3 Excellent Opportunities To Buy Travel Points For Less

Typically buying points only makes sense when you have an immediate usage for them. That’s because you’ve been savvy, checked the price to book a hotel or airline seat with cash, and found that you may be able to snag the same hotel or flight for less, buy topping up, or outright buying points.

Buying airline miles or hotel points can actually make even more sense right now than normal times during major sales, because in many cases, there’s not just a discount on buying points, but also a discount on redeeming them. Basically, fewer points can take you a longer way. Here’s a few opportunities worth a gander…

Hyatt 30% Bonus Buying Points, Plus Discount

Hyatt is letting you work it both ways right now, and that is kind of awesome. Whereas most luxury hotels booked with points from other programs cost circa 100,000 points, the very top Hyatt properties only require 40,000, and most knockout hotels are 25,000 points per night or less.

Right now, Hyatt has a 30% bonus when you buy points, which stacks with a 15- 25% rebate for all members when they redeem those points for hotel stays by Feb 28th, 2021. The 25% only applies if you carry the World Of Hyatt Card, or get one, but you’ll get at least 15% back via a points rebate after booking regardless.

Basic example: if you book a hotel that costs 25,000 points per night, you’d receive 15% back for stays before February 28th. That means around 3,750 points back on each night. When you can acquire the points at a 30% bonus, it’s double win.

As a side note, Hyatt’s made elite status incredibly attainable this year, and points stays count towards nights in that pursuit. Just 15 paid nights before February 27th, 2021 would earn top tier Globalist status through to 2023. Not too shabby, at all. You can buy Hyatt Points here.

Alaska 60% Bonus Buying Miles

Alaska? But I don’t live in Alaska? Alaska Airlines has one of the most lucrative points programs for redeeming miles on flights with partners like Cathay Pacific and Japan Airlines, costing around 50,000-60,000 miles each way between the USA and Asia in first or business class.

That’s an absolute steal, particularly when you buy points and top off with a 60% bonus – which is pretty much as high as Alaska ever goes.

Crucially, with many people unable to travel abroad at the moment, View From The Wing reports Alaska does not plan to devalue its points program when it joins the Oneworld alliance later this year. This should mean the fantastic values which make points worth buying should still be there.

As always, just keep in mind that you’ll need to find ‘award space’ when you want to use Alaska Miles on a partner airline, so learn how to search for seats and know what you’re getting into before purchasing. You can buy Alaska Miles with a 60% bonus here.

Hilton 100% Bonus And 5th Night Free

From Conrad properties to LXR and new Waldorf Astoria options, there are a lot of ways to gain excellent value from Hilton Honors Points. We’ve got a little round up, in case you need inspiration.

But if your inspiration is already there, and you were just waiting on an opportunity, it’s here. Hilton is back with their highest 100% bonus buying points, where any amount you buy is doubled. Buy 80,000 points for $800, end up with 160,000 points. Love it.

With Hilton’s 5th night free using points, this can present excellent opportunities to max out your points value. Combining this bonus opportunity to buy points with one of Hilton’s massive US credit card bonuses could land over 300,000 points in no time. You can buy Hilton Honors points here.

Should You Buy Points

Points are a purely personal equation. If you’re a safety focused traveler choosing a destination with excellent protocols, travel absolutely can be safe and rewarding right now. In some ways, more than ever.

Also, if you want to go really deep on whether it makes sense, we’ve got a resource to help ponder in a more concrete way. Read up on “should you buy points” here.

If you’re unsure you’ll travel in the next year, it’s tough to advocate for a speculative purchase which may change in value over a year or so. Travel is expected to open up widely by the third quarter of 2021, and perhaps even before then, so there will be lots of options before you know it, the question is whether it makes sense for your personal goals, dream hotels, flights and so forth.