On Monday I wrote about the first two weeks of Daily Getaway offers from American Express and the US Travel Association. The really wasn’t anything I found enticing.
The concept is that there are a limited number of items available for each offer, deep discounts on travel packages that you can pre-purchase. But the first two weeks of deals weren’t things I’d want to prepay for, either because the items didn’t interest me (20% discount on Marriott Travel Cards — great for frequent Marriott guests) or because they weren’t so deeply discounted (you can buy Priority Club points just as cheaply any time you wish by booking and cancelling cash and points awards).
Via Mommy Points, the Daily Deals week 3 offers have been released.
On Wedmesday, April 25 you can buy Hilton HHonors points for about $0.005 apiece. On the whole, that’s what they’re worth, it’s a pretty standard redemption value, I usually shoot for about a penny apiece and have gotten as much as about 3-4 cents apiece on top end redemptions. But those only come from booking Hilton’s most expensive properties on points. So unless you’re looking for something like the Conrad Koh Samui, on a mult-night stay as an elite (which conveys a redemption discount) then I’d probably give this one a miss. On the other hand, it’s unlikely you’ll do worse than half a cent a point in redemption value, unless you try really hard, so you won’t take it on the chin if you do it.
The big offer — the best one announced to date in the first three weeks of Daily Getaway deals — is Monday, April 23:
- 16,000 Wyndham points for $55, or $0.0034375 cents per point
- 28,000 Wyndham points for $76, or $0.002714286 cents per point
- 32,000 Wyndham points for $110, or $0.0034375 cents per point
- 50,000 Wyndham points for $143, or $0.00286 cents per point
- 48,000 Wyndham points for $165, or $0.0034375 cents per point.
If Wyndham hotel stays don’t appeal — and they probably should — you can transfer 2.5 Wyndham points into airline miles with a variety of programs from big ones like American, Delta, United, and US Airways to some obscure but useful ones like Hainan Airlines Fortune Wings Club (some of the best upgrade options for US to China, available on he Seattle – Beijing flight). That means you’re buying airline miles in your choice of program for between $0.0068 and $0.0086 cents per mile — i.e. less than a penny a point no matter how you slice it. You’d even break even redeeming the points for Amazon Gift cards (6500 points for a $25 gift card means $0.00385 in value per point).
And all these prices and calculations are before taking 10% off for paying with an American Express card.
There’s a limited number of these points packages, they’ll certainly go quickly. And it looks like about 20% will be available during ‘pre-sale’ which will be announced on their brands’ Facebook pages.
My guess is you’ll have to be quick on the trigger on this one in order to get in.
I have a question about the presale and facebook. Let’s take the case of Wyndham. You mentioned, “which will be announced on their brands’ Facebook pages,” but Wyndham has a number of pages on FB (Wyndham rewards, Wyndham Worldwide, etc…) – how do I know which one will have the code, or do I need to like all of them?
When do these deals “go live”… is it at a specific time, say midnight Eastern or such?
What does
$0.0034375 cents per point
mean? $.0034375 means about 1/3 cent, whereas .0034375 cents means 3/100 of a cent.
Saying $0.0034375 cents” is quite ambiguous.
about a third of a cent
Gary, your should also warn your readers that they most likely will NOT be able to get in on this. As your may remember last year when Hyatt points went for cheap, unless you were at your computer at the exact time, you probably could not get in on the deal. Then for the majority of people who tried purchasing, the website would not load as it can not handle the volume. So a small percentage of people are ever able to get the advertised deal.
For me my time is better spent NOT trying to get these deals.
Is there a mistake?
50,000 Wyndham points for $143, or $0.00286 cents per point
48,000 Wyndham points for $165, or $0.0034375 cents per point.
why would 48k points be cheaper…
Not a mistake, they advertise X nights at Y brand for Z dollars but are really selling you points.
They sold points at about these prices last year and from the looks of it, it took about 30 minutes to sell out.
I’ll be after the $165 one, for 3 nights at a decent midtown Manhattan hotel.
You should drop the word “cents” from your descriptions as it’s incorrect given how you’ve stated the per point cost. $55/16,000 points = $0.0034375 per point.
If you want to state it as “cents per point” you would write .34375 cents per point.
Looks llke they pulled the Wyndham point offers on the 23rd
@Steve M what makes you say that? It is still coming up for me.