In case you’re not familiar, Daily Getaways are daily deals sponsored by the US Travel Association. Some are better than others, so you need to think about whether you can take full advantage of the offer before buying.
For the more popular offers, they will sell out quickly, which means being around right when they go on sale each day at 1:00 pm EDT. Some offers will sell out in hours, some in minutes. It’s also important to be patient. If you click shortly after an offer becomes available and it shows sold out, keep trying. Someone may have an offer in their shopping cart but change their mind or have their computer crash. When that happens, their bad luck or change of heart can be your good fortune.
Finally, make sure you pay with an American Express card to save an additional 10%. Any AMEX card will do.
Since my new daily newsletter format has my notification coming to subscribers between 7 and 10pm EDT, I’ll summarize today’s and tomorrow’s offer so you can plan ahead if reading in the evening. Feel free to e-mail me or post questions in the comments section. Good luck chasing the deals you’re looking for!
Monday, May 26th: IHG Rewards Club
100,000 points for $567 (with 10% discount for paying with AMEX card) or .567 cents a piece.
15,000 points for $90 (with 10% discount for paying with AMEX card) or .6 cents a piece.
25,000 points for $150.30 (with 10% discount for paying with AMEX card) or .6 cents a piece.
50,000 points for $292.50 (with 10% discount for paying with AMEX card) or.59 cents a piece.
If you have a specific redemption in mind, you can really pile on the points with this offer. The T&C allow you to buy 3 of each offering and a total of 16 packages across the 8 total deals IHG is featuring for Daily Getaways.
If you don’t have a specific redemption in mind, I wouldn’t be stockpiling IHG Rewards Club points, as you can effectively “buy” them directly from IHG at .7 cents a piece by booking Points & Cash reservations and canceling them.
Finding good value for room redemptions can take a bit of work, though there are properties out there. I did a search on an upcoming trip and found them to be an especially bad value:
$116 nightly rate and it would cost me ~$170 to buy 30,000 points. However, I did find the following solid values:
Intercontinental Times Square is advertised at $400 and above most nights I found, and it would cost $283 to buy points through this offer.
Intercontinental Paris-Le Grand offers a great value with rates that are generally North of $500. It will cost you $283 to buy points for this property and I saw reward availability for nights when the rate was as high as $700. You’ll find a lot of solid values in Europe, especially with the conversion rate on the Euro.
Airline transfers don’t offer quite as much value. American, Delta, US Airways and United all convert at a rate of 10,000 IHG points to 2,000 airline miles. Based on the price of this offer, that’s about 2.8 cents a mile. United generally sells miles at or above 3 cents, but American and US Airways are down around 2 cents. And, unless you have a very specific use in mind, paying almost 3 cents for a mile speculatively is a bad idea.
Bottom Line It For Me, Ed
As with many of the Daily Getaways deals this year, value is in the eye of the beholder. If you have a stay planned at a specific property, there’s a good chance you can save a few bucks buying points. But, don’t buy points if you don’t have an immediate plan.
Related
A beverage vouvher would make my next flight a nicer experience (I hope)
Where is a link to purchase these points ? Seems like a good deal for intercontinental hotels
Leonard, you can purchase them today at 1pm ET at http://www.dailygetaways.com. Good luck, and make sure you pay with an AMEX for the 10% discount.