In my head, I am already thinking about where we are going to go one future December break, and how we are going to take advantage of points and/or miles for some free travel. I recently toyed with LA for 5 nights and Palm Springs for 3 nights.
Los Angeles
As for LA, I have been researching and talking to friends about where we should stay and it looks like it will be Santa Monica. As for hotels in Santa Monica, there is a Westin but it is not on the beach. So I am thinking the JW Marriott Santa Monica Le Merigot.
This hotel is a Marriott Rewards Category 9 (High!) so the rooms go for 45,000 Marriott Rewards points per night with the 5th night free. This will definitely be a stay where we squeeze into one room with a cot (or air mattress) as the point requirement is too high for us for 2 rooms. Upon doing a quick search, it looks like a standard room is about $400 per night, so the room for 5 nights would cost about $2000. (There is no 5th night free when you pay for your room.) So if we use our points for this, we will save about $2,000.
So for one room, I will need 180,000 Marriott Rewards points. My plan to get these points over the next 14 months is as follows….
First, a couple of months ago, Rob got the Chase Marriott Rewards Premier Credit Card. (We got a lot of other cards at the same time, read about that here.) He spent the required $2,000 in the first 3 months of card membership and I am currently waiting for those 70,000 miles to post to his Marriott Rewards account. So with these bonus points and the $ he spent on the card, we will be roughly at 72,000 Marriott Rewards points.
Next, we have a very expensive (not on points) trip planned to the Atlantis in April 2015. Recently, Atlantis partnered with the Autograph Collection. The Autograph Collection is part of Marriott International’s Exclusive Portfolio of Independent Hotels. This means that Marriott Rewards members can now earn points for their stay at the Atlantis. In fact, I am going to earn 10 points per dollar on my rooms when we stay at the resort. (We need to stay in 2 rooms at the Atlantis as they count people for water park access). This trip is costing us (shhh don’t tell Rob 🙂 ) about $7,000 for the rooms for 1 week. (Bucket list trip for our family!) The bright side-we are going to earn about another 70,000 Marriott Rewards points for our stay. ($7,000 X 10 points per $ spent–note on room rate only).
Third, the card that we are going to use to pay for the room and all of our other charges at the Atlantis is none other than Rob’s Chase Marriott Rewards Premier Credit Card. When we use this card to check out, we earn 5 points for every $1 spent at a Marriott. So even just for our $7,000 we will earn an extra 35,000 Marriott Rewards points. This does not include paying for our additional charges at the hotel. But let’s leave them out for this scenario.
So now after next spring break we would have 177,000 Marriott Rewards points. We would have 72,000 from Rob’s sign-up bonus plus charges, 70,000 from our Atlantis stay and another 35,000 from using our Chase Marriott card for our Atlantis stay. We are 5,000 points short.
For these 5,000 points, I would transfer points from my Chase Ultimate Rewards account to my Marriott Rewards point account. These points transfer at a 1:1 ratio.
Palm Springs
In Palm Springs, we will likely stay at The Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort & Spa. A friend of mine stayed here last year and loved it.
This hotel is Starwood Resort and is only an SPG Category 4 hotel and accordingly, the rooms are only 10,000 Starpoints per night. Plus it looks like they have a Cash and Points offer that maybe I would take advantage of. The rooms here would cost about $250 per night. Maybe I would not use points. I will weigh my options when I actually book. But if I did, we would save about $750 for the 3 nights.
If we were to use points, we already have a lot of Starwood points from accumulation over a number of years. We earned these points using our Starwood American Express card for charges on stays at Starwood resorts and on everyday purchases. We also have referred a number of people to the card and have received 5,000 points per referral. We have also earned extra points by paying with this card when staying at a Starwood resort and earning extra bonus points. Specifically, I earn 2 points per dollar with my Amex plus 3 points as a Gold member, so I earn 5 points per dollar on all of my Starwood charges.
Lastly, although we would not likely take advantage of this because we do not need the Starpoints, if you are an American Express Membership Rewards member you can transfer your Membership Rewards points, in 1,000-point increments, to your Starwood Preferred Guest account. However, your points transfer at 3:1 value. That means three American Express Membership Rewards points equals one Starpoint. In my opinion, this is not worth it!