Many Preferred Hotels now bookable with points

When Citi added Preferred Hotels as a transfer partner at an incredible 1 to 4 transfer ratio (details here) our excitement was muted due to the fact that only a few hotels were actually bookable entirely with points. Now, though, many hotels are bookable with points (212 at the time of this writing). Suddenly, this is exciting. Very exciting!

I’m sure this will be fixed sometime soon, but as I write this, you can’t find points-bookable hotels through the iPrefer website. The page that should show available hotels (found here) simply tells me that it “Failed to fetch.” Bad website. Bad.

The good news is that the Preferred Hotels website works fine. Simply enter your search criteria and click “Find Hotels.” If you leave out your destination, it will bring up all Preferred Hotels. Good website. Good.

Next, click View Rates for any hotel of interest, then pick dates from the availability calendar

Press Continue once you’ve selected dates. The next screen defaults to showing cash rates:

Click the little “Use I Prefer points” check box to switch to the points price:

Finally, in the section where it shows the “I Prefer Reward Nights” click the little “Rate Details” link to see the full cost with taxes. In this example, the full cost for two nights is 200,000 points plus $70.18 in taxes:

I love how the rate details clearly show all taxes due (including resort fees when applicable) and it also clearly shows the cancelation policy. In the example above, you can cancel for free up to 48 hours prior to 4pm on the day of arrival.

I’m working on a number of analyses that I’ll publish in the next few days, but here’s a quick preview of what I’ve found so far:

• While there’s a huge amount of variance from one hotel to another, iPrefer points average around half a cent in value when used as above to pay for a hotel stay. With Citi’s 1 to 4 transfer ratio, that means that it’s easy to get a very respectable 2 cents per point value with your Citi points. I’ve also found a number of examples where you can get much more value than that.
• There is a big overlap between Preferred Hotels bookable with Choice points and Preferred Hotels bookable with iPrefer points, but the overlap is less than I would have guessed. Only 44% of the Preferred Hotels bookable with Choice points are currently bookable with iPrefer points. Where they do overlap, if you’re starting with Citi points, it’s almost always cheaper to transfer to iPrefer at a 1 to 4 rate rather than to Choice at a 1 to 2 rate. I did find some properties, though, where it’s cheaper to transfer points to Choice to book so it’s a good idea to always compare the two booking platforms before transferring points. Here are the hotels where transferring 1 to 2 to Choice is better than 1 to 4 to iPrefer:
  • Corso 281
  • Excelsior Palace Portofino Coast
  • Hacienda Encantada Resort & Residences
  • INIALA HARBOUR HOUSE & RESIDENCES
  • Palazzo Dama
  • The One Palácio da Anunciada
  • THE THIEF

Many thanks to @nguoilangthang for tipping us off that Preferred Hotels are now really bookable with points

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