Daily Getaway June 10: Best Western Rewards Points
Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here – The Platinum Card® from American Express, Premier Rewards Gold Card from American Express, Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express, Gold Delta SkyMiles® Credit Card from American Express
American Express and the US Travel Association (a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting US travel) have partnered to offer discounts and deals with various travel brands and loyalty programs during the next month, including hotel packages, points/miles purchase promos, rental car discounts and more. These deals are called the Daily Getaways.
Each day we’ll hash out the details of that day’s deal to see whether it’s worth taking advantage of.
Today’s deal goes live at 1 pm EDT, and you can sign up for alerts if you’d like to be notified when the deals go live.
All of these promotions have the added benefit that you can save an additional 10% by purchasing with an Amex card, like the Platinum and Premier Rewards Gold, or even co-branded cards like Gold Delta SkyMiles Credit Card from American Express and the Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express.
Tuesday June 10, 2014: Best Western Rewards Points
- 10,000 Reward points for $65, 835 available
You can purchase up to five sets of Reward Points per membership number, for a maximum of 50,000 points for $325 ($292 with the Amex discount). Getting five sets is plausible since there is a lot of availability. The Best Western website isn’t very user-friendly when searching by reward points, and the results I found were mostly discouraging. The Best Western City Hotel in Austin, Texas costs 24,000 points or $118 per night in July, coming out to 48,000 points or $236 for two nights. Simply paying the $236 cash price is about 20% cheaper than using the purchased points in this case ($236 vs. $292 with Amex discount). Same thing for the Best Western in Angkor Wat: the cost per night in July is 20,000 points or $96, or for two nights, 40,000 points or $192. Purchasing four Getaway deals to get the 40,000 points would cost you $260. Even with the Amex discount bringing that down to $234, you're better off just using cash.
However, there were some worthwhile options. In Quebec City at the Best Western PLUS City Centre, room rates start at $224 per night in July or 24,000 points. In this case, you could purchase three Daily Getaway packages for $175 (with the Amex discount) and save about 22%. Each Best Western property uniquely prices out the number of reward points required per night, whether it be a PLUS, Premier or just a run of the mill Best Western. Frustratingly, there's no way to tell how many points are needed short of actually attempting to book the reward. I personally wouldn’t be interested in this deal, because I don’t typically stay at Best Westerns and in most cases it doesn't seem to be worth it.
Airline Miles
Best Western points transfer into airline miles at 5,000 points to 1,000 miles in programs like American Airlines and Aeroplan. Southwest is 5,000 points to 1,200 Rapid Rewards points. If you were to max out the promotion at 50,000 points for $292, you'd be getting 10,000 airline miles for a price of about 2.92 cents a pop- not a deal, especially since you can usually buy directly from the airlines and the transaction is much faster and hassle free. Transferring to Southwest would net 12,000 points (~$192 in Wanna Get Away fares) and they'd also count towards the Companion Pass, so I guess you could think about it like paying $100 for 12,000 Companion Pass Qualifying points (11% of the miles needed). Still not a great deal in my book when you can get 50,000 Southwest points from their Chase credit card.
This deal is only worthwhile if you know where you're traveling, are sure you want to stay at a Best Western, and have researched the cost of redemption at that property beforehand on your travel dates to make sure the cost in points is less than the cash price.
