Mattress running for Hyatt stays and bonus points

Pure mattress running for hotel elite status rarely makes sense: you only receive status benefits for nights you stay, so the further away from elite status you are, the less worthwhile a potential mattress run towards status will be.

At the same time, mattress running for bonus points during promotions rarely makes sense because travel hacking makes hotel stays so cheap that any bonus points earned are unlikely to buy you much hotel than you can purchase any day of the week by simply manufacturing spend.

As a new Hyatt Diamond, I decided to see whether the current Stay More Play More promotion may make mattress running make sense for the combination of elite-qualifying stays towards renewing my status, and the bonus points earned.

How much does a mattress run cost?

To calculate the cost of a mattress run, I take the cost of a paid stay and, in the case of a Points + Cash stay, the cost of any points redeemed, then subtract the value of any points earned on the stay. Here are some sample calculations I scratched out last week, based on nightly rates at my local Hyatt property.

In words, I can pay $50.38 (after buying a gift card at an 18% discount) and 2,642 Hyatt Gold Passport points (4,000 minus the 1358 points earned on the cash portion of the stay), or I can pay $122.84 and earn a total of 1,872 points. A valuation of 1.61 cents per Hyatt Gold Passport point makes the two options a wash. If I value Hyatt Gold Passport points more highly than that, I should book an all-cash stay, and at a lower valuation, I should book a Points + Cash stay for my mattress run.

The question is, it possible for the Stay More Play More promotion to make mattress running cheap, or even free? The answer, it turns out, is yes — for a certain definition of free.

Stay More Play More makes mattress runs cheaper the more nights you stay

Stay More Play More is really 5 distinct promotions, and it's essential to grasp that to make any sense of this calculation:

• one promotion offering 5,000 points on your 5th eligible night;
• one offering 10,000 points on your 10th night;
• one offering 15,000 points on your 15th night;
• one offering 20,000 points on your 20th night;
• one offering 25,000 points on your 25th night.

Keep in mind that no other nights are bonused in any way under this promotion: only these multiple-of-five eligible nights between April 1 and June 30, 2016, earn any bonus points at all.

The first promotion may be marginally worth a mattress run if you have access to a Category 1 Hyatt property. You'll earn 5,000 bonus points plus, as a Diamond, 6.5 points per dollar on the cash portion of your stay, plus 500 bonus points (at Hyatt Place and Hyatt House properties) or 1,000 bonus points (at other Hyatt properties).

A Points + Cash stay at a Category 1 property will thus cost $50 plus tax and earn a net of 3,325 Hyatt Gold Passport points, or 1.5 cents per Hyatt Gold Passport point at Hyatt Place and Hyatt House properties or 3,825 points (1.31 cents per point) at other Hyatt properties.

If you value Hyatt Gold Passport points at 1 cent each (when transferred from Ultimate Rewards), that's like paying $11.75 or $16.75 for a stay credit, which may be worth doing if needed to secure Diamond elite status the following year.

The promotion for later nights shifts the balance even more in your favor. Booking your 10th night on a Points + Cash stay in Category 1 gives a net cost of 0.6 cents per point and at Category 2 a net cost of 0.8 cents per point.

The deeper you get into the promotion, the more lucrative it becomes. If your 25th night happens to be at a Category 7 Park Hyatt on a Points + Cash stay, you'll pay 15,000 and $300 for the night — then get 27,950 points back, leaving you out of pocket just $170.50 for your Category 7 night.

Think twice before mattress running unbonused nights

The flip side of the structure of this promotion is that unbonused nights (all but the 5 bonused nights) make little sense for mattress running. Even at the very top of the promotion earning 5,000 bonus points per night leaves you paying 1.5 cents per point at Category 1 properties, which is 50% more than you would pay simply transferring in Ultimate Rewards points.

But even more importantly, if you are staying that many nights in a single 3-month period you're unlikely to need the elite-qualifying stays at all — you'll probably requalify for Diamond status on the stays you'll naturally book during the calendar year.

When the Fun Stops

If you've ever visited Las Vegas, you've no doubt seen the constant parade of advertisements run by the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling, with the campaign slogan "When the Fun Stops."

I've persisted, in the face of pressure from Rolling Stone, in calling travel hacking "the game," which makes us players, and which usefully raises the specter of problem gaming. In general, I think there are three ways a healthy attitude towards travel hacking can become problematic.

Getting stuck on the status treadmill

One of the great intellectual triumphs of the loyalty industry was making it difficult — but just easy enough — to qualify for elite status. Hotel loyalty programs offer three good examples:

• The Hilton HHonors Surpass American Express and Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve give top-tier Diamond elite status after spending $40,000 on either card;
• The Starwood Preferred Guest American Express gives 5 nights and 2 stays towards SPG elite status just for being a cardmember;
• The Chase Hyatt Gold Passport credit card gives 2 stays and 5 nights towards elite status after spending $20,000 with the card, and 3 stays and 5 nights towards elite status after spending a total of $40,000 with the card each calendar year.

Likewise the Delta Platinum and Reserve business and personal American Express cards each offer Medallion Qualification Miles towards elite status at certain spend thresholds, the Citi / AAdvantage Executive World Elite MasterCard offers 10,000 Elite Qualifying Miles after $40,000 in calendar year spend, and the Barclaycard AAdvantage Aviator Silver World Elite MasterCard gives 5,000 Elite Qualifying Miles after spending each of $20,000 and $40,000 on the card per calendar year.

For an experienced travel hacker those thresholds are easy to meet, which is easy to confuse with being worth meeting.

But if you'll enjoy few or any of the benefits of elite status, you shouldn't be going out of your way to earn — or even think about earning — elite status in programs you don't actually take advantage of!

Losing track of point values

The Chase Marriott Rewards credit card has earned 1 Marriott Rewards points per dollar spent everywhere, well, forever.

But the Marriott Rewards program has undergone a series of horrific devaluations since the credit card was introduced!

The same card that would have earned you three free nights at the JW Marriott in Washington DC for $50,000 in spend will now barely earn you one night for the same spend (the property now costs 40,000 Marriott Rewards points per night).

If you got on board early, you could have powered your way through a series of devaluations and suddenly find yourself earning far fewer stays for the same amount of spend.

Losing track of costs

This is a story I've told before, but I think it's still illustrative. I was introducing a friend to travel hacking right about the time when Vanilla Reload Network cards stopped being sold to credit card users at national pharmacy outlets.

I broke the news to my friend and explained that only cash was now accepted for the reload cards. And my friend, who was eager to earn as many United MileagePlus miles as possible for an upcoming trip, asked me, "well, what if I take out a cash advance from my card and use the cash to buy a Vanilla Reload card?"

It's a funny story, but it illustrates an actual problem I see all too often: once folks are stuck in a groove, they'll do anything to stay in that groove, even when the costs slowly (or rapidly!) start to outweigh the rewards they were initially earning.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, I'm a travel hacking enthusiast. I think this game, in the huge variety of forms it takes, will be around for a long, long time to come.

But that general relaxation about the bigger picture shouldn't be treated as an invitation to take your eye off the particular credit cards, programs, and techniques you use!

A relentless focus is the only way to make sure you're getting the most value out of every second you spend playing this game.

And if you don't have that focus? Well, there's always tennis.

The concept of loyalty and the Wyndham Rewards revaluation

I had an interesting exchange on Twitter the other day with Seth, the Wandering Aramean, who was arguing in response to Trevor at Tagging Miles that loyalty currencies are on a perpetual downward valuation spiral. While they devalue at different rates and different times, Seth claimed, they never increase in value.

My response was, "What about Wyndham?" After all, the May 11, 2015, revaluation of the Wyndham Rewards program made the 4 cheapest award categories (5,500 to 14,000 Wyndham Rewards points) more expensive, while the 5 most expensive award categories (16,000 to 50,000 Wyndham Rewards points) became less expensive when all properties were realigned at 15,000 Wyndham Rewards points per night.

Meanwhile, the Barclaycard Wyndham Rewards credit cards continue to offer 2 Wyndham Rewards points per dollar spent everywhere.

Reconciling these two positions is easy, as long as you can tell the difference between loyalty programs and loyalty.

If you were a loyal Wyndham guest, you probably got screwed

I admit that I've been travel hacking so long that it's a bit tough to remember what "loyalty" is supposed to signify.

But if "loyalty" means anything, it's surely the willingness to pay more to direct your stays or flights to a particular travel provider, not for any short-term interest but because over multiple nights, flights, stays, and years, your business will be rewarded in a way it wouldn't if you stayed at the cheapest possible hotel and booked the cheapest possible flight each time you traveled.

Since most travelers, most of the time, are traveling domestically, and only rarely staying in the most expensive categories of property, the change of cost of Wyndham Rewards nights to a flat 15,000 points was, as Seth asserted, a radical devaluation for "loyal" travelers, which is to say for travelers who directed their paid stays to Wyndham in order to secure cheap future award nights.

If you're a travel hacker, the Wyndham Rewards revaluation was a godsend

Compared to putting the same spend on a 2% or 2.105% cash back credit card, the Barclaycard Wyndham Rewards credit cards allow you to purchase a night at any Wyndham Rewards property in the world for between $150 and $158. As it is for a "loyal" Wyndham Rewards customer, at many properties that's an increase over the cost prior to the May 11, 2015, revaluation.

But the key takeaway for the travel hacker is that other, cheaper options remain for the nights you'd otherwise have redeemed Wyndham Rewards points for. There's a difficulty in analyzing the situation precisely, but fortunately Wyndham still makes available the list of properties which went up and went down in category in 2013, which at least gives a sense of what properties were in which categories prior to the 2015 revaluation.

With all that in mind, here are some United States properties which, as of 2013, cost less than 15,000 Wyndham Rewards points per night. These are properties that became more expensive after the 2015 revaluation. Next to each property I also suggest the cheapest nearby competing property and its imputed redemption value.

I don't claim this is exhaustive research — anybody can do the same research and find more extreme examples at their leisure using the links provided above.

• Baymont Inn and Suites Florence/Muscle Shoals. Was 14,000 Wyndham Rewards points ($147 IRV). Nearby: Hampton Inn Florence-Midtown. 20,000 Hilton HHonors points ($70 IRV).
• Days Inn Tempe ASU. Was 10,000 Wyndham Rewards points ($105 IRV). Nearby: Embassy Suites Phoenix - Tempe. 30,000 - 40,000 HHonors points ($106 - $141 IRV).
• Days Hotel Oakland Airport-Coliseum. Was 14,000 Wyndham Rewards points ($147 IRV). Nearby: Hilton Oakland Airport. 30,000 HHonors points ($106 IRV).
• Ramada Denver Midtown. Was 10,000 Wyndham Rewards points ($105 IRV). Nearby: Hampton Inn & Suites Denver-Speer Boulevard. 30,000 - 40,000 HHonors points ($106-$141 IRV).
• Knights Inn Lafayette Midwest. Was 5,500 Wyndham Rewards points ($58 IRV). Nearby: 
  Homewood Suites by Hilton Lafayette. 30,000 - 40,000 HHonors points ($106-$141 IRV).
• Travelodge - Columbus. Was 5,500 Wyndham Rewards points ($58 IRV). Nearby: 
  Hyatt Place Columbus/OSU. 8,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points ($80 IRV). Also
  DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Hotel Columbus Downtown. 20,000 - 30,000 Hilton HHonors points ($70 - $106 IRV)

Conclusion

The point of this post is not that the Wyndham Rewards revaluation was "a good thing." Whether or not a particular individual benefited or suffered from it depends on that person's past and future pattern of paid and award stays.

My point is that for a travel hacker the increases in prices at Tier 1-4 Wyndham Rewards properties are easily offset by balances in competing programs with more reasonably priced properties in the same markets.

Meanwhile, the decrease in prices for properties in Wyndham Rewards tiers 5 to 9 (16,000 to 50,000 Wyndham Rewards points) make their top-tier properties radically more affordable in the same markets as their competitors continue to charge high prices, whether you choose to pay in cash or in points.

Redeem Wells Fargo "Go Far" rewards for Hyatt gift cards

Maybe you got in on the Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond status match in time. Maybe you didn't.

But if you have a Wells Fargo credit card that's earning 5 "Go Far" rewards points per dollar spent at gas stations, grocery stores, and pharmacies, you should seriously consider redeeming those points for 1.22 cents each by ordering Hyatt gift cards.

Hyatt gift cards are a strong competitor to the Chase Hyatt credit card

The Chase Hyatt credit card gives 2 elite-qualifying stay credits and 5 elite-qualifying night credits after spending $20,000 on the card in a calendar year, and another 3 stay credits and 5 night credits after spending $40,000, total, within the same calendar year.

The same spend manufactured on a 2% cash back card would yield $800, while Chase Ultimate Rewards points transferred to Hyatt come at a cost of 1 cent each (the cash value of the same Ultimate Rewards points redeemed for cash).

That means, as I explained on episode 26 of the Saverocity Observation Deck podcast, you're paying a minimum of $80 per stay for each of the 5 stays you earn manufacturing $40,000 in spend with the Chase Hyatt credit card.

But the same $400 in Wells Fargo "Go Far" rewards points (otherwise redeemable for cash) will purchase $487.80 in Hyatt stays in the US, Canada, or the Carribean (the regions where gift cards can be used).

In other words, your breakeven point is not $80 per paid stay, but rather $97.56 per paid stay — and that's ignoring the points you earn on paid stays, which aren't earned on the elite-qualifying stays awarded by the Chase Hyatt credit card.

Discounted gift cards provide real savings — don't discount them

If you're able to buy Hyatt gift cards at an 18% discount, then redeem them for paid stays which, in turn, earn 500 or 1,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points each, you should be properly comparing manufactured spend on a Chase Hyatt credit card to stays costing as much as $107 after taxes.

So while manufacturing spend on the Chase Hyatt credit card is an easy and convenient method for racking up additional elite-qualifying stays and nights, you may find that you're leaving money on the table by doing so.

Redeeming rump point balances

If having too many points in a single program is one kind of problem, both because of the increased exposure to devaluations and the fact that the least valuable point is the one that is never redeemed, then having just a few points in a program is a slightly different kind of problem.

The remaining points left in an account, whether "orphaned" there when you moved your earning activity to another program or the "rump" points left after a big redemption, can be difficult to redeem for anything: too few points for a big, valuable redemption and too many points to simply redeem for magazines.

Since I redeem my miles and points as aggressively as possible, I'm often faced with this problem of rump points. I thought it might be useful to go through my balances and see what I can get with my current account balances, without earning any additional points.

Club Carlson: 13,248 points

After my windfall back in January, I rebooked a couple of stays and ended up with a rump balance of just over 13,000 Gold Points. This is enough for a single night at a Category 1 property.

Club Carlson's Category 1 offers very slim pickings. The Park Inn by Radisson Puerto Varas, in Chile, looks adorable, and there are a few properties in Eastern Europe that seem fine (although I'm not sure the Park Inn Danube, Bratislava, will still be Category 1 after they finish their renovations on September 1, 2016).

There are 3 Radisson Blu properties on the list, in Egypt, Turkey, and India.

But since none of those options work for me, I'll likely redeem my remaining Club Carlson points for airline miles. As you'd expect, the transfer ratio is terrible, with 2,000 Gold Points transferring to 200 airline miles with their partners. Still, it's clear that I'm much more likely to redeem 1,200 airline miles than 13,000 Gold Points.

IHG Rewards Club: 55,380 points

"FQF," I imagine you asking, "how can you call 55,000 points a rump balance? That sounds like a ton of points!"

Well, it's a rump balance because IHG is a terrible program. 55,000 points isn't enough for a single night at one of their top-tier properties. If I were skipping around the world living in PointBreaks properties it would be enough for 11 nights at one of those, but I already pay rent on a perfectly nice apartment, so I'm not keen on moving to Browning, MT, for 11 days.

Having said all that, IHG's huge footprint makes it easy to find properties to fill in the little gaps in an itinerary. I currently have a one-night stay booked at the Grand Hyatt New York for $202.27 (as part of my tentative plan to requalify for Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond status). Instead, I'll buy 5,000 IHG Rewards Club points for $40 and stay at the InterContinental New York Times Square, getting 0.3 cents per point, which is slightly below the Hotel Hustle median value for IHG Rewards Club points.

American Airlines AAdvantage: 13,917 miles

Despite having had a Citi / AAdvantage World Elite MasterCard for several years (since they keep waiving the annual fee), I only recently booked my first reduced mileage award.

This is how reduced mileage awards work: if you're redeeming miles for a one-way or roundtrip itinerary within the contiguous United States, and your origin or destination is on the list of eligible "destinations," you receive a 2,500- or 3,750-mile discount on the miles required in each direction. The discount is applied immediately over the phone, which is the only way to book these awards, and it can't be combined with the new short haul awards going into effect March 22, 2016, although American promises that "New reduced mileage award levels will be introduced for these shorter flights on April 1st."

All of this is just to say that when applying the 3,750-mile discount I'm eligible for, one-way awards to and from eligible cities cost just 8,750 miles. Moreover, since American's co-branded credit cards also offer a 10% mileage rebate on all redemptions (up to 10,000 rebated miles per year), that rebate immediately brings the total cost of such flights down to 7,875 in each direction in economy (19,125 in first class).

One interesting possibility with these awards is to use them for hidden city ticketing. Since every American Airlines itinerary from my home airport requires a connection in Charlotte, Chicago, or Dallas, I could theoretically use a reduced mileage award to fly there and simply exit the airport or continue on to a different destination on a different carrier.

In any case, I'll likely kill two birds with one stone and transfer 12,000 Club Carlson Gold Points to AAdvantage, leaving me just 633 AAdvantage miles short of a roundtrip reduced mileage award redemption (n.b. actually slightly more than that since the 10% discount is applied only after booking, so I'll actually need 1,508 AAdvantage miles to make the second one-way redemption. The proof of this is left as an exercise for the reader).

Exceptions, exemptions, and exclusions from hotel rewards and benefits

After 4 years involved in travel hacking, I still find myself learning something new almost every week. For example, since until this year I'd never had Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond elite status before, it had never occurred to me to dive into the gritty details of Suite Upgrade Awards.

There are in fact quite a few popular benefits of hotel loyalty programs that have cavernous exceptions you may not know about. Here are four.

Hilton HHonors elite 5th night free exceptions

Elites in the Hilton HHonors loyalty program get their 5th night free on all-points award stays (not on "points and money" awards).

But the Hilton HHonors terms and conditions conceal a landmine: the 5th-night-free benefit "[d]oes not apply when stay is booked as part of a Reward Stay offer, package, or promotion offered by Hilton or any of its partners, or at All-Inclusive properties or Distinctive properties."

"All-inclusive properties" is simple enough, although I consider it a bit cheap since there are non-all-inclusive properties that cost more points per night than Hilton's all-inclusives while still managing to honor the 5th-night-free benefit.

That leaves the question: what are "Distinctive" properties? Amazingly, the Hilton HHonors terms and conditions don't say. For that, we'll need to turn to Citibank.

Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve weekend night exemptions

You may have heard of the Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve weekend night certificates offered as a signup bonus after spending $2,500 on the card within 4 months and on each account anniversary if you spend $10,000 during the membership year.

What you may not have heard about are the properties that are exempted from having to honor those free night certificates! Citi excludes all-inclusive properties and distinctive properties, and handily provides us with an actual list of the excluded properties. Besides the all-inclusive properties, they also list all the "Distinctive" properties that are excluded. Most of these are simply timeshare properties operated as Hilton Grand Vacations properties, but the last one, the Qasr Al Sharq, appears to me to just be a very luxurious hotel that managed to carve itself out an exemption.

Hilton HHonors breakfast and upgrade policy exclusions

If you're used to receiving a complimentary continental breakfast when staying at Hilton and Conrad properties, you might be surprised to discover that Waldorf Astoria Hotels and Resorts are excluded from that benefit. Your "My Way" benefit choices are limited to upgrades to preferred rooms and your choice of 1,000 HHonors points, a free in-room movie, or a spa, golf, or restaurant discount.

Speaking of those upgrades to preferred rooms: the Napua Tower at the Grand Wailea and the Imperial Floor at Rome Cavalieri are excluded by name from the preferred room upgrade benefit.

Properties excluded from Hyatt Suite Upgrade Awards

Everyone knows that "Suite upgrade awards are only valid for standard suites, defined as each participating property’s introductory suite category," which can be a real pain when you're trying to figure out which available suites are and aren't eligible for upgrades.

But there are also properties and brands that are completely excluded from suite upgrades!

First of all, "Suite upgrade may not be booked at Hyatt hotels or resorts before they have opened."

And second, "Suite upgrade awards are not available" at:

• Park Hyatt Beaver Creek Resort and Spa
• Park Hyatt Maldives Hadahaa
• Park Hyatt Sydney
• Andaz Tokyo
• Hyatt Regency Kyoto
• Hyatt Regency Phuket Resort
• Hyatt Regency Tulsa
• Hyatt Regency Wichita
• Hyatt Paris Madeleine
• Hyatt Herald Square
• Hyatt Key West Resort and Spa
• Hyatt Manila City of Dreams
• Hyatt Santa Barbara
• Hyatt Residence Club resorts
• Hyatt Place and Hyatt House hotels
• and M life resorts.

Some of these properties, like the Hyatt Place and Hyatt House brands, simply don't offer suites. M Life resorts are only bookable as part of a joint marketing effort, so you can imagine some kind of logic behind them not offering free suite upgrades to Hyatt elites.

But the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek and Andaz Tokyo do have suites, and the Park Hyatt Maldives and Park Hyatt Sydney at least have upgraded rooms. They're just extremely expensive and the properties aren't inclined to guarantee them to Diamond elite members in advance, for free.

Conclusion

Travel hacking is the knowledge that the house doesn't always win; it can be beat. But it can only be beat when you know what you're entitled to, and what the loyalty programs and properties can give you at their own discretion.

Western Hemisphere all-inclusive resorts

I wrote a few weeks ago that I've been craving a beach vacation, and I decided to take a look at so-called "all-inclusive" resorts, mainly out of curiosity: I've never stayed at one of these resorts (although I did crash one in Cuba's Veradero beach community) and I have a hard time conceptualizing exactly how they work. With the points currencies I have easy access to, there are 4 obvious options in the Americas:

• Hyatt Zilara Cancun
• Hyatt Zilara Rose Hall
• Hilton Rose Hall Resort & Spa
• Hilton Puerto Vallarta Resort

The Zilara properties are Hyatt's brand of adults-only all-inclusive properties, while the Hilton properties are all-ages (a slight disadvantage in my book as a childless person, no offense meant to childful people) but available using Hilton HHonors points, an account where I've found myself with an uncomfortably large balance.

Methodology

In deciding between the four properties, I want to be as rational as possible. In my view there are two main considerations:

• Nightly room rates. What's the imputed redemption value of a points stay, and what are some typical nightly rates: are points redemptions a good deal?;
• Flight options. Paying for your stay is only the part of a trip's total cost — you've also got to get there. Especially if you're booking for two or more people, a small difference in flight costs can swamp any difference in room rates.

Hyatt Zilara Cancun

The Hyatt Zilara Cancun costs 25,000 Gold Passport points per night for single or double occupancy rooms (40,000 for single or double occupancy suite nights), and 12,500 points per additional person after the first two.

Meanwhile, due to a current 50% discount promotion, a 5-night stay in mid-July costs $2,400, giving an upfront value of just 1.92 cents per Hyatt Gold Passport point. Since paying for that stay would also earn a Diamond elite member 15,600 points, the net value per point is just 1.71 cents each. That's a perfectly good redemption if you're transferring in Ultimate Rewards points worth a penny each, but it is on the low end of possible Hyatt redemptions. 

I have quite a few flight options to Cancun for the same July dates. Southwest flies from relatively-nearby Chicago nonstop in each direction for 30,014 Rapid Rewards points and $73.69 in taxes and fees ($373.83 in cash value if the Rapid Rewards points are transferred from Ultimate Rewards). A business class itinerary operated by American would cost me 60,000 Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles and $105. And an economy US Bank Flexperks redemption from my home airport would cost just 40,000 Flexpoints (redeemable for $400 in cash). Given those options, I'll pay the extra $25 to redeem Flexpoints and fly from my home airport.

Total cost for 5-night trip: $1,250 in Ultimate Rewards points, $400 in Flexpoints per person, $2,050 for two people.

Hyatt Zilara Rose Hall

Like the Hyatt Zilara Cancun, the Hyatt Zilara Rose Hall costs 25,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points per night for single or double occupancy reservations.

With the same ongoing 50% discount promotion, five nights at the Hyatt Zilara Rose Hall cost $2,215, or 1.77 cents per Gold Passport point. After accounting for points earned on paid stays (14,397), a Diamond elite would get a total of 1.59 cents per Gold Passport point redeemed.

While the two Zilara properties cost the same number of Gold Passport points, flights to Montego Bay are much more expensive than to Cancun: I can redeem 60,000 Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles plus $145.31 in fees per passenger, or 60,000 Delta SkyMiles plus $120.31 per passenger. The corresponding flights are just a hair over $1,000, so they'd cost 60,000 US Bank Flexpoints per passenger. Here Southwest comes to the rescue, with $586.79 roundtrip flights from Chicago Midway. That would cost me 30,000 Flexpoints per ticket ($300 cash value) or 32,832 Rapid Rewards points plus $114.69 per passenger ($443.01 cash value).

Total cost for 5-night trip: $1,250 in Ultimate Rewards points, $300 in Flexpoints per person, $1,850 for two people.

Hilton Rose Hall Resort & Spa

Remember, my motivation for booking this beach vacation was at least in part to use up some orphaned Hilton HHonors points after I started directing as many reservations as possible to Hyatt in order to take advantage of my matched Diamond status.

It turns out, however, that Hilton doesn't honor the 5th-night-free on award reservations at their all-inclusive resorts! That means a 5-night stay at the Hilton Rose Hall Resort & Spa costs 350,000 HHonors points, which if earned at 2.105% in opportunity cost comes to $245.58 per night — within striking distance of the $250 per night in cash value of Ultimate Rewards points redeemed at the Hyatt Zilara properties above.

By way of reference, the same 5-night stay would cost $1,745, or 0.5 cents per HHonors point.

Total cost for 5-night trip: 350,000 HHonors points ($1,228 in opportunity cost), $300 in Flexpoints per person, $1,827 for two people.

Hilton Puerto Vallarta Resort

The final entry here is Hilton's Puerto Vallarta Resort, which is just 50,000 HHonors points per night in July. Without the benefit of a 5th night free, you'll pay 250,000 HHonors points for a five night stay that otherwise retails for roughly $1,107, or 0.44 cents per HHonors point. Given a 2.105% cash back opportunity cost on manufactured spend, that comes to about $175 per night at this resort, the cheapest we've see so far.

Given that lower cost, it would be dynamite if I could get there on the cheap. Southwest isn't an option because of their punishingly early flights from the only two nearby airports they serve (there's a 5:30 AM now?). But I can pay 60,000 Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan miles and $133 per passenger for business class tickets, which is better than paying the 70,000 US Bank Flexpoints it would take to pay for the oddly expensive revenue economy tickets.

Total cost for 5-night trip: 250,000 HHonors points ($877 imputed redemption value), 60,000 Mileage Plan miles and $133 per passenger, 120,000 Mileage Plan miles and $1,143 for two people.

Conclusion

Presumably these calculations won't be useful to anybody else unless they want to visit an all-inclusive resort in mid-July! But this is the kind of calculation I run when I'm thinking about visiting a new property: how much will it cost to stay there, how much will it cost to get there, and what will I get for my money?

Finding the constellation of rewards programs that's right for you

I do very little speculative earning of miles and points, which doesn't mean that I always earn miles and points with specific redemptions in mind. Rather, it means I earn the points that I know I'm consistently going to be able to redeem for good value and for the kinds of trips I want to take.

When I see a large balance sitting in an account for an extended period of time, it usually means I'm doing something wrong, since it means I earned those points instead of the cash back I could have earned instead — cash back that I know I would have been able to use by now. That's why speculative acquisition of miles and points, even at seemingly cheap prices, usually looks very expensive to me.

Of course there are exceptions: I participated in the IHG Priceless Surprises promotion without any specific plan or intention to redeem the resulting points, mainly because gambling is fun (and I won a sound system!). When I had the Bank of America Alaska Airlines debit card, I cheerfully earned Mileage Plan miles at rock-bottom prices, tens of thousands of which I have yet to redeem even now, years later. Now THAT'S speculative!

Still, my general rule is: I prefer to focus on a few programs, where I tend to rapidly cycle my points balances up and down, rather than spread myself thin chasing every increased credit card signup bonus that comes along.

Find travel rewards programs that work together

If you don't collect miles and points speculatively, then it helps to focus on miles and points that work together, rather than at cross-purposes.

For example, Starwood Preferred Guest runs an excellent hotel loyalty program, and allows Starpoints to be transferred to many airlines at a 1-to-1 ratio, with an additional 5,000 bonus miles added each time you transfer multiples of 20,000 Starpoints. But Starpoint transfers to United Airlines MileagePlus miles are at a mere 2-to-1 ratio! That makes it more expensive for Starwood Preferred Guest to be your main hotel chain if United is your primary airline, since you'll give up more potential hotel nights when transferring Starpoints to United than you would to American, Delta, or Alaska.

On the other hand, since Chase Ultimate Rewards points transfer to Hyatt Gold Passport and both Southwest Airlines and United Airlines, focusing your mile earning and redemption on one of those airlines, and your hotel point earning with Hyatt, allows you to top up both your primary travel rewards accounts with points in a single Ultimate Rewards account.

Find credit cards that work together

It's not just travel rewards programs that can work together, but credit cards as well.

For example:

• Your primary premium Ultimate Rewards account might be linked to a Chase Ink Plus card, which allows you to earn 350,000 Ultimate Rewards points per year in its bonus categories of office supply stores and gas stations.
• Knowing it's one of the best cards out there for earning Ultimate Rewards points, you can apply for a Chase Freedom card as well, and earn an additional 15,000-30,000 Ultimate Rewards points per year, depending on the year's bonus categories.
• Next, tempted by the signup bonus, you might apply for a Chase Sapphire Preferred. After meeting the minimum spend requirement and waiting a suitable period of time, you can product change the Sapphire Preferred to another Freedom card and double each year's bonus Ultimate Rewards points.
• Finally, you can take out a 0% interest rate loan from the Chase Slate, and at the end of the promotional period product change that card to Freedom as well.

This procedure would give you access to a huge pool of bonus and annually recurring Ultimate Rewards points, and would at no point violate Chase's strict "5/24" rule for approval of their own-brand credit cards.

I've written before about other potentially lucrative card combinations, like combining the Citi Premier and Prestige cards, or the American Express EveryDay Preferred and Business Platinum cards, for manufactured spend at gas stations.

If you use United MileagePlus as your primary airline rewards program, it can even be worth signing up for one of their co-branded credit cards just for access to last-seat "Standard"-level award availability, even if you never spend a dollar on the card, since access to those Standard awards can increase the value of Ultimate Rewards points transferred in from Chase.

If Hilton is your primary hotel program, you could carry both the American Express Hilton HHonors Surpass card and the Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve card. While manufacturing gas station and grocery store spend with the Surpass, you could add on $10,000 per calendar year in unbonused spend to the Reserve card and earn 30,000 HHonors points and a free weekend night certificate on each account anniversary.

I'm not the biggest fan of the Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve card because of its $95 annual fee. However, if you consistently redeem your HHonors points and free night certificates at top-tier properties, then paying $95 in cash and $200 in foregone cash back offers a 29% discount compared to manufacturing 125,000 additional HHonors points on the Surpass (which bears $416 in opportunity cost compared to a 2% cash back card).

The breakeven point comes when redeeming the Reserve's free night certificate at 60,000-point properties: at that point you see a wash between manufacturing $15,000 on the Surpass (earning 90,000 HHonors points and foregoing $300 in cash back) or paying a $95 annual fee and manufacturing $10,000 on the Reserve (earning the equivalent of 90,000 HHonors points, paying a $95 annual fee, and foregoing $200 in cash back).

The point here is that it can be worth carrying co-branded cards that see little or no use if they provide ancillary benefits that supplement the value of your other activity.

Conclusion

As I wrote on Monday, in general I find high balances in a few programs to be more valuable than small balances spread across a number of programs. In fact, even when a narrow earning focus causes you to pay more for a flight or room than you would if you had access to the "right" points currency, you can still be saving money after taking into account the annual fees you'd pay for that access.

And of course, most people are busy, and cramming more and more knowledge of increasingly esoteric loyalty programs into your head will eventually reach a point of diminishing returns. That point may come sooner or it may come later, but knowing when you've reached it is the beginning of travel hacking wisdom.

What to do with IHG Priceless Surprises points

At this point I assume everyone who is planning to participate in the IHG Priceless Surprises promotion has done so, which means you either are or will soon be in possession of roughly 50,000 IHG Rewards points (assuming you scored at least one or two 1,000 and 2,000 point prizes).

If, like me, those 50,000 points are your entire IHG Rewards balance, then three possible approaches to redeeming them suggest themselves.

At the low end: PointsBreaks list and more remote properties

Everyone knows about the IHG Rewards PointsBreaks list, a rotating list of properties which can be redeemed for just 5,000 points per night. It's always worth a quick glance on the off-chance that you're planning to visit an area with a participating property. I was living in Brno one summer when the Holiday Inn there was on the list and considered simply moving in for 5,000 IHG Rewards points per night!

Besides that promotional list, there are properties which belong to the lowest rungs of IHG's award chart. If you're passing through Sheridan, Wyoming, why not stay at the Candlewood Suites for 10,000 IHG Rewards points per night?

Your Priceless Surprises points haul will even get you 5 nights at The Lodge At Eagle Crest Holiday Inn Resort in central Oregon. The place looks nice!

In the middle: Category 4 and 5 properties

Category 4 IHG Rewards properties cost 25,000 points, meaning your 50,000-point Priceless Surprises haul will get you 2 nights at places like the Intercontinental Presidente Merida in Mexico, the InterContinental Mar Menor Golf Resort & Spa in Spain or the InterContinental Bucharest.

I always find it annoying when bloggers treat being married as a travel hack, but if you participated in Priceless Surprises with a partner/child/dog, you might have enough points for 4 nights at one of those properties. That begins to sound like a real vacation, or at least a long weekend.

Unfortunately, 25,000 IHG Rewards points isn't even halfway up the IHG Rewards chart, and most centrally located or desirable properties are going to be more expensive than that. One popular option to widen your options is purchasing additional IHG Rewards points for as little as 0.6 cents each. Buying an additional 15,000 points at that rate would get you above 60,000 points, allowing you to book 2 nights at a Category 5 property like the InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort & Spa or InterContinental Kuala Lumpur.

At the top: Category 11 properties

Meanwhile, 50,000 IHG Rewards points isn't even enough for one night at top-tier IHG Rewards properties after their February 17, 2016, devaluation. After that date, you'll have to buy an extra 10,000 IHG Rewards points to get up to the 60,000 points required for a single night at properties like the InterContinental Bora Bora Resort Thalasso Spa or InterContinental Le Moana Bora Bora.

Alternatively, if you had a willing partner, you could imagine both applying for the IHG Rewards credit card and receiving 80,000 IHG Rewards points each. If you were willing to wait until your first account anniversary to receive two additional bonus night certificates, you'd end up with enough points and certificates for a six-night stay between the two of you. That wouldn't be too bad a redemption for a $49 annual fee and $46 in stamps per person.

That Rube Goldberg machine requires you to assume, of course, that IHG Rewards won't devalue again before your plans come to fruition!

Other redemptions

Of course, if you don't actually have any upcoming hotel needs and just participated in Priceless Surprises on a lark, you may just be looking to cash out your points at a profit. In that case, you could pick up two $50 Walmart gift cards for 40,000 points, or transfer your IHG Rewards points to airline miles at a 10,000-point to 2,000-mile ratio.

Buying 10,000 miles for $46 and a few hours of work may not sound like a great deal, but it's better than letting your IHG Rewards points sit in your account unredeemed. After all, your least valuable point is always the one you don't redeem.

Understanding booking channels

Judging by the headlines I see in my RSS reader, Bank of America is running a bounty for Alaska Airlines credit card applications. Internet Brands went ahead and declared it the best travel credit card of 2016 on their Frugal Travel Guy storefront, while Thought Leader From Behind Gary Leff managed to shoehorn it into a post ostensibly about an unrelated Virgin America promotion.

This got me thinking about an issue I've touched on periodically and that I think needs to be thoroughly understood to get the most value from travel hacking: booking channels.

What is a booking channel?

A booking channel is any method you use to purchase airfare (or make hotel or car reservations, although I'll set that aside for now).

For example, when purchasing airfare with Ultimate Rewards points in a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Ink Plus account for 1.25 cents each, you're required to use the Ultimate Rewards travel portal.

Likewise when redeeming an American Airlines voluntary denied boarding voucher, you're required to make a reservation through American Airlines' website or phone agents, then mail the voucher to Florida (or drop it off in person at an American Airlines office).

Your choice of booking channel restricts your options for savings

I've written before that statement credits are worth (much) less than cash and that the Delta Platinum and Reserve American Express companion tickets have to be paid for with American Express cards, which are both examples of the general rule that your options to save on flights are limited by the booking channel you're required to use.

Better fewer, but better

That suggests a general rule that small balances spread across a number of booking channels are less valuable than high balances in a single booking channel.

For example, while US Bank Flexpoints are worth up to 2 cents each when redeemed for airfare (and the US Bank Flexperks Travel Rewards card earns 2 Flexpoints per dollar spent at either gas stations or grocery stores each month), and Citi ThankYou points in a Citi Prestige account are worth 1.6 cents each when redeemed for American Airlines-marketed flights, you can't combine both Flexpoints and ThankYou points on a single reservation: 20,000 Flexpoints and 25,000 ThankYou points won't buy you an $800 reservation, while 40,000 Flexpoints or 50,000 ThankYou points will.

Understand booking channels to manage exceptions

If that's the general rule, then in reality things are much more complicated.

Let's take another look at that Bank of America Alaska Airlines companion ticket. It has three important restrictions:

• It takes the form of a "discount code" that has to be entered on Alaska Airlines' website. That makes it impossible to directly redeem any points currency for an Alaska Airlines companion ticket (or use an Alaska voluntary denied boarding voucher, since those also take the form of a discount code).
• The Bank of America credit card holder has to be one of the two passengers on the companion ticket, or the ticket has to be booked with a credit card in the Bank of America credit card holder's name (read that three times).
• If paying with funds in an Alaska Airlines "My Wallet," it has to be the "My Wallet" of the Bank of America Alaska Airlines credit card holder.

Now let's square the circle: up to 60 days before departure (up to departure for MVP Gold and MVP Gold 75K elites), Alaska Airlines flights can be cancelled and the full value of the flight redeposited into the passenger's "My Wallet" for use on future flights.

Another typical situation comes up if you've earned a Southwest Airlines companion pass. That pass allows you to add your companion to any Southwest Airlines revenue or award reservation for no additional airfare (you pay just the taxes and fees for your companion's ticket). There are two difficulties here:

• Southwest doesn't publish its fares on the unified airfare platform most other airlines use, which means you have to call to redeem third-party loyalty currencies like Flexpoints.
• And third-party loyalty programs can't book companion tickets!

Just as in the case of Alaska, one solution might be to redeem your third-party currency for a ticket of any value, have the value refunded to your Southwest account, and then book your own companion ticket using that value.

Conclusion

If you want to use an American Airlines voluntary denied boarding voucher to pay for part of your airfare, you can't pay for the rest by redeeming Citi ThankYou points for 1.6 cents each. Likewise you can't combine a Delta voluntary denied boarding voucher with an American Express Business Platinum discount on Membership Rewards redemptions.

But by learning the nuances of each loyalty program — and thinking outside the box — you can start to identify the ways in which seemingly rigid booking channels may be more flexible than they appear, allowing you to stack certificates, coupons, and other discounts with your already-heavily-discounted rewards currencies.