Christmas on the road, part II

We’re halfway through our Christmas travels this year, and thought it would be great to share our plan for cheap lodging on the road!

One of the biggest benefits of the time I spend on the road for my job at Hope is that I get to collect honors/reward points from all of the hotels at which I stay.  This usually amounts to something like 5 or 6 nights per year that are free to us to use for our own personal travel.  We’ve gotten some major use out of this perk during our trips to my parents’ house this year, with a trip out in August for a graduation party and now our Christmas travel this month.

A little backstory: with four siblings, my parents’ house can get a little full during the holiday season.  We’ve stayed there before, but this year we decided to cash in some points and stay at a hotel for the three nights that we’d be in town.  I hadn’t accumulated them to the point where we’d be able to get all three nights through one brand (Hilton, Marriott, etc.), so here’s what we ended up with:

Nights #1 and #2: 40,000 Hilton Honors points got us two nights at the awesome Hampton Inn in Webster, New York.  Hampton Inns are my hotel of choice when on the road and this newer hotel (opened March 2009) is really great for the money.

Night #3: 15,000 Marriott rewards points got us a night at the Marriott hotel in Greece, New York.  It seems to have been recently renovated and it was a really nice place to stay.  I did have to purchase some points to meet the one-night quota, but that only cost us $12.50.

It’s a nice perk that Hope allows me to hang on to the rewards points I accumulate during the year from Hilton, Marriott, and Holiday Inn, among others.  Doing a little math, we get a savings of:

2 nights at Hampton Inn: 2 x $130 = $260
1 night at Marriott: $125
- purchased rewards points: $12.50
Total savings: about $373

Probably worth noting is the fact that we’d be less inclined to stay in a hotel were it not for the rewards points we’d accumulated.  But if you’ve got ‘em, why not use them?
__
Photo Credit: brent_nashville // Creative Commons