Miles and points have lots of different uses, but one of the best uses of them is for situations where the cash price for something is unexpectedly or seasonally high. We have written before about using hotel points for the Super Bowl, or using hotel points for the World Series, or college football (SEC) games. Even though many (most?) hotel chains have dynamic award pricing now, they don’t always correctly correlate the difference between the cash price and the points price. I got over 3 cents for a Marriott Bonvoy point for using points during the 2024 eclipse. That’s about 4 times as much as Bonvoy points are typically worth.

A Trip To California

I am heading out to Los Angeles in a few months for a conference, and I have been making plans for this trip. I am using 22,000 Delta Sky Miles to fly directly from Cincinnati to LAX. Even though there are cheaper options on American that have a connection, in this case I value the direct flight, so I was willing to pay a bit more

(SEE ALSO: Another 4.6 cents per mile redemption with American Airlines)

On my way back home, I am flying my first AA Flagship transcontinental flight from LAX to Boston, spending the day in Boston before flying home.

For the hotel, I looked at a few options. I believe there is value in staying at the hotel where the conference is in many cases, but I’m also not opposed to staying somewhere else if the cost savings is enough. One trick I’ve often used when staying at conferences is buying points when it comes out to less money than buying a cash. I’ve had experiences where buying points saved me 80% on my conference hotel costs.

Snagging A Deal With Hyatt in Los Angeles

In this case, the conference is at the Pasadena Convention Center, and the hotel that is right across the street is the Hyatt Place Pasadena. It’s not a true “conference” hotel but it is right across the street. I need 3 nights, and the cash cost is nearly $400 / night on 2 of the nights.

But that’s what miles and points are for, right? I used the trick to combine points reservations and free nights reservations on a Hyatt stay, and arranged my payment as such::

Of course I used my free night certificate on the peak night where it would have cost 18,000 points instead of 15,000 😛

The Bottom Line

So, if I count my free night as costing $95 from the annual fee on the Hyatt credit card, that means that 30,000 points plus $95 saved me $1,248.77, giving me a 3.84 cents per point value from my Hyatt points. Another way to look at it possibly would be to ignore the free night and say that 30,000 points saved me $675.46, which is 2.25 cents per point, though then I can talk about the outsized value of paying a $95 annual fee to get a free night certificate worth $390! All in all, I am quite happy with this redemption and looking forward to an awesome trip

What’s your record for cents per point value on a Hyatt redemption? Leave it in the comments below

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