How Many Points Do I Need?

So how many points do you actually need to book travel on points? These are the numbers I hold in my head for rough estimates and a starting ground when looking at potential bookings based on my own experiences.

Note: airlines and hotels can "devalue" or increase the points cost of flights or hotels at any time. The points cost believe truly is just a starting point for a rule of thumb. I commonly see points prices for much less and for much more!

For example, I list international economy flight as 35K pts one way for one person, however more than once, I've found economy flights for my family of two adults and two kids for 87K points total! (Flying Blue, Air France and KLM's points booking system, can be a great option with slightly higher fees, but they also offer 25% off children's flights for kids 11 and under!)

Flights

• Domestic flight, economy one way: 12,500 - 20,000 points

• International flight to Europe, economy, one way: 35,000-40,000 points* + taxes/fees**

• International flight to Europe, business class, one way: 65,000-70,000 points* + taxes/fees**

• International flight to Mexico, round-trip: 40,000-50,000 points + taxes/fees

*Note: being Denver-based, I use United as my basis of thought; however, you can often find much lower options if you're willing to do a positioning flight to fly out of another large hub airport. A positioning flight is a flight you take to for the sole purpose of getting to another airport to start your primary trip

**International Taxes/Fees vary depending on the airport. For Europe, London Heathrow (LHR), is known to have the highest taxes/fees; often 2-3X's the cost of EU airports

Hotels

• Standard 3 or 4-Star Domestic Hotel, double queen or king room: 5,000-12,000pts/night

• Luxury Level Domestic Hotel (Hyatt Level 7 of 8 levels), double queen or king room: 35,000pts/night

• Mexico All-Inclusive: standard double queen or king room: 25,000-30,000 pts/night ***

• Mexico All-Inclusive: club access double queen or king room: 44,000 pts/night ***

***When booking all inclusive with children: if you add the children into your booking reservation, it will generally add on 50% more points. If you want to save your points, you can book the reservation with 2 adults only (although ensure your room type can accommodate your total number of travelers, adults + children) and pay the daily cash rate to add children.

After you have a reservation, you can call and add in the children saying you want to pay cash. With this approach, instead of using points, you'll pay roughly $125/child/day to add in the all inclusive package.


Determining Value

Ultimately, when it comes to deciding what's a "good deal", really comes down to each individual - your goals, your spending habits, your budget, etc. however, in the points world, people commonly determine value by calculating their CPP, or their cent per point, by taking the cash value of the item booking and dividing it by the cost of their points redemption. To calculate CPP:

You can then compare your CPP and consider how far your points are going in consideration to just redeeming points in bank portals. For example, if you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, if you're booking travel with points in the portal, Chase will automatically give you 25% "bonus" for using your points, this every 1 points becomes 1.25 points when booking in the portal. But..... you can get much better than 1.25 CPP by transferring to partners!

For example, if you're looking at booking a hotel and it's $300 cash per night, but only 12,000 points to book, then your CPP is ($300/12,000) x 100 = 2.5. 2.5 CPP is twice as good as the 1.25 CPP you get with booking in the Chase Portal with a Chase Sapphire Preferred card!

I'm trying to keep this post short and sweet, so keep your eyes peeled for more on transferring to partners!