Earlier this week, I stumbled on what I think is a pretty awesome sweet spot hotel redemption in the US and I got pretty excited…and then I proceeded to make an absolutely boneheaded mistake. Like, the type of dumb mistake that I’m still cringing about this morning. I’m writing this post in the hopes that it helps those looking to visit Napa Valley save a bunch of points/money while also more broadly helping even those who have no interest in Napa Valley to learn from my mistake as it applies to your own travels. Do as I say, not as I do.
A Napa Valley find
My wife absolutely blew my mind when she surprised me with reservations for The French Laundry for our anniversary. For non-foodies, it’s a top gourmet restaurant that is notoriously difficult to book. They release reservations online on the 1st of every odd month for the following two months and sell out lightning fast. I’m shocked and impressed and excited beyond description. She even lined up another family member to come on the trip to babysit the night we go to dinner. I’d say that Wife of the Year 2019 is wrapped up.
My wife secured the most difficult part of our itinerary, so it fell on my shoulders to figure out accommodations for us and our family member coming along. I started with the usual suspects: Hyatt (there’s a 25K Andaz nearby), Marriott (the places nearby are all 50K / 60K per night), IHG (45K per night), Hilton (LOL-K per night), etc. I’m sure the Andaz is lovely, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just not an Andaz guy. Besides, with a need for two rooms, it was honestly just more points than I wanted to spend.
I did just recently get my hands on some ultra-cheap IHG points, but even so the Hotel Indigo would cost $172.80 per night since it’s 45K. Paying that much per room per night x 2 rooms for an IHG, where we wouldn’t even get free breakfast, didn’t excite me either.
Then the other day, I realized I hadn’t checked Choice Privileges. I know what you’re thinking: nothing says miles-and-points enthusiast like dining at The French Laundry and sleeping at the Econo Lodge.
But stay with me here: there is an Ascend Collection hotel in Napa, California (less than 10 miles from The French Laundry) that really looks more like a beautiful B&B. And it’s 12,000 Choice Privileges points per night and includes free breakfast and apparently a free wine hour in the evenings.
Note that if you don’t have at least 6K Choice Privileges points in your account, you’l see an error message rather than being able to see the available room types:
The good news is that Choice Privileges is a 1:1 Amex transfer partner. Since I generally find Membership Rewards easier to earn than Chase Ultimate Rewards (though that might be changing), I’d be much happier to transfer 12K points per night to book this than 25K per night for the Andaz.
But it gets better.
Some Choice hotels make all room types available for awards
A surprising benefit of the Choice Privileges program that I often forget because of its inconsistency is that many hotels will allow you to book just about any room type for the cost of a standard award. Whereas most hotel loyalty programs limit you to booking a “standard” room on points or others allow you to pay more points or cash for a better room, some Choice Privileges properties will let you book a suite for the same award rate as a regular room.
The Hotel Napa Valley apparently allows you to book any room for the same 12,000 points — even the two-bedroom 1 King and 1 Single Bed suite that has a full kitchen and looks more like an apartment in a home than a hotel room.
The photos of that room look pretty nice:
The cash rate for that suite during our dates was $341/nt plus tax, so 12K points per night sounded stellar. I needed a 3-night reservation, so 36K points would save me $1,036 plus tax over the cash rate (though in fairness there were rooms available from $265 per night, so I probably wouldn’t have ponied up for the suite). The second room I was booking (also a suite, but just 1 king bed) was a bit cheaper, but still north of $300 per night. Again, solid value.
But it gets better.
Choice Privileges Points Plus Cash
Choice Privileges also has Points Plus Cash awards, and contrary to the direction taken by most programs these days, they are a stunning value in a case like this. That’s because the same hotel costs just 6,000 points per night plus $45. For any of those room types above.
I instantly realized that, while I like keeping cash in my pocket and all, it would be dumb to transfer over 12,000 points per night when I could alternatively pay 6K + $45 per night. With points plus cash, I’d essentially be paying $45 to keep 6,000 Membership Rewards points each night. Since our Reasonable Redemption Value for Membership Rewards points is 1.55c each, that seemed like a no-brainer.
In the interest of clarity, think about it as a single room for 1 night to start. I could either:
- Transfer 12K Membership Rewards points and have a free room for 1 night
- Transfer 6K Membership Rewards points and pay $45 for 1 night
Again, I’d basically be paying $45 to keep 6K Membership Rewards points. Even if you only value Membership Rewards points at $0.01, that’s a no-brainer: I’d be paying $45 to save $60 worth of points. I think most of us would value the 6K points even higher.
Since I actually needed two rooms for 3 nights, that’s a total of 6 room nights, so my grand totals would be either:
- Transfer 72K Membership Rewards points to stay for “free”
- Transfer 36K Membership Rewards points + pay $270
When put that way, it really seemed like a no-brainer: I’d be paying $270 to keep 36K Membership Rewards points. To put that in context, that’s enough points to fly Iberia business class one-way between New York, Boston, or Chicago and Madrid during off-peak season (they sometimes even run specials as low as 25,5K one-way). I flew Iberia in business from Madrid to New York a few months ago. It was definitely worth more than $270 to me.
But then it got worse.
While I was patting myself on the back for how smart I was to pay the Points Plus Cash rate in order to keep my Membership Rewards points, I got awfully stupid and wasted 30K Membership Rewards points.
Choice Privileges Cash & Points: The cheap way to buy Choice points
Those familiar with both IHG and Hyatt likely know that not all Cash & Points reservations are created equally. Such reservations work significantly differently between those two programs (and they are different still with Hilton).
Hyatt’s model is that when you reserve a cash & points stay, you pay the points immediately and if I remember correctly you pay the cash portion at the hotel. These days, you’re basically paying half the points rate plus half the cash rate to the hotel. As such, you’re charged tax on the cash rate. You’ll also owe any resort fee, etc. You’re basically just using points to get a special discounted hotel rate.
IHG’s model is that you’re actually buying the points when you make the booking. In other words, if the hotel costs 55K points for a free night, you’ll be offered the choice to use 50K of your existing points and buy the additional 5K points necessary or use 45K points and buy 10K points, etc.
With IHG, your credit card is charged immediately when you make a points & cash reservation. If you later cancel, you are refunded in points — in other words, you’ll get 55K points back on that theoretical reservation if you cancel. You’re really just buying IHG points at a discount (recently as low as 0.384 cents per point).
I didn’t previously know which model Choice used. Just before I transferred over the points (yes, before), I went through to the final checkout page on a dummy booking to see if any taxes were added to the $45. No taxes or fees added. Great!
And that’s when I got really stupid. I went ahead and transferred over the balance of the 36K Membership Rewards points I needed to have enough points to book my two rooms for 3 nights each for a grand total of 36K plus $270 (I had some points in my account already, so I didn’t need to transfer the full 36K).
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me to ask myself “Why aren’t there any taxes?”. If I had asked myself that simple question, I’d have probably looked closely and seen where it said that taxes were “included”.
And at that point, which didn’t happen until later than it should have, I’d have realized that Choice isn’t coming up with a perfect room rate to make it come out to exactly $45 with any state and local taxes included. Clearly, Choice is following IHG’s methodology — a fact I’d have known if I’d have read this excellent post from Ric Garrido of Loyalty Traveler earlier this year.
But unfortunately, I didn’t read that post before prepping for this one. Even still, if I’d have, ya know, scrolled to the bottom of the screen and actually read what it says, I’d have seen that Choice clearly shouted this much with a check box that I had to tick to confirm that I understood I was buying 6K points per night for $45 per night.
For those who don’t see where I’m going, I didn’t need to transfer over any Membership Rewards points. I could have just used 6K of my existing Choice Privileges points to make a dummy booking of 6K + $45. After I canceled the dummy booking, I would have had 12K points in my account. Then it’s just rinse and repeat until I had 72K total points. Assuming I started with just 6K Choice Privileges points in my account, I would have been able to buy the other 66K points I needed for $495. All-in, I’d have paid 6K points + $495 for 6 room nights (effectively $82.50 + 1K points per night). And I’d have been 30K Membership Rewards richer. Essentially, paying $495 would have kept a grand total of 66K Membership Rewards points in my account. In the end, I paid $270 — but paying just $225 more would have kept that 30K Membership Rewards points flexible. Yes, I’m still kicking myself over such a silly blunder.
But what if you’re not going to Napa Valley?
Of course, the trick here is irrespective of the Hotel Napa Valley. As Ric points out in the piece at Loyalty Traveler, as long as you have at least 6,000 Choice Privileges points in your account (which you could get by transferring 6K Membership Rewards points if you’re starting at zero), Choice allows you to buy points at a rate of $7.50 per 1,000 to make a reservation. In my case, the total rate for an award stay was 12K points per night, which means that for a Points + Cash reservation, I’d need to buy 6K points. At $7.50 per 1K, that’s $45. That’s a rate of 0.75c per point — even lower than our Reasonable Redemption Value for Choice Privileges points.
We’ve previously written about the biggest sweet spot in the Choice Privileges program: Free hotel breakfast & dinner at Nordic Choice Clarion Collection [Sweet-spot spotlight]. Many properties in Scandinavia offer both free breakfast and a free light evening meal and only cost between 10K-20K points per night — an excellent value if you’re paying just 0.75c per point.
Obviously, Choice Privileges points won’t always be worth more than the selling price here. However, there are definitely times when they will be — or times like these when buying the points can come at a substantial enough savings over transferring points as to save you from a big transfer like mine.
Bottom line
The Hotel Napa Valley, a Choice Privileges Ascend Collection property, presents a very good value in Napa Valley at just 12K points per night (including breakfast and an evening wine hour). Choice Privileges is a 1:1 Amex transfer partner. However, in booking that hotel, the takeaway for me was as long as one keeps 6K points in their Choice Privileges account, they can buy all the points they need quite cheaply and avoid transferring much more valuable Membership Rewards points. In the future, should I need to book a Choice Privileges property, I’ll just transfer 6K points and avoid repeating my mistake. Fool me once, Choice Privileges.
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Looks like suites may no longer be bookable online. I checked a few dates in the next 100 days and the King Suite option never showed up.
After all that…how was the stay?
It shows 30k points per night now
Yes, the current pricing is 25K or 30K depending upon the date:
Feb 16, 2020 – Apr 16, 2020: Sun – Thu 25,000/Room Fri – Sat 30,000/Room
Apr 17, 2020 – Jun 30, 2020: Sun – Thu 25,000/Room Fri – Sat 25,000/Room
[…] post, I bought 6K Choice Privileges points to keep them on hand to be sure I don’t repeat this mistake. In short, having 6K points on hand should make it possible to buy points cheaply via cash & […]
[…] I tend to like Choice points (I recently wrote about getting great value from them in Napa Valley), they are also cheap to acquire (see that same post for details). On a one-night stay, I might […]
Also, what’s the best way to get a 6k point balance to begin with. Buy them? 🙂
That’s the cheapest way. You could alternatively transfer from Membership Rewards, but buying them probably makes more sense.
Has anyone checked with the Amex Plat concierge to get reservations here?
Yeah, I know some people have had good luck with the Plat concierge for French Laundry reservations. But I think that these days, they’re doing the same thing — sitting and the computer and trying to click to reserve as fast as possible, same as you can do. In the past, when it was phone reservations, there may have been more advantage to trying through them.
Why not just buy the CP points outright? Just two months ago they were giving 50% bonus when buying 25k+ points and they’re regularly on sale for 70-80 cents each.
Thanks for sharing your mistakes! Nice to know that the experts make them too. There’s so much to remember!!
@Nick Reyes, your dates must be during low season. When I look for my dates it’s 25k per night. Also they won’t book any further out than some point in November
Choice Privileges only allows bookings up to 100 days in advance at any property, that’s why you can’t boo out further than November.
Interestingly, I just tried new dates and I see 16K. That’s interesting. Seems to be variable. That’s quite a swing if you’re seeing some dates at 25K….
Is there an easy way to filter which Choice Hotels offer any room for the same miles (vs more miles for a suite)?
Looks like you can’t see the points + cash option unless you have enough points for the points only option? It’s not coming up anywhere? Is this correct? Thanks!
right, need 6k in account.
Thank you for your insight and candor, Nick. Sometimes this miles and points game seems like dealing with international currency-but more challenging. It makes us “novices” feel a little better when you “experts” show us that it can sometimes be challenging for you guys, as well.
I wonder if it has anything to do with the #40kchallenge. ^_^
Choice Hotel win with Low Price Guarantee and $50 VGC
I recently booked SW trip using stack of AMEX Airline GC credits for the family to go visit my Dad and step-mom and younger half-siblings in Fort Collins, CO. They have a small place and so I was looking at places to stay for the few days and no rooms with points that were reasonable or that I wanted to use points on and DOC has shared about Hotels.com and we have some travels ahead to countries that don’t have hotels we have points with or enough so I have started buying Hotel.com GC when they are great deals (i.e. AMEX offers or close to 20% off which stack with a free 10th night). As well we picked up a C1 Venture card when they were pushing the 75K late last year, which earns 10X at Hotel.com
I digress, Choice Hotels is often overlooked but I found a 9.0/10 500 reviews Quality Inn & Suites with free Breakfast for four 2 Adults / a 19YO and 15 yo for about $50 less than pretty much anything decent hotel as well as near my Dads place. (2 Queen beds and a Sleeper couch and Kitchenette for $72 on Hotels. com, $84 direct on Choice Hotels and $62 at Agoda website. I saw the Choice Hotels low price Guarantee (Match low price for duration upto 10 rooms and $50 VGC HT to Drew Travel is Free).
So Choice Hotels has been off my radar since I became a CC shark and serious about this hobby. So I booked the first night Direct with Choice hotels (since the $50 GC is one per stay per home address no check in check out P2). Submitted the info on Friday and got email with this on Monday with 1-2 back and forth emails. (But CS is US based and surprisingly wasnt pulling teeth, did get an initial denial but left a short VM please call me, and got a call back after weekend, Short Conversation and then got an e-mail:
“…The rate on your Choice reservation has been modified to match the average nightly rate of 61.87 USD found on Agoda.com, and a $50 Reward Card will be sent to you within 45 days after completing your stay….”
So booked the other night using the Venture link for Hotels for the 10X (7.5 FF miles per dollar) . So we are now pretty close to 100k/75K FF transfer miles the night earned a little more than 900 C1 points with taxes [as well as posted within 1-2 days *cough-cough* speculation anyone].
Could have used 10K per night but banking MR for FF transfer. Still happy with Avg of $50/night with taxes and Breakfast for 4.
You guys have been on a roll recently. Keep it up!
The first thing I thought of when I read this is…Bay Area meet up!
In Sweden there’s a 8,000 point sweet spot in malmo in the center of town which also offers free breakfast and like a lite dinner
2nd … If you have no points … you can buy 6,000 at 11 cents each ……and then do the points and cash at 7.5 cents each
Choice has some amazing value in many places ….they just don’t have the prestige that hyatt,Hilton’s or marriotts
Funny, I don’t look at this as a “mistake” at all. It is a much bigger thrill for me when the travel is truly free, so I would have chosen the path that allowed the smallest possible cash outlay regardless of the perceived “value.”
I understand that many people share that mentality (and Greg has written about the “Joy of Free”, and I get it). The problem with that mentality is that it’s never free.
Let’s say that I earned the 72K Membership Rewards points at 1 point per dollar spent. That’s $72K in spend to get my “free” hotel nights with the lowest possible cash outlay.
If I put that $72K of spend on my Alliant card at 2.5% cash back instead, I’d have $1800 — enough for over a week with 2 rooms at this hotel. Essentially, my choice to earn/use 72K points at 1x is costing me a cash outlay of $1800. Even though I don’t directly see that cash, I left it sitting on an imaginary table and picked up the points instead of the money. (Obviously I didn’t earn my 72K points at 1x, but I’m illustrating the point as to why “smallest possible cash outlay” can be deceiving).
The fact is that when you choose to earn points over cash, it’s not really different than paying for the points in my mind. Imagine if your boss offered to pay you $100 for a day’s work or 1 large pizza. Would you feel excited about accepting the pizza? Of course not — that’s an expensive pizza if the trade-off is losing the chance to earn $100. Each point you choose over 2.5c cash is the same type of decision. Of course you can potentially get much better value out of the points — which is why it certainly makes sense to earn points over cash back sometimes.
But then using points at low value turns that points vs cash back decision into a potentially poor one.
Let’s now imagine that I earned the entire 72K Membership Rewards points at 4x at a grocery store. That’s $18K in spend. Had I put that 18K on a card earning 2.5% cash back, I’d have had $450. In this case, that would put me *just short* of enough money to buy all the points I’d need for this reservation. So I’d be getting a tiny sliver more value out of using 72K points for the “free’ room than had I just used a 2.5% cash back card. Personally, I’d much prefer to get more than a tiny sliver more value than 2.5% cash back when I use my points — I’d like to use those points for something I couldn’t or wouldn’t have otherwise bought. For example, I could use those 72K points for a round trip business class ticket to Europe. That’s worth a lot more to me than the $450 I’d be giving up to earn the points. In this case, using them for a room for which I could buy all of the points necessary for just $550 would seem like a less ideal choice to me.
100% agree
More tangibly, the 72K points could be cashed out via a Schwab Platinum card for $900. That’s nine hundred in cold, card cash — enough for me to book the reservation here and still have enough to pay for the wine pairing at The French Laundry. 72K points transferred would have been a poor redemption.
“That’s nine hundred in cold, card cash ”
Tax-free/after-tax cash, something a lot of people forget. Both ends of FICA, plus state, plus federal, plus others.
I understand your point, Nick. But if someone already has the Choice Points in their account, for example, (I have a stash thanks to the Daily Getaways), then it is a different proposition, is it not? If you do not have future plans to use the Choice points, then I imagine many people would rather spend their 72,000 points than 36,000 plus $270, because even though they are not maxing out the cpp value, they are still getting a very good value, plus the satisfaction of the stay being free.
Absolutely. My point was to transferring Membership Rewards. If you already have Choice points, by all means use those rather than buying more.
Yeah, I definitely agree with you about transferring from Amex. Another idea would be to purchase 6,000 points through points.com(currently $49.50 with the 25% off points purchase) and then do the points + miles trick for the rest if them so that you don’t have to burn any Amex points at all!
Or find a friend who has a gigantic stash of Choice points and work a trade.
I stock up on Choice points annually at Daily Getaways. Depending on available pkg can buy from 0.571 to to .482/pnt.
I truly appreciate the article and the Choice Privileges info, which was completely off my radar. But keep in mind that some of us simply want to travel “free”. Sometimes I get lost in all of the calculations of points values. For me, the one great analogy/perspective was to pay $270 instead of using 36k points that could purchase a business class ticket.
IDK, Nick, there are many, many, many ways to MS MR points far cheaper than $45 for 6k MR or.75 on the dollar. Instead of lamenting the loss, seems to me you just need to get busy replacing them!
@Kirk it isn’t a terrible card but with that said, it will take a 5/24 spot away and there are certainly better cards out there. I’d recommend going with something more valuable first.
@Nick Reyes, when I was reading and couldn’t believe it. Even though I just recently learned about this method of cancelling and receiving more points, I couldn’t stop thinking that Choice also very frequently sells their points at around 0.75 cpp? Certainly seems like a better value than transferring much more valuable Amex MR…
Should one get the choice hotel credit card and use that to buy the points?