Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is happening now! Follow us as Greg, Nick, and Stephen compete to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines before November 23rd. Who will complete the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
The Daily Getaways are a set of travel deals available in limited quantities. Each day, for the next several weeks, a new deal becomes available at exactly 1 pm ET. The most popular deals will be sold out before you can finish saying “where’s my wallet?” The best way to grab these deals is to be at your computer minutes before the deal goes live and refresh your browser continuously like a stark raving lunatic until the option to “Buy” appears. Then, click the button and hope not to see the dreaded sold out message. There are often multiple deals available on the same day. To increase your chance of getting one you can try first for the deal that you think will be less popular than the rest.
Are any of these deals worth this craziness? In general the answer is… it depends. For most deals, you can save money by buying them if you were planning to spend more money on similar travel anyway. Many deals, though, will only encourage you to pre-pay for things you might never actually want to use.
To save you time, I’ve summarized each deal below and rated the ones I consider particularly deal-worthy with a thumbs up icon:
| Date Available | Deal | Frequent Miler’s Review |
|---|---|---|
| Monday April 4 | Buy Choice Privileges points for .4 to .45 cents each. |  The current Fair Trading Price for Choice points is .56 cents, so this can definitely be categorized as a cheap way to buy Choice points. That said, points are only worth buying if you know for sure that you’ll use them. It’s worth noting that Choice points can also be transferred to Southwest Airlines at a reasonable rate. |
| Tuesday April 5 | Buy Busch Gardens or Sea World tickets for about half price |  If you know you’ll use the tickets, this looks like a good deal to me. |
| Wednesday April 6 | Buy IHG points for around .6 cents each | The current Fair Trading Price for IHG points is .56 cents, so this isn’t really much of a deal. There’s no guarantee that IHG points will be worth .6 cents or more when redeeming them. So, go for this deal only if you have immediate plans for their use and know you’ll save money. If you need IHG points in the future, it’s always possible to buy IHG points for cheaply by booking and cancelling Points & Cash stays as long as you have at least 5,000 points available. |
| Thursday April 7 | Buy Best Western points for .55 cents each. | The current Fair Trading Price for Best Western points is .56 cents, so this isn’t really much of a deal. That said, I don’t know of any other cheap ways to buy Best Western points so this deal is probably worth pursuing if you are planning Best Western stays where you’ll get more than .6 cents value for your points. |
| Friday April 8 | Vegas package deals ranging from $475 to $1750 | These may be good deals if you were planning to pay for the rooms, shows, and meals anyway, but keep in mind that each package expires either at the end of this year or by the end of January 2017. Personally, I hate the idea of plunking down a lot of money for something like this that may or may not get used before it completely expires. |
| Monday April 11 | 15,000 Wyndham points for $150 (1 cent per point) | The current Fair Trading Price for Wyndham points is .56 cents, so this looks like a terrible deal from that perspective. Also, the standard price to buy points from Wyndham is only 1.1 cents each, so this is barely better than that. On the other hand, Wyndham usually restricts buying points to just 5,000 points per calendar year, so if you have a good use for the points, it might make sense. |
| Tuesday April 12 | Universal Orlando Resort (Various Packages) | If you happen to know that you’ll go to this particular park with the exact number of people specified for a particular package, and that you’ll go before they expire on May 26 2017, then this can be a great deal. It’s definitely not for me. |
| Wednesday April 13 | $1000 Expedia+ Hotel Coupon for $650 | I almost gave this deal a thumbs up. There’s no doubt that there are situations where it can be used to save $350 on a hotel stay. The terms & conditions, though, are pretty extreme:
|
| Thursday April 14 | One to two night stay at various Omni Hotels for $160 to $335 | As with all of these deals, only buy if you know you’ll use those nights and that you’ll save a lot of money over booking directly. |
| Friday April 15 | Las Vegas and Atlantic City packages ranging from $350 to $1400 | Again, only buy if you know you’ll use those nights before they expire, and that you’ll save a lot of money over booking directly. |
| Monday April 18 | 5 Night Stay at a Diamond Property Worldwide for $525 | Certificate expires May 13, 2017. Meh. You can probably do just as well renting a week from a timeshare owner. Check listings on sites like tug2.com, redweek, etc. |
| Tuesday April 19 | Las Vegas packages ranging from $299 to $590 | Again, only buy if you know you’ll use those nights before they expire, and that you’ll save a lot of money over booking directly. |
| Wednesday April 20 | Buy Hilton HHonors points for half a cent each. | Don’t do it unless you have concrete plans for a Hilton stay that would give you good value for the points. Hilton points are rarely worth more than the current Fair Trading Price of .45 cents each when redeeming for stays. |
| Thursday April 21 | Two nights in a Vegas suite for $495 or $608 | No way. “Additional blackout dates may apply” on top of these blackout dates: March 21-22, 2016, April 18-19, 2016, May 1-2, 2016, May 10-12, 2016, May 23-24, 2016, May 28, 2016, June 7-8, 2016, August 7-9, 2016, August 13-15, 2016, August 26-27, 2016, September 3, 2016, September 26-27, 2016, October 4-5, 2016, October 14-15, 2016, October 17-18, 2016, October 23-25, 2016, November 1-2, 2016, November 14-16, 2016, November 29-30, 2016, December 30-31, 2016. Additional blackout dates may apply |
| Friday April 22 | Buy Hertz points for 4.2 to 4.5 cents each |
Caution: While I’ve had great luck in the past in getting good value from Hertz points, I know others who haven’t been as successful. It is a bit of a gamble. Plus, note that you won’t get automatic rental collision waiver from your credit card when you book with points. |
| Monday April 25 | $596 worth of Universal Studios Hollywood tickets for $500 | For such a small discount, don’t bother unless you already happen to be in the market for four 2-day admission tickets. |
| Tuesday April 26 | 2 nights in a Loews hotel between $275 and $1300 | Only buy if you know you’ll use those nights and that you’ll save a lot of money over booking directly. |
| Wednesday April 27 | $50 Alamo rental certificate for $25 |  Certificates can be combined with Alamo Insiders 5% discount (sign up for free). Up to 3 certificates can be applied to one rental (but you’ll have to call to use more than one). Can maximize this deal and get nearly half off by using on rentals costing just over $50, $100, or $150. Savings can actually be even better than advertised since taxes and fees will be proportionally lower as well. |
| Thursday April 28 | 6 Night Fairmont Hawaii vacation for $1,800 or 3 Night Scottsdale for $610 | The nice thing about these packages is that you actually get multiple certificates each good for 1 night plus breakfast and they have no expiration dates. The Hawaii deal is like pre-paying for Fairmont nights for $300 per night (breakfast included), and the Scottsdale package is $203 per night (breakfast included). If you use those certificates during high-season in either location, then you could save a lot of money over paying the going rate. That said, you could instead apply for the Fairmont credit card to get 2 free nights at any Fairmont hotel worldwide. |
| Friday April 29 | Buy Hyatt points for 1.04 to 1.1 cents each | The current Fair Trading Price for Hyatt points is 1.12 cents, so this is a reasonable price at which to buy Hyatt points. There aren’t many packages available though, and they tend to sell out nearly instantly so the chance of being able to buy a package is close to zero. Don’t waste your time. |
| Monday May 2 | Avis one day car rental for $30; or Chairman’s Club membership for $1,115 |
Caution: Reader Danny says that the certs do not work in Alaska. |
| Tuesday May 3 | Buy Marriott e-gift cards for 20% off |  According to the Daily Getaways site: “the eGiftCard is available for use at participating Marriott branded or Ritz-Carlton properties worldwide for stays, dining, spa treatments, golf and more.” If you know you’ll be staying at Marriott properties then this is definitely a solid deal. |
| Wednesday May 4 | Vegas packages ranging from $150 to $2,000 | Zzzzzz |
The listed offers are based on AnyDay rewards. If you find Standard Award availability, your points will go twice as far as advertised. For example, they advertise a 1 week rental for $250. That package actually gives you 5,500 points which are enough for two weeks at the Standard Award rate (or 1 week at the AnyDay reward rate).
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
[…] me this morning to ask if I something has changed with Wyndham Rewards. Just two days after selling their points via Daily Getaways, their website is no longer showing a fixed 15K point rate for free nights. For example, when […]
[…] The real deals: A quick guide to Daily Getaways 2016 – Which deals are worth pursuing during this month long promotion? […]
[…] notes 5 deals in this year’s lineup that he thinks are worthwhile, while Greg is slightly more optimistic and names 6 deals that he considers “deal-worthy.” Since there’s a total of 23 deals across the […]
[…] Freguent Miler […]
[…] Deals and FrequentMiler have good rundowns on where they see potential […]
Since FM forgot to HT the impetus for the post, here is a HT to Dem Flyers. http://www.demflyers.com/2016/03/31/daily-getaways-2016-should-you-buy/
If you want to see where I really stole this from, check out this post from last year: https://frequentmiler.com/2015/03/25/the-quick-guide-to-daily-getaways-2015/
I apologize. Thank you for replying to my post.
Gotta HT yourself, Greg 😉
Thanks for the support, Plag.
Side note — props to Greg for keeping up the comment, despite the resolution.
Thanks for this! Note that there’s a typo in the discussion of the IHG points, where you refer to them as Choice points…
Thanks. I think i fixed it
I find the IHG points very useful. IHG hotels are all over the world, unlike other properties (only Hilton compares to it and surpasses it). Also for a family of four it’s really useful to get hotels that allow 4 to one room.
I don’t think the rental car deals are good. You can only use them for rentals in the U.S., no internationally, which sucks. And Avis, Herts and Alamo are usually much more expensive than the other companies. So not sure what the appeal is.
IHG is good only if you have plans to use the rooms. Now, if I were someone who was traveling in off the beaten path locations and between homes for some reason then I would buy IHG points and use as many of them for Pointbreaks as possible (basically $30 a night rooms in various off the beaten path cities in the world). But if I don’t have plans within the next year for ANY of the daily getaways, then I’m not buying. I might try Avis, because I do occasionally rent cars, but if they are only offering 700 certificates then it might not be worth even trying.
I have a question about the Alamo certificates. Do you think it’s possible to apply them to an existing reservation? Or would it only be on new reservations?
I don’t know
I have applied them to existing reservations in the past (but of course YMMV)
I wish I could shout this from the rooftops for every blog covering this – the Avis certs are not good in Alaska, even though it is not in the official terms. I learned this the hard way after buying them when every single Avis location in Alaska told me they don’t take them. Thankfully Avis refunded my money, but I see they haven’t updated their terms to reflect reality yet.
Thanks Danny. When I get back to my laptop I’ll add a caution about that (working from my phone right now)
You just answered my question! Thanks for posting!
Thanks so much Danny for reporting this. I was about to buy these Monday for Alaska. Saved me a bunch of time and a headache.
“Plus, note that you won’t get automatic rental collision waiver from your credit card when you book with points.”
Why is that? One still has to pay taxes and fees on their credit card, even when using points, so shouldn’t that trigger the collision waiver? Thanks!
Credit card terms usually say that the rental must be paid entirely with the credit card to be eligible for coverage