Get More for Your Points by Using Them at Inexpensive Hotels

Award Nights 101: Using Your Hotel Points, Hotel Strategies

There are only a limited number of hotel points that you can easily acquire.

You’ll get more value from your hotel points by booking multiple free nights at less expensive hotels than you would by booking fewer nights at higher-end hotels.

For example with Hilton, 95,000 points will get you a single night at one of their most expensive hotels and 70-80,000 points will get you a night at most of their properties in New York City; but the same number of points can get you 14-19 nights at their least expensive hotels. With Marriott, 85,000 points will get you a single night at one of their most expensive hotels (100,000 points during peak season) or 11.33 nights at their least expensive hotel (17 during off peak times); 50,000 Marriott points might get you a single night at most of their New York City hotels but the same number of points could get you 2-6 nights somewhere else.

Of course, with a limited amount of vacation time, you may primarily choose to spend your nights at nicer hotels or more expensive destinations. But if you have an opportunity to book an award at a low category hotel, you’ll almost always get great value per point.

We like to calculate an “award room rate” that represents the cost of using your points to book a hotel room (versus using them for a different hotel or trip). The following table shows the award room rates for Category 1 and Category 2 hotels in the largest hotel programs. Even in less expensive locations, these are usually great rates (especially because they include taxes).

Program	CPP	Award "room rate" for a
Program	CPP	Cat 1 Room	Cat 2 Room
Hilton	.45	$22.5	$45
Hyatt	1.7	$61 - 114	$114 - 166
IHG	.5	$50	$75
Marriott	.7	$40 - $70	$70 - $110

The award prices for Category 1 Hilton and Marriott 1 off-peak nights are ridiculously low.

Staying on the outskirts of cities or by the airport

One of the ways to get more value from your points is to stay at a hotel on the outskirts of town or out by the airport, rather than a hotel in downtown. If you are sightseeing by car anyway, it may not make a big difference to your trip and you’ll usually save even more money by avoiding expensive overnight parking.

Traveling in less expensive countries

The other opportunity for low cost redemption is when you are traveling in less expensive countries. Just a few of many examples, the Hilton Garden Inn Konya in Turkey is only 5,000 Hilton points, the Hyatt Regency Kuantan Resort in Malaysia is only 5,000 Hyatt points, and the Protea Polokwane Ranceh Resort in South Africa and AC Hotel Palacia de Santa Ana are only 4,500 Marriott points on off peak nights.

Finding redemption opportunities at low category hotels

Use one of the award hotel search tools. If you know your destination, you can use one of several tools that are designed to help you find hotels that participate in the various reward programs. Then you can filter or sort the list to show just the lower-priced options. Unfortunately, each of these tools has significant flaws.

Browse lists of all the low category hotels. If you are motivated, you can scan through each program’s low-end category list to see what is available in destinations near your house or where you may be headed in the future.

We've also included links to a set of maps from Travel is Free. But they are not completely up to date.

	Go to Hilton's Points Explorer and push the slider to the left. Travel is Free map.
	Category 1. Travel is Free map.
	No published list. Travel is Free map.
	Marriott Hotel Directory, you can filter by category. Travel is Free map.
	No published list. Travel is Free map.
	Category 1, Category 2. Travel is Free Map.

At Accor Live Limitless, your points are redeemed for a fixed value per point—there are no hotel categories at all.

Travel is Free’s Unbelievably Cheap Hotel List. Travelisfree.com has put together a slightly out of date compilation of attractive low-category hotels around the world. It is not a great place to find super-cheap award nights in the United States, and it is really out of date, but it highlights some of the more interesting options in other countries.