How to double your points, anytime

Good morning from Benin, one of the coolest countries I’ve been to in a long, long time.

While I consult a voodoo witch doctor to see if I’m going to die soon, here are some hotel deals to read about:

• 🏨 Why I’m buying Hilton points

• 🍬 Sweet spot: Double your points, anytime

• 💸 Buy Choice points with a 30% discount

• 💳 Current Transfer Bonuses

🏨 Why I’m buying Hilton points

This is going to be controversial on two very different levels, so brace yourselves.

• Controversial point 1: I am buying a bunch of Hilton points.

• Controversial point 2: The points are for a stay in Belarus. 😬

If you feel triggered by either of those statements, skip to the next section.

I won’t talk about why I’m going to Belarus (yet), but I will tell you why I need to buy Hilton points.

Current 100% bonus promotion

Right now, Hilton is offering a fantastic deal to buy points with a 100% bonus, which puts them at a clean $0.005 each (half a cent).

Hilton just opened a brand-spanking-new Waldorf Astoria hotel in Minsk, which looks incredible.

It costs almost $500 per night, or a much more reasonable 60,000 Hilton Honors points.

I want to book a 3-night stay there for 180,000 points… but right now, I only have 84,000 points in my account.

I checked the price to see what it would be if I used all my points and paid the rest in cash, which came to $760 extra.

Instead, I can BUY the remaining 96,000 points I need for just $480 thanks to this nice sale.

That means by buying points, I’m saving almost $300 for basically no extra work…

These are the times when buying points can really come in handy. With Hilton, it’s pretty hit or miss.

But in my case, it’s a slam dunk deal.

So if you have a Hilton stay coming up soon, crunch the numbers to see if this points sale could make sense for you, too. 🫵

🍬 Sweet spot: Double your points, anytime

Normally, when we talk about “sweet spots,” it’s about solid ways to use airline miles for outsize value.

And when we talk about hotels, we talk about the heavy hitters like Hyatt, Marriott, IHG, and Hilton.

But today, I’m going to tell you about a hotel sweet spot that doesn’t involve any of the above…

So, without further ado, let’s talk about Choice Privileges.

Choice is one of those programs that doesn’t have many of the sexy perks that the other programs offer…

But there’s one thing they DO have – the ability to double your points by transferring ThankYou Points at a 1:2 ratio.

And while Hilton has a similar arrangement with MR Points, Choice is better 👀

That’s because they have a fairly strict redemption range of 8,000 points to 35,000 points (except for some partner brands, like Preferred Hotels).

Transferring 4,000 points to Choice (thus giving you 8,000 points) and booking a hotel like this is one of the best hotel sweet spots there is.

But even the higher-end hotels (of which Choice has many) are a really solid sweet spot.

If any other program allowed us to book their highest-tier hotels for just 15,000 points per night, we’d be drooling. 🤤

But that is exactly the case with Choice, since 15,000 points turn into 30,000 when transferring from ThankYou Points.

So here’s the bottom line:

We don’t often talk about cards like this one, which earns ThankYou Points.

But racking up a lot of ThankYou Points can REALLY come in handy when you find the perfect Choice Hotel for your travels.

If you don’t have ThankYou points or want to leverage Choice hotels more urgently, there’s another deal that can help.👇

💸 Buy Choice points with a 30% discount

To bookend this newsletter, let’s talk about another sale to buy points… this time with Choice Privileges.

I don’t think I’ve ever suggested buying Choice points before, but right now could be a good chance to do so, since they’re offering up to a 30% discount.

As I literally just told you, Choice has fixed pricing for all of its hotels, which cost as few as 8,000 points per night.

With a 30% discount, the price per point comes out to roughly 0.7 cents.

That means a hotel that costs 8,000 points would effectively cost you around $56 per night if you simply buy points.

In other words, as long as the cash rate for the hotel you’re booking is more than the price of buying points, this is a good deal.

Whenever you buy points, you’ll want to use a card that earns 2x on uncategorized spend, like the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card or its big brother.

That’s all for today, friends. I know this one was a little hotel-heavy, but I think these are all great deals worth considering.

Have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you Monday.

Yours truly,

6.3562° N, 2.4278° E

With contributions by McKay Moffitt