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  • Miles And Money Blog
  • What We Do
  • Newbie Lounge
    • How to Get Started
    • FAQ - Miles & Points
    • FAQ - Money & Cashback
  • Travel Destinations
  • Contact Me

Value in Wyndham Hotels Rewards Program?

2/25/2018

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Wyndham Hotels group has more than 8,000 properties in 66+ countries. Their loyalty program Wyndham Rewards gives free night for 15,000 points (Go Free) or you can redeem for points+cash rate starting at just 3,000 points (Go Fast). So why bother about Wyndham Rewards Program?

You can reap great value from their redemption scheme of 3,000 or 15,000 points. (Note: Wyndham has been known to make changes without notice so do know that investing a lot in this program has its own risks). Below are few quick reasons why you should give a thought to their rewards program:
  • ​They have hotels which usually fall in budget to mid-range and few on the high end side so it is easy to earn points in this program.
  • You earn at least 1,000 points or 10 points/$ spend which ever is more for qualified stay which involves booking directly through Wyndham Hotels and paying a minimum per night rate of $25 (before taxes and fees).
  • They have been expanding their brand presence like the recent addition of AmericInn hotels for earning and redemption.
  • They have been running various promotions of late where just two separate one night stay (qualified stays) can earn 15,000 bonus Wyndham points (Good for 1 "Go Free" award or 5 "Go Fast" award nights). For e.g. here is the link for current promotion to earn 15,000 bonus points and you need to sign up for promotion before your stay (limit of 1 bonus point promotion per user).
  • A "Go Free" award for 15,000 points can be redeemed for 1 free night at any Wyndham Hotel worldwide and thus can represent a great value. You can redeem for high end Dolce or TRYP brand hotels for the same 15,000 points.

They do have few important "cons" to consider though:
  • Wyndham reward points expire after 4 years regardless of activity on the reward account but otherwise you can keep extending the life of your points up to 18 months as long as you have any activity on your account.
  • "Go Fast" award redemption for cash+points starting at 3,000 Wyndham reward points are not available for all the hotels.
  • They change their Wyndham reward program terms without any notice.

That being said below are couple of example of value from Wyndham Rewards program.

Go Free night stay at Silverado Resort and Spa, Napa for 15,000 points:
This is one of nice vacation location and the weekend nights do not come cheap. The room rates can easily run $250+/night and thus represents a great value for just 15,000 Wyndham Reward points.

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Revenue rate for 1 night stay at the resort
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15,000 points "Go Free" 1 night stay at resort
Go Fast Stay at Howard Johnson Long Island City for 3,000 points:
Although not a high end hotel but still it would save you some dollars at this nice location in Long Island in lieu of 3,000 Wyndham reward points.
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1 night revenue stay starting at $135+
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1 night "Go Fast" stay starting at 3,000 points + $85
So, next time you are planning short 1 or 2 night stays do look at the Wyndham rewards program as you can use them for good value redemption. 

​Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.
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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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USEFUL WEBSITES FOR HOTEL STAYS (AWARD/REVENUE)

4/6/2014

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Broadly Speaking there are three kinds of Hotel Stays:
  1. Revenue Hotel Stay paid with Cash/Money.
  2. Award Hotel Stay paid with points.
  3. Hotel Stays Paid with Points + Cash.
I would be discussing useful sites for the (1.) and (2.) kind of Hotel Stays as those are the one's most often booked for hotel stays. In general the decision for booking a hotel with Cash or Points depends on couple of factors:
  1. Are you doing the stay as part of promotion for which it has to be a paid stay through Hotel Website?
  2. Or are you looking to stay at any good hotel and just want to pay the lowest price and want to evaluate is it worth paying the cash or better booking with points?

Let's assume your intent is to "pay the lowest price". In that case this article would give you various resources which will help you making that decision better and faster (Hopefully!). Below are few websites/tools which will quickly allow you to narrow down your search to few of the hotels in your desired area.
  • Award Mapper
  • Wandering Aramean Hotel Tools
  • HotelsCombined
  • TripBam

Award Mapper:
This is a pretty useful tool where you can enter your desired hotel location and it will quickly show up the hotels and the points required to stay there. Since, it uses Google Maps as the backdrop, it is very easy to map the hotels with your desired place of stay. Currently the website supports following Hotel Chains:
  • Best Western
  • Club Carlson
  • Choice Hotels
  • Hilton Hotels
  • Hyatt Hotels
  • Intercontinental Hotels (includes all Priority Club Hotels)
  • Marriott Hotels &
  • Starwood Preferred Guest's Hotels

All you need to do is to enter your "Destination" in the search box and it will pop up hotel property names and price in award points for them. This makes it very easy to short-list the hotels and gives estimate on price you would have to pay (based on your valuation of the points) if you chose to stay on "award". For e.g. I have searched "Bali, Indonesia" below and as you can see that there are several options to select from based on where I want to stay and price I am looking to pay. Of-course there are certain limitations of this tool, as it does not list the "exact rates" for your dates as well as it does not specify the availability of award for your dates, but you at least get to know available properties and the points required which makes your selection easier.

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Award Mapper Hotel Awards for Bali, Indonesia
Wandering Aramean Hotel Tools:
This tool gives specific information about the hotels as well as comparison between the "cost of award stay" and "cost when payed with cash". The comparison does require your "Fair value of points input", but it is pretty neat in that it will only show hotels with availability on your dates. It requires you to create your "login ID" before performing the search and currently supports Rates comparison for following Hotels:
  • Wyndham Hotels
  • Intercontinental Hotels (includes all Priority Club Hotels)
  • Marriott Hotels
It does have support for "Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG)" awards, but the search is limited to availability check on "points" or "points+cash". There is no price comparison function for SPG hotels. As an example I did search for hotels in "Bali, Indonesia" for 1 night stay at Intercontinental group hotels from 3rd May 2014 to 4th May 2014 and the results show that the best value I would get from my points is for staying at "Intercontinental Bali Resort" whereas if I am looking to stay at cheapest cost then I should stay by paying cash at "Holiday Inn Express, Bali Kuta".
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Wandering Aramean Hotel Search for IHG
HotelsCombined:
Now you have done your reward stay research it's time to check if there are hotels available (may or may not be brand affiliated hotels) which are better bargain then redeeming your points. HotelsCombined is hotel aggregate site which searches for the hotels in your "desired location" and gives you whole bunch of criteria to narrow down or refine your search. The best part is it will show various "OTA as well as hotel websites" where you can book online along with their price comparison. For e.g. searching for hotels with only "5 stars" gives us prices ranging from $21 for a shared dorm to a price of $2299 for a resort room. You can further filter down on brand name and other bunch of criteria to get best bang for your buck.
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HotelsCombined Price Search
TripBam:
Enter TripBam! This is a useful tool once you have done the search through HotelsCombined and have booked a "refundable room" for your stay. You can use this "TripBam" to send you alert if the price of your reserved hotel goes up or down on your desired dates of stay. You can also set the criteria if there are other hotels of your interest where you can possibly stay if the price is within the desired range of the price you paid for the current reservation. TripBam can send you an email alert about the price changes for your set of desired hotels so you do not need to keep searching for lower price once you have booked your reservation. For e.g. you can select the set of hotels you are interested in as shown below and you are on your way to savings if the price drops below your price paid or desired price.
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TripBam Hotel selection for price check
Although there are numerous other sites which can help you search Hotels such as Kayak, but the above are just a few gem of tools which would help you make your hotel search better and faster. 
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BUY UNITED MILES FOR ~1.8CPM

10/27/2013

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There are two promotions going on currently which can help you earn United Miles at ~1.8 cpm (cent per mile). Although this might not be a cool way to earn united miles, but if you are short of miles for you next award and want to get there quickly this could be for you rather than buying it directly from united at a cost of ~3.5 cpm.

There are currently two promotions going on which both co-incidentally run till November 30th, 2013. 

  • Earn 20% more points when you purchase Wyndham points till November 30th, 2013.
  • Earn 25% more miles when you transfer your hotel points from any partner hotels (including Wyndham) to United MileagePlus program (Minimum 5000 miles should be deposited to earn the bonus) till November 30th, 2013.

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Earn 25% more United Miles when you transfer partner hotel points
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20% more bonus points for Wyndham points purchase
Wyndham points can be purchase in the blocks of 1000 points with each 1000 points costing $11. So let's say you purchased 20,000 Wyndham points you would essentially pay $220 for 24,000 points (20,000 + 4000 [bonus]). Wyndham points convert at ratio of 2.5:1 to United Miles. Thus you would trade 24,000 Wyndham points to 9600 United Miles. Since United will give you 25% bonus on received miles which is 2400 additional miles (9600 x 25%). Thus you get 12,000 miles (9600 + 2400) for a payment of $220 which is ~1.833 cent/mile.

There is one more way of earning United Miles for same price as above if you do not mind renting a car at Alamo if it is available for cheap (This is YMMV and thus proceed with caution). For details of this promo offer which earns 1000 miles for 1 day rentals check here.

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GETTING BEST VALUE OUT OF HOTEL LOYALTY POINTS - PART 1

10/6/2013

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As you keep collecting hotel program points for reward stays it's worth understanding the value you are getting out of your investment. Everyone has a different value on points they hold and in which program the points are available. But knowing what value you can get of those points is of importance. The intend of this post is to highlight different program "sweet spots" so you know your choices and where to look before deciding to use your points for hotel award night stay. The loyalty programs we will be looking at are listed below:
  1. Hyatt Gold Passport, 
  2. Hilton Honors, 
  3. IHG (Priority Club), 
  4. Marriott Hotels, 
  5. Club Carlson Hotels
  6. SPG

This article will focus on Hyatt Gold Passport and Hilton Honors. For IHG (Priority Club) refer to my post on IHG Big Win. The value proposition for IHG (Priority Club) comes from Point Savers Award. For details on Marriott, Club Carlson and SPG do check my next article in this series.

Hyatt Gold Passport
Most hotels in Hyatt brand represent high tier and luxury class hotels. Hyatt award night starts from mere 5k points for category 1 hotels and the highest category 6 hotels cost 22k points for standard room. The reward chart representing the hotels in different categories can be found here. The category 6 hotels include Park Hyatt Tokyo, Park Hyatt Maldives and Park Hyatt Sydney that retails upwards of $900+. Thus redeeming 22k points for standard room at this hotels is extremely awesome value proposition if you are looking for Style and grand experience. On the lower end of it you could redeem 5k points for hotels such as Bali Hyatt which goes for ~$120+. So if you are looking to stay at decent to good brand hotel, I would suggest looking at Category 1 & 2 hotels to see if any hotels exits for the destination you are planning to visit which provides great redemption value for award nights rather than paying cash.

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Hyatt Award Night Categories
Hilton Honors
Although Hilton has massively devalued their program in recent time by increasing award night redemption cost's almost 2x and introducing variable points reward rate based on seasonality; there are still quite a few value hotels for budget conscious travelers who want to experience Hilton brand. You should use this useful tool here to determine how many points are required for standard room stay at the location you plan to visit. Once you know the points, you can visit the brand hotel website and scroll all the way to the bottom to see the award night rate for your stay. Look at the example below for Double Tree Hilton Goa. The Hotel's average night cost is INR 11,000 which would roughly equate to ~$180 but the points cost is only 5k points. That's awesome value proposition for Hilton Honors points.
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Hilton Points Category
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Hilton Goa for 5k Points in November and December
As you can see from above it is still a good value proposition redeeming Hilton Honor points for lower category hotels and thus maximizing value of your points for free award night stays.

So in short if you are looking for value from above programs look for lower or mid category hotels in Hyatt and lower category hotels in Hilton Honors program
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DAILY GETAWAY - BUY US/AA/UA/DL mILES FOR 1.35C/MILE

7/1/2013

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The Upcoming Daily Getaway for Wyndham Points on 2nd July is essentially an opportunity of buying Airline Miles at at cost of 1.35c/mile. So if you are looking for a specific redemption and are short of few thousand miles or want to buy miles for real cheap then this is the opportunity for you. I would recommend not to buy Wyndham points speculatively unless for specific redemption because Wyndham is known for unannounced devaluation of their points.
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With tomorrow's deal you would be buying different point packages at a fixed rate of 0.6 cent/point (0.54 cent/point if you use AMEX Credit Card as you get 10% discount). Wyndham allows points to miles conversion for most US carriers at a ratio of 2.5 Wyndham point = 1 Airline Mile, thus giving a cost of 1.5 cent/mile (1.35 cent/miles with AMEX card). Note that this ratio of conversion is True for Major US Carriers such as US Airways, American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Airlines. You could also convert the points to South West airlines (3 Wyndham point = 1 Airline Mile), Frontier Airlines, Amtrak Points and few foreign airlines miles such as Air Berlin, Czech Airlines, Air China etc. To view the complete list and the ratio of conversion you will need to have Wyndham Rewards account and click "Redeem for Airline Miles and Partner Points" on the link here. 

There are different points packages available with limit of 1 package type per account except the 14000 points package which can be purchased in the quantity of 2. Thus you can purchase all the different point packages to have larger stack of Wyndham Points. Below are the package available and their cost. Note that you could still use the points to stay at Wyndham branded hotels and you are not just limited to stay at the hotel advertised, but any hotel room available for given amount of points. Also the points expire 4 years from the date of deposit and after 18 months if there is no earning or redemption from the account. All the packages are at same rate of 0.6 cent/point (0.54 cent/point with AMEX).

  • 14000 points for $84 ($75.6 with AMEX Card) - Limit of 2 packages per Wyndham account.
  • 32000 points for $192 ($172.8 with AMEX Card) - Limit of 1 package per Wyndham account.
  • 40000 points for $240 ($216 with AMEX Card) - Limit of 1 package per Wyndham account.
  • 60000 points for $360 ($324 with AMEX card) - Limit of 1 package per Wyndham account.
  • 75000 points for $450 ($450 with AMEX card) - Limit of 1 package per Wyndham account.

The points go on sale at 1 p.m. EST so make sure you are online before that as the points usually sell out in a matter of minutes. Best of luck and hope this is useful for buying points for your award flight,

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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.
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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. 
  1. 20k points for $102 (0.51 cent/point) or $91.8 (0.459 cent/point) if paying with AMEX credit card.
  2. 32k points for $134 (0.419 cent/point) or $120.6 (0.377 cent/point) if paying with AMEX credit card.
  3. 36k points for $156 (0.433 cent/point) or $140.4 (0.390 cent/point) if paying with AMEX credit card.
  4. 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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GET US AIRWAYS/ ASIA MILES/ HAWAIIAN MILES VIA AEROPLAN TILL 13TH MAY 2013

5/5/2013

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There is a current promotion going on which caught my eye today. Aeroplan is running a great promotion where you earn bonus miles when you transfer your financial services, car rental, hotels and points.com points to Aeroplan till 13th of May 2013. Below are the partner list and chart of points earned.
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Starwoods, Marriott, Wyndham & SPG are partners
As I had discussed in my earlier post of 50% bonus on transferred hotel points to US Airways, how to take advantage of the transfer using Marirott and Wyndham, I would not discuss that here, but in addition there are few other pluses in this transfer:
1. SPG is also a partner, so for every transfer of 20k SPG points you already earn 5k bonus miles from SPG, but in addition you would now also earn bonus miles of 4k from Aeroplan. So 20k SPG points would get you 29k Aeroplan Miles.
2. The bonus is calculated after considering the total miles you accumulate by transfer from all the partners cumulatively. That means you can transfer over points from various hotel partners to earn a maximum of 40k Aeroplan bonus miles when you get 150k Aeroplan miles deposited in your account.

Note: Transfer from American Express Membership Rewards does not count towards this bonus. You can check out the full list of terms & conditions on the bonus offer page here.
There is a hidden value in the transfer which makes this promotion more interesting and that's "points.com".
If you head over to "points.com" you will realize that Aeroplan Miles can be exchanged (minimum of 15k Aeroplan miles required) for US Airways miles at a ratio of 1 : 0.84.  Not only that if you look closely you will find out that you can transfer your points to Asia Miles (Cathay Pacific) at a ratio of 1 : 0.724 as well as to Hawaiian Airlines miles at ratio of 1 : 0.672 which are really good if you are short of few thousand's miles on those account for your redemption. Considering that you cannot directly convert Wyndham points to either of Asia Miles and Hawaiian Airlines miles and adding a bonus factor to it could be a really cool value. You can see the snapshot from pionts.com below as well as conversion chart factoring in the bonus miles earned.
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points.com transfer from Aeroplan to US Airways, Hawaiian Miles and Asia Miles
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Points Conversion Table from Aeroplan to US Airways, Asia Miles & Hawaiian Miles
Thus if you missed the US Airways 50% bonus promotion (which was limited to only 1st transfer), you could very well use this promotion to get US Airways miles, but in addition to that you could very well get Asia Miles and Hawaiian Airline miles at reasonable loss in miles value (as well as transfer from Wyndham Rewards becomes a possibility).
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50% BONUS FOR HOTEL POINTS TO US AIRWAYS MILES TRANSFER TILL APRIL 30

4/14/2013

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US Airways is running promotion where you get 50% bonus miles when you transfer the "participating" hotel points into miles. This promotion is valid till April 30th and you are limited to "ONLY ONE TRANSFER BONUS OF 50%". Below are the transfer partners:
1. Best Western Rewards
2. Choice Privileges
3. Club Carlson
4. Hilton Honors
5. Priority Club
6. Wyndham Rewards
7. Marriott Rewards
8. LaQuinta Returns

Unfortunately "Starwood Preferred Guest" is not a transfer partner. Also do note that the US Airways Dividend miles will get converted to AAdvantage miles when it merges with American Airlines. So, a good way to built US Airways miles for now.
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US Airways Transfer Promotion
Although hotel points transfer to Airline miles is rarely a good value and a good partner like "SPG" is excluded. There are couple of good value to have above.

Wyndham Rewards Transfer:
Wyndham Rewards points transfer to US Airways miles with a ratio of "2.5:1". Adding 50% bonus the ratio becomes "2.5:1.5".
For e.g. Transferring 8000 Wyndham Reward Points with will you 4800 US Airways Dividend Miles.

Marriott Rewards Transfer:
There are two different ways of getting US Airways miles in exchange for Marriott Rewards Points:
1. Air Mileage: Marriott Rewards Points can simply be converted to US Airways miles with a variable ratio ranging from "5:1" for 10k points transfer to maximum of "2.5:1" for 125k points transfer. Thus with 50% bonus you will earn anywhere from "5:1.5" to as good as "2.5:1.5". Here is the link to get started.
e.g. 1: Transferring 10k Marriott Reward Points would yield 3k US Airways Dividend Miles.
e.g. 2: Transferring 125k Marriott Reward Points would yield 75k US Airways Dividend Miles.
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Marriott Rewards Points to Airline Mileage Transfer
2. Hotel + Air Package: Marriott Rewards Points have an option for redeeming for "Hotel + Air Package" deal. One of the good redemptions here is "7 nights in category 1-5 hotels + 120k miles" for 270k Marriott Reward Points. The good deal about this package is you not only get 7 nights worth of stay in category 1-5 hotels (which by the way you could finalize at later point in time) but you would get a transfer ratio of "2.25:1" without bonus. Adding the 50% transfer bonus would yield "1.5:1" transfer ratio which is "awesome" considering you get 180k miles + 7 nights of hotel stay as well.
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Marriott Rewards Hotel + Air Package 1
Do note that the 50% bonus is only applicable for "1 transfer only" but you could always transfer the points to your spouse account as well and get similar benefits. Both Wyndham Rewards and Marriott Rewards allows such transfers. If you do not have either Wyndham Rewards Points or Marriott Rewards Points but are having "few thousand points lying over" in any other participating hotel program, now would be a good time to get a good 50% bonus on them.
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HOTEL POINTS TO MILES

10/3/2012

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One of the way’s to accumulate miles in the airline frequent flyer program is to collect points in one of hotel programs which allow point conversion to miles. Most often than not the conversion ratio from points to miles is bad but still there are few exceptions to this. So, why would you want to transfer points to miles?
  • You are short by few thousand miles in your airline frequent flyer program and transferring points from a hotel program seems to be best bet than outright buying them.
  • You got few thousand points in one of the hotel loyalty program but are way short on getting to a total required for getting free hotel reward night and thus it seems best to convert them to miles.
  • You participated in a hotel promotion and have earned good amount of points which would give a great value when converted to miles and used for flying.
Apart from the above at times there are promotions by the airlines where they would provide “bonus” for transferring the points to their airline miles, but these are rare these days. Also there are quite a few hotel programs which provide great conversion ratio from hotel points to miles and thus can help to get best value out of them. So what are the best characteristics of good points to miles conversion programs?
  • The points should be earned at a good rate at the program hotels.
  • The points to miles conversion ratio should be such so as to give the similar value as it would give if used directly for hotel rewards night. For e.g. if 8000 points of a hotel program are valued at $100 then converting them to miles should still give a value of $100.
  • The hotels partners with some of the major airlines for points to miles transfer.
  • The hotel chain runs good value promotions so as to earn points which can be converted to miles later.

Let’s look into more details about the good hotel programs purely from points to miles conversion perspective.

Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG): SPG is one of the few programs which provides great transfer value:
  • It earns at a rate of 1 point/$ at most of the Starwood branded hotels without any ongoing promotion.
  • It provides from 1:1 to 1:1.25 ratio of conversion from points to miles for most partner airlines. For every transfer of 20k points to miles it provides 5k bonus miles (In all 20k points to 25k miles) thus giving a maximum transfer ratio of 1:1.25.
  • Assuming you spend $100 in a hotel stay, earning at 1x, you would earn 100 points which converts to 100 miles.
It has huge number of airline partners and thus the points earned become much more valuable because of the flexibility. The partner list and the conversion ratio can be found here.

Wyndham Rewards (WR):
WR is another program which provides great transfer value:
  • It earns at a rate of 5 points/$ (Hawthorn Suites) or 10 points/$ at all other WR brand hotels without any promotion.
  • It provides 2.5:1 ratio of conversion from points to miles for most partner airlines.
  • Thus assuming you spend $100 in a hotel stay, earning at 5x, you would earn 500 points which converts to 200 miles.
  • Although Wyndham has lucrative earning rate, the fact that it primarily partners with only few airlines gives a lesser value on flexibility count. The partner list and the conversion ration can be found here.

Apart from Starwood Preferred Guest and Wyndham Rewards there are bunch of other hotel programs which could potentially earn higher miles at times due to lucrative seasonal promotion offers. Some of the hotel programs which are useful for points to miles conversion are listed below.

Hyatt Gold Passport
Club Carlson
Marriott Rewards
Priority Club
Hilton Honors
Choice Privileges
Best Western



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