the world with my family because of this amazing hobby of collecting points – and even if the Hyatt changes make the program harder to use, I know we’re set with lots of other options!
