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DAILY GETAWAYS - WEEK0 TO WEEK3 DEALS

4/16/2017

This year Daily Getaways is already underway. As for any sale not all "sale-items are created equal and the same is true for the Daily Getaways. Below is the run down of deals which I think are good deals for each week and my brief take on which one are worth chasing. As with any deal, do your own analysis before you jump on to purchase the deal.

Week 0 (April 10 to April 14):
April 10 - Alamo Car Rental Certificate (Good Deal): You get $50 Alamo Car Rental certificate for $25. Although it is 50% off the face value, in reality the certificate works like a coupon and thus would reduce the taxes as well. On top of it you could combine 3 certificates together to get a good discount for rentals of longer period. The only downside is the certificate does not work at all Car Rental locations (including some airports).

April 12 - Priority Club IHG Points at ~0.589 to 0.6 cent/point (OK Deal): You can buy the IHG prioirity club points from ~0.589 to ~0.6 cent/point with this deal. Since you can always buy IHG points for 0.7 cent/point whenever you need as described in the linked article even without the daily getaway, this deal is only good if you have immediate use of it. Do note the IHG points now expire after 12 months if there is no activity on the account.

Week 1 (April 17 to April 21):
April 19 - Universal Studios Hollywood front of the line pass for $139 (OK Deal): This deal boasts of saving $61 off of 1 day admission pass which also gives you front of the line access. In reality this is "Non-peak" pass and you need to give 30 days of notice to book this. Alternatively if you have American Express card which keeps having Amex Sync offers at Undercover Tourist, you can do equally better rather than investing up-front in daily getaway deal.

Week 2 (April 24 to April 28):
April 25 - Avis One Day Car Rental for $30 (Good Deal?): This deal lies somewhere between OK and Good Deal. This is simply because the certificate expires in 1 year (May 15, 2018) and has restrictions of black out days while not exactly spelling out what all are the black out dates. The good part is you can rent up to "G class" of car and you can combine up to 7 certificates for up to 7 day of rental. It is a good deal only if you know you will be able to use it.

April 28 - Choice Privilege points at 0.4 to 0.45 cent/point (Great Deal): This one is a great deal and you can bet it will be sold out in few minutes. Choice privileges sells points at a cost of 1.1 cent/point without any promotion. So getting more than 50% off the purchase price of points is great deal given that you can potentially use the points at a great redemption value in Europe. As I had pointed out in my article last year there have been positive changes around Choice privilege points expiration policy etc and this represents a really good deal if you travel to Europe and use your points for hotel redemption's even in the peak season. There are 4 different packages available with price ranging from 0.4 cent/point to 0.45 cent/point and they are limited. So get them before they sell out.

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DAILY GETAWAYS FOR NEXT 3 WEEKS IN JUNE

5/31/2014

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In my earlier post on Daily Getaways Return, I mentioned about the offers for the first 2 weeks of this sale. There are still few of those deals available specifically The Diamond Resort Stay, CityPass, IHG Points and Wyndham Rewards points. Although they are not great deals, they might be useful for someone's particular travel or stay scenario. Daily Getaways has announced the remaining deals for next 3 weeks and there are few hotels points and Car rental deals I want to highlight in this post. The deal which most traveler are interested would be the Hyatt Stay Deal. Let me list down these here:

June 4th - Buy Hyatt Gold Reward Points ranging from 0.933 cent/point to 0.99 cent/point (with Amex 10% discount): These got sold out last year within seconds, so expect the same this time around although Hyatt has done some devaluation since the last year. But compared to its peers the value of Hyatt gold points have reduced by a very small margin from last year redemption levels. The reason these points are so valuable is because the high end hotels in Hyatt chain still costs 30,000 points for standard room redemption which compares quite favorably to the revenue rates for these properties. In addition Hyatt has forayed into all-inclusive properties and they are priced quite reasonably for stay of up to 2 persons. You can find the new award chart for Hyatt here. On top of the great pricing of the Hyatt points sales there are extremely small number of these packages that go on sale, so there is high demand for them.
June 5th - Buy IHG Club Rewards Points ranging from 0.567 cent/point to 6 cent/point (with Amex 10% discount): As mentioned in my previous post it is quite easy to purchase these poinst at 7 cent/point whenever you need it. To top it, there are still packages available for sale from Week-1 of the Daily Getaways and thus these do not seem to get sold out. But, if you are looking at specific properties such as Intercontinental Le Moana Bora Bora that sells for $500+ but requires only 50,000 points/night this purchase would still make sense.
June 9th - Buy Marriott Gift Cards for 81% of the actual value: These could be useful for folks who mostly stay at Marriott Hotel chains and thus can pay during the check-out using the Marriott Gift Card. Note that you cannot book the nights using the gift cards so most non-refundable prepaid nights will still be charged to your credit card on file and you would not be able to use these gift cards during the hotel check-out. Still 19% discount on regular refundable rate is quite a bargain for regular stayers at Marriott. These also gets sold out pretty quickly so if you are looking for one of these make sure you are online at the time when these go on sale.
June 10th - Best Western Reward Points for 5.85 cent/point (with Amex 10% discount): Since there is no simple way of knowing in general how many points are required for award night for Best Western properties most people do not purchase these. Usually the points required to stay at most properties are in the range of 16k to 30k points. Again, Best Western is a mid-range hotel chain which has lot of presence in U.S.A as well as Australia and some of those locations could be quite expensive. So, if you are looking to stay at one of those locations or want to top up your account for that kind of stay then you might be interested in this deal.
June 12th - Avis One Day Car Rental Certificate for $30 (with Amex 10% discount): This deal is similar to the one they had last year and if you are one of the guys/gals who plan to rent out at expensive locations around the U.S.A, Canada, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin island then this could be the deal for you. I have written about this deal in the past and you can access my analysis for Car Rental Daily Getaway deal here.
June 17th - Club Carlson Reward Points from 4.44 cent/point (with Amex 10% discount): Club Carlson do not have lot of great properties in the U.S.A. but they have really good presence in the Europe. Their reward night starts from 9,000 points in category-1 and recently they have added the 70,000 points category-7 which currently has 11 properties, most of which are in Europe. Also due to their Club Carlson Visa Credit Card in the U.S.A it's always easier and lower cost to accumulate points through their credit card rather than buying from the Daily Getaway. On top of that the credit card features 1 free night on redemption of points for a stay of 2 or more nights. Still the Daily Getaway deal is for folk's who do not have this credit card and who have specific stay planned where buying points at 4.44 cent/mile makes sense.

Note - None of the credit card links in the post earns me any revenue. Thanks for reading!

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DAILY GETAWAY 2014 RETURNS, BUT..

5/10/2014

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The Daily Getaways has returned and will be starting on May 19th, 2014. It used to have quite a few lucrative deals, but seems due to the seasons of devaluation it has lost its sheen. The first and second week of deals are announced and it does not sound interesting.
Week 0 -- May 19th to May 23rd:

Buying Wyndham Points from $5.4 for 1000 points (With 10% Amex Card Discount) to $6 for 1000 points without Amex card. Wyndham used to be great for converting points to miles, but with their devaluation they now convert 6000 points to 1200 miles and thus no longer an interesting deal.
Hertz Car Rental for standard or premium vehicles. Does not sound to be great deal with points for 1 week rental costing $280 (Without 10% Amex Discount).
Choice Rewards Points for as low as $3.71 for 1000 points (With 10% Amex Discount). These are still good packages and similar to last year deal. You should definitely give this a consideration If you have plans on staying in Europe in Shoulder or off-peak season as the rooms going for ~$150 can be had for only 8000 points. The best deal is either the 32k points package or the 40k points package.
Alamo $50 car rental certificate for $25. This is same as last year deal and I have written about this in the past with its pro's and cons, so definitely consider this if it suits your needs.
Hilton Honors Points from $4.95 for 1000 points (With 10% Amex Card Discount). After last year's massive devaluation the value of Hilton Honors points is no longer the same. You could still consider it if you have definite plans at staying at few hotels which still offer some bargains such as the standard room at Double Tree Kuala Lumpur, MY for 10,000 points. You might want to refer my past post on this to understand what I am talking about.

Week 1 -- May 26th to May 30th:

Priority Club Points as low as $5.67 per 1000 points (With 10% Amex Card Discount). Since you can easily buy Priority Club Points for $7 per 1000 points I would not bother with this unless there is specific redemption you are looking for.
Other deals include stay at Caesars Palace, CityPass for various citieis, Stay at Diamond Resorts and Visiting SeaWorld and Busch Gardens which I do not find a great deal to talk about.

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DAILY GETAWAYS - CHOICE PRIVILEGES POINTS

6/23/2013

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The upcoming Daily Getaway promotion for sale of Choice Privileges points is one of the upcoming sale promotion. It is scheduled for 27th June and has variety of points set on sale for a price as low as ~0.377 cents/point.

The offer is a "buy" if you are looking to use them primarily for your stays in Europe where the off-season hotel room costing $200 can be had for as low as 8000 points. The other good use of the choice points is for a family travel stay. Since a Choice Hotel Reward stay can have up-to 4 guests on a single reservation with no difference in points required, it would give a good bargain for stays where otherwise 2 rooms would be required or there would be extra cost for more than 2 guests. Also do remember that you are buying "Choice Privileges Points" regardless of what the Daily Getaway advertisement says, so you are not guaranteed stay at the hotels mentioned for the amount of points mentioned nor you are limited to use your points at a specific Choice hotels mentioned. You can essentially spend the points as you like. (even transfer to airline miles if you wish to, although I would advice against it unless you are topping of your mileage account for specific redemption)

Below are the offers available with limit of 2 per package type and in total of 8 per Choice Privilege account.

20k points for $102 (0.51 cent/point) or $91.8 (0.459 cent/point) if paying with AMEX credit card.
32k points for $134 (0.419 cent/point) or $120.6 (0.377 cent/point) if paying with AMEX credit card.
36k points for $156 (0.433 cent/point) or $140.4 (0.390 cent/point) if paying with AMEX credit card.
40k points for $166 (0.415 cent/point) or $149.4 (0.374 cent/point) if paying with AMEX credit card.

As you can see from the list above you could essentially stay at a hotel which costs 8k points/night for up-to 5 nights at a cost of $150. That's a great bargain if this hotel has even a cost of $50/night.

Note: If you are looking to solely purchase the points to transfer to Airline Miles than the Wyndham Reward Points Daily Getaway Sale on 2nd of July is something you would be interested where essentially you are buying points at a cost of 1.35 cent/airline miles. (8k Wyndham points transfer to 3.2k Airline miles into AA, UA, US and DL airlines mileage program)

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DAILY GETAWAYS - WEEK0 TO WEEK3 DEALS

DAILY GETAWAYS FOR NEXT 3 WEEKS IN JUNE

DAILY GETAWAY 2014 RETURNS, BUT..

DAILY GETAWAYS - CHOICE PRIVILEGES POINTS

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