Redemption Day

Earning miles and the the high of doing it on the cheap is great, but miles are earned to be burned.  Various plans coordinated and made Saturday mileage redemption day.

I finally settled on a hotel for my upcoming trip and found the rate of $195 ($171 + 14% tax) to be both out of my price range and obscene.  This is a Holiday Inn property and participates in Priority Club. One of the nice features of Priority Club is the cash and points redemption so you can pay partially with points and partially with cash.  This works well for both corporate office as they get more revenue than they would from franchise fees on a paid stay and the traveler also pays less.  The individual property owner loses out as they will get a pittance instead of $171 for my stay. This could alternatively be viewed as they get a pittance over nothing as I would not pay that price.

I redeemed 5,000 Priority Club points in conjunction with $60 for the room.  In this case each point is worth  2.7 cents, I am quite impressed with getting this value.

The second redemption of the day was Amtrak travel from Los Angeles to San Diego.  The cash price for this is $31 or $27.90 with AAA discount.  The price is high considering the distance and my hotel in San Diego is higher than I would like so I burned some Amtrak points for this trip.  1,000 points to be exact as the routing is on the Pacific Surfliner, a route Amtrak considers to be primarily commuter use so much lower than other redemption options. At 2.8 cents per point this is not a great value but it is acceptable and keeps cash in my pocket.  I also get this view, priceless.

The third redemption was for a flight for part of the Grand East Coast tour.  12,500 American miles and $5 for the TSA goons got me a flight routing that is retailing at $354.  There are cheaper flights that are acceptable to me so it is not correct to value based on the routing I have.  $210 is the lowest priced acceptable alternative so I'll use that as my basis for valuation, 1.65 cents per mile.  Again that is acceptable but not great and May is going to busy so cash staying in my pocket is a good thing.

18,500 miles/points no longer with me for $370 in travel value.  A productive weekend indeed.