Do Hotel Points Plus Cash Awards Create Good Value?

Points plus cash is one of my favorite ways to use my rewards to pay for a hotel room. I stumbled upon this concept by accident when I went to use points I’d accumulated for a reward night last year, and I’ve been using it as often as possible ever since. Before we get a bit more into it, allow me to explain to you precisely what this is.

Let’s take Hyatt for instance. It was through my Hyatt Gold Passport membership that I first realized I could do this. We had a very early morning flight out of Tampa last year heading to La Guardia and we wanted to stay in Tampa the night before our flight. We love the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay and try to visit for a night or at least dinner or brunch reservations as often as possible, so we knew we wanted to stay there. I’d forgotten I used the vast majority of our points on another trip, and I didn’t have enough for a free night. That’s when I noticed the Points + Cash deal and checked it out. This hotel is a category 3 and the nightly rate that night was $299. For 6,000 points and $75, I could book the room.

An amazing deal, by far. Now, there are times when the rooms at the Grand Hyatt are far less expensive, as we’ve gotten them for around $119 a night in the past. Would that be a good savings if we’d used the points plus cash option? Sure, we’d have saved $50. However, it’s my opinion that it’s not as good a value to use those points to save a little. I personally feel it is better to use them when you’re saving significantly. After all, it takes a while to accumulate points, so it doesn’t make that much sense to use them to save only a few dollars.

At the end of the day, only you can decide whether or not your points and cash deal is a good one, but it’s generally always a less expensive option.

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