 IHG PointBreaks hotel are once again here and they are live for your booking. You could book the hotels for just 5k points per night. You could easily buy points from ~0.6 cents/points or less by either going through Daily Getaways IHG Points purchase if you do not have any IHG Points or by booking and cancelling cash + points booking provided you have atleast 5k points in your IHG account. You can refer here on how to purchase IHG points using cash+points booking.
Although there are certain restrictions on how many nights per hotel each member can book, it is rarely enforced in practice. Below is the sample list of hotels in "United States of America" available for booking at 5k points per night and there are smaller lists for other countries. So go ahead and make your reservations NOW!! UNITED STATES AlabamaArkansasArizonaCalifornia
0 Comments
 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.  Daily Getaways for Week-3 is here. As been the trend in the Daily Getaways most of the deals are lack luster but there are few reasonably good deals and 1 or 2 gem of a deal. Most of the week is again hotel related deals except for Monday where we have 1 reasonably good deal on Car-rental from Avis. Towards the end of the week on Friday (04/10) we have gem of a deal from Hyatt to buy Hyatt Gold passport points at a rate from 1.0375 cent/point to 1.1 cent/point. Given there is an ongoing promo for 20% of Hyatt reward redemption for Hyatt Credit Card holder who registered before 03/31 this makes the timing of the sale even more lucrative. Below is the snapshot of this week deals:  Daily Getaways Week-3 deals Below is the quick details on the two deals which are worth looking at in this week Daily Getaways.
Avis One-day car rental certificate - $30 - 04/06:
Hyatt Gold Passport Points - Various packages - 1.0375 cent/point to 1.1 cent/point cost - 04/10:
If you have upcoming stay at Hyatt properties these point purchase deals could potentially provide real good value redemption at Hyatt and you should definitely give it a look.  The daily getaway for Week-2 will start on 03/30. There are couple of hotel points sale promotion which you might be interested in. The first one of interest is for Best Western Points which is on 03/30 and the other one for Choice Privileges Points on 04/03. There are other hotel getaway sales for "The Palazzo", "Venetian" and "CAESARS" as well as for "Universal Studios" but those are not that interesting in my view. Below is the snap shot of what's available for Week-2.  Daily Getaway week-2 deals Best Western Points Deal - $55 for 10k points - 0.55 cent/point value - 03/30:
Choice Privileges Points Deal - Various packages = 0.4 cent/point to 0.45 cent/point value - 04/03:
 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:
Note - None of the credit card links in the post earns me any revenue. Thanks for reading!  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:
Week 1 -- May 26th to May 30th:
 Daily Getaways are brought by American Express in partnership with various Hotels, Car Rentals, Amusement parks and City Pass vendors. There are various points purchase and pass purchase deals which are discounted from 20% to 50% of their actual purchase value. On top of this discount if you make your purchase using American Express Credit Card you get 10% additional discount on the purchase price. The details of the deals are revealed one to two week at a time in advance. This year the Getaways will start on June 10th and the first 2 weeks are already up which you can preview here. My focus of this post is on the car rental deals in Week1 and Week2 which would be a good bargain depending on where you use them.
Week1 : Alamo Car Rental Certificate of $50 value for $25 The Alamo Car Rental deal on June 11th is good one for your if you typically rent for 2-3 days on average. Since the value can only be applied to BASE Rate and not the entire car rental cost and cannot be combined with any other discounts including the "Alamo Insider" discount, the best bet would be to use them at places where none of the other available discounts work or are not worth. Of course if Alamo is not your preferred car rental company this deal is NOT FOR YOU. One of the best uses of the Alamo Car Rental Certificate is in Alaska and Hawaii where most other discount codes does not work and sometimes does not give significant discounts. Below I have listed some of the "Pros" and "Cons" w.r.t. maximizing the value of this deal. Pros:
Cons:
Week2: Avis One day Car Rental for $33 The Avis One day Car Rental on June 21st is good deal if you regularly rent premium cars from Avis. ( of course their service is good and they have good cars on rental). Generally premium cars are sold a good price and so getting such cars at fixed BASE price of $33 is good value in my opinion. Of course the terms of the deal reduces the shiny deal it could be as it is capacity controlled and any location can refuse to allow it to be used on a specific day. You need to pay additional fees, taxes, including additional service such as GPS, car seat etc, which you purchase separately. Also you can use the certificate in Canada, Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands. Below are the important "Pros" and "Cons" in my view. Pros:
Cons:
I personally like Alamo Car Rental deal better than Avis as you can rent the car you like and have lesser restrictions in terms of usage of certificates and black out dates. So what's your take on it? And yes, do not forget to get 10% additional discount by using your AMEX Credit Card. |
AuthorI love traveling / backpacking. This blog focuses on below 3 aspects of travel: Archives
December 2020
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
