For me, one of the treats of European travel is the ability to spend the night in a historic building. All of the major hotel brands have properties that are located in restored convents, monasteries, palaces, etc (see our recent reviews of Palacio de Villapanes and Palacio de Santa Paula) and there are a plethora of possibilities outside of the chains as well.
Since my first trip to Spain, I’ve always been fascinated by the Paradores, a collection of hotels, largely in historic buildings, that are owned and run by the Spanish government (or more appropriately, by a company that’s owned by the Spanish government). If you think that having the full weight of the Spanish crown behind a hotel brand creates some opportunities for amazing properties…you’d be absolutely right.
I’m also a fan of using Chase Ultimate Rewards for travel in places that my traditional points and miles won’t take me. Armed with a Chase Sapphire Reserve, you can use Ultimate Rewards at a value of 1.5 cents per point (cpp) to pay for anything that’s bookable through the Chase Travel Portal (if you have a Sapphire Preferred, you can do the same thing at 1.25 cents per point).
And the Spanish Paradores are a great case in point.
What are Paradores?
Paradores (officially Paradores de Turismo de España) were founded by the Spanish King Alfonso XIII as a means to promote tourism in Spain and at the same time provide a use for historic heritage buildings. The first Parador opened in 1928 in Ávila and there are now ninety-seven located throughout the country. The company is still state-owned and features hotels that are located in palaces, monasteries, forts and, yes, castles.
Not only are many of the Paradores located in swoon-worthy buildings, they are in marvelous locations like hilltops and cliff-edges and are generally in or near the centre of historic districts. Most of them have excellent restaurants (often with incredible views) that are meant to highlight the regional cuisine of whichever province they are in.
I wanted to take my wife to a Parador while we were in Spain last month and ended up staying at the one that’s located in a historic palace in the Andalucian “white town” of Arcos de la Frontera. The cash cost of most Paradores are quite reasonable for what you’re getting. In our case, the nightly price with breakfast for two was just over $150. Even still, I try to avoid using cash for travel whenever possible and this is where Ultimate Rewards came to the rescue. 10,131 Ultimate Rewards points, to be exact.
How about 10,000 points for that palace?
Nick will often (correctly) point out that, just because you can redeem Ultimate Rewards at 1.5cpp, it doesn’t mean that you’re actually getting 1.5cpp in value. This is because, especially in US, you’ll often find that properties’ prices in the portal are higher than either booking direct or using an online travel agency like booking.com or Hotels.com. So, when you redeem your points for hotels, you’re often paying a higher price than you need, making the actual value of those points less than the redeemed value.
That said, I’ve had much better luck with pricing internationally, and it’s not unusual to see the price in the portal almost mirroring the book direct price. It just so happens that the entire network of Paradores is bookable through the Chase Travel Portal AND the prices seem to be more or less identical to prices that you’ll find on the Paradores website.
In this case, the Chase Portal had all of the available room-types, including the superior room wew wanted that has the cliff-edge balcony pictured above. It also had the choice of booking just lodging, lodging + breakfast or lodging + breakast/dinner (these are the same options for all Paradores). The price of the room with full breakfast was 10,131 UR, an almost exact 1.5 cent per point value compared to the cash price of $151.89.
But didn’t you say something about a castle?
Let’s take a look at booking that castle, located in Jaén, just north of Granada. This Parador looks amazing, occupying its own hilltop with rooms that overlook the surrounding mountains. I wanted to stay here on our last trip, but we just couldn’t fit it into our itinerary. So, let’s compare the pricing of Parador de Jaén between the Paradores website and the Chase Portal.
First let’s take a look at the Paradores site:
Paradores are often more expensive on weekends because of domestic tourism, so I picked a random Wednesday night at the end of June. The cost for bed and breakfast for 2 in a standard room is €160.00, or $171.50 at current exchange rates. Now, let’s go to the UR Portal. First, I’ll open up the hotel booking engine by selecting hotels in the landing page sidebar:
Once in the hotel booking engine, I entered the province name, Jaén, and had multiple results come up, including the Parador de Jaén:
On clicking through, I find the same options as I did on the Parador site, and a cash price of $172, 50 cents more than the direct, best available rate from the hotel. I can then redeem 11,432 Ultimate Rewards points…or 8,574 (!) points without breakfast. For a balcony room. In a castle.
Final Thoughts
So, here I am, “heretic-ing” it up again by cashing out Ultimate Rewards instead of transferring to partners. But do a little thought experiment with me. Let’s say that suddenly, every Parador in Spain became bookable via Hyatt, but with no elite credit. So, I could use 8,000-11,000 Hyatt points (equivalent to a Category 2) and book the very same room in the very same castle. Everyone in the blogosphere would be talking about transferring their Ultimate Rewards to Hyatt to take advantage of what would appear to be a steal on a unique set of properties (no offense, Sunscape).
So what makes this any different?
Regular readers will note that I’m a big proponent of folks using points and miles to travel the way that they want, even if it’s not the “best” redemption in terms of cents-per-points. My wife and I absolutely love the experience that the Paradores offer and it would be a shame to miss it simply because Paradores de Turismo de España isn’t an official transfer partner of the convertible currencies.
So, in the end, if you’re going to Europe, have a look at the Paradores. But more than that, and regardless of which country you’re in, don’t sleep on the Chase Portal as a viable way to stay at terrific independent properties and still keep cash in your pocket. There’s a huge variety of impressive hotels that can be booked there, especially in places that are underserved (or not served) by the usual chains. That’s a lot of magic for a few thousand points.
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The Capital one Venture X gives you a $300 credit pa against almost any hotel booking when using the card to book!
Paradores have very nice properties. If you sign up for the ‘Amigos de Paradores’ program you can have free breakfast on your first stay. They also have some discounted rates for guests over 55.
Does the Capital One travel portal have the Paradores too?
They do, but obviously without the sweetener of the .25 or .5 additional value. They seem to be the same price as on the Chase portal, but oddly without the option of paying a breakfast or full board rate. The one’s I checked, you could only book lodging.
WOW. I cannot believe this is the first time I have heard of parador’s. I have spent the last few hours reading about them and have set out a furture trip to southern spain to just do Cadiz, Seville, Cordoba, Granada. Best thing is now I am over 55 the prices are really sharp. Half board is around 20-30% cheaper than cheapest non refundable breakfast only rate. Years of reading all the travel blog’s and of course its frequent miler who looks past the standard international name hotels to find a fantastic way to visit spain. Now if only Hyatt would have a stay agreement with them :)- Thanks again.
I’m also over 55 and starting to plan a similar trip for October. If you have any details you’d like to share (assuming you’ve taken the trip by now), I’d love to read them!
Alas not yet. Air fares too expensive at present from the antipodies . Prob in two years
Try the parador in Salamanca. Great rooms, breakfast buffet and you can photograph all your cityscapes from the pool, day or night.
Fred, I’ve ogled that Salamanca property, it looks incredible! E-mail us a couple photos, I’d love to see them.
The EU has great prices on 4* hotels people believe the old story like Hawaii. It costs to much but Greece 4* hotel in Athens 7 nites $900.Good post a Deal..