When it comes to purchasing miles or points for a hotel it rarely makes financial sense. The valuations that they give you when purchasing points is more than paying in cash for the flight or room.
There are better ways to build up points or miles such as flying, booking hotel rooms, paying with your travel card or promotional offers.
But just like most things in life you never say never when it comes to purchasing miles or points for flights or hotel rooms in certain circumstances.
These are 4 reasons to purchase miles and points and they include the following.
1. Buying points so points don’t expire
Many airline or hotel points will expire after a given time. This can range from 12 to 36 months when there has not been an activity in an account.
One way to keep your points active is by purchasing extra miles or points. By purchasing the miles or points it will restart the clock on your points.
Before you do this you will want to contact the hotel or airline to make sure this is the case since everyone does not start the clock over.
Purchasing points or miles can be expensive if you are not doing it during a sale so you will want to keep on top of it so that you can purchase the points and miles at a rate as close to the redemptive value as possible.
2. To complete a room purchase or ticket
There may be times when you want to book a flight or room right now and you are just short in points or miles to do so. If you try to do so through a credit card it will take too much time so purchasing a few points or miles can still make good financial sense.
For example, let’s say you wanted to fly from Cleveland to Honolulu with United Airlines. You have 71,000 points and you wanted to fly first class on part of the flight.
A flight from Cleveland to Honolulu is 74,500 points + $5.60.
Right now you can purchase 4,000 miles for $150.50 which includes tax and recovery fee.
This is a good return on investment since a first class flight one way would cost you $2,060.00.
3. When the price of flight or room is more expensive than purchasing points
There are times when you want to stay at a particular hotel or book a flight and purchasing points may be cheaper to do so than buying a ticket or getting a room with cash. This is especially true if you want to stay at an upscale hotel or booking a business or first class ticket.
For example, if you wanted to stay at Hyatt Residence Club Maui Kaanapali Beach from April 11-12 it would cost you $1,740 for a member rate per night. Total cost for the night with taxes and fees is $2,023.91.
You can use points to book your one night stay. It costs 30,000 points per night to book a room. If you did not have any points and wanted to purchase points, it would cost you $720 for 30,000 points.
So, purchasing 30,000 points instead of paying cash for the room would save you $1,303. It makes financial sense to purchase points in this case.
Again, you would want to purchase points when Hyatt would be running a deal in this case. The points that I showed in this example are not on a discount. You could save even more money if you got them on a discount.
4. Fantastic deal on points
The last time when it makes financial sense to purchase miles or points is when they are offering such a great deal it makes financial sense.
For example, American Airlines was offering 5x the points when purchasing items through various stores like Best Buy. This brought the cost of a mile down to .42 which makes it a great offer to get miles.
American Airlines was also offering to give you 40 miles for every dollar donated to Conservation International. This was a fantastic offer and well worth making a donation to get some miles.
Most deals are not this good, so you have to look at the deal and see if it makes good financial sense when purchasing points or miles.
What credit card to use when purchasing miles?
When purchasing miles most airlines and hotels are affiliated with Points.com which is a third party site. Since most go through a third party site you will not be able to earn category bonuses that you would normally earn with booking hotel rooms and flights. So, using an affiliated hotel or airline card will not earn you bonus points or miles.
The best thing to do when purchasing points is to use a card that gives you bonus points on everyday purchases. For example, The Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card, Chase Flex card and The Chase Business Ink Unlimited Card.
There are a few airlines that offer their own miles from their own website this includes:
- American AAdvantage
- Avianca LifeMiles
- Delta SkyMiles
- British Airways Executive Club
So, if you have a credit card affiliated with the airline, you will earn bonus miles when purchasing points on their website. Or if you have a travel card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Chase Sapphire Reserve you will earn bonus points for travel.
Final Thoughts
As I mentioned before, purchasing miles or points rarely makes good financial sense. There are better ways to earn points and miles than purchasing them. If one of the reasons that you need to purchase miles or points fits into one of the four points I mentioned then it may make good financial sense.
