Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
I’ve long argued that the best use for points & miles is for travel. It’s often possible to get outsized value from your points with just the right flight or hotel awards. That said, there is another way to get outsized value: use points to book experiences. These include things like backstage concert tickets, impossible to get sports event tickets, dining with famous chefs, etc. Some experiences have fixed award prices, but most are setup as auctions. In either case, you may or may not get good value depending upon circumstances.
In this post I’ve compiled all of the points for experiences options that I could find. I did this, initially, for me. I had an upcoming trip to London and wanted to see if I could use points to do something really cool. Unfortunately, I first looked too early: the sites hadn’t yet loaded experiences for the dates I would be there. Then I looked too late: all still-available experiences in London were happening after my visit. That’s why I’ve added a date to start looking to the round-up so that you’ll avoid my mistake.
Hilton Experiences (click here to visit website)
- Search by: location, category, date range, keyword, points range,
group size - Fixed Price & Auction
- When to start looking: 2 months in advance
- Greg’s notes: Large selection of experiences. What I really like about this site is that it includes experiences in many less-popular cities. Most other sites concentrate all the good stuff in cities like New York and LA. On the other hand, some of the fixed price experiences are outrageously priced.
SPG Moments (click here to visit website)
- Search by: location, category, date range, keyword, points range,
group size - Fixed Price & Auction
- When to start looking: Events start to appear ~3 months in advance. 2 months seems to be the sweet spot.
- Greg’s notes: Large selection of experiences in popular cities around the world. It’s annoying that SPG Moments and Marriott Moments are still separate considering that they’ve merged their rewards programs. Hopefully that will change soon.
Marriott Moments (click here to visit website)
- Search by: location, category, date range, keyword, points range,
group size - Fixed Price & Auction
- When to start looking: Events start to appear ~3 months in advance. 2 months seems to be the sweet spot.
- Greg’s notes: Large selection of experiences in popular cities around the world. It’s annoying that SPG Moments and Marriott Moments are still separate considering that they’ve merged their rewards programs. Hopefully that will change soon.
Hyatt Find (click here to visit website)
- Search by: location, category, date range, keyword,
points range, group size - Fixed Price only (1.4 cents per point value)
- When to start looking: Anytime. Hyatt Find experiences are available far in advance.
- Greg’s notes: Very small selection available at this time. With only fixed prices available, it’s impossible to get great value from your points, but at least 1.4 cents per point isn’t terrible (but note that Hyatt points are often worth more than that when used towards stays).
IHG Auctions (click here to visit website)
- Search by: location, category,
date range, keyword, points range,group size - Fixed Price & Auction
- When to start looking: 3 months in advance
- Greg’s notes: Very small and very eclectic selection (example: an iRobot Braava Mopping Robot was one of the options when I looked). My impression is that there are some amazing values to be had if you happen to be in the right place at the right time.
Delta Experiences (click here to visit website)
- Search by: location, category,
date range, keyword, points range,group size - Fixed Price (none available when I looked) & Auction
- When to start looking: Most experiences are for events within 2 or 3 months, but some of the travel related ones let you pick your own dates approximately a year in advance.
- Greg’s notes: Decent selection. Great deals can be had if your auction doesn’t get bid up too high.
United MileagePlus Exclusives (click here to visit website)
- Search by: location, category,
date range,keyword,points range,group size - Fixed Price & Auction
- When to start looking: 2 months in advance.
- Greg’s notes: Decent selection within the US. Not much going on internationally. Search filter doesn’t appear to work correctly.
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[…] is that you can bid on unique experiences. I can’t figure out how this is different from the usual ability to bid on experiences. At first, I was excited that they offered limited “time travel” (see image, below), […]
Greg, thanks for the heads up on this. I spent 12,000 Delta miles for 2 LA Kings vs Vegas Golden Knights lower level tickets on the blue line. As someone who doesn’t live in a Delta hub, I consider this a really good deal since those tix would easily cost me north of $250 on Stubhub.
That’s awesome!
[…] awards travel companies are enticing us to burn our miles and points on. Here we go: Redeem Points for Experiences. A complete Roundup. I still have never redeemed any of my miles or points for these things, just not my […]
Also, BA has ways to redeem avios for experiences. Have you looked at those?
Which ones offer bidding only with no outright redemption?
lots of choices, little value…I notice a lot of times auctions go for more than retail value, due to someone that has too many points and nothing better to spend them on…this occurs on all of the sites, but especially IHG…that $200 I-Roomba mentioned could wind up going for $1000 worth of points…also many of the auctions end less than a month (some less than 2 weeks) from the date of the event….which is great for someone with trip plans in place, but nearly impossible for those that have to book flights and rooms at the last moment…it is a gimmick, just another way to use points at a poor value.
Coachella Music Festival sells out every year but was always bookable thru SPG Moments. Starpoint CPP value for winning bids wasn’t great from what I recall, often just 1-2 CPP. But was always a backup option for years where tickets sold out too fast (which is often minutes after they go onsale). This past year, SPG held out until just a month before the event to offer all ticket levels, including Artist Passes. Not an ideal use for Starpoints but a great once in a lifetime experience for someone with boatloads of Starpoints/Marriott Rewards.
But Greg…you’re not a millennial…how is it you value experiences? 😉
All joking aside, thanks for the post. This hasn’t been on my radar before but it sounds like there are more channels & choices available than I had assumed.
Yesterday I ended up using an experience from my kids’ BA avios (to save 39k miles from expiring). Cost me 1100 avios, but was running out of time snd options.
Thanks. I forgot about BA, but it looks like the experiences are fixed price and probably not very good value?
I booked one of the tours offered through the BA portal earlier this year. The tours are organized by Viator and it appeared that you could book any Viator offering using BA points. It looks like you get about $.007 per BA point. This can be a good use of BA points if your can’t use them to fly or they are near expiration. The booking window varies by tour but you can generally book up to 8 months in advance.
Southwest has similar (More Rewards) for cardholders only (as I recall). A couple years ago, they had a KY Derby Package (both auction and immediate purchase) that was not that bad a price I thought.
Details on that deal in an old Flyertalk thread.
Examples of things available:
https://www.1.awardhq.com/24468SWA0SWARR/RapidRewards?icid=SWArewardspotlight_July2018_events&p=Auctions
Thanks! The link you provided just goes to a timeout screen. I don’t have a Southwest card, but did find experiences available for all Southwest members. There doesn’t seem to be a way to share the link to it though.
Hmmm. I got there without logging into WN or Chase.
Anyway, you might be able to Google “Southwest More Rewards”.